Abstract
Alfred Schutz himself did not develop an explicit theory of creative action. However, he quite explicitly addresses the future aspects of action in his theory crucial to any notion of creativity. Therefore the question will be raised how useful these aspects are to a theory of creative action. I will argue that a theory of creativity can build on an inconsistency in Schutz. For although Schutz acknowledges the role of fantasy and imagination as activities of consciousness, he dismisses the role of imagination in action in favour of a more rational concept. In doing so, he cuts off an important part of his theory and gets into contradictions: On the one hand, imagination and fantasy form part of action, on the other hand, they are cut off from action in a distinct “province of meaning.” I want to solve this problem by suggesting to include imagination into action and projection and creativity, in order to, then, show which aspects of imagination contribute to creative action. In the conclusion I shall address the societal dimensions which provide the social background for the transformation in the concept of action analysed theoretically. It will be argued the increasing importance of creativity and imagination is due to general changes in contemporary society. In this context, creativity is not any longer limited to the arts but extends into the fields of science, technology, and economy. From this point of view, the theory of creative action has to be considered as a part of a theory of action that is open to societal changes, including the transgression of art and creativity.
And I first taught them what dreams needs must prove True vision.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, pp. 527f.
I am indebted for the very useful comments by Michael Barber, Rene Tuma, and Rene Wilke on the manuscript.
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Notes
- 1.
As opposed to Marx, capitalism survives and succeeds because and as if it is permanently producing innovations.
- 2.
A process studied by Rogers (1962) in much detail.
- 3.
The wrong methodological assumption that “events” phenomenologically outside of the brackets, the epoché, may serve as an explanation for what is inside the brackets leads in my eyes to the somehow quasi religious substantialism in some recent phenomenological conceptions. Cf. Henry (1987); Marion (1989).
- 4.
I have elaborated this problem of the methodological grounds of subjectivity in more detail in Knoblauch (2008).
- 5.
Although this is very basic to Schutz’s understanding of the difference between act (“Handeln”) and action (“Handlung”) and suggests a universal capacity of humans, there is, as far as I can see, so far no comparative analysis if this quite difficult grammatical form is to be constructed in all languages. As opposed to relativist arguments that stress the differences of languages in structuring time (Whorf 1956), there are strong arguments to assume that even those languages that do not dispose of similar grammatical structures are capable of producing similar meanings. Cf. Malotki (1983).
- 6.
Quite frequently, Schutz adds that certain rules must apply for such actions: Very often he mentions the “ceteris paribus” rule by which we assume that in general the same conditions are assumed that held for our projected actions, and the cum grano salis rule, by which we assume that certain restrictions to the prior typification may apply.
- 7.
“Handeln ist zunächst einmal jede auf Zukünftiges gerichtete spontane Aktivität” (Schutz 1974, p. 75).
- 8.
“Jedes Entwerfen ist vielmehr ein Phantasieren von Handeln, d.h. ein Phantasieren von spontaner Aktivität, nicht aber die spontane Aktivität selbst” (Schutz 1974/1932, p. 77).
- 9.
One should underline the particularity of this insight. In the French tradition there is long record on “l’imaginaire,” the imaginary may be sometimes linked to institutions, yet hardly ever to action. Cf. the systematic and historical overview in Legros et al. (2006).
- 10.
Still in his “notebooks” for The Structures of the Life-World (Schutz and Luckmann 1984) Schutz uses “province of meaning” synonymously with “sub-universes,” “meaning fields,” (“Sinnbereiche”) and “meaning areas” (“Sinngebiete”).
- 11.
Originally Schutz had planned to use “imageries” as a title but then he favoured “fantasy.” Cf. Schutz (1996 [1945]).
- 12.
For the sake of clarification, Schutz refers to Husserl’s distinction between predicates of reality and predicates of existence in “Experience and Judgement”: “With the natural attitude there is at the outset (before reflection) no predicate ‘real’ and no category ‘reality’. Only if we fantasise and pass from the attitude of living in the fantasy (that is the attitude of quasi-experiencing in all its forms) to the given realities, and if we, this, transgress the single casual fantasying and its phantasm, taking both as examples for possible fantasying as such and fiction as such, then we obtain on the one hand the concepts of fiction (respectively fantasying) and on the other hand the concepts ‘possible experience as such’ and ‘reality… we cannot say that he who fantasies and lives in the world of phantasms (the ‘dreamer’), posits fictions qua fictions, but he has modified realities, ‘realities as if’… Only he who lives in experiences and reaches from there into the world of phantasms can, provided that the phantasm contrasts with the experienced, have the concepts fiction and reality.” (Schutz 1962a, p. 238)
- 13.
One should add at this point, that the description of imagination as a province of meaning causes another problem for Schutz. For even with respect to imagination, he observes that it must not be performed in isolation but can be subject to communication for it is “social and then take[s] place in We-relation as well as in all of its derivations and modifications.” (Schutz 1962a, p. 240) If however, communication presupposes that we act in everyday life, as Schutz stresses frequently (Knoblauch et al. 2003), how could the communication on imagination be cut off this everyday life?
- 14.
- 15.
In drawing this sharp distinction, he can be understood as following a substantialist notion of experience (cf. Knoblauch 2011). That is to say that it assumes clear-cut boundaries of the “faculties” of the mind as if they were given by nature. Although some might consider this substantialist interpretation of Schutz as exaggerated, it is no accident that, for example, Peter Berger built his explicit “substantialist” sociology of religion on Schutz’s theory of provinces of meaning. Berger (1974) argues that Schutz´s different provinces are separate because there are substantial differences between them, so that religion e.g. is seen to be found on experiences that essentially differ from those of e.g. imagination or arts. However, this only holds if one agrees with the assumption that imagination is a separate province of meaning. One should note that this assumption is substantialist in essence. In a more constructivist sense, however, it may be argued that the differences between provinces of meaning are themselves subject to social constructions (Luckmann 1988). That is to assume that the types of realities and their boundaries may vary within as well as across cultures—an assumption Schutz himself cherished at certain points, for example, in his idea that the dominance of the “paramount reality of everyday life” is itself a result from the “secularization” of consciousness and rationalization of the “attention à la vie” (Schutz 2003, p. 71).
- 16.
See Schutz 1962, footnote 19.
- 17.
With respect to the world of fiction and play, this critique had been formulated by Goffman (1986) who suggests instead that various “frames” be distinguished by means of conventional signs and rituals.
- 18.
As Michael Barber suggests here rightly, Schutz indeed discusses the fact that we are moving between provinces of meaning; the observation, however, already presupposes a “bounded unit” and indicates simultaneously the problems of this presupposition.
- 19.
Phenomenologically, the future itself is not available in experience directly; it is only by way of protentions and of memories of future events that had been expected in the past that future is accessible to consciousness. The assumption that the transposition is identical with the future aspect becomes even more problematic if we consider that imagination does not have a time index (according to Husserl) and is not clearly related to the standard time of action according to Schutz.
- 20.
In this respect, Sartre’s analysis of “l’image mentale” may be of some use (1986, Chap. 8).
- 21.
In this sense one would even be able to consider abduction as one of the basic imaginary techniques to create the new, as Reichertz (2003, p. 60) stresses, for by way of abduction we may infer from one known element to two unknown.
- 22.
This idea is also to be found in Husserl’s Ideas (§74a) where he stresses the move from the “single fantasy and the content of the fantasy” to the fiction, i.e., the reality “as if.”
- 23.
Bröckling (2007, pp. 157f) distinguishes between six semantic aspects of creativity: artistic action (expressivity); production; problem-solving action; revolution (similar to Schumpeter’s entrepreneur); life; and game.
- 24.
At this point, the role of communication enters into phenomenological theory. Cf. Knoblauch 1985.
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Knoblauch, H. (2014). Projection, Imagination, and Novelty: Towards a Theory of Creative Action Based on Schutz. In: Barber, M., Dreher, J. (eds) The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01390-9_4
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