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01.12.2009 | Research Paper

Phenomenology of Friendship: Construction and Constitution of an Existential Social Relationship

verfasst von: Jochen Dreher

Erschienen in: Human Studies | Ausgabe 4/2009

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Abstract

Friendship, as a unique form of social relationship, establishes a particular union among individual human beings which allows them to overcome diverse boundaries between individual subjects. Age, gender or cultural differences do not necessarily constitute an obstacle for establishing friendship and as a social phenomenon, it might even include the potential to exist independently of space and time. This analysis in the interface of social science and phenomenology focuses on the principles of construction and constitution of this specific form of human encounter. In a “parallel action,” the perspective of social science focuses on concrete socio-historical constructions of friendship in different time periods. These findings are confronted with the description of principles of the subjective constitution of the phenomenon of “friendship” from a phenomenological perspective. The point of reference for the study is the real type of the symbolically established and excessively idealized form of friendship intended for eternity which was especially popular in eighteenth century Germany. Analogous to the method of phenomenological reduction, three different levels of protosociological reduction are developed for the exploration of the unique social phenomenon of friendship.

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This analysis starts from the assumption that phenomenology and sociology are different paradigms that have to be kept apart from each other because of their diverging methodological standpoints. From this perspective I assume that there is no such discipline as phenomenological sociology (Psathas 1973, 1989; cf. also Eberle 2000).

The exploration of the phenomenon of friendship in a parallel action of phenomenology and the social sciences further develops my reflections on “protosociology of friendship” (Dreher 2008).

In his novel The Man without Qualities Robert Musil uses the term “Parallel Action” to refer to the planning of the Austro-Hungarian celebrations of the 70-year government anniversary of Emperor Franz Josef in 1918, which were supposed to run parallel to the festivities for the 30-year government anniversary of the Prussian Emperor Wilhelm II the same year (Musil 1995; Berger 1993).

The concept of “construction” was principally introduced into the sociological discourse by Berger and Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality (1966/1987).

According to Alfred Schutz’s theory of the life-world, the individual’s life-world divides itself into the dimensions of time, space, the social world and multiple, everyday transcending reality spheres which form the boundaries or transcendences that the subject has to understand and integrate (Schutz 1962, 1989, p. 159ff.). Signs and symbols represent experiences originating in different spheres of the life-world within the world of everyday life, within which these experiences can be communicated, thereby establishing intersubjectivity. Signs and symbols establish “appresentational systems” with a “meaning clip function” (Srubar 1988, p. 247) that are responsible for the integration of the individual’s life-world as a whole.

Here, additional reductions with regard to the constitution of friendship could be elaborated on, dependent on the respective “bracketing” of semantic contexts; the analysis in the present study is restricted to three levels of constitution.

Following Thomas Luckmann, I use the term “protosociology” in relation to a phenomenological description of the epistemological foundations of the social sciences (Luckmann 1973/1983a, p. 69f.). Protosociology concentrates on the analysis of the general structures of the life-world that are considered to be a “mathesis universalis” (Luckmann 1973/1983b, p. 25ff.). For the analysis of concrete social phenomena I apply the concept of protosciology for the socio-eidetic reduction describing the empirical (historical and cultural) variations of the phenomenon as well as for the phenomenological reductions investigating the constitution of the social phenomenon, in our case friendship.

Rococo refers the epoch of early Enlightenment still highly influenced by the Baroque period. It focused on subjective emotionality and sensitivity, but at the same time emphasized the individual, rationally founded world of experience.

Johann Georg Jacobi (1740–1814), Christian Felix Weiße (1726–1804), Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–1769), Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener (1714–1771) and Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) were literary authors of the early German Enlightenment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1751–1792), Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg (1750–1819) in their younger years were representatives of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) period.

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) and Christian Gottfried Körner (1756–1831), together with Goethe, were involved in these kinds of friendship during the later period of the German Enlightenment.

For example, with regard to the US-American understanding, the concept of friendship is used in a less demanding manner and the closeness and duration of the social relationship decisively differs from the European form so that we can speak of a “less binding comradeship” (Schelsky 1957, p. 351ff.).

“Appresentation” or “analogical apperception” refers to doubling as an integral part of activities of the consciousness, in which for example in processes of perception the emerging object triggers or brings to mind a different, non-present circumstance (Schutz 1962, p. 294ff.).

It is beyond question that the level of reduction presented here cannot reach transcendental subjectivity as pointed out in the description of Husserl’s thoughts on phenomenological reduction. In focusing on the social phenomenon of friendship, the perception of the Other still has to be part of the reduction procedures and it is not necessary to thematize transcendental subjectivity. Nevertheless we have to emphasize that any encounter with the Other is based on constitutive processes of transcendental subjectivity.

The recently published works of Edmund Husserl with a focus on “the life-world“(“Die Lebenswelt“, Husserliana XXXIX: Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution) reveal insights closely related to what is defined as protosociology. His reflections on “the life-world as personal world of praxis“describe association of human beings, intentional communities, as the major topic of “intentional sociology” (Husserl 2008, p. 389).

Pen-pal relationships and Internet chat friendships, which manage without the face-to-face encounter with the friend, will not be addressed here, because we can assume that they profit from or seek to elude the notions of friendship defined by ideal-types and resulting from physical encounters.

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Titel: Phenomenology of Friendship: Construction and Constitution of an Existential Social Relationship
verfasst von: Jochen Dreher
Publikationsdatum: 01.12.2009
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Human Studies / Ausgabe 4/2009
Print ISSN: 0163-8548
Elektronische ISSN: 1572-851X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9130-4

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