Conference | Paper

The Experience of History and Social Phenomenology: Perspectives from Max Weber and Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Luka Janeš, Toma Gruica

Wednesday 6th September 2023

11:30 - 12:00

 

In Max Weber's interpretive sociology, the concept of traditions holds significant importance in understanding the experience of history. Traditions serve as a means of transmitting historical experiences from one generation to the next, shaping individuals' understanding of the past and present. This provides a sense of continuity and stability, allowing individuals to comprehend their place in history and society. Weber emphasizes the need to understand history as a lived experience, rather than a mere set of objective facts or events. By focusing on how individuals interpret and make sense of their historical experiences through traditions, Weber highlights the subjective meanings that individuals attach to social phenomena. Therefore, analyzing Max Weber's interpretive sociology as a phenomenology can illuminate the subjective experiences of individuals and their interpretations of social phenomena, including the experience of history through traditions. To expand on Weber's understanding of history, we can draw an analogy with the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who also views history a priori as the development of meaning. According to Merleau-Ponty, history, just like perception, involves logic in the domain of chance, a type of reason in the unreasonable. While historical forces, such as objects of observation, come into focus exclusively through human effort, which actualizes and defines them, just like perception, history cannot be accurately interpreted as a mechanical game of various alienated factors and accumulations of unfolding facts. This idea is semantically in accordance with Weber's previously indicated thought. For Merleau-Ponty, history and perceptual objects exist only in relation to individuals who assume history themselves, with varying degrees of consciousness. History, like perceptual objects, represents meaningful activities that establish a meaningful world, going beyond a mere power struggle. Therefore, in our presentation, we will emphasize Merleau-Ponty's review of language, particularly the thesis that we cannot discuss human history without taking into account the discussion about human intersubjectivity and language, which enables valid intersubjective communication at all.