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10 Can “the Social” Be a Proper Object of Theory? I t is often taken as axiomatic that human beings are essentially social, where “social” refers to more than the fact that people, like many nonhuman creatures , are never wholly apart from others of their kind. Despite this, the proposition has, with few exceptions, served as a resource for but not been directly submitted to theoretical inquiry.1 There may be good reasons for this, whether it stems from a philosophical principle, simple indifference, or momentary neglect. At best, it appears difficult to identify the social, as we must, apart from aggregation, institutional patterns, congregation, familiarity, interpersonal relations, overlapping intentions, rules of social reference, individuals taking account of the conduct of others, systems of social facts, and exchange. Consequently, it may be enough to grant that humans are social and to continue from that point; as indicated previously, this seems to have been Strawson’s (1992) strategy. I try to show that the reasons for ignoring the theoretical issue justify the converse. One reason is that referring to and describing sociality typically rely on two distinctions so fundamental that questioning their validity would make it virtually impossible to rely on the idea as a resource. The first is between active subjectivity (“ego”) and its other (“alter”). The second distinguishes human beings (agents) from things (agency-independent objects). Taken together, they differentiate what is social from what might mistakenly appear to be social and from the indicative meaning inferred from ordinary linguistic practice. A successful challenge to the validity of both distinctions leads in different directions from what can be imagined within their limits.2 The first distinction is between particular subjects understood as agents and the concrete others with whom they are associated as a matter of practice, and whom they presumably take into account. It is realized in depictions of 184 Chapter 10 one person doing something in the presence of another as an external relation between a projective subjectivity and a reactive body. An “external relation” is one in which the terms remain as they were prior to their connection and are invariant throughout its course (see Wollheim 1960, 92–128). The distinction presupposes, on the one hand, that the actor and her other “share meanings” so that the actor’s intention can be known by both her other and an observer from what she says or does (Weber 1947, 88–115); that is, an act must be understandable to the relevant others if it is to succeed in that part of its intention that anticipates consequences. Therefore, it is described as undertaken in anticipation of reactions of another that test whether it represents the actor’s intention. This means that an act is public before it is completed by the other’s reaction. On the other hand, it is clear that no act in which others have to be taken into account can be sufficiently intelligible as to its initiating intention. Therefore, the test can never be complete. In other words, the idea of “shared meaning” is utopian as long as “taking others into account” defines “social action.” Since the conditions of an action being intelligible as an expression of someone’s intention that can be shared (and therefore realized by what another does) will vary from moment to moment, we can say that to act is to undertake a certain labor that constitutes the meaning of the act within the course of activity necessary to its completion. The outcome cannot be anticipated sufficiently to bring the problem of meaning posed by the act to a solution in a meeting of minds (real or stipulated by an observer). Part of what is presumably intended by every act, whether goal-oriented, expressive, or imitative, is that someone else will react. In this respect, it appears to support a theory of action that relies on an equalizing notion of “intersubjectivity ,” thought of as an interaction of agents. However, the reaction of a designated other is not conceived of as an instance of agency in the same sense of “agency” ascribed to the designated actor. To refer to something as an act is to assume it expresses the intention of a particular agent for which everything else is either a condition or an effect. To refer to something as a reaction, actual or anticipated, is to take it as dependent and conjectural, though not as inert or merely passive. A reaction is conjectural insofar as it is taken as an...

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