Social justice and the implications of actors' subjective perspectives

The phenomenological lifeworld analysis of Alfred Schutz explicated the manifold methodological implications of the subjective perspective for the social sciences. One of them is that abstract categories and general concepts must be linked to the concrete, vivid experience of individual actors, their biographically determined stocks of knowledge at hand and their subjective systems of relevancies. This is a transformation process of meaning that must be carefully attended to (and that is often overlooked). Social justice is usually debated on the level of abstract and general concepts like ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’ and defined accordingly, as stated in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. But what does this mean on the level of concrete social situations, constellations and settings as experienced by individual actors? Taking the subjective perspective seriously – a basic methodological postulate of Schutz – makes transparent why it is so difficult to reach a consensus on social justice in empirically concrete, everyday life situations.

Interestingly, his mentor Ludwig Mises and many friends from the Mises-Circle drew quite different conclusions from the relevance of the subjective perspective. The subjective revolution in economics implies, in their view, taking subjective preferences serious and not judging them (e.g. morally), and leaving the allocation of means to the forces of the market. A free market economy without state interventions, Austrian Economics (as well as neoliberalism nowadays) pretends, will provide the best way to balance the diverse individual needs and wants. ‘Social justice’ therefore belongs, as Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek proclaims, to the category of ‘nonsense.’ Alfred Schutz takes a different road, in spite of the heavy influence of Austrian Economics and his own membership in the Mont Pelerin Society. The goal of this paper is to delineate these different positions and investigate Schutz’ reflections and analyses on equality.