ABSTRACT
The notion of 'intersubjectivity' was first widely publicised by Alfred Schutz, though he derived it from the work of Edmund Husserl. 'Intersubjectivity' is held to define the philosophical grounding both for the social scientist's interpretation of the actions of others and for his attributed understanding of their interpretations of one another's actions. Schutz derives his notion of 'intersubjectivity' from the distinction made by the phenomenologists between 'life' and 'thought' as alternate modes of conscious experience. The sociologist's talk of 'order' and 'anomie' thus exhibits his notions of 'reality': but it is blind to the notions of 'reality' exhibited by the talk about which he speaks. Despite its claim, Garfinkel's ethnomethodology employs documentary method to treat the speech it analyses as the mere appearance of a reality positioned in the speech of ethnomethodology, namely, 'intersubjectivity'.
