Sociology and the Irony Model

Abstract

The central point is that Schutz's idealization of reciprocity, the matching of subjective intentions in the public world of interactive behaviour, necessarily involves agents in an ironic process. This is largely because, since they are taking so much for granted, they cannot be aware of what is latent in the intentional perspectives of their social partners. In bringing out the pattern of the irony of intersubjective dialectic, the argument makes plain the importance of pretence as a vital concept in philosophy, sociology and hermeneutics. The article closes with a criticism of naive optimism among purveyors of dialectic, recommending a proper concern with the irreconcilables of tragedy.