Elements of Theory of Social Space

Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship J 1970 Elements of a Theory of Social Space Klaus HAMBERGER 09.10.2000 The intention of the project is to elaborate and utilize a genuine concept of social space as a form of intuition (in the Kantian sense). The inquiry aims to establish an equally independent and genuine (i.e. non-metaphorical) concept of space which may serve as a condition of experience for the social universe in just the same way as physical space does for the natural universe. In this connection, our definition of the social universe grants an equally prominent (and formally analogous) role to the concept of communication, as the geometric foundations of physics grant to the concept of motion. Starting from this epistemological interconnection between language and society, social space as the outer form of meanings is contrasted with physical space as the outer form of appearances; the argument thus rests crucially on a formal equivalence between the basic geometric relations of "here" and "there" on the one hand, and the basic social relations of "I" and "thou" on the other hand, both of which are interpreted as two different manifestations of the same "concept of reflection", viz. the dichotomy between the "inner" and the "outer". Against this background, we shall try to develop the difference between the two forms of space by referring to the logical foundations of the respective construction. This kind of procedure traces back to Kant`s "transcentental analytic" - however, precisely this "Kantian" statement of the problem rules out any simple "transfer" of Kantian results to the social domain, although it may permit (and even require) a well- founded use of (properly modified) Kantian tools. Not least in order to avoid the failure of analogizing, the epistemological construction will be performed in continuous connection with a comparative structural analysis of geometric-physical and social models, and a systematic evaluation of the numerous empirical studies on the spatial projections of social structures.