phainomena

EMA DEMŠAR
schemes even for the world of direct social experience. However, they are
carried along with and modified by the We-relationship as it develops.
(ibid.: 185)”
It is thus possible to understand the other person in terms of his or her ideal
type even in face-to-face interaction with them; nevertheless, through actual
encounters, such impersonal understanding of the other can be enriched and
can even change one’s conception of ideal types themselves. Interacting with
a particular waiter might, for instance, change one’s understanding of what
waiters do, and through that influence the way in which one will interpret
waiters in general. Therefore, even though previously existing knowledge of
the broader social world or of the character of the particular other guides
our direct interactions with the other person, that same knowledge is in turn
modified by the unfolding experience.
This identification of the double influence between generalized knowledge
of the social world and concrete face-to-face social encounters elucidates the
difficulty of discerning the prototypical from the concrete in Bermúdez’s above
suggestion that we understand perceived social situations by matching them
to prototypical ones. Ratcliffe (2007) adopts a more dynamical view of the
relationship between shared social situations and concrete social encounters.
He argues that our everyday social understanding is environmentally supported
not by means of detached comparison of the two, but rather through our
practical involvement with the environment. The framework of social norms,
roles and functions against which we understand the other does not have to be
known explicitly and independently of the specific interaction:
115
“Pre-established situations are not set in stone; they can be reshaped
through interactions between people. We inherit situations but, through
our interactions, we modify them. Hence there is a complex relationship
between established norms and interpersonal interactions, involving
two-way feedback between them. (ibid.: 180)”
Ratcliffe points out that our social interactions are implicitly guided by
a common regulatory framework of the social world that limits the range