Habitus, Intentionality, and Social Rules: A Controversy between Searle and Bourdieu

Bourdieu’s sociology contains many concepts and terms that could play a significant role for philosophy. University philosophers are hardly inclined, of course, to accept suggestions from other disciplines, in particular when they carry the scent of empirical research in the everyday world. Their interest lies–apart from a few exceptions, such as Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Charles Taylor–beyond the sensory world, directed instead toward the world of pure thought. The mind has no smell; it avoids contact with the corporeal. When philosophers describe society, it is transformed into a product of thought. The absence of sensuality lends intellectual rigor and consistency to their attempts, inasmuch as they trace social structures back to logical ones. In this way philosophy can achieve, at best, clarifications of concepts from which sociology can also benefit. However, this advantage is always obtained at a high price: intellectual construction ignores everything that constitutes society–social practice, power, actions of social agents, their habitus, their position, strategies, and the internal complexities of society itself.