Alfred Schutz, 1899 - 1959
Born: Vienna, Austria
1916-1918: Served in the artillery division of the Austrian army on the Italian front during World War I
1919: returned to pursue studies at the University of Vienna, studying law, social science, and business
1927: While continuing to pursue his academic interests, Schutz was named executive officer of Reitler and Company, a leading Viennese banking firm with international business relations, and thus he commenced a life-long pattern that led him to be described as “a banker by day and a philosopher by night.”
Especially influenced by Weber (who he heard in 1918), the French philosopher Henri Bergson (who was also an influence of Simmel), and the French phenomenologist Edmund Husserl.
1032: produced his major life's work, The Phenomenology of the Social World, a work for which Husserl praised him as “an earnest and profound phenomenologist.” He spent the rest of the 1930s authoring brief essays showing how his phenomenology of the social world could come to terms with the economic thought.
Schutz's career, academic and business, was thoroughly convulsed when Adolf Hitler implemented the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria by Germany on March 13, 1938, especially since he, on a business trip in Paris, was separated for three months from his own family, whose emigration to Paris he finally arranged. As an international lawyer and businessperson, he was able to assist numerous intellectuals to escape Austria, but the westward movement of the Nazi juggernaut eventually compelled him to immigrate with his family to the United States on July 14, 1939.
In the United States, he continued assisting immigrants and working with Reitler and Company in reestablishing its business, and he supported the United States war effort by reporting on German and Austrian economic matters for the Board of Economic Warfare. He also cooperated in founding the International Phenomenological Society and in instituting and editing Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
In 1943, Schutz began teaching sociology and philosophy courses on The Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research.
Subsequently influenced by George H. Mead and Jean Paul Sartre.
Served as chair of the Philosophy Department at the NewSchool from 1952-1956.
SUMMARY OF SCHUTZ, ala Natanson
(from Collected Papers, Volume I)
COMMON SENSE WORLD
• Biographical Situation
• Stock of Knowledge at Hand (typifications)
differential social distribution (e.g., cultural capital
• Coordinates of the Social Matrix
INTERSUBJECTIVITY (Our world is the underlying typification)
• Here and There of the Ego
congruency of relevances & interchangeability of standpoints =
Reciprocity of Standpoints
• Alter Ego
self-consciousness only in the past tense
• Predecessors, Contemporaries, Consociates, Successors
• Consociates: I; We relationship; Thou relationship; They relationship;
It relationship
ACTION
• Subjective Interpretation of Meaning
verstehen = first order construct (embedded in the Lebenswelt)
verstehen = second order construct (defined by science)
• Definition of the Situation
• Horizons of Action
“I can do it again”; “and so on”; The Etcetera Principle
PROJECTS AND ROLES
• Phantasying of Acts (pre-imagining the act as complete)
• Acting “As If”
• Because Of; In OrderTo Motives
• Fragmentation (I as subject, Me as object)
• Degrees of Relevance
MULTIPLE REALITIES
• The Paramount Reality of Everyday Life
• The Epoché of the Natural Attitude"the wide-awake, fully-functioning
adult in the natural attitude”
• The Fundamental Anxiety
• Multiple Realities; SubProvinces of Meaning
SUMMARY OF SCHUTZ, ala Allan)
(from Explorations in Classical Theory)
Phenomenology – Husserl
Numenon / Phenomenon
Social Construction – Berger and Luckmann
Ethnomethodology – Garfinkel
Problem of Meaning (suspension of belief – Science, i.e., how do we know something
and what is it we know?)
No Problem of Meaning (suspension of disbelief – Everyday Life; why would you doubt
something in the first place?)
• Everyday Reality as a Reflexive Activity (incorrigible propositions)
• Everyday Reality as a Coherent Body of Knowledge
• Everyday Reality as Ceaseless Inter-actional Activity/Work
• Everyday Reality as Protected Against Dissolution
• Everyday Reality as Potentially Permeable
Bracketing ala Husserl is bracketing reality
Bracketing ala Schutz is bracketing doubt