Alfred Schutz 1899 – 1959
Alfred Schutz was an Austrian-American philosopher and the principal founder of the phenomenology of the social world. Trained as a lawyer and economist in Vienna, he combined a long career as an international banking executive with deep philosophical work and, after his emigration to the United States in 1939, with teaching at the New School for Social Research. His Phenomenology of the Social World extended Husserl's phenomenology into a study of the meaning structures of everyday life, and his essays on multiple realities, social typifications, and the stranger shaped the work of Garfinkel, Berger, Luckmann, and the subsequent traditions of ethnomethodology and the social construction of reality.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Austrian-American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Phenomenology, Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Alfred Schutz:
“The lifeworld is the unquestioned ground of all our experience.”
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Attributed to Alfred Schutz:
“We act in a world made meaningful by typifications.”
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Attributed to Alfred Schutz:
“The Other is given to me first as a fellow human and only afterwards as a problem.”
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Attributed to Alfred Schutz:
“Meaning is what we attach to our acts as we look back upon them.”
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Attributed to Alfred Schutz:
“Multiple realities surround everyday life: dreams, art, science, religion.”