Methodological Implications of Phenomenological Life-World Analysis

Abstract

Alfred Schutz's work is obviously multilayered and can thus be examined from a variety of perspectives. His central motive, however, was, without question, the contribution of an analysis of the life-world to the methodology of the social sciences. The avowed goal of his major work The Phenomenology of the Social World was to develop a "philosophically founded theory of method" for social scientifi c research (Schutz 1967 : xxxi). Despite the various topical ramifi cations of his work, Schutz never lost sight of this goal. Accordingly, his blueprints for the structure of his planned opus The Structures of the Life-World features a chapter titled "Sciences of 1 the Life-World" (Schutz and Luckmann 1973 : xxii) as a quasi-crowning conclusion. In this concluding work, the diverse facets of the phenomenological analysis of the life-world were therefore arranged to culminate in a philosophical founding of the sciences of the life-world. Since Luckmann decided to excise this chapter, when editing the Structures posthumously, interpreters of Schutz less familiar with the entirety of the corpus have sometimes lost sight of this fundamental objective. This article then looks to explicate and discuss some methodological implications of the phenomenological life-world analysis for the social sciences. My line of argumentation goes as follows: In the fi rst chapter I discuss Schutz's original plans for a philosophical foundation for the methodology of the social sciences. I begin with his refl ections in The Phenomenology of the Social World and present his plan for the fi nal, omitted chapter of the The Structures of the Life-World on the basis of his index cards. In the second chapter I briefl y sketch Schutz's postulates of social-scientifi c constructs and focus in the third chapter on the postulate of adequacy which is the crucial one.

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