The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz's seminal attempt to achieve a comprehensive grasp of the nature of social reality. Here he integrates his theory of relevance with his analysis of social structures. Thomas Luckmann, a former student of Schutz's, completed the manuscript for publication after Schutz's untimely death.

In this book, his major work, Alfred Schutz attempts to provide a sound philosophical basis for the sociological theories of Max Weber. Using a Husserlian phenomenology, Schutz provides a complete and original analysis of human action and its "intended meaning."

Alfred Schutz was born in Vienna on April 13, 1899, and died in New York City on May 20, 1959. The year 1969, then, marks the seventieth anniversary of his birth and the tenth year of his death. The essays which follow are offered not only as a tribute to an irreplaceable friend, colleague, and teacher, but as evidence of the contributors' conviction of the eminence of his work. No special pleading is needed here to support that claim, for it is widely acknowledged that his ideas have had a significant impact on present-day philosophy and phenomenology of the social sciences. In place of either argument or evaluation, I choose to restrict myself to some bi~ graphical information and a fragmentary memoir. * The only child of Johanna and Otto Schutz (an executive in a private bank in Vienna), Alfred attended the Esterhazy Gymnasium in Vienna, an academic high school whose curriculum included eight years of Latin and Greek. He graduated at seventeen - in time to spend one year of service in the Austrian army in the First World War. For bravery at the front on the battlefield in Italy, he was decorated by his country. After the war ended, he entered the University of Vienna, completing a four year curriculum in only two and one half years and receiving his doctorate in Law.

The volume gathers together over twenty contributions that emerged from a conference held in in honour of Dermot Moran on the occasion of his retirement from University College Dublin. The book explores the contribution of phenomenology to empathy, intersubjectivity, affectivity, and the constitution of the cultural and social world, from both a historical and an applied philosophical perspective. Theoretical and methodological differences in approach notwithstanding, phenomenologists have converged in the recognition that self and others are fundamentally related, and have provided fine-grained accounts of the origin, forms, and implications of such relationship. The volume critically reconstructs and further develops central aspects of this body of research within a pluralistic framework. It offers a renewed investigation of the work of classical phenomenologists like Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, as well as an original application of phenomenological concepts and theories to contemporary discussions on intentionality, culture, emotions, and morality. The book provides insights for scholars in phenomenological philosophy as well as in philosophy of mind and interpersonal and social experience.

Time and the Shared World challenges the common view that Heidegger offers few resources for understanding humanity’s social nature. The book demonstrates that Heidegger’s reformulation of traditional notions of subjectivity has wide-ranging implications for understanding the nature of human relationships. Contrary to entrenched critiques, Irene McMullin shows that Heidegger’s characterization of selfhood as fundamentally social presupposes the responsive acknowledgment of each person’s particularity and otherness. In doing so, McMullin argues that Heidegger’s work on the social nature of the self must be located within a philosophical continuum that builds on Kant and Husserl’s work regarding the nature of the a priori and the fundamental structures of human temporality, while also pointing forward to developments of these themes to be found in Heidegger’s later work and in such thinkers as Sartre and Levinas. By developing unrecognized resources in Heidegger’s work, Time and the Shared World is able to provide a Heidegger-inspired account of respect and the intersubjective origins of normativity.

This volume contains a translation of four early manuscripts by Alfred Schutz, unpublished at the time, written between 1924 and 1928. The publication of these four essays adds much to our knowledge and appreciation of the wide range of Schutz’s phenomenological and sociological interests. Originally published in 1987. The essays consist of: a challenging presentation of a phenomenology of cognition and a treatment of Bergson’s conceptions of images, duration, space time and memory; a discussion of the meanings connected with the grammatical forms of language in general; a consideration of the relation between meaning-contents and literary forms in poetry, literary prose narration and dramatic presentation; and an examination of resemblances and differences in the inner forms and characteristics of the major theatrical art forms.

Phenomenological foundations - The cognitive setting of the life-world - Acting in the life-world - The world of social relationships - Realms of experience - The province of sociology.

The maintext in the present volume has beenconstructed out of passages found scattered aboutin thirty-five years of Alfred Schutz's writings, and it has been constructed by following a pageof notes for a lecture that he gave in 1955 under the title "Sociological Aspect of Literature. " The result can be considered the substance of Schutz's contribution to the theory of literature. More detail about how this construction has beenperformed is offered in the Editor's Introduction. The complementary essays areby scholars from Germany, Japan, andthe United States , from several generations, and from the disciplines of anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. These researchers were invited to reflect in their own perspectives on the main text and in relation to matters referred to within and beyond it. Draftversions of most of these complementary essays were presented for critical discussion in a research symposium held at the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of theNewSchool for Social Research on April28-29, 1995 underthe sponsorship of The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomen ology, Inc. , Florida Atlantic University; The Department of Philosophy of The Graduate Faculty of the New School, Richard 1. Bernstein, Chair; and Evelyn and George Schutz, the philosopher's children. Revised versions of these presentations and also several essays subsequently recruited are offered to begin yet another stagein thehistory of scholarship on Schutz and the phenomenological research inspired by him. Northwestern University Press is thanked for permission to quote extensively from Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans.