Alfred Schutz on intersubjectivity

reading from "The everyday life-world and the natural attitude"

In this article, Schutz tries to explain how every life world be constructed by prevailing stock of knowledge and intersubjectivity with others. People need to take into account the motivations and actions of others to structure their own actions. Society is socially constructed through constructing intersubjectivity.

Everyday life: is the social reality that one assign and receive meanings.It is built upon natural attitudes (common sense) i.e. taken-for-grantedness such as:


1). the corporeal existence of other men
2). these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially similar to my own
3). the external things endowed the same meanings to me and others
4). I can enter into the interrelations and reciprocal actions with my fellow men
5). I can make myself be understood by them
6). a stratified social and cultural world is historically pregiven as a frame of reference for me and fellow men
7). therefore, the situation I find myself at any moment it only to a small extent purely created by me.

The everyday reality of the life-world includes not only natural experience by me but also social and cultural world in which I find myself in. Therefore, the lifeworld is not created by merely physically objects or events we encounter in our environment, but also the meaning strata, which transform the natural things into cultural things, human bodies into fellow men, and the movement of fellow-men into acts, gestures, and communications.

It is true that like William James suggested that physical world is paramount reality, what is plain given to us in the natural attitude includes both external perception and cultural objects. The lifeworld must be understood in its totality as natural and social world, it sets the limits of my and reciprocal action.

In order to actualize our goals, we must master what is present in them and transform them, the lifeworld modifies our actions and our actions are acted upon it. The natural attitude or daily life is pervasively determined by a pragmatic motive.

Natural attitude is built up by our previous experience a stock of knowledge to society, cultural and fellowmen. All of those experiences in the life-world are bought into relation to the schema, a reference schema, from which I form my opinion and judgements.

It however brings problem. The typical experiences contained in the relative-natural world world view do not constitute a closed, logically articulated system, the higher form knowledge are replace by Scheler in opposition to the relative natural intuition. The deficient agreement of the components of my stock of knowledge does not fundamentally compromise its self-evidence. Taken for granted is only valid until further notice. What is taken for granted within the prevailing lifeworldly situation is surrounded by uncertainty. Habitual reference schema may lead us wrong judgements. When taken for granted interrupted, the reality of life demands me to reexamine my experience and interrupts the course of self-evident.

My stock of knowledge is not a logically integrated system but rather only a totality of my sedimented and situationally condition explications. The lifeworld is intersubjective from the very beginning, it something to be mastered according to my particular interests, at the same time is subject to my fellow men's behaviour and response.

The everyday lifeworld is therefore fundamentally intersubjective, it is a social world. All acts whatever refer to meaning that is explicable by me and must be explicated by me if I wish to find my way about in the life world, Understanding (interpretation of meaning, is a fundamental principle of the natural attitude with regard to my fellow men.