Wissen die Sozialwissenschaftler, was die “Lebenswelt” ist? Eine Rückbesinnung auf Husserls “Urstiftung” und Schütz' “Wideraufnahme” des Begriffes

Abstract

Do Social Scientists Know What The “Lifeworld” Is? Revisiting Husserl's “Proto-Foundation” and Schutz's “Reprise” Of The Concept

The present paper aims to provide a contribution to the self-clarification of social scientists with regard to the using and abusing of the concept of "lifeworld" [Lebenswelt] and its surrogates. With this aim, the author adopts a dual approach which draws upon the one used by the late Husserl in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, namely: the combination of genealogical reflections on the origins and historic itinerary of the concept with phenomenological descriptions of the "thing itself". More precisely, the present article tries to systematically reconstruct Edmund Husserl's phenomenological "proto-foundation" [Urstiftung] and Alfred Schutz's "reprise" of the Lebenswelt.

Keywords: Lifeworld; Phenomenology; Edmund Husserl; Alfred Schutz, Social Sciences