ABSTRACT
Life versus thought in Schutz Alfred Schutz uses the method of phenomenology to advance upon Max Weber’s account of social action. His discussion centres on a single distinction. ‘Weber’, states Schutz (1974), ‘makes no distinction between the action, considered as something in progress, and the completed act’. Schutz distinguishes these as ‘life’ and ‘thought’, in the following terms (ibid., pp. 69-70):
This distinction seems familiar.1 For Schutz as for Husserl, the ongoing immersion in life of the immanent ‘psychological ego’ is contrasted with the reflective, timeless detachment of the ‘transcendental ego’. But Husserl himself was not consistent as to his own location within this distinction: in one work he took up, methodologically, an immanentist position: in the other, he took up methodologically a transcendentalist position. We have proposed, in opposition to each of these, a ‘real’-ist position.
