Alfred Schütz was a North American philosopher and sociologist born in Austria, who stood out for having developed a social science based on phenomenology. Phenomenology is a philosophical movement developed in the 20th century whose objective is to describe various phenomena according to how they are consciously experienced.
Schütz moved to the United States when he was 50 years old and taught at the New School for Social Research located in New York. His work gained the attention of his colleagues by studying the day-to-day development of people, as well as the creation of reality through symbols and human action.
Biography
Alfred Schütz was born in Vienna, Austria, on April 13, 1899. His family was from the upper middle class of Austria. Alfred had no brother.
He had a common education, like that of any other young man of his time. However, after finishing his high school studies, he was drafted into the army of his country.
It belonged to the Austrian artillery division that fought on the Italian front in the First World War. After completing his military service, he returned to Austria to pursue advanced studies at the University of Vienna. There he studied law, social science and business with several important figures of the time.
However, his greatest educational influence was when he belonged to the Mises Circle. It was in this social group that she made friends with other young people who became important social figures later in their lives. This had a great influence on Schütz's philosophical thought.
After completing his studies, he began to develop as a businessman for a banking company in Austria. His success earned him a reputation for being a good executive as well as an excellent philosopher.
Thought
One of the main goals of Schütz in his professional life was to establish a philosophical foundation for the social sciences. He was influenced by various thinkers of the time, among whom Edmund Husserl stands out.
In fact, Schütz and Félix Kaufmann (who was his colleague and friend) studied Husserl's works in depth to develop the theory of interpretive sociology that Max Weber had proposed.
In 1932 he published his first book, where he collected all the knowledge obtained about his studies of Husserl's work.
This book was called The phenomenology of the social world and is considered one of the most important works that he wrote in his career; with this he caught the attention of Husserl himself, who asked Schütz to be his assistant. However, he was unable to accept the offer for work reasons.
Last years
In 1933 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the establishment of the Fourth Reich forced Schütz and his colleagues to seek asylum in allied countries.
He moved to Paris with his wife Ilse, whom he had married in 1926. In 1939 his career as a banker took him to the United States, where he became a member of the New School.
There he taught sociology and philosophy to new students, in addition to serving as chair of the Department of Philosophy. He continued his professional work as a lawyer and never abandoned his teaching work at the New School in New York.
Even as a banker, he managed to produce several works related to phenomenology that were later published in four different volumes.
One of the reasons why Schütz was so successful in various professional endeavors was the involvement of his wife, who helped him transcribe all of his notes and shape his philosophical works. Schütz died in New York on May 20, 1959, at the age of 60.
Theory
Schütz based his work on the theory that the social reality of the human being is intersubjective and that people use simple methods of meaning.
Each interpretation that is given to things includes an area of knowledge that all human beings share, but that they interpret individually.
For Schütz, the main objective of the social sciences is the constitution and maintenance of what he himself calls social reality.
For him, social reality is the interpretation that each person has of the events that manifest themselves in their lives every day. These manifestations are unavoidable and are part of life.
The philosopher theorized about this idea. According to his theory, all people are born in this social reality, where there is a series of social manifestations and cultural objects, which each person must accept individually. Humans are nothing more than actors on the social scene where life unfolds.
Schütz's theory has several similarities to Weber's work, but first of all it is based on Husserl's work.
Contributions
Schütz's main contribution was his work in the field of phenomenology. His first significant contribution was the development of Edmund Husserl's theory, with which he came to develop social phenomenology.
This branch of phenomenology was a combination of the social construction of reality with ethnomethodology.
This work established that people create a feeling of reality and subjectivity using as a basis the sensations and social experiences that occur in their lives.
In fact, a large part of his work is based on the construction of reality from life experiences.
It is a quite subjective way of studying individuals, as it is based on the understanding that each person has about life and not on the scientific methods that can be used to understand the behavior of each individual.
Schütz's ideas were highly influential in the field of world sociology. His work on the phenomenological approach to sociology and the development of the bases for ethnomethodology were the most outstanding of his career.
References
- Alfred Schütz, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2002. From Stanford.edu
- Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (nd). Taken from utm.edu
- Alfred Schutz, Encyclopaedia Britannica, (nd). Taken from Britannica.com
- Phenomenology, Encyclopaedia Britannica, (nd). Taken from Britannica.com
- Interactionism, Encyclopaedia Britannica, (nd). Taken from Britannica.com
- Sociological Theorists: Alfred Schutz, Graham Scambler, 2015. Taken from grahamscambler.com