Luckmann presents Schütz’s unfinished manuscript as groundwork for a phenomenology of the natural attitude and, through it, for interpretive social science. The issue is not a psychological theory of attention but the constitution of social reality before scientific abstraction: how the everyday world is already organized as meaningful, familiar, problematic, and actionable.
Die philosophische Begründung der Sozialwissenschaften setze eine exakte Analyse der Konstitution der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit – des Gegenstandsbereichs der Wissenschaft – in der vorwissenschaftlichen Erfahrung, im sozialen Handeln, voraus.
English translation: The philosophical foundation of the social sciences presupposes a precise analysis of the constitution of social reality—the subject matter of the science—in prescientific experience, in social action.
Schütz begins from ordinary activity, where perception, memory, bodily orientation, language, routine, and social expectation surround the present task without all becoming thematic. Relevance names the selective structuring by which something emerges from a horizon, is interpreted through available types, and matters for possible conduct. It is not arbitrary choice, nor merely utility, but a sedimented organization of biography, embodiment, time, and shared knowledge.
Die vorgängige Aufgliederung in Thema und Horizont ist die Grundlage für jede Geistestätigkeit.
English translation: The prior articulation into theme and horizon is the foundation of all mental activity.
The famous case of the rope that may be a snake lets Schütz distinguish thematic, interpretive, and motivational relevance. Thematic relevance makes something stand out from an unproblematic field; interpretive relevance connects it with parts of the stock of knowledge; motivational relevance explains why this interpretation matters for projected action. Fear, habit, and practical interest therefore shape not only response but perception and standards of verification. Yet the three systems are separable only analytically, since a theme can call forth inquiry, an interpretation can produce new motives, and a motive can pull unnoticed horizons into focus.
Die drei Relevanzsysteme sind also nur drei Aspekte eines einzigen Phänomenkomplexes.
English translation: The three systems of relevance are thus only three aspects of a single complex of phenomena.
The deeper argument is that experience is never isolated. The stock of knowledge consists of earlier relevance-structures sedimented as types, routines, expectations, and familiarities. A type is not exhaustive knowledge but sufficient knowledge for a purpose; strangeness arises when anticipated typicality fails. Thus interpretation depends on biography, while biography itself is an ordered history of previous thematizations, interpretations, and practical motives.
Schütz then expands relevance into a structural account of the lifeworld. Everyday reality is open in time, space, sociality, and finite embodiment, yet is lived as sufficiently familiar for ongoing action. The body supplies the zero-point of here and there, reach and distance; birth, aging, waiting, movement, and death impose basic constraints on every project. Routine knowledge functions because its original motives no longer have to be made explicit. The unfinished reflections on the Leerstelle add that the unknown is not an empty blank but is anticipated by the contours of what is already typified; learning fills gaps whose possible contents are prefigured by prior horizons.
Finally, relevance is social as well as biographical. Knowledge is transmitted and stratified through language, tradition, roles, and communication. Mutual understanding requires enough overlap between partners’ relevance-contours, even though each actor interprets from a distinct situation and history.
Aber Wissen ist sozial verteilt.
English translation: But knowledge is socially distributed.
The manuscript remains fragmentary, but its architecture is clear: Schütz moves from theme and horizon to typification, motivation, embodiment, routine, social distribution, and unknown knowledge. Relevance is the hidden ordering principle through which the lifeworld becomes experienceable, interpretable, and practically real.
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