Alfred Schütz, “Der gut informierte Bürger” (1946) — Summary

This file is a single-author theoretical essay in six sections. Schütz’s scope is at once modest and foundational: he sketches a sociology of how knowledge is distributed in modern everyday life. The opening premise is that no modern person, and no fellow human being, can fully comprehend the whole lifeworld. People use technologies, markets, legal orders, and institutions through trust and routine rather than full understanding. Schütz therefore redirects the sociology of knowledge from ideology alone to the ordinary organization of what is known, trusted, ignored, or investigated.

Wissen ist sozial verteilt, und der Mechanismus dieser Verteilung kann das Thema einer soziologischen Disziplin werden.

English translation: Knowledge is socially distributed, and the mechanism of this distribution can become the subject matter of a sociological discipline.

The argument proceeds by ideal types. The expert knows a narrow field clearly; the man on the street possesses practical “recipe” knowledge and often substitutes feeling for inquiry; the well-informed citizen stands between them. He is not a specialist, but he does not rest content with vague routine when a matter may affect him indirectly.

Gut informiert zu sein bedeutet ihm, zu vernünftig begründeten Meinungen auf den Gebieten zu gelangen, die seinem Wissen entsprechend ihn zumindest mittelbar angehen, obwohl sie seinem zuhandenen Zweck direkt nichts beitragen.

English translation: To be well informed means, for him, to arrive at reasonably grounded opinions in those fields which, according to his knowledge, concern him at least indirectly, though they contribute nothing directly to the purpose at hand.

The essay’s central conceptual machinery is the theory of relevance. Inquiry begins from a taken-for-granted world, but interest divides that world into zones: immediate practical reach, indirect conditions and risks, relative irrelevance, and supposed absolute irrelevance. These zones are not stable borders; they shift like contour lines on a map as plans, roles, and problems change. Because a person is simultaneously parent, citizen, believer, professional, and more, interests can conflict. Schütz distinguishes chosen or “essential” relevances from “imposed” relevances, which arrive from events or from other people’s purposes and must be faced without being fully ours.

Auferlegte Relevanzen bleiben leere, unerfüllte Antizipationen.

English translation: Imposed relevances remain empty, unfulfilled anticipations.

This distinction moves the essay from cognition to social order. Face-to-face relations allow some shared relevances; modern anonymous society increasingly does not. Economic, political, technical, and military forces can make their consequences felt without disclosing their purposes. Hence the postwar sharpness of Schütz’s claim: distance collapses through communication and weaponry, while accountability and mutual understanding do not.

Wir besitzen immer weniger das Recht zu definieren, was für uns relevant ist und was nicht.

English translation: We possess less and less the right to define what is relevant for us and what is not.

The three ideal types now acquire political meaning. The man on the street treats imposed relevances as brute conditions and rarely asks about their origin. The expert tends to absolutize the relevance system of a bounded field. The well-informed citizen must instead reduce the sphere of the irrelevant, tracing which remote powers, risks, and decisions may become practically decisive.

Schütz then asks how such a citizen can know what lies beyond personal experience. Since most knowledge reaches us through others, he calls it socially derived knowledge.

Wir wollen diese Art von Wissen sozial abgeleitetes Wissen nennen.

English translation: We shall call this kind of knowledge socially derived knowledge.

He differentiates four ideal sources: the eyewitness, trusted because of positional access; the insider, trusted for grasping an internal meaning; the analyst, trusted when facts and relevance systems can be checked; and the commentator, trusted when one can understand a differing relevance system. Historians, teachers, editorial writers, and propagandists usually mix these types. The citizen’s problem is thus not information as quantity, but judgment of competence, source, and relevance.

Schütz complements this with “socially approved” knowledge: beliefs gain force when accepted by the in-group and sediment into the natural attitude. This is the sociological basis of prestige, authority, charisma, and public opinion.

Sozial gebilligtes Wissen ist die Quelle des Prestiges und der Autorität; es ist auch der Ursprung der öffentlichen Meinung.

English translation: Socially approved knowledge is the source of prestige and authority; it is also the origin of public opinion.

The conclusion is a democratic warning. Polls, interviews, and mass opinion can elevate the uninformed man on the street while pressing his opinion upon better-informed members as an imposed relevance. Schütz’s enduring relevance lies in this diagnosis: democracy requires not merely access to facts, but citizens able to test social approval, judge mediated knowledge, and contest public opinion when it becomes sanctioned ignorance.

Es ist daher die Pflicht und das Privileg des gut informierten Bürgers in einer demokratischen Gesellschaft, seine private Meinung gegenüber der öffentlichen Meinung des Mannes auf der Straße zur Geltung zu bringen.

English translation: It is therefore the duty and the privilege of the well-informed citizen in a democratic society to assert his private opinion against the public opinion of the man in the street.