This is a single phenomenological essay. Schütz analyzes the Lebenswelt as the world of nature, culture, and society lived in the natural attitude. His thesis is that everyday reality rests on assumptions of continuity—Husserl’s “und so weiter” and “ich kann immer wieder”—yet this taken-for-granted world is layered, revocable, and organized by relevance. What is familiar can become a problem; inquiry ends when knowledge is sufficient for the actor’s purpose.
Die Fraglosigkeit und Vertrautheit dieser Welt ist nämlich keineswegs homogen.
English translation: The unquestionedness and familiarity of this world is by no means homogeneous.
Schütz first maps the world’s spatial-temporal and social strata. There is what lies in actual reach, what was once within reach and may be restored, and what has never been reached but can be attained. Socially, the face-to-face Umwelt of “Mitmenschen” is surrounded by the more anonymous Mitwelt of contemporaries, the Vorwelt of predecessors who affect us, and the Nachwelt of successors whom we may affect. Culture consists in the group’s inherited schemes for expression and interpretation; it predefines what counts as obvious, doubtful, or worth asking.
The next layer is the stock of knowledge. Following William James, Schütz distinguishes Vertrautheitswissen, expert familiarity with what, how, and why, from Bekanntheitswissen, practical knowing-about sufficient for use. Much of this stock is socially transmitted as recipes, maxims, tools, institutions, and language, so its contents vary by biography and history.
Der Inhalt des Bekannten, Vertrauten, Geglaubten und Unbekannten ist daher relativ: Für den Einzelnen in Bezug auf seine biographische, für die Gruppe in Bezug auf ihre historische Situation.
English translation: The content of what is known, familiar, believed, and unknown is therefore relative: for the individual with respect to his biographical situation, for the group with respect to its historical situation.
The essay’s core move is to explain this variation through relevance. The actor never confronts the whole world at once, but a situation defined within imposed conditions and a biographical stock of knowledge. Plans and interests select what matters.
Der Lebensplan bestimmt somit die Einzelpläne, diese die jeweiligen Interessen.
English translation: The life-plan thus determines the individual plans, and these in turn the respective interests.
Motivational relevance names this first selection: an interest makes certain elements of world and knowledge-stock pertinent to defining and handling the situation.
Diese Form der Relevanz wollen wir, weil sie subjektiv als Motiv zur Definition der Situation erlebt wird, Motivationsrelevanz nennen.
English translation: We shall call this form of relevance, because it is subjectively experienced as a motive for defining the situation, motivational relevance.
When the inherited stock suffices, conduct remains routine. When it fails, an element becomes questionable and worthy of inquiry; this is thematic relevance, the constitution of a practical, theoretical, or emotional problem. The theme is singled out, yet its surrounding motivational horizon decides when investigation is “enough.” Interpretive relevance, the third form, concerns which past knowledge is usable in solving the theme. Schütz thereby displaces associationist psychology: what appears as association is sedimented from earlier inquiries and earlier thresholds of adequate solution.
Typification is the decisive bridge to sociology. Lifeworld objects are not first encountered as neutral data but as mountains, tools, dogs, persons, and situations under types. Yet types are not universal labels; they carry the history of problems for which they were useful. Hence different cultures can train different interpretive relevances—magical, theological, technical—within the same world.
Alle Typisierung ist problemrelativ, es gibt somit keinen Typus schlechtweg, sondern nur Typen, die einen problem-verweisenden „Index" mit sich führen.
English translation: All typification is problem-relative; there is thus no type as such, but only types that carry with them a problem-referring "index."
The structure of the essay is cumulative: unquestioned givenness, stratified reach, social layers, unequal knowledge stocks, then the three relevance-systems. Its relevance for social theory lies in showing that action, decision, and communication presuppose overlapping thematic and interpretive structures. Face-to-face relations provide the richest overlap through shared space, bodies, gesture, and reaction; more anonymous relations depend increasingly on typification. Schütz’s final claim is methodological: phenomenology grounds the social sciences by clarifying the pretheoretical order that makes human action understandable.
Die Lehre von den Relevanzen ist daher von grundlegender Bedeutung für die Theorie der Sozialwissenschaften.
English translation: The doctrine of relevances is therefore of fundamental importance for the theory of the social sciences.
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