Time and meaning. Alfred schutz’s concept of intersubjectivity and its cognitive corollaries

Why Alfred Schutz's legacy influenced so much social theory, remaining much less known in the world of philosophy, and phenomenology in particular? The paper tries to show its importance for the phenomenological tradition, pointing to its relevance for such philosopical problems as understanding of the phenomenological reduction, self-evidence, the reproach of psychologism, constitution of meanings and realism vs. idealism in phenomenology. Highlighting Husserl's high esteem for Schutz, it departs from the historical background of Schutz's reflection (the Austrian school of law and economy, neo-kantianism of the Marburg and the Baden school and its influence on Max Weber, Husserl's dispute with psychologism) in order to show, on the example of "The Phenomenology of the Social World", how Schutz finds his way from the solipsistic trap, finding a solution of the self-evidence problem by means of providing a description of the pre-reflexive and of the reflexive side of the time structure, inherent in the process of the social constitution of meaning.

The text proceeds by delineating historical background of Schutz’s reflection: first of the inspiration of his philosophy by legal and economic theories, then of his engagement in the discussion on grounding the humanities, of Max Weber’s position in this discussion, constituting a point of departure for Schutz, and, finally, of Schutz’s relation to the basic issues of phenomenology, comprised in the question of psychologism. After this introduction Schutz’s project turns out to be a reconstruction of processual self-evidence, realized in co-existence of various streams of consciousness, in a way congenial to Heidegger’s “Time and Being”.

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