Alfred Schutz’s Life-World and Intersubjectivity

Alfred Schutz’s view of life-world and intersubjectivity are presented. Both concepts were developed in the realm of a social science inspired by Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology. The life-world accounts for the pragmatic issues such as temporal and spatial structures. Intersubjectivity is the basis for living and sharing the understanding of the life-world with others. Both concepts must be acknowledged in order to understand the making and shaping of the social. Lastly, we argue that intersubjectivity is an interactional process that expresses the experiential tension between the individual-subjective and the social-objective, of the social world and an antidote against the objectification of social life.