Historicity in Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz. Development of Meaning and Modes of Relevance

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine history in the framework of Edmund Husserls transcendental phenomenology and Alfred Schutz?s constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude. Significant similarities regarding the analysis of the lifeworld, its historical character, and the levels of this development will be shown in order to highlight the importance of the complementation that can be found in Schutzs descriptions. Whereas Husserls furnishes significant ideas dealing with, so to speak, a longitudinal or horizontal plane of history that involves the successive moments of establishment, sedimentation, and teleological reestablishment of meaning, Schutzs main contributions concern themselves with, as it were, a transversal or vertical plane that entails the simultaneous systems of thematic, interpretative, and motivational relevance. The intersection of both structures leads to an enrichment of the analysis of history insofar as the types of relevance help to clarify and develop further the moments described by Husserl. Examples taken from the history of philosophy will offer an illustration. Finally, reference is made to the interdependence of moments and relevances in view of the problem of the continuity of history.