Abstract

Alfred Schütz is considered one of the most influential figures of phenomenological sociology. For that very reason, it is puzzling that Schütz is not one of the key authors when it comes to conceptualizing the public realm in a specifically phenomenological manner. In The Structures of the Lifeworld and other writings, we find meticulous analyses of how the lifeworld unfolds in layers of meaning that constitute our social, everyday world, but descriptions of how a public realm or public space is constituted or of what it means to be in public or act as a public are missing. This paper investigates this surprising lack. It does so against the backdrop of a larger project on the phenomenology of the public realm. By highlighting different aspects of Schütz’s work, I will discuss three different possible answers to the question whether there is such a thing as a Schützian phenomenology of the public realm: Answer 1: There is no such thing, because Schütz equates the term “public” with “social” and “intersubjective.” Answer 2: There is, but only implicitly. One has to re-examine the concepts of social types and their scales of anonymity and use them to develop a phenomenological description of the public realm and publicness. Answer 3: There is, even explicitly, but in a rather restrained form in the theory of the well-informed citizen.