Schutzian Research

Volume 4, 2012

Two Concepts of Type in the Work of Alfred Schutz

Schutz not only adapted Max Weber’s “ideal types” but also Edmund Husserl’s prepredicative “types,” which must have been “empirical types,” in his work. With care, these terms can be kept distinct. The former term refers to concepts used in common-sense thinking as well as cultural science, while the latter refers to vague material universals or eidē. This essay studies how “type” is used in these two different ways by Schutz after he had read Husserl’s Erfahrung und Urteil by 1940.