International Phenomenological Society

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Erwin Straus and Alfred Schutz

Author(s): Maurice Natanson
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Mar., 1982), pp. 335-342
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107490
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 ERWIN STRAUS AND ALFRED SCHUTZ*

Inside of every long paper is a little paper trying to escape.

Liberated, the miniscule version looks homeward toward its full ex-
pression. I begin in an alternativeway: here are a few pages in search
of a larger statement.
The comparison of Straus with Schutz is a natural one and, in
my judgment, a productive one. A quick resume should bring the
relationship between the two men into focus.
1. Both were essentially European men of the same period.
Straus was German; Schutz was Austrian. Both attended classical
gymnasia. Both were highlymusical. Both shared in the major events
of their time: theyserved their respectivecountries in the FirstWorld
War; they came to the United States in later years as refugees. Both
were men of unusual intellectual quickness, wit, and human discern-
ment.
2. Neither Straus nor Schutz took his degree in philosophy. The
firstwas a doctor of medicine; the second was a doctor of law. Both
were philosophers; both were intensivelytrained in domains other
than philosophy: Straus in medical science and Schutz in social
science. Both were at home in classical and European literature. One
could safelyhave staked his life on expecting to find in their homes a
complete set of the works of Goethe.
3. Schutz's central philosophical indebtedness was to Husserl.
Max Weber dominated in the realm of social science. Bergson was an
early and lasting influence. Among modern philosophers in the broad
tradition, Leibniz was - as he was forsome other phenomenologists-
of special significance. Schutz recognized Heidegger's importance but
remained essentially suspicious of his work. Straus, on the other
hand, was much more involved in Heidegger's thought, though he
was clearly not a disciple. Scheler rather than the early Husserl was
more interestingto Straus. The later Husserl he found more appeal-
ing. But modern philosophy, whose problems are verymuch the focus
of Straus's writings,was not the fundamental medium of his thought.
Rather, it was in classical Greek philosophy that Straus found his
home. I will return to that point later.
*
This paper was firstpresented at a meeting of the Society for Phenomenology
and Existential Philosophy at Evanston, Illinois, on October 6, 1976.

335

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336 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

4. The two men knew of each other but never met. Schutz greatly
admired Straus's Vom Sinn der Sinne. It was only in the late fiftiesor
in the sixties, I would guess, that Straus read anything by Schutz. I
doubt that Straus ever read verymuch by Schutz. From the few pages
he may have looked into and from what he read and heard about
Schutz, Straus quickly recognized that his poetrywas too close to that
of Schutz to riskinfiltration.In any case, Straus was a highlyidiosyn-
cratic reader.
5. Both men were, formost of theirlives, part-timeteachers but
full-time professionals, in the worlds of psychiatry and business
respectively. Like the two men, the two worlds are not all that far
apart. When I warned Straus about petting a treacherous cat of mine
who was, I told him, paranoid, he replied, as his continued stroking
brought fortha profound purr, "but that's my business." And it was.
Schutz was equally at home with philosophers and businessmen. His
presence was contentment-making. It was said of him by his
academic colleagues that he was the only one who could really speak
to the trustees.
6. Both Straus and Schutz were impressed by Freud and quite
critical of psychoanalysis.
Against this background of intellectual and personal attitudes
we may now view the more distinctivelyphilosophical interestsof the
two thinkers. Their similarities are not difficultto locate. For Straus
as well as for Schutz, the methodological stratum of Husserl's work
which proved to be of decisive importance was phenomenological
psychologyrather than transcendental phenomenology. It is man in
the natural attitude, in the midst of mundane activities, who is the
starting point for philosophical inquiry. Whether one speaks of the
"axioms of daily life," as Straus does, or refersto the "typificationsof
common sense," as Schutz does, the rootage of man remains in the
taken for granted structures of everyday life. It is the task of
phenomenological psychology to present an anatomy of those struc-
tures. Certain paradigm examples in the writingsof the two men offer
a way of approaching the sense of mundanity which they locate and
express.
Perhaps the dominant illustration of placement in the natural
attitude which Straus relies on, in variant ways, is that of the percep-
tion of identity and sameness of the object intended in experience
despite the multitude of differentobservers and discrete perceptual
experiences. Straus writes:
Say that I am in a museum, lost in the contemplationof a painting.

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 ERWIN STRAUS AND ALFRED SCHUTZ 337

Another visitor comes up from behind me, at firstunnoticed. His mere

presence doesn't affect my view of the picture; it neither adds nor takes
anything away. Now that he has moved forward several steps, I notice
his presence; even so my view of the painting remains as it was before.
Looking straight ahead I face the picture; twisting around I see the
other visitor and understand him as someone inspecting the same ob-
ject. While the rays reflected from the picture plane, the stimuli,
diverge in separate bundles to his eye and to mine, our gazes converge
on the same object. If he should open a conversation and point
something out to me that had previously escaped my notice, then I
discover something in the see-able that he has already seen for himself. I
cannot participate in his seeing; it is forever inaccessible to me. But I
can, through his guidance, make actually accessible to my own view
something that in principle is visible to both of us.'
The commonality of the "see-able" presupposes the actuality of
communication in the world of daily life. More specifically, though,
communication between fellow human beings is centered in shared
space and time. The "see-able" is part of The world, not my world.
Similar paradigm illustrationscan be found in Schutz, but the domi-
nant motif is not perception but action. Even further, action as
distinctivelysocial involvesdistance as much as immediacy. Thus, the
kind of illustrationone findsstressedin the writingsof Schutz refersto
a domain of largely anonymous activity. "Putting a letter in the
mailbox," Schutz writes, "I expect that unknown people, called
postmen, will act in a typical way, not quite intelligible to me, with
the result that my letter will reach the addressee within typically
reasonable time."2 Here, communication is seen as socialized through
the constructswhich the individual utilizes of those fellow human be-
ings who are not present,with whom we do not, at the moment, share
space and time. In formulatinghis illustration of the museum goer,
Straus typifieshis anonymous reader, surrenders his manuscript to
postal officials, gets back galleys prepared by printers who are
unknown to him, and receives royalties on a book bought by
anonymous others. Yet just as communication with another person at
the museum is possible, so understanding others with whom no per-
sonal contact ever takes place is also possible.
Communication for both Straus and Schutz is marked by the
character of the "wide-awake" man. "All work done by man," Straus

1Erwin W. Straus, "Psychiatry and Philosophy," in Psychiatryand Philosophy

(ed. by Maurice Natanson), New York: Springer-Verlag, 1969, pp. 23-24.
2AlfredSchutz, CollectedPapers, Vol. I: The Problemof Social Reality(ed.
by Maurice Natanson), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, p. 17.

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338 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

writes,"is accomplished in a state of awakeness."3 And Schutz writes,

"Only the performing and especially the working self is fully in-
terested in life and, hence, wide-awake."4 These are not random
quotations. On the contrary, Straus devotes one of his most
penetrating essays to "Awakeness" and Schutz introduces his analysis
of the individual's common-sense knowledge of the world by
characterizing "the way in which the wide-awake grown-up man looks
at the intersubjectiveworld of daily life . . ."5 Within the naive orien-
tation of the natural attitude, awakeness is simply taken for granted
by actors in the everyday world. The reality grasped by mundane
man is taken simpliciter. Schutz remarks:
No motive exists for the naive person to raise the transcendental ques-
tion concerning the actuality of the world or concerning the reality of
the alter ego, or to make the jump into the reduced sphere. Rather, he
posits this world in a general thesis as meaningfully valid for him, with
all that he finds in it, with all natural things, with all living beings
(especially with human beings), and with meaningful products of all
sorts (tools, symbols, language systems, works of art, etc.). Hence the
naively living person (we are speaking of healthy, grown-up, and wide-
awake human beings) automatically has in hand, so to speak, the mean-
ingful complexes which are valid for him.6
Everydayness,in these terms,is a field of action predicated tacitlyon
the acceptance of ordinary experience as intersubjectivelyreliable
and shareable. Transcendental questions about such reliability and
shareability are immanently bracketed. More fundamentally,
philosophical questioning about the nature of mundane experience is
successfullyresistedand, more or less, overcome by the force of a dif-
ferent order of questioning: the pragmatic interest which common
sense takes in seeing its projects through to efficacious conclusions.
Accordingly, communication between fellowmen arises as a problem
within daily life only when the breakdown of the ordinary occurs.
And even then, breakdown is viewed as an "in-between" state, one
which will eventually return the pathological to the normalcy of
everydayness.
For Straus, communication is the certitude of the mundane. He
writes: "We view communication as a fact and as beyond any doubt;
only the what and how require discussion."7 Viewing communication
3Erwin W. Straus, PhenomenologicalPsychology,New York: Basic Books,
1966, p. 101.
4Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I, p. 213.
5Ibid., p. 7
6Ibid., pp. 135-36.
7Straus, "Psychiatry and Philosophy," p. 24.

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 ERWINSTRAUSAND ALFRED SCHUTZ 339

as a factmeans, forStraus,thatego and alterego share a common

world. The commonalityof that world is the condition for the
possibilityof raisingseriousquestionsabout communication.Thus,
ego and alterego maybe opposed to each otherat times,but thatop-
positionpresupposespartnership.In Straus'swords, "Communica-
tionis im-part-ing;I meettheotherone as a part-ner."8Priorto con-
frontationbetweenindividuals,thereis a sharingof what is "ours":
"We meetone another,"Straussays,"in theone worldcommonto us
both."9 As long as one remainsin the natural attitude,the "world
commonto us" is simplylived and appreciated;the "whatand how"
of the constitution of that worldbecome problematiconlywiththe
relinquishmentof the natural attitude. It is at this point that we
beginto see a difference betweenthe phenomenologiesof Strausand
Schutz. Both agree in the initialcharacterizationof the man in the
naturalattitude,but each thinkergoes on to a distinctwayof inter-
pretingthe taskof philosophicalanalysis.For Straus,it is the private
ratherthanthesocial worldwhichcalls forphilosophicalscrutiny-a
claim whichbringsus back to an earliersuggestionthatStraus'sin-
tellectualbase was classical Greekphilosophy.Strauswrites:
In antiquity one's own world, the idios cosmos, was considered a
private, and that meant a deficient, world. Awakeness was deemed
superior to sleep and dreaming. It was not so much communication that
called for an explanation as its suspension. In the modern concept of the
world as external, constituted in and by the subject's 'mind,' the prob-
lem is reversed. Communication thereby becomes a well-nigh insoluble
riddle. It seems to me that our account of comportment towards the
Allon and the heteros, in their mundane orientation, coincides in many
respects with the ancient view.10
Here thereis an implieddistinctionbetweenthe "having"of ex-
perienceand the reflectiveexaminationof that "having." It would
seem thatthe latteris an answerin searchof a question.The "what
and how" of communicationmay need clarification,but the activity
of clarifyingappears to be supernumerary in some respects-the il-
luminationof that whichis alreadylight-saturated. In otherterms,
the deprivationcharacteristic of privacymakes philosophypossible.
At the level of the natural attitude,Schutz is largelyin agree-
ment with Straus's insistenceon the primacyof communication.
Schutzwrites:
... it is characteristic of the natural attitude that it takes the world and

8Ibzd.
9Ibid., p. 53.
10Ibid., p. 57.

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340 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

its objects for granted until counterproof imposes itself. As long as the
once established scheme of reference, the system of our and other peo-
ple's warranted experiences works, as long as the actions and operations
performed under its guidance yield the desired results, we trustthese ex-
periences. We are not interested in finding out whether this world really
does exist or whether it is merely a coherent system of consistent ap-
pearances. We have no reason to cast any doubt upon our warranted ex-
periences which, so we believe, give us things as they really are.11
But the intersubjectiveworld of taken for grantedexperience
rests,accordingto Schutz,on a tacitepochUwhichplaces primordial
doubtin brackets.Philosophicalreflection is held at bay byour com-
plicitywith everydayness, and our departurefromthe natural at-
titude is not the resultof privacydisplacingcommonalitybut the
recognitionthat commonalityconceals itsown originand rationale.
But evenwithinthegeneralthesisof thenaturalattitude,a returnto
sourcesis withinthe purviewof phenomenology.Schutz maintains
that:
a special motiviation is needed in order to induce the naive person
even to pose the question concerning the meaningful structure of his
life-world, even within the general thesis. This motivation can be very
heterogeneous; for example, a newly appearing phenomenon of mean-
ing resists being organized within the store of experience, or a special
condition of interest demands a transition from a naive attitude to a
reflection of a higher order . . . If such a motivation for leaving the
natural attitude is given, then by a process of reflection the question
concerning the structure of meaning can always be raised. One can
always reactivate the process which has built up the sediments of mean-
ing, and one can explain the intentionalities of the perspectives of
relevance and the horizons of interest. Then all these phenomena of
meaning, which obtain quite simply for the naive person, might be in
principle exactly described and analyzed even within the general thesis.
To accomplish this on the level of mundane intersubjectivityis the task
of the mundane cultural sciences, and to clarifytheir specific methods is
precisely a part of that constitutive phenomenology of the natural at-
titude of which we have been speaking.12
The closenessof theviewsof the twomen certainlyovershadows
theirdifferences:both are sayingthat mundane realitymay be il-
luminatedfromwithin,that is, that phenomenologicalpsychology
can be pursuedwithoutinvokingthe transcendentalreduction.Yet
the differencebetweenthem to which I am pointingremains: for
Straus, mundane existence,the intersubjectivedomain of the one
commonworldall of us share as common-senseindividuals,is essen-
tiallyluminousand philosophyless.For Schutz,themundanerestson

"Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I, p. 228.

"Ibid., pp. 136-37.

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 ERWIN STRAUS AND ALFRED SCHUTZ 341

transcendental grounds which common sense masks and, in a

pragmatic way, overcomes. The luminosityof daily life, for Straus, is
assured by the omnipresence of the sensoryorder. "Communication,"
he writes, "is mediated in the last analysis by the sensible."13 Schutz,
on the other hand, considers action to be the fundamental clue to the
meaning-structure of the mundane. Communication involves a far
wider spectrum than face to face encounter suggests. In turn, phan-
tasy rather than the sensible proves to be the mediator of communica-
tion. Schutz writes:
All projectingconsistsin anticipationof futureconductbywayof phan-
tasying,yetit is not theongoingprocessof action but thephantasiedact
as havingbeen accomplishedwhichis the startingpoint of all project-
ing. I have to visualizethe state of affairsto be broughtabout by my
futureaction beforeI can draftthe single steps of such futureacting
fromwhich thisstate of affairswill result. Metaphoricallyspeaking,I
musthave some idea ofthestructureto be erectedbeforeI can draftthe
blueprints.1
4
The distinctionbetween the sensible and phantasy leads back to
significantdifferencesin the ways in which Straus and Schutz support
their views of the life-world. In Strausian terms, the sensible is ap-
proached by way of Man as part of Nature; in Schutzian terms,phan-
tasy is interpreted as the activity of Man as part of Sociality. Yet,
these important distinctions are not indicative of any profound an-
tagonism between Nature and Sociality. For Straus, Man's taking the
upright posture brings him face to face with the trafficof the social
world. The sensible, though it is rooted in Nature, mediates the
sociality of communication. For Schutz, Nature and Society are
transcendences which constitutethe conditions of human action and
of human freedom. As he says, ". . . the order of Nature and of Society
is common to all mankind."15 It is clear in Schutz's view of
transcendence that Nature and Society are representative in com-
mon-sense thinking of "some kind of order; yet the essence of this
order as such is unknowable to us."16 For Straus, the sensory world
gives us unmediated presence. As he writes:
When I open myeyesthebrightsunlightimpingesupon me. I am forced
to see, to hear, to smell thisand that. I am beset, threatened,or pro-
tectedin myexistencebetweenlifeand death, beingand not-being.I do
not act as a detached, impartialobserverwho merelytakescognizance
oftheoccurrenceof things,I feeltheirpower.They are real to me, I am

3Straus,"Psychiatryand Philosophy",p. 24.

4Schutz,Collected Papers, Vol. I, p. 20.
15Ibid., p. 330.
16Ibid., p. 331.

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342 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

in the game myself,seized by the eventsin diversmodi.17

Thus, Strausian Man remains at home in the immanence of the
sensory; Schutzian Man must come to termswith the transcendences
of both Nature and Society.

MAURICE NATANSON.
YALE UNIVERSITY.

17Erwin W. Straus, "Aesthesiology and Hallucinations," in Existence (ed. by

Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger), New York: Basic Books, 1958,
p. 155.

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