Abstract

Alfred Schutz was the outstanding representative of the phenomenological approach to the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences. An attempt is made here to explore one fundamental feature of Schutz's work: his theory of typification. That theory is found to be a development of Husserl's doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness and is shown to be concerned with the structure of pre-predicative experience as well as the process of abstraction and ideation as constitutive of the 'natural standpoint' of daily life.