Abstract

Alfred Schutz’s Constitutive Phenomenology of the natural attitude was completed under the influence of Edmund Husserl Phenomenology, Henri Bergson’s Vitalism and William James’ Psychology. Schutz used James’ psychology mainly to analyze acts, their intentional modifications and the modifications found in finite realities of meaning. While the phenomenology of Husserl was important for the topics discussed, Schutz’s appreciation of James’s psychology is due to the fact that he makes these analyses without resorting to reduction, i.e. he explores worldly consciousness. Despite these differences, Schutz values the contact points between the two theories. Indeed, the first one of these contact points refers to the election of perception as the privileged act in the experience of the world. Such coincidence originated in Brentano’s basis that sustains both theories, particularly in relation to the concept of intentionality. On the other hand, the second contact point can be noticed in the use of the term “horizon” in Husserl and “fringes” in James. These notions influenced the Schutzian theory of Multiple Realities and provided significant support for that theory. This paper is intended to stress the coincidences that Schutz analyzes in detail in “William James’s ‘Concept of the Stream of Thought Phenomenologically Interpreted” contained in CP III, and also as an exegesis of the way these authors cooperated with the Schutzian notion of “the world of everyday life” or “world of working” (Wirkwelt).