Schütz and Marx on Action

Abstract

Alfred Schütz’s investigation of the temporal structure of consciousness in The Phenomenology of the Social World leads him to conceive action as antecedently projected behaviour. Schütz presents his conception of action as resolving a problem in Weber’s discussion of meaningful behaviour in the opening pages of Economy and Society. It serves that aim well, but also has independent value. The antecedently projected form of action necessitates a biographical conception of human agency. Schütz’s conception of action thus reinstates the biographical nature of agency ignored in contemporary analytical philosophy of action. Furthermore, Marx is committed to exactly this conception of action. It founds his further claim that action and history mutually presuppose one another.