Alfred Schütz, The Problem of Rationality in the Social World

Alfred Schütz’s methodological essay, originally published in May 1943 and republished in 1964, distinguishes rationality in everyday conduct from rationality in scientific explanation. Beginning with Talcott Parsons’s definition of rational action, it asks whether ordinary actors’ knowledge and purposes can legitimately be understood on the model of scientific inquiry.

The problem suggested by the terms “rationality” or “rational action” as used in current literature is most certainly central to the methodology and epistemology of the scientific study of the social world.

The question is not simply whether people act rationally, but how rationality changes meaning between practical life and theoretical construction. Schütz illustrates the difference through the native, stranger, and cartographer confronting the same city. Familiar orientation, the acquisition of practical knowledge, and systematic mapping organize the environment according to different interests. Of the stranger, he writes:

Nothing is self-explanatory for him and he has to ask an expert, in this case a native, to learn how to get from one point to another.

What one person takes for granted becomes another’s problem. Drawing on William James’s treatment of concepts and contextual meaning, Schütz presents these differences as changes in interpretive frameworks, not merely variations in the quantity of information available. Scientific concepts must therefore be distinguished from the understandings through which actors navigate their surroundings.

The everyday social world is organized around the actor’s position and interests, extending from intimate relationships to anonymous social functions. People use tools, services, and institutions without investigating their operation or the individuals who sustain them.

But if I am not guided by a special motive, I do not ask for the history, genesis, and construction of all the tools and institutions created by other people’s activity.

This reliance expresses the practical selectivity of knowledge. Everyday understanding combines inherited rules, habits, experience, and expectations without demanding systematic consistency. Schütz’s “cook-book knowledge” supplies recipes sufficient for practical purposes; their success does not establish that they employ the best possible means. Practical typifications anticipate scientific ideal types, but their relevance remains governed by personal interests.

Schütz distinguishes rationality from reasonableness, deliberateness, planning, predictability, logical consistency, and choice. Routine conduct can be reasonable and serve a plan without involving explicit comparison among alternatives. An observer also cannot automatically identify the project that gives an action its unity: catching a train may belong to a business undertaking or a much larger life plan.

Reflective choice differs from the selectivity inherent in consciousness. When routines become problematic, actors may imaginatively rehearse alternatives as already accomplished, projecting their acts in the future perfect tense. Such imagined outcomes remain revisable, whereas completed actions have irrevocable consequences. Everyday rational choice is possible when clarity is understood relative to practical interests. Strict rationality, however, would require extensive knowledge of ends, means, consequences, and other people’s interpretations and responses. It consequently concerns a system of actions rather than an isolated decision.

Scientific construction can impose conditions that everyday conduct generally does not satisfy. The scientist creates ideal-typical actors, described as “puppets,” whose motives, knowledge, and possible actions are stipulated. Unlike living persons, they cannot spontaneously revise their assigned projects. The scientific problem determines which features enter the construction, performing a role analogous to practical interests in daily life. A change of problem therefore requires corresponding changes in concepts and types.

These constructions remain constrained by subjective interpretation and adequacy. Explanations must be translatable into understandable individual motives and actions, while constructed conduct must remain intelligible within the everyday social world. Pure theory adds a postulate of rationality, requiring clear, logically compatible constructions warranted by scientific knowledge. Economic theory illustrates how a governing hypothesis defines a model’s scope.

Schütz thus defends rational models while limiting their claims to reproduce lived experience. Their explanatory strength derives from controlled construction; their connection to social reality depends on adequacy to actors’ meaningful conduct. The investigator nevertheless remains a participant in ordinary social existence. The essay makes the relation between scientific interpretation and practical understanding central to a rigorous social methodology.