Alfred Schütz’s writings from the perspective of a theory of action’s creativity

Abstract

The article proposes a review of the work of Schütz from the question about “creativity” of social action, which was not made expressly by the author but it is in his writings an important principle of response. After positioning the subject in some coordinates of the current sociological discussion, we present four specific fields from schütz’ contributions: the ability to expand and make a creative use of “the social heritage of knowledge”, the individual and collective capacity to imagine action projects, the ability to create and use symbols, and producing with them exclusive worlds of imaginary existence, as well as the ability to give birth to new experiences. It is stated that these four fields outline the contours of a phenomenology of creativity of action, which sets out some open fields for further research.

Keywords

• Characterization
• Fantasy
• Symbolism
• Pure duration
• Phenomenology
• Pragmatism