Concept
Lifeworld
Overview
Lifeworld (or life-world; German: Lebenswelt) may be conceived as a universe of what is self-evident or given, a world that subjects may experience together. The concept was popularized by Edmund Husserl, who emphasized its role as the ground of all knowledge in lived experience. It has its origin in biology and cultural Protestantism.
The lifeworld concept is used in philosophy and in some social sciences, particularly sociology, human geography, and anthropology. The concept emphasizes a state of affairs in which the world is experienced, the world is lived (German erlebt). The lifeworld is a pre-epistemological stepping stone for phenomenological analysis in the Husserlian tradition.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Thus, in the conception of a figure which is contained within two straight lines, there is no contradiction, for the conceptions of two straight lines and of their junction contain no negation of a figure. The impossibility in such a case does not rest upon the conception in itself, but upon the construction of it in space, that is to say, upon the conditions of space and its determinations. But these have…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
States what Lifeworld is; the author is tied to Lifeworld in the knowledge graph.
If it be remembered that every attribute is _grounded_ on some fact or phenomenon, either of outward sense or of inward consciousness, and that to _possess_ an attribute is another phrase for being the cause of, or forming part of, the fact or phenomenon upon which the attribute is grounded; we may add one more step to complete the analysis. The proposition which asserts that one attribute always accompanies another…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Lifeworld is.
Up to this point the world is what is called an external, which is here taken to mean (not a world external to the individual, but) a self-externalised world. That is to say, it is the observer who has hitherto by his interpretation of his perceptions supplied the “Spirit in Nature.” In itself the external world has no inside, no centre: it is we who read into it the…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
States what Lifeworld is.
Philosophers who discussed Lifeworld
Related ideas
- Alfred Schütz
- Pierre Bourdieu
- Philosophy
- Immanuel Kant
- Power (social and political)
- Verstehen
- Jürgen Habermas
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Sociology
- Marxism
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Intersubjectivity
- Max Weber
- Metaphor
- Perception
- René Descartes
- Social science
- Social alienation
- Debate
- Constructivism (philosophy of science)
- Martin Heidegger
- Communication
- Capitalism
- Anthropology
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Continental philosophy.