1 Type and spontaneity. Beyond Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world Jan Straßheim jan.strassheim@fu-berlin.de This manuscript forms the basis for the following paper: Straßheim, Jan 2016: “Type and spontaneity. Beyond Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world.” Human Studies 39 (4): 493-512. Online access at: https://rdcu.be/7wh0 (freely accessible, read-only) http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9382-8 (downloadable from SpringerLink) Abstract: Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world, often neglected in philosophy, has the potential to capture the interplay of identity and difference which shapes our action, interaction and experience in everyday life. Compared to still dominant identity-based models such as that of Jürgen Habermas, ho assumes a coordination of meaning built on the idealisation of stable rules (primarily those of language), Schutz’s theory is an important step forward. However, his central notion of a “type” runs into a difficulty which requires constructive criticism. Against the background of Schutz’s theory of meaning inspired by Bergson and Husserl, his idea of types “taken for granted until further notice” is shown to express a primacy of identity which, in the final analysis, leads into the implausible scenario of ‘ubiquitous tunnel vision’. This makes it necessary to go beyond Schutz and assume an inherently motivated tendency towards difference in meaning termed ‘spontaneity’. Where spontaneity and the opposed tendency towards identity of meaning work together in the application of types, they enable embodied subjects to interact with the world and with each other in the routine yet flexible and sometimes innovative ways which we all know. 1 Introduction Alfred Schutz’s theory of the social world is still neglected in philosophy. One reason is that Schutz is often perceived as a sociologist only. But perhaps more importantly, Schutz’s theory expresses a tension between identity and difference which later on came to be decided in favour of identity. His notion of typicality in particular addressed both the relative stability and uniformity of meaning-patterns and their openness to revision, modification and change. But in the year Schutz passed away, a paper by Noam Chomsky (1959) heralded a paradigm of thinking about the social world primarily in terms of shared rules and structures, in short, of identity rather than difference, which made Schutz’s more balanced concepts appear obsolete and inconclusive. This trend, exemplified in the explanatory models of communication of John Searle and Jürgen Habermas, has come under increasing criticism bolstered by findings on the role of relevance in communication. Rules cannot reflect the necessarily flexible and sometimes innovative character of our everyday experience, action and interaction. Schutz tried to go beyond existing theories based on identity as early as the 1920s, and his account remains superior to the more recent models too. However, in order to appreciate Schutz’s lasting significance not only for sociology but also for social philosophy and phenomenology and to build on it productively, we must go one step further beyond his account as well. Constructive criticism is needed because within the tension between the patterning and openness of meaning, a primacy of patterning is implicit in Schutz’s notion of “taking things for granted until further notice”. If thought out to its end, this primacy leads to a picture of the social world which I call ‘tunnel vision’ and which is implausible for the same reasons as the later rule models. In order to preserve Schutz’s insight on the essential openness of typification, it is necessary to give up even his moderate primacy of typical identity and assume an inherently motivated tendency towards difference in meaning for which I propose the term ‘spontaneity’ (a term