Alfred Schutz’s scientific contributions

In a brilliant paper presented to the “Colloque international de phénoménologie à Royaumont 1957”1 Professor Eugen Fink deals with what he calls the operative concepts in Husserl’s phenomenology. He distinguishes in the world of any major philosopher between thematic and operative notions. Whereas the former aim at the fixation and preservation of the fundamental concepts, the latter are used in a vague manner as tools in forming the thematic notions; they are models of thought or intellectual schemata which are not brought to objectifying fixation, but remain opaque and thematically unclarified. According to Fink, the notions of “phenomenon,” of “constitution,” and “performances” (Leistungen), and even those of “epoché” and of “transcendental logic” are used by Husserl as operative concepts. They are not thematically clarified or remain at least operatively adumbrated, and are merely headings for groups of problems open to and requiring further analysis.