A further investigation of the life-world

Conclusions My personal way to phenomenology revealed to me qualities that seem to be essential to one's sense of everyday social reality. Having been victimized I became aware of some of the basic elements that lie beneath the intersubjectivity of the taken-for granted life-world.Death is the ultimate problematic event and the individual is shielded from it by his or her life-world. We hope that actions are repeatable and that others are trustworthy so that we will not confront our own isolation and our own mortality. Although one is alone in death, we act as if we are, and always will be, fundamentally with others within a shared and orderly social world. In short, we avoid our finite individuality through the hopeful construction of a sense of permanent and fundamental sociability. By sheltering ourselves within the life-world, we are, in essence, hoping that we will not die. In this sense, the life-world is a fundamentally deceptive construction. Yet, in this same sense, the life-world is also the source of social and cultural progress. Paradoxically, our sense of everyday reality is both deceptive and productive.The author wishes to express his gratitude to Susan Meisenhelder, George Psathas, and Richard Zaner for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.