lifeworld

Lifeworld, or Lebenswelt in German, is a term used in phenomenology and related social theories to denote the pre-theoretical world of lived experience that serves as the background for all knowledge, action, and interpretation. It includes the everyday, concrete reality in which people perceive, move, and interact, and it is shaped by culture, language, tradition, and social practices. The lifeworld is the horizon within which meanings are formed and taken for granted, rather than something constructed by scientific theorizing alone.

Originating with Edmund Husserl, the concept plays a central role in his critique of the crisis of the sciences. Husserl argued that science rests on a grounded, pre-scientific lifeworld—the natural attitude—that provides the tacit assumptions with which observers experience phenomena. In phenomenological method, researchers attempt to suspend or bracket the lifeworld to describe essences, while acknowledging that the lifeworld remains the base layer of all inquiry and experience. The lifeworld is, for Husserl, the resource of common sense, shared meanings, and practical know-how that science must interpret rather than replace.

Different thinkers extend the idea in various directions. Martin Heidegger presents the lifeworld as the everyday world of Dasein, where beings are encountered through practices, tools, and concern, rather than through theoretical objects. Jürgen Habermas uses the term to denote the background of norms and social integration that sustain communicative action, contrasted with impersonal systemic forces of economy and administration. In criticism, some argue that the lifeworld can be idealized or essentialized, while others view it as a useful analytic to explain how people coordinate meaning and action in everyday life.