Life-World, Sub-Worlds, After-Worlds: The Various ‘Realnesses’ of Multiple Realities

From this archetype Schutz derives his descriptions of the other realities.¹ The notion of provinces of meaning stems from the concept of “sub-universes” developed by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890), in which he speaks of “many worlds”. Declaring that “[t]he total world of which the philosophers must take account is thus composed of the realities plus the fancies and illusions” (1890: 291), he refers to the latter as “sub-universes” or “sub-worlds”. Among the most important sub-worlds, “each with its own special and separate style of existence,” James counts the world of science, the world of madness, “the world of ‘idols of the tribe’,” and “the various supernatural worlds,” including Christian notions of heaven and hell, Hindu mythology, but also mythical narratives like King Lear and the Iliad (1890: 292f.).

From the very beginning of “On Multiple Realities,” Schutz directly relates his theory to James’ thesis of parallel, multiple realities, although he initially varies both the term as well as the argument it is meant to serve: “(…) we prefer to speak instead of many sub-universes of reality of finite provinces of meaning upon each of which we may bestow the accent of reality. We speak of provinces of meaning and not of sub-universes because it is the meaning of our experiences and not the ontological structure of the objects which constitutes reality” (1962a: 230).

It is the experience of these finite provinces of meaning that Schutz discusses in detail in “On Multiple Realities”. Their primary characteristic feature is that they are void of the accent of reality of everyday life. Schutz specifically mentions the following provinces of meaning: “All these worlds—the world of dreams, of imageries and phantasms, especially the world of art, the world of religious experience, the world of scientific contemplation, the play world of the child, and the world of the insane—are finite provinces of meaning” (1962a: 232). Moving from one province of meaning to another is only possible by abandonment of the accent of reality of the first province. The point of origin is generally the reality of everyday life (although this is not a condition). A very typical finite province of meaning mentioned a number of times by Schutz is sleep and dreaming. This example provides a brief explanation of the properties and characteristics of finite provinces of meaning. Although the body of the sleeping person does not undergo any spatial changes and is observable for his contemporaneous fellow-men, the certainties of everyday life are no longer valid for the sleeping person in his dreams—in fact, they are canceled. Their place is taken by other conditions: In my dreams, I may do things I can obviously not do in everyday life (flying for example), but on the other hand, there are some things which go without saying in everyday life but which I cannot do in my dreams (running or escaping). In my dreams I may also meet people who are no longer alive (my predecessors). The time spent sleeping and dreaming is experienced as a time which does not correlate with the world of everyday life and which possesses its own temporal structure.

To describe the transition from one state to another, Schutz uses the word “shock” (1962a: 231), or “leap” (1962a: 232) making reference to Kierkegaard. It consists of “a radical modification in the tension of our consciousness, founded in a different attention à la vie” (1962a: 232). Every province of meaning experiences its own typical “shock” or “leap”: “There are as many innumerable kinds of different shock experiences as there are different finite provinces of meaning upon which I may bestow the accent of reality” (1962a: 231). The examples given by Schutz are the transition into the world of sleep and dreaming, but also the inner transformations that take place in a theater when the curtain is raised or in an art gallery when closely studying a painting.

In his description of the constitution of multiple realities, Schutz provides detailed discussions of three of these provinces of meaning: the world of dreaming, the worlds of phantasms, and the world of scientific theory. He explains these three provinces of meaning in terms of the specific experience they involve. For example, there is an absence of the wide-awakeness we know from everyday-life experience as well as a mitigation of the tension of consciousness. Schutz concludes that “[t]o the cognitive style peculiar to each of these different provinces of meaning belongs, thus, a specific tension of consciousness and, consequently, also a specific epoché, a prevalent form of spontaneity, a specific form of self experience, a specific form of sociality, and a specific time perspective” (1962a: 232).

The knowledge and fear of one’s own death, for Schutz, is the “basic experience” from which thanks to its domination of the natural attitude, the entire system of relevance is derived: “… the basic experience of each of us: I know that I shall die and I fear to die”. Schutz refers to this elemental experience as “fundamental anxiety” (1962a: 228). All other relevancies of the life-world are derived from it. “It is the primordial anticipation from which all the others originate” (Schutz 1962a: 228). Fundamental anxiety is a determining element in the systems of relevance of the human life-world. It is the target of the suspensions which take place in the epoché of the natural attitude.

“On Multiple Realities” leaves readers with a number of questions, especially with respect to the interior structure and the logic of individual provinces and their comparability. It is for this reason that Schutz’ discussion of multiple realities has been picked up repeatedly in the past decades. Among the first scholars to comment on Schutz’ text in some length was Gurwitsch in Théorie du champs de la conscience (1964: 394–403). Discussing Schutz’ notion of finite provinces of meaning, he then turns to the “existential problems” (1964: 401) of these provinces of meaning, which he subsequently studied using the term “order of existence” (1964: 404). Other authors, such as Goffman in Frame Analysis, provide only a rather cursory discussion of the term (1974: 6, fn 11).

On reading the texts which make direct reference to “On Multiple Realities,” one becomes aware of the heterogeneity of the possibilities of further study presented by the text and the impossibility to systematize them. For instance, it may inspire a reading of Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (see Berger 1970), or a comparative analysis of the concept of finite provinces of meaning and Goffman’s notion of frames (see Psathas 2014), or a comparison with Ortega y Gasset’s notion of “being in one’s self and being beside one’s self” (see Hermida-Lazcano 1996). Other authors address the concept of provinces of meaning (with reference to Husserl: Marx 1970; with reference to Gurwitsch: Kassab 1991), or exemplify the concept by providing specific provinces of meaning, e.g., hallucinations (Endress 2003), religion (Nieder 2006), or art and literature (using Schutz’ example related to Cervantes: Biemel 1983 and Endress 1998; discussing drama, poetry, and novel: Kersten 1998). Psathas (1998) applies the concept of finite provinces of meaning to the world of film and filmic realities. Some others are concerned with topics such as the correlation of provinces of meaning with communication (Knoblauch 1998), possible passageways between individual finite provinces of meaning (Sebald 2011), the specific correlation of provinces of meaning with rituals (Spickard 1991), with time (Flaherty 1987), with symbols (Dreher 2003), socialization and the world of adults and of children (Nasu 1999), or the role played by secularization in the pluralization of “meaning structures” and the question of which “feedback” finite provinces of meaning channel into the world of everyday life (Chojnacki 2012). While most authors concentrate on one aspect of finite provinces of meaning in general (Kersten for instance on cognitive style) or focus on one province of meaning in particular, Endress (2014) attempts further differentiation. He suggests that, since Schutz distinguishes between the various provinces of meaning on the basis of their predominant cognitive styles, it makes sense to differentiate between “various levels of reflexivity” (2014: 171). Based on a re-reading of Berger’s essay on Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (see Berger 1970) and the novel itself, he distinguishes, depending on the degree of reflexivity, between first, second, and third-order finite provinces of meaning.

Schutz’ conception of finite provinces of meaning primarily relies on their predominant cognitive style: “Hence we call a certain set of our experiences a finite province of meaning if all of them show a specific cognitive style and are—with respect to this style—not only consistent in themselves but also compatible with one another” (1962a: 230). In what follows, I will pursue a different avenue. My interest is with the pragmatic aspects of finite provinces of meaning in general. On the one hand, finite provinces of meaning possess distinctive realnesses which characterize them and separate them from one another. On the other hand, finite provinces of meaning incorporate themselves into, and have an effect on everyday life. On the face of it, Schutz clearly separates different provinces of meaning, emphasizing for instance that it is one thing to experience a finite province of meaning, and another to refer to it from the world of everyday life (1962a: 246). However, in his manuscript “Reflections on the Problem of Relevance,” he implies that finite provinces of meaning are not necessarily as exclusive as had been suggested in “On Multiple Realities”:

It was therefore an oversimplification to state as we did that we are living in different provinces of reality which we can interchange by a leap from one to another, and that the selection of one of them is the first step toward defining what is thematic and what is merely horizonal in our field of consciousness. In truth we are always living and acting simultaneously in several of these provinces, and to select one can merely mean that we are making it so to speak our ‘home base,’ ‘our system of reference,’ our paramount reality in relation to which all others receive merely the accent of derived reality (…). (2011: 98)

Given the ubiquity of finite provinces of meaning and man’s ability to commute between them, how, then, can their concrete embedments and our everyday methods of dealing with them be described?

At an initial stage, religion as a finite province of meaning, just as other sub-universes, features a special cognitive style (consisting of a particular tension of consciousness, a particular form of sociality, a particular temporal perspective, etc.; see Schutz 1962a: 232f.). What exactly do these different features of the finite province of meaning of religion look like?

The finite province of meaning of religion is among those that can be “intersubjectively shared” (see Schutz 1962c; 1962a: 232f.). In fact, there is an urge toward communalization. There are other provinces of meaning which generate communities (the world of games for example), and yet this is not true of all of them. There is no community of sleepers, dreamers, and (supposedly) no community of insane people. The communalization of those practicing religion is achieved through religious practices required for the generation of these communities, such as religious services or the performance of rituals. Hence, religious practices are a product of existing communities of adherents, but at the same time continually re-constitute them. To be sure, there are other religious practices which may be carried out also in solitude (meditation, prayer, fasting, etc.), and in many religions, there exist such figures as the hermit or the ascetic saint choosing a life of seclusion. Unlike many other provinces of meaning, that of religion can be entered both alone and in company. The reason this double gateway is of such great importance for the linkup of religion as a finite province of meaning to the world of everyday life is that it allows this-worldly communion without making it a prerequisite for religious experience.

Provinces of meaning possess (aside from the phenomenon of enclaves) the striking feature that they generate what may be called gateways, i.e., connecting parts between finite provinces of meaning and the world of everyday life. In “Symbol, Reality and Society” (1962c), Schutz granted symbols a central role for the connections between finite provinces of meaning: symbols are “appresentational references of a higher order” (1962c: 331). Unlike indications, marks, and signs,—all of which are of a ‘this-worldly’ nature—symbols are references which point beyond the everyday and which transcend everyday experience. Symbols connect finite provinces of meaning to the world of everyday life: The appresentational object—the “appresenting symbol”—is a constituent part of the world of everyday life (Schutz 1962c: 343), and it is in this capacity that the symbol points to finite provinces of meaning. Schutz and Luckmann speak of “boundary crossings” (1989: 131). It is indeed also common for indications, marks, and signs to point to something not present and thus to cross boundaries. But the target of a symbol is another finite province of meaning. Schutz and Luckmann use the term “bridge” to point out the boundary-crossing power of symbols: “[…] they throw a bridge from one province of reality to the other (…)” (1989: 144). Symbols can take a variety of forms. Schutz explicitly names “expressive, purposive, or mimetic gestures, linguistic or pictorial presentations, charms, spells, magical or religious rites, ceremonies” (Schutz 1962c: 335f.). Many of these symbol carriers are mobile and require no or only few material aids. References to other realities are thus an almost ubiquitous part of the world of everyday life—the everyday is indeed pervaded by them. Schutz uses the example of the Jacob’s Ladder to illustrate that virtually any object of everyday life may become a reference to a higher order and experience of the transcendental is possible virtually anywhere. Schutz speaks of “the irruption of the transcendent experience into the world of everyday life, which transforms it and gives each element of it an appresentational significance” (1962c: 337f.). And yet, we cannot help but notice that the distribution of symbols is not an arbitrary one. Religion, above all, makes sure that these symbols have a stubborn dependence on times and places.

Religions generate gateways of a spatially and temporally finite nature within the world of everyday life: in houses of prayer, which provide fixed places of worship where the community assembles, in calendars of feast days requiring the assembly of the adherents at fixed and recurring times of the year (defined in the liturgical year in Christianity). These gateways allow access to the finite provinces of meaning, serving in fact as a type of portal to a different reality. Gateways indeed possess their own character and their own force of working upon their inhabitants and visitors. A cloister garden is capable of (and indeed intended to) help its visitors attain a contemplative state of mind and turn inward; it is hardly possible not to be seized by the Chartres Cathedral; etc. Durkheim had already described the isolation of the holy places and times from the world of everyday life as “elementary forms of religious life”. In particular, it is the purpose of the so-called negative rites to achieve separation of the sacred from the profane (Durkheim 1971: 299–325). According to Durkheim, it is a key characteristic of religion that it creates sacred times and places. “By definition, sacred beings are separated beings” (1971: 299). These gateways can be specifically frequented in order to gain or facilitate access to another reality—a cathedral, a cloister garden, etc.

This raises the question of institutionalization of such locations and events. Endress notes that the handling of various forms of transcendence is organized and controlled by society (2003: 108). At the initial stage, closed provinces of meaning are an individual’s inner experiences. However, institutionalization and social control of its entryways—‘holy’ places, ‘holy’ times—generate social structures and material facts within the everyday life-world which in turn shape and channel the accesses to various closed provinces of meaning. People seeking out such places have expectations of them which, as with any kind of expectation, they may live up to or fall short of.

It is especially these passageways to the closed province of meaning of religion which show how much they are subject to historical and socio-structural change. Thomas Luckmann’s theses of the individualization and privatization of religion aim to show that this offer of religious provinces of meaning and gateways is historically diverse. In the afterword to the German 1991 edition of The Invisible Religion (Die unsichtbare Religion), he writes:

The specifically religious constructions of experience […] in Western societies were once placed under the monopoly-like control (canonization, censorship) of the Christian Church. In the meantime, the traditional Christian, specific religious representations are by no means the only ones found on the ‘market’ of ‘sacred universes.’ Instead, they must compete with religious orientations (…) of various origin. (1991a: 180; our translation)

Luckmann refers to this competition of orientations and religious offers of meaning as a “commodity market of transcendencies” (1991a: 180). It is composed, Luckmann explains, of (explicitly) religious representations taken from other religions, but also of distinctly secular everyday models. Luckmann’s argument also applies to the finite provinces of meaning. The “commodity market” characterization is also true of practices through which finite provinces of meaning may be attained without necessarily involving any religious creeds, e.g., breathing or drumming courses, practices of meditation or yoga, etc. The “commodity market of transcendencies” described by Luckmann leads not only to a possibility of choice, but also to established symbols and gateways losing their realities-crossing potential. A cloister garden, for instance, can suffer the fate of not being perceived as a religious place, but simply as a shady and beautiful spot.

The spatial and temporal structuring found in religious provinces of meaning and worldly gateways extends into models of non-secular worlds in visions of a hereafter and paradises. These visions consist of spatio-temporal imaginings of (other) worlds, taking (from the perspective of the everyday human) their place in the past or future, not existing parallel to the world of everyday life. Unlike finite provinces of meaning, notions of paradises and hereafters do not provide the possibility of coming back to the world of everyday life—they are places of no return. Through notions of hereafters, religions effect an irreversible separation of this world and the transcendent world. Nor are conceptions of hereafters one province among many; they are ultimate provinces of meaning.

The exact spatial and temporal positioning of hereafters and paradises differs from religion to religion. The Garden of Eden envisioned in the Old Testament and described in Gen 2:10–14 has been targeted with many attempts to localize it, and the narrative does indeed make references to locations (mentioning “the east” as well as the rivers Euphrates and Tigris). In the Ancient Egyptian culture, the realm of the dead is located, on the one hand, in the west (the place of the setting sun where the sun god Re seeks shelter with Osiris) and on the other hand in the underworld (through which Osiris safely guides Re). According to the myth adhered to on the Trobriand Islands (South-West Pacific), the ghosts of the dead inhabit the island of Tuma, which is located not too far from the island of the living, allowing the dead to pay regular visits to the living (Malinowski 1954: 155). Paradises may be future worlds which the respective religion promises to be attained on specific conditions. These conditions, however, must be satisfied in this world (e.g., the paradises which Islam holds in store for its adherents). Likewise, paradises may be worlds of the past to which access has been lost by man (the Garden of Eden, the paradise of the book of Genesis, is an example).

It becomes apparent, then, that many religions set against the fugacity of this life-world a hereafter canceling the temporal restrictedness of human life. The idealizations of “I can do it again” and “and so on,” valid in the world of everyday life, are not idealizations in that world, with the spatial and temporal structuring losing its significance. Most importantly however, paradises are liberated, so to speak, of the “world of working” of everyday life. Alois Hahn, in Sociology of Paradise Conceptions (Soziologie der Paradiesvorstellungen), points out that the conception of paradise as a garden (e.g., in Christianity and Islam) presents itself as the “earthly bliss of a simple agricultural society” (1976: 11; our translation). Initially that is, there is a resemblance between paradise conceptions and earthly life. “The hereafter invariably retains features of the respective secularity,” as Hahn writes (1976: 23). However, the two differ in crucial respects: There is no famine and no toil. “Paradise, as it were, is a repetition of the everyday dasein without its laborious painful circumstances” (Hahn 1976: 11). Hereafter conceptions therefore never fail to be remarkably concrete and detailed. For Hahn, these similarities between paradises and the world of everyday life demonstrate that “paradise conceptions are socially conditioned” (1976: 11). In many cases, paradise and hereafter conceptions feature fantastic elements. What distinguishes them from fantasizing, however, is the essential fact that in the case of the latter, he who engages in it is aware that he is in a world of fancy, while the religious believer by no means takes his hereafter conception to be a province of meaning or a figment of their imagination. Moreover, fantasizing individuals, in a completely different way, are in control of their ideas. “The imagining individual masters his chances: he can fill the empty anticipations of his imageries with any content he pleases; as to the anticipating of imagined future events he has freedom of discretion” (Schutz 1962a: 238f.). From such freedoms and choices, aspirants for the hereafter are far removed. Access and processes of admission are subject to explicit representations. Some hereafters have wardens guarding the entrance. In Greek mythology the entrance to the underworld is guarded by Cerberus, ensuring that no living person enters and no dead exits. For the Trobriand Islanders studied by Malinowski, the deceased are awaited by Topileta, ruler of the villages of the dead (1954: 156). Some of these worlds can only be attained by heroes and martyrs (Elysium, Valhalla), but surely not anyone. Many hereafters, it seems, are thus elitist. Entering them therefore is indeed similar to passage rites in Van Gennep’s sense (1960), with the exception that the aspirant’s concern is nothing less than admission to the ultimate province of meaning. Many religions know the idea of a judge or a court of the dead issuing a verdict on the admission of individual aspirants based on their deeds in life (i.e., in the world of daily life). In Ancient Egypt, for example, a judge whose verdict one could previously not be sure of had to be convinced. The impact of these conceptions, especially in Ancient Egypt, are more than remarkable. This is because the requirements of the court of the dead do not take the form of merits which as in an entry test could be accomplished in situ. Instead, the judgment looks at the deeds done in life, and thus at this world and the actions of the world of everyday life. The prospect of having to stand trial before a judge after death does indeed make an impression on the living. It also determines the world of the living and pervades everyday action. In Ancient Egypt, these notions influence everyday life; they have an effect on art and—still visible millenniums later—on architecture (Assmann 2005). Notions of the trials and the dangers of the hereafter are so explicit that in the world of everyday life, a strand of literature specifically concerned with them has emerged—the so-called “books of the dead”. These contain explicit advice on how to approach the dangers after death and are given to the dead for their passage. The hereafter is not always a safe place.

Unlike the finite provinces of meaning described by Schutz, these religious conceptions of hereafters and paradises (the ultimate provinces of meaning) transcend the here and now of the world of everyday life. Often enough they also contain notions of the beginning and the end of the cosmos. For instance, creation myths describe how the world, which is home (also) to the world of everyday life, first came into existence. Occasionally, there are apocalyptic conceptions of the end of all time and the beginning of a completely new eon, overcoming this world once and for all and thus leaving behind the world of everyday life (“a new heaven and a new earth,” Rev 21:1).

The three-fold correlation between the world of everyday life, the religious finite provinces of meaning, and finally the conceptions of hereafters and paradises is by no means unambiguous. In the different religions, the three worlds enter wholly different relationships with each other. On the one hand, conditions faced in the hereafter may be influenced by practices in this world, the world of everyday life. Expecting after-death judgment of the deeds done in life, any believer will be anxious to live their life in this world according to the particular religious expectations. Already in Ancient Egypt, Ma’at, i.e., proper conduct of life, played an important role for daily life and the behavior toward the gods. Breasted (1934) dates the “dawn of conscience” at this time. In the famous “Teaching for Merikere” a father gives an urgent warning to his son (end of the 22nd century BC):

The court of judges who judge the unworthy, thou knowest that they are not lenient on that day of judging the wretched, in the hour of executing the writ. … Set not thy mind on length of days, for they (the judges) view a lifetime as an hour. A man surviveth after death and his deeds are placed beside him like mountains. For it is eternity, abiding yonder (in the next world), and a fool is he who disregards it. (Breasted 1934: 157)

Other religions develop catalogs of behavior (e.g., a “Decalogue” carved in stone) for the proper behavior toward contemporaries, predecessors, and the respective deities. They attach great importance to participation in religious practices (invocations, praise, meditation, prayer, etc.). In the Hindu teaching of reincarnation, the threat is less non-admittance to the hereafter than re-birth as a lesser being (“As one acts and conducts oneself, thus one becomes”). Buddhism attempts to escape this circle of death and re-birth (“Samsara”) by non-attachment to the earthly. Nirvana, the state of being “blown out,” may be attained, for example, by asceticism and meditation, even allowing the option of inner-worldly redemption.

The hereafter, the finite provinces of meaning, and the world of everyday life interlock in the most diverse ways and influence each other. This relationship has repeatedly been subject to studies in the sociology of religion. Perhaps the most prominent example of the relationship between hereafter conceptions and finite provinces of meaning and the world of everyday life can be found in Weber’s (2005) description of the beliefs of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. According to this teaching, it is irrevocably certain who of the living is, and who is not among the chosen. The anxiety and uncertainty of the individual adherents with respect to their chances of attaining bliss in that world leads to restless labor and ascetic conduct of life in this world. It is only by the success achieved in this labor that the individual may guess whether they may not after all indeed be among the doomed ones—only guess; for certainty of it cannot be obtained because the Calvinist god remains silent on the matter, leaving the adherents in permanent doubt. As Weber describes, this gives rise to “a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual” (2005: 60). The example of Calvinism shows the extent to which conceptions of the hereafter (can) impact this world and the enormous consequences they have: for the individual that becomes lonely as well as for the society as a whole that changes its countenance and brings forth “modern economic man” (moderner Wirtschaftsmensch) (Weber 2005: 117). What, ultimately, also undergoes a change is the correlation between a finite province of meaning and the everyday. Previously monkish asceticism becomes part of everyday life—“worldly asceticism” (innerweltliche Askese) (Weber 2005: 97) arises. It is the hereafter conceptions of Calvinism through which an attitude is exported from the finite provinces of meaning (monkish asceticism) into the world of everyday life (as worldly asceticism), thus bringing about permanent change in it.