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Lifeworld refers to the commonsense interpretive frames and logics by which individuals prereflectively conceptually organize their perceptions of everyday life. The concept of the lifeworld is central to two theoretical traditions – phenomenology and the critical theory tradition as articulated by Habermas – but the lifeworld is also an important concept in the sociological investigations into the construction of knowledge and the social body. Edmund Husserl, a nineteenth-century German philosopher, theorizes the importance of the lifeworld in how individuals come to understand the world around them. The primary focus of his work theorized the nature of logical thought, particularly the origins of knowledge. Husserl developed a philosophy of what he later termed the lifeworld. Two positions were prominent within the philosophical debates of the late nineteenth century. The first stressed formal systems of logic and methods of knowledge construction. The second tradition stressed the importance of lived experiences in the development of an intuitive reflection and subsequent construction. Husserl's early work attempted to bridge these two traditions. In doing so, he argued that the logic involved when thinking does not simply utilize ideal forms, but must incorporate the context of what is specifically being thought about. Thought, for Husserl, is an interplay between pure logic ... log in or subscribe to read full text