p.1 The life-world is the quintessence of a reality that is lived, experienced, and endured. It is, however, also a reality that is mastered by action and the reality in which - and on which - our action fails... we engage in it by acting and change it by our actions... We must act in the everyday life-world, if we wish to keep ourselves alive. We experience everyday life essentially as the province of human practice.

p.11-12 All operation, as controlled corporeal conduct, in some way engages in the world. But not every operation changes the surrounding world in a way that is significant for the practical objectives of everyday life... Some determinate effect, a change in the natural and social world was achieved by a plan of action... it is meaningful to stress the kind of operation that changes the surrounding world according to the plan of action... Let us call it work.

p.13 Let me stress once more that work must be understood in terms of the project. The actor works when he wants to achieve something definite in the surrounding world. This can be something natural or social... The attribution of responsibility is governed in this case by what we have defined as work: if definite effects of an operation are foreseeable, one should orient oneself by them

p.14 Every action, as was said, is preceded by a project.

p.15 it can be said in general that the actor takes it for granted that the individual steps in the performance of an act are oriented by the project... In its meaning, action is then indeed still based on the past project that reached forward into the future (modo futuri exacti) - at the time when the project actually had been planned

p.18 Action, let it be stressed once again, gets its meaning - or more precisely its actual meaning as action - from the project.

p.24 Planning is fantasying in the framework of open possibilities

p.25 The estimation of the practicability of a determinate project is necessarily based on general assumptions.

p.26 Every project is necessarily composed of typical components. This is most obviously true of projects involving repetitions of courses of action that have long since become habitual... the essential components of project-construction, e.g., the individual steps for reaching a goal, are of a typical kind.
  Therefore, in estimating the practicability of a certain project, general assumptions of the continued existence of the world as I know it, and of my continued existence in it as I know myself, play a role. Knowledge of the types of objects and events, which stems form other provinces of the subjective stock of knowledge, is also applied. Obviously of great significance in this is habitual knowledge, whose "function" consists mainly in simplifying everyday types.

p.27 Beyond habitual knowledge, specific elements of knowledge are project-relevant for the actor, especially his knowledge of the concrete limits of his reach and capacity to operate... The person hoping to act... uses only such (envisioned) means to achieve his goal... as lie within his actual or potential reach.

p.28 Every act, or more accurately every action, is constructed step by step

p.29 We can say, in any case, that all action begins, or originally began, in problematic situations.

p.29 Every project stems from a clearly determined interest, namely interest in a future that is formed thus and so and not otherwise.

p.31 The project is by nature oriented to something future, but even its genesis - from interests - has a complicated time-structure... it is oriented by a future that is relevant for the actor.

p.32 What does it mean that several projects are on hand before an action? How does the actor manage to choose one project?

p.34 Only envisionings of the future that can be taken seriously are, as was said, included in the comparison. Those that are somehow merely imagined unpurposefully are left out of the picture... They do not stem from interest-contexts... what speaks against them is only that nothing speaks for them.

p.34-35 The framework of open possibilities always comprises the actor's historically and biographically determinate world - which he takes for granted and without question. Open possibilities become problematic for him when it turns out in a concrete situation - which calls for a decision - that they could be of interest for his future. Thus the framework of the problematic possibilities is comprised of a hierarchical plan that is interest-determined.

p.35 The actor must decide to which of the problematic possibilities that come in question he should assign the greater weight for his future under the circumstances and in the situation... the process of the decision itself, the actual choosing... takes place in the fleeting present, it is of course, like all experience and all action, stamped by the past. However, in its meaning, it is obviously and essentially future-oriented.
  The past acts upon the process of choice through the experiences that are deposited in the actor's stock of knowledge and have shaped concrete motivation-contexts in his subjective stock of knowledge.

p.39 Only when one project does not predominate must a second round be sought.

p.42 The performance of consciousness consists rather of the fantasying presentation... of something that is not and never has been on hand.

p.46 Projects can be designed... the act that is envisioned modo futuri exacti has the character of a project

p.47 The choice between conflicting projects is basically an act of interpretation. Choosing is... an interpretive decision that stands under the pressure of action and time in an actually present situation. It is also clear that the actor thinks because he must: he has a more or less cogent, practical motive for choosing, and he is more or less urgently interested in the result of choice. Nevertheless, envisionings of the future are nothing but fantasies. However, they are fantasies that come into question seriously for the actor based on his biographically predetermined interests.

p.54 The steps of action are arranged in the project... it cannot be surprising that the degree of agreement between the projected and the completed steps of the act is subject to considerable fluctuations... This also holds true, of course, for the case of "successful" action, in which the actor comes step by step closer to the originally projected goal.

p.56 he will briefly... "stop and reflect." ...He may, however, discover a series of steps other than the one arranged in the original project, and assume that it has better chances.... Further action is then oriented by the newly projected sequence of steps. Thus in the midst of the action, components of the project are changed... The project of the act, accordingly, follows the original project up to a certain point, then it follows the changed project.

p.56 Many kinds of acts can be continued from where they had been interrupted. This applies to daydreams and mental calculations as well as to operations and work.

p.58 we want merely to play with the idea of the unrestricted rationality of action, in order to see how the practical rationality of action is constituted under the limiting conditions of everyday reality.

p.58 First, the actor, in order to be able to act with unrestricted rationality, would have to know himself just as he is.

p.59 Second, the actor would not merely have to know himself as he is now, but also as he will be at some future time... Before he decides now to do or not to do some particular thing, he would have to know now, at least according to the kind of acts and their typical consequences, the extent to which what seems good and precious to him today might also be important and urgent to him tomorrow... The actor should also take carefully into account the foreseeable state of interests of his future self.

p.59-60 Everyone knows, of course, that he could, according to his present state of interests, regret certain acts tomorrow - and this has considerable influence on his present decision to do or not do something... the actor would have to be able to calculate whether he will in the future, according to a later but now foreseeable state of interests, regret having done something now that seems to him highly worth striving for today and that he knows he will most probably not regret having done tomorrow. Only in this way is he in a position to decide now on a completely rational basis whether the later (now foreseeable) regret would outweigh the present (more precisely speaking: the now immediately foreseen) satisfaction. The person would thus have to build up not merely a clear and well-ordered hierarchy of interests and plans relative to his present self, but already now to orient it by his (presumed) future self. He would deliberate both between his present different interests as if they were meaningfully comparable, and between his present and successive phases of his future interests, insofar as they are now foreseeable... But these calculations of his life expectancy would be based less on his knowledge of himself than on knowledge of the world, especially of his fellowmen and their typical life-spans.

p.60 Third, in order to act rationally, the person would have to know not just himself but of course also the world around him.

p.61 Fourth, in order to be able to act rationally, the person would have to be able to choose between competing projects as if the choice itself were not an event in his stream of consciousness.

p.61-62 The fifth and last point concerns the action itself. Let us assume that the previously discussed reservations did not apply... Let us also assume that he had with the help of his fully sufficient knowledge calculated exactly the possibilities of practicability for the projects and carefully weighed the consequences of the acts eventually performed. As a perfectly rational actor he would, furthermore, keep up to date all decisions and weighings already made. Thus equipped, he would enter the decisional situation and, relieved of the time pressure, make the logical choice fully consciously, step by step. Even then, in the course of the action proper, still unexpected circumstances immediately affecting the further course of the action could occur... The actor's nature, especially his temporality, as well as the nature of the reality around him, especially its temporality, set uncrossable limits to his knowledge. The idea of the unrestricted rationality of action thus remains what it is: an idea.

[JLJ - I agree, and this shoots down Rescher's obsession with rational action.]

p.65 Humans are the ones who can do or not do something.

p.66 There is no question about it: humans act. But it is questionable whether only humans act... In our modern Olympus, "systems" act, and even the unconscious we have heard that "it" acts. But this need not concern us too much, since such acts are recorded in a different attitude from the natural one. In myth and epic, in fable and science, other rules apply than in the reality in which one acts because one must, in the primary and completely ordinary reality of everyday life... If it is transferred to nonhumans, then it is always in an attitude that is relieved of the immediate everyday requirements.

p.66 the actor is "always already" within society.

p.68-69 Actions are always socialized, but not always social... Social action is characterized by the fact that others appear in its thematic core or at least in the thematic field of the project.

p.72 With certain reservations, immediate reciprocal action... can be considered that basic form of all social action, whereas the other forms can be regarded as derivations of this basic form.

p.76 Without further elucidation it was stated above that reciprocal immediate action must be regarded as the basic form of social action.

p.80 The social stock of knowledge contains typifications of various social situations, various motives of acts, goals and courses of acts by different kinds of actors, and it contains typifications of various corporeal modes of behavior that as a rule are classified as acts.

p.80 Typologies that assign external conduct and intention to one another approximately according to the pattern "mere conduct, operation, work," are indispensable for orientation in social everyday life.

p.87 I can never establish with absolute certainty the goal toward which a person is aiming... But here I can apply my knowledge of typical combinations of motives, goals, acts, and courses of acts with the help of principle of the reciprocity of perspectives and motives... what is perceived must be interpreted... And it is always interpreted within the prevailing stock of knowledge... Interpretation and action fuse together.

p.147 Symbols are intersubjectively constituted and form historical contexts, often even hierarchically arranged systems institutionalized as special knowledge... one of their essential features is their historicalness.

p.221 Motives, says [Gottfried] Leibniz, induce a man to act but do not necessitate him. He is free to follow or not to follow his inclinations or even to suspend his choice.

p.225 Any form of social action is founded upon constructs relating to the understanding of the other person and the action pattern in general.