Values and the scope of scientific inquiry, by M. Farber.--The phenomenology of epistemic claims: and its bearing on the essence of philosophy, by R. M. Zaner.--Problems of the Life-World, by A. Gurwitsch.--The Life-World and the particular sub-worlds, by W. Marx.--On the boundaries of the social world, by T. Luckmann.--Alfred Schutz on social reality and social science, by M. Natanson.--Homo oeconomicus and his class mates, by F. Machlup.--Toward a science of political economics, by A. Lowe.--Some notes on reality-orientation (...) in contemporary societies, by A. Brodersen.--The eclipse of reality, by E. Voegelin.--Alienation in Marx's Political economy and philosophy, by P. Merlan.--The problem of multiple realities: Alfred Schutz and Robert Musil, by P. L. Berger.--Phenomenology, history, myth, by F. Kersten.--The role of music in Leonardo's Paragone, by E. Winternitz.--Alfred Schutz bibliography (p. [297]-306). (shrink)

This never published paper by Benita Luckmann describes the ori­gins and uniqueness of the New School for Social Research. It portrays Alfred Schutz’s arrival in the United States, his reasons for working at the New School, his exchange with Talcott Parsons, the debate over his presentation of the Stranger in the General Seminar, and his many efforts to recruit Aron Gurwitsch to the New School. It also provides an account of Gurwitsch’s experience of life in exile, (...) his friendship with Schutz, and his time at the New School after Schutz’s death. (shrink)

This book presents the remarkable correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, emigre philosophers influenced by Edmund Husserl, who fled Europe on the eve of World War II and ultimately became seminal figures in the establishment of phenomenology in the United States. Their deep and lasting friendship grew out of their mutual concern with the question of the connections between science and the life-world. Interwoven with philosophical exchange is the two scholars' encounter with the unfamiliar problems of (...) American academic life—what Gurwitsch called the "passology" of exile. Apart from its brilliant and moving portrait of two distinguished men, the correspondence holds rich significance for current issues in philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

Drawing partly on unpublished materials from the Sozialwissenschaftliche Archiv Konstanz (Alfred‑Schütz‑Gedächtnis‑Archiv), in this paper I attempt to reconstruct Schutz’s barely explored reception of Marx and Marxism. To this aim, I proceed in four steps. First (1), I trace the very few references to Marxian thought in Schutz’s published work. Second (2), I review Schutz’s mentions of the topic in his correspondences with his friends and colleagues Aron Gurwitsch and Eric Voegelin. Third (3), I give an (...) overview of the books by Marx and other Marxist literature that Schutz had in his personal library. Finally (4), I analyze Schutz’s unpublished lectures on “Dialectics” and “Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge,” two of the only documents where he extensively discusses Marx and Marxism. The reconstruction carried out in the paper is not an end in itself but an effort to contribute to the contemporary ‘critical turn’ in phenomenology. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch's critique of Schutz's essay The Stranger is the starting point for this consideration of Schutz's relationship with phenomenology. This relationship is based on Schutz's emphasis on the value of the average as a phenomenological structure. In opposing sociology to philosophy, Gurwitsch takes this value as inferior in comparison with what he sees as cardinal issues of transcendental phenomenology. What Gurwitsch finds incompatible with phenomenological inquiry – the idea and practice of the natural (...) attitude within the social sphere – Schutz turns into the core of his philosophy. The phenomenology of the natural attitude is as essentially philosophical as any reflectively practiced human science. The problem of how everydayness is constituted requires a phenomenological insight that leads the explorer – through reconstructing the meaning in terms of the mundane – straight to the origin. (shrink)

During the 1992–1993 academic year, Harold Garfinkel offered a graduate seminar on Ethnomethodology in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. One topic that was given extensive coverage in the seminar has not been discussed at much length in Garfinkel’s published works to date: Aron Gurwitsch’s treatment of Gestalt theory, and particularly the themes of “phenomenal field” and “praxeological description”. The edited transcript of Garfinkel’s seminar shows why he recommended that “for the serious initiatives of ethnomethodological (...) investigations […] Gurwitsch is a theorist we can’t do without”. Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological “misreading” is not a mistaken reading, but is more a matter of taking Gurwitsch’s phenomenological demonstrations of Gestalt contextures in phenomenal fields and transposing them for making detailed, concrete observations and descriptions of organizationally achieved social phenomena. Where Gurwitsch addresses the organization of perception as an autochthonous achievement, inherent to the stream and field of individual consciousness, Garfinkel extends and elaborates this field into the social world of enacted practices. The April 1993 seminar also is rich with brief asides and digressions in which Garfinkel comments about his use of Alfred Schutz, his attitude toward publishing, his relationship with Erving Goffman, and many other matters. (shrink)

Th is paper considers the relation between Harold Garfinkel and Alfred Schutz. Reference will be made to their correspondence as well as to some of Garfinkel’s writing. Garfinkel, who was a graduate student at Harvard at the time, first met Schutz at the recommendation of Aron Gurwitsch. Their meeting led to further exchanges including papers that Garfinkel sent to Schutz. When his book, titled Studies in Ethnomethodology, appeared in 1967 he specifically cited Schutz as (...) one to whom he was “heavily … indebted” in his work. In later writings he no longer made such citations and moved away from his earlier position. (shrink)

This article reexamines Alfred Schutz’s famous 1944 Stranger essay and the initial criticism of Aron Gurwitsch. I side with Schutz in thinking of the refugee as a special type of stranger. Then to respond to the charge that the essay is not philosophical enough from Gurwitsch, I read Schutz’s notion of the strange with Husserl’s notion of homeworld and Levinas’s notion of fecundity. This allows us to see the philosophical depth of doing a phenomenology (...) of the stranger and strangeness. (shrink)

The present paper gives an introduction to Schutz’s hereafter first published [“Fragment on the Phenomenology of Rhythm”]. After the editorial remarks the connections to the first part (first published in 1976) are developed along the lines of a nonconceptual substructure of meaning, the problem of passive synthesis,the phenomenological concept of the ideal object, the problem of the unit, and finally the connection of body, mind, and space. The paper closes with a commented summarization of Schutz’s fragment.

In this book, his major work, Alfred Schutz attempts to provide a sound philosophical basis for the sociological theories of Max Weber. Using a Husserlian phenomenology, Schutz provides a complete and original analysis of human action and its "intended meaning.".

The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz's seminal attempt to achieve a comprehensive grasp of the nature of social reality. Here he integrates his theory of relevance with his analysis of social structures. Thomas Luckmann, a former student of Schutz's, completed the manuscript for publication after Schutz's untimely death.

This paper is a transcription and translation by Marina Banchetti of two memories of Edmund Husserl that Alfred Schutz recounted as part of a panel of philosophers discussing their memories of Husserl at Royaumont in 1957. One memory concerned Husserl lecturing in Prague without notes on the dignity of philosophy. The other had to do with Schutz ordering oranges for Husserl during his final illness.

Following the thematic divisions of the first three volumes of Alfred Schutz's Collected Papers into The Problem of Social Reality, Studies in Social Theory and Phenomenological Philosophy, this fourth volume contains drafts of unfinished writings, drafts of published writings, translations of essays previously published in German, and some largely unpublished correspondence. The drafts of published writings contain important material omitted from the published versions, and the unfinished writings offer important insights into Schutz's otherwise unpublished ideas about economic (...) and political theory as well as the theory of law and the state. In addition, a large group contains Schutz's reflections on problems in phenomenological philosophy, including music, which both supplement and add new dimensions to his published thought. All together, the writings in this volume cover Schutz's last 15 years in Europe as well as manuscripts written after his arrival in the USA in 1939. Audience: Students and scholars of phenomenology, social theory and the human sciences in general. (shrink)

The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz's seminal attempt to achieve a comprehensive grasp of the nature of social reality. Here he integrates his theory of relevance with his analysis of social structures. Thomas Luckmann, a former student of Schutz's, completed the manuscript for publication after Schutz's untimely death.

This volume contains a translation of four early manuscripts by Alfred Schutz, unpublished at the time, written between 1924 and 1928. The publication of these four essays adds much to our knowledge and appreciation of the wide range of Schutz’s phenomenological and sociological interests. Originally published in 1987. The essays consist of: a challenging presentation of a phenomenology of cognition and a treatment of Bergson’s conceptions of images, duration, space time and memory; a discussion of the meanings (...) connected with the grammatical forms of language in general; a consideration of the relation between meaning-contents and literary forms in poetry, literary prose narration and dramatic presentation; and an examination of resemblances and differences in the inner forms and characteristics of the major theatrical art forms. (shrink)

Phenomenological foundations - The cognitive setting of the life-world - Acting in the life-world - The world of social relationships - Realms of experience - The province of sociology.

I will begin by considering how the social world appears to the scientific observer and ask the question of whether the world of scientific research, with all its categories of meaning interpretation and with all its conceptual schemes of action, is identical with the world in which the observed actor acts. Anticipating the result, I may state immediately that with the shift from one level to the other, all the conceptual schemes and all the terms of interpretation must be modified.Proceeding (...) in this direction, I encounter several problems overlapping with the problem of rational action and the “rational act unit” in Professor ParsonsParsons, Talcott’ sense. First: The conceptual scheme of rational action presupposes a more or less definite knowledge of, or orientation within, the world in which this action is performed. In this sense the term, “rationality”, is not specific to the conceptual scheme of action; it embraces the conceptual scheme of the world in general and is only one element in it. Therefore, we also must examine the problem of orientation in this world. Second: We ought to keep in mind that all interpretation of the social world has to start from the actor’s subjective point of view. Therefore, we cannot accept the term, “unit act”, as such, without trying to reduce it to its subjective meaning. Here I have to discuss in general terms why I insist on the subjective point of view. This is more than the whim of a few social scientists; social science cannot be built up except by taking cognizance of the subjective meaning the actor connects with his acting. Finally, I have to discuss the fact that there are social sciences operating on high theoretical levels that, like economics, apparently prefer to deal with statistical curves and mathematical formulae rather than with actions of human beings in the social world, yet they use the term, “rational action”, as an indispensable element of their systems. I will have to show what modification this term undergoes in these types of social sciences..). (shrink)

The struggles that Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Harold Garfinkel, and other social phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists have had with Edmund Husserl’s progenitive but inconsistent notion of intersubjectivity are summarized and assessed. In particular, an account of Schutz’s objections to intersubjective constitution is presented. The commonly pervading elements and major differences within this lineage of inquiry – a four generation-long lineage of teacher and student that commences with Husserl, runs through Schutz and Gurwitsch, then Garfinkel, and (...) then the present author and his colleagues – are discussed, under the advisory (as suggested by Maurice Natanson) that what Husserl sought was more important than what he found. (shrink)

Il problema della «nozione di responsabilità» che Alfred Schütz affronta in So­me Equivocations of the Notion of Responsability emerge sullo sfondo di una dimensione fenomenologica dell’azione morale. L’autore propone di di­stinguere internamente a questa nozione il punto di vista soggettivo e quello oggettivo, mettendo in luce come principi, norme, leggi e doveri morali assu­mano significato differente se riferiti alla coscienza individuale, in cui ven­gono autodeterminati ed elaborati, o se invece imposti dall’esterno. Giudicare ‘da se stessi’ la propria azione risulta (...) così su un piano etico di maggiore rile­van­za rispetto a quello in cui la responsabilità viene etero-determinata come ‘re­sponsabilità di qualcuno verso qualcosa’, quello in cui è soltanto il gruppo o l’au­torità, dall’esterno, a rendere un altro responsabile.The problem of the «notion of responsibility» which Alfred Schütz treats in So­me Equivocations of the Notion of Responsability comes out on the back­ground of a phenomenological size of the moral action. The author sug­gests distinguishing inside to this notion the subjective point of view and that one objective, sheding light upon as principles, rules, laws and moral duties grasp different meaning if ascribed to the individual conscience, in which are self-determined and elaborated, or if instead imposed from the outside. So ‘self-judgment’ on the action turns out on an ethical greater importance plan than that one in which the responsibility is hetero-determined as ‘responsibility of someone towards something’, that in which is only the group or the au­tho­rity, from the outside, to hold another person responsible. (shrink)

Band II gibt den Text der 1932 in Wien erschienenen Monographie wieder. Sie fällt in eine Zeit der intensiven Auseinandersetzung um den theoretischen Status und die methodische Anlage der Soziologie als einer eigenständigen wissenschaftlichen Disziplin. In diesem Grundlagenstreit sucht Schütz eine vermittelnde Position zwischen den Ansätzen Max Webers und Ludwig von Mises' zu gewinnen. Im Anschluss an die Zeitphilosophie Henri Bergsons und die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls analysiert Schütz die Prozesse, in denen sich die soziale Welt als eine als sinnhaft verstehbare (...) aufbaut. Die Konstitution der Lebenswelt als einer intersubjektiv sinnhaften Welt vollzieht sich, so Schütz, in den interaktiven Handlungszusammenhängen der in natürlicher Einstellung lebenden Subjekte. Im Umgang mit Dingen und in der Interaktion mit Mitmenschen eröffnet sich dem Menschen ein Zugang zum Verstehen von Welt. Der Sinn, den Menschen der Wirklichkeit und ihrem Handeln zuschreiben, entsteht somit aus ihrem Handeln selbst. Mit der Aufklärung dieses Zusammenhangs zwischen menschlichem Handeln und den Sinnstrukturen der Wirklichkeit geht es Schütz in Abgrenzung von Husserls transzendentaler Phänomenologie um eine Analyse der "Sinnphänomene in der mundanen Sozialität". Diese Konstitutionsanalysen bleiben im Prinzip für die gesamten späteren Arbeiten grundlegend und konturieren Schütz' Verständnis von verstehender Soziologie. (shrink)

Scheler's main purpose is to show that an ethics of concrete values by no means has to lead to the consequences reached by Kant. He develops an ethical theory based on the insight that concrete values and their hierarchical order form a realm of material, a prioristic data which is disclosed to us by emotional intuition. He calls his system "ethical absolutism and objectivism" and adds that, in another sense, it might be interpreted as a new attempt at personalism, since (...) one of its outstanding theses is the subordination of all values to the personal. (shrink)

The student of Max Scheler's work encounters several difficulties. First, the range of his preoccupation is unique in our time. During his most creative years, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, and the phenomenology of emotional life were at the center of his interest. Later he became more and more involved in the ontological problems of society and reality and laid the foundation of a new sociology of knowledge. Second, Scheler's thought evolved in the course of his short life--he died in (...) 1928, barely fifty-four--through various phases which were hardly compatible with one another. He started as a student of Rudolph Eucken, the philosopher of life, who imbued his disciple with an admiration for St. Augustine and Pascal; he became deeply influenced by Nietzsche, Dilthey, Bergson, and above all, Husserl. Converted to Catholicism, Scheler became a convinced Christian--both a personalist and a theist. But very soon his attitude toward religion underwent a complete change; in a last pantheistic phase, he dedicated himself to the philosophical and sociological exploration of the human condition. He then conceived the development of world history as a progression from illogical and blind vital urges to the fulfillment of the destiny of humanity in the realms of values and spiritual existence, and interpreted the whole process as the manifestation of divine force, the becoming of God in the world. A third difficulty for the student of Scheler's thought is the lack of organization of his books, originating in his disdain of any attempt to visualize life in an artificially unified perspective of the kind which the construction of a philosophic system might offer. He was, as Ortega y Gasset said, in the true sense of Plato an "enthusiastic" philosopher. Overwhelmed by the wealth of his discoveries, he lived in a continuous haste of mind. He had to proclaim so many lucid insights that he staggered, bewildered by cognition and inebriated by truth. This explains the frequent inconsistencies of his thought and the lack of structure of his writings. (shrink)

The present paper gives an introduction to Schutz’s hereafter first published [“Fragment on the Phenomenology of Rhythm”]. After the editorial remarks the connections to the first part (first published in 1976) are developed along the lines of a nonconceptual substructure of meaning, the problem of passive synthesis,the phenomenological concept of the ideal object, the problem of the unit, and finally the connection of body, mind, and space. The paper closes with a commented summarization of Schutz’s fragment.