Alfred Schütz to Talcott Parsons, letter of 15 November 1940 — Summary

This file is a single scholarly-private letter, not an essay or collection. Its scope is narrow but intellectually dense: Schütz writes from New York to Parsons to explain the delayed delivery of a long critique of The Structure of Social Action, distinguish that critique from his comments on Parsons’s unpublished manuscript, and arrange an in-person discussion. The letter’s governing claim is that Parsons’s theory touches the central problems of social science so deeply that it cannot be responsibly handled in a short review.

Schütz begins with apology and gratitude, presenting the delay not as neglect but as the effect of illness, work obligations, and slow, serious study. He frames disagreement as indebtedness rather than opposition:

Ich verdanke Ihren Theorien auch dort unendlich viel Gewinn und Anregung, wo ich von ihnen abweiche.

English translation: I owe your theories an infinite amount of profit and stimulation, even where I depart from them.

The central conceptual move is therefore dialogical: Schütz positions his critique as immanent engagement with Parsons’s project. He had intended to write the 4,000-word Economica review requested by Hayek, but the material resisted compression. Parsons’s book, he argues, is too close to the foundations of the social sciences for superficial treatment:

Ihre Theorie handelt eben so sehr von den wichtigsten unmittelbar im Zentrum gelegenen Problemen der Sozialwissenschaften, und tiefgedachte Dinge lassen sich nicht oberflächlich wiedergeben.

English translation: Your theory deals precisely with the most important problems lying at the very centre of the social sciences, and deeply considered matters cannot be rendered superficially.

This explains both the form and the scale of the enclosed work. The letter turns a practical publication problem into a methodological point: adequate theory-criticism must match the complexity of the object. Schütz’s “review” has become a major manuscript, and he knows it is probably unusable in its current form for Economica:

So ist der Arbeit ein Ungeheuer von ungefähr 20 000 Worten geworden, und es ist wohl hoffnungslos, sie in dieser Form in der ECONOMICA zu publizieren.

English translation: Thus the piece has grown into a monster of about 20,000 words, and it is presumably hopeless to publish it in this form in ECONOMICA.

The second major section separates the critique of The Structure of Social Action from Parsons’s other manuscript. Schütz has read the latter carefully, but refuses to reduce his annotations to another written report. Its value lies in clarifying his understanding of Parsons’s published work, while the remaining issues require conversation:

Was Ihr Manuskript anbelangt, so habe ich dieses dreimal gründlich gelesen und eine Reihe Anmerkungen für mich notiert.

English translation: As for your manuscript, I have read it thoroughly three times and noted down a series of remarks for myself.

From there the letter becomes an invitation to intellectual encounter. Schütz asks Parsons to read the enclosed paper and then meet—preferably in New York on a Sunday, or otherwise in Cambridge. This is not merely logistical; it shows Schütz’s sense that problems of action, rationality, and social theory require shared clarification rather than isolated textual exchange:

Wenn Ihre Zeit erlaubt, so bitte ich Sie, die beiliegende Schrift zu lesen und zu überdenken und sodann mir die Gelegenheit zu einer Aussprache zu geben.

English translation: If your time permits, I ask you to read and consider the enclosed piece and then to give me the opportunity for a discussion.

The closing paragraphs situate the exchange within a wider transatlantic scholarly network: Hayek’s Economica, Williams, Merton, Voegelin, Schumpeter, the American Philosophical Association, and the Husserl memorial volume. Schütz also connects the Parsons discussion to debates on rationality and to a possible edited collection with Schumpeter:

Es hat mich sehr interessiert zu hören, daß Sie und Prof. Schumpeter die Herausgabe eines Sammelbandes planen.

English translation: It has interested me very much to hear that you and Prof. Schumpeter are planning to publish a collective volume.

The letter is relevant because it documents an early moment in the encounter between phenomenological social theory and Parsonsian action theory. Schütz’s core moves are to acknowledge Parsons’s importance, insist on the irreducibility of foundational social-scientific problems, distinguish published argument from developing manuscript, and shift critique toward face-to-face theoretical dialogue. Its importance lies less in a finished doctrine than in the scholarly posture it records: rigorous, appreciative disagreement directed toward the basic categories of social action, rationality, and interpretation.