Alfred Schütz: Über die Schwierigkeiten einer brieflichen Diskussion (21 April 1941)

Alfred Schütz’s letter to Talcott Parsons, presented here in a German version published in 1977 within an edited correspondence collection, addresses the conditions for continuing their intellectual exchange. Its central concern is how scientific disagreement can remain productive without damaging personal relations. Schütz opens by thanking Parsons for his letter of 29 March: it has relieved his fear that their theoretical differences had strained their relationship. Maintaining that relationship matters both personally and as a basis for clarifying unresolved questions.

Schütz then explains why he had referred to his own writings. His paper had a double purpose: to survey Parsons’s theory and to establish how far it agreed with his own reflections. Such comparison did not imply that he ranked his book alongside Weber’s and Durkheim’s work. His expressions of modesty culminate in a sharper distinction between the possible inadequacy of his answers and the legitimacy of his questions:

Aber wenngleich ich über die von mir gebotenen Lösungen sehr bescheiden denke, bin ich ganz sicher, daß es sich bei den Problemen, mit denen ich mich beschäftige, um genuine Probleme der Sozialwissenschaften handelt, die auf die eine oder andere Weise gelöst werden müssen.

English translation: But although I think very modestly of the solutions I have offered, I am quite certain that the problems with which I concern myself are genuine problems of the social sciences that must be solved in one way or another.

This distinction is the letter’s principal conceptual move. Schütz allows that his book might be inadequate or even wrong without conceding that its problems can be dismissed. Accordingly, continuing the exchange need not require Parsons to reread the book: their discussion concerns the problems, not Schütz’s particular solutions. The letter thus seeks to redirect attention from the standing of an author or his work toward questions requiring shared investigation.

Its final movement turns from intellectual clarification to the limitations of the medium itself:

Eine Briefdiskussion kann ja immer nur ein armseliger Ersatz sein für einen Dialog, der es erlauben würde, auftretende Mißverständnisse sofort auszuräumen, jedenfalls aber zeitsparend ist.

English translation: A discussion by letter can, after all, only ever be a poor substitute for a dialogue that would allow misunderstandings as they arise to be cleared up immediately and would, in any case, save time.

Geographical distance makes clarification slower and less responsive. Schütz nevertheless promises notes on Parsons’s earlier letters, while explaining that professional and other commitments will delay them. The letter’s significance lies in this effort to sustain disagreement: personal reassurance, intellectual modesty, and insistence on substantive problems jointly establish the conditions for further debate. It does not elaborate those problems here; it explains why and how their discussion should continue.