585

Boylston Hall, Room 34
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

December 5, 1949

Professor Alfred Schuetz
25 West 81st Street
New York, 24, New York

Dear Professor Schuetz,

I am a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University where I am at present completing my doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Talcott Parsons.

Sociological in emphasis, the dissertation is organized around two topics: first, a theoretical consideration of the analytically conceived conditions under which the experiences of a party to a social relationship remain continuous; and second, the effect, experimentally tested, of systematically "destroying" the meaning-structures which comprise the alter ego (as a constituent of the natural attitude, while preventing the adoption of alternative cognitive styles) for the ability of the perceiver to continue to transform the behavioral and verbal materials found in the field of expression into meaningful sequences of expressions of conduct.

These tasks have taken me rather deeply into your writings, as well as into the writings of Husserl, and Dr. Aron Gurwitsch. The orientation of the thesis has been taken principally from these writings, but particularly from your article, *On Multiple Realities*, and your book, *Der Sinnhafte Aufbau Der Sozialen Welt*.

I have been fortunate in having as a friend and extra-curricular teacher, Dr. Aron Gurwitsch, with whom I have had many conversations about the particular problems involved in an effort of this sort, as well as the problems of general methodological and theoretical significance that result when one addresses a phenomenological critique to such pressing analytical problems in current sociology as the theory of meaning, the theory of objects, the method of verstehen, the role of motivation theories in accounting for change, the logical character of the subjective categories, and so on. I have felt for a long while the need to talk with you, and I have been encouraged by Dr. Gurwitsch to ask for a meeting.

I am writing to ask for an opportunity to speak with you about your writings and about the uses that I have made of them in the dissertation. I am also interested in translating your

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
PRINCETON NEW JERSEY

Organizational Behavior Project

March 24, 1952

Professor Alfred Schutz
25 West 81st Street
New York 24, New York

Dear Professor Schutz:

I am sending 4 copies of the Mosteller paper under separate
cover. I am also enclosing with this letter a list of participants
and the program you requested.

The thesis will be ready for shipping at the end of the
week, and you should receive a copy soon after that.

Mr. Burke's address is simply Andover, New Jersey.

I talked with Dr. Moore with regard to your participation
in the June conference. He is reluctant to open the list of parti-
cipants at this particular time because he has already turned down
many requests and expects to turn down many others in the future.
However, he is using the formal device of a "reserve list" which
permits of considerable manipulation. He has advised me to tell
you that your name is at the top, and should any of the participants
find it impossible to attend, he will invite you immediately. I
hope you understand with what regret I am unable to extend you an
invitation at this time.

I am looking forward to seeing you again, and in the
hope that you will not lose patience with me for the way I have
handled your writings in the thesis, I am looking forward to many
more meetings with you in the future.

HG:cl
Enclosures

Organizational Behavior Project Conference on
"Problems of Model Construction in the Social Sciences"

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Paper Preparers

Gregory Bateson, Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California;
anthropologist

Kenneth Burke, Andover, New Jersey; literary critic

Robert R. Bush, Harvard University; mathematical statistician

Karl W. Deutsch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; political scientist

James S. Duesenberry, Harvard University; economist

Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Columbia University; sociologist

Frederick Mosteller, Harvard University; mathematical statistician

Alfred Schutz, New School for Social Research; sociologist

Kurt H. Wolff, Ohio State University; sociologist

Discussants

Oskar Morgenstern, Princeton University; economist

Frederick F. Stephan, Princeton University; sociologist

Sylvan S. Tomkins, Princeton University; psychologist

Melvin M. Tumin, Princeton University; sociologist

Other Participants

William J. Baumol, Princeton University; economist

Henry W. Bruck, Princeton University; political scientist (OBP)

Jerome S. Bruner, Institute for Advanced Study; psychologist

Ansley J. Coale, Princeton University; economist

Heinz Eulau, Antioch College; political scientist

J. Leiper Freeman, Jr., Princeton University; political scientist (OBP)

Harold Garfinkel, Princeton University; sociologist (OBP)

Harold Gulliksen, Princeton University; psychologist

James Hund, Princeton University; economist (OBP)

Marion J. Levy, Jr., Princeton University; sociologist

Elliot G. Mishler, Princeton University; social psychologist (OBP)

Wilbert E. Moore, Princeton University; sociologist (OBP)

Harold C. Passer, Princeton University; economist (OBP)

Burton M. Sapin, Princeton University; political scientist (OBP)

Richard C. Snyder, Princeton University; political scientist (OBP)

John W. Tukey, Princeton University; mathematician

Gordon B. Turner, Princeton University; historian (OBP)

John Von Neumann, Institute for Advanced Study; mathematician

Max A. Woodbury, Princeton University; mathematical statistician

587

THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

HOWARD L. BEVIS, President

COLUMBUS 10

PERSONNEL RESEARCH BOARD

October 8, 1953

Dear Professor Schuetz,

The enclosed mimeographed drafts of two articles were written during the last academic year for a faculty seminar at Ohio State University in which I participated. Because both of them are confined with your writings, I am sending them to you for your comments.

The article, "Four Pre-Theoretical Decisions of Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schuetz" was written with an eye for possible publication. I am very much interested in knowing in what degree I have accurately represented your views.

The article, "Notes on the Sociological Attitude" is not intended for publication since it consists almost entirely of your ideas. My contribution consists only in having re-arranged them in the service of a question that they were not originally intended for. I am much interested in knowing whether I have fallen into error.

The article on the sociological attitude was drafted while I was at Princeton University for use in my courses in Social Disorganization and Criminology. It was written with the aim of furnishing the students with as accurate a statement as I felt capable of writing that would tell what it meant to "see sociologically". I am much concerned with whether, in handling the materials, I have done violence both to the problem of commenting on the sociological attitude as well as to your ideas.

If patience lasts you through the article, you will see that I have drawn without conscience from your writings. Specifically, the section characterizing the natural and scientific attitudes, with the exception of some additions from my own reflections, is a paraphrasing of your ideas as they are found in your article, "On Multiple Realities". The second section on the specific rules of the sociological attitude uses the four postulates of social science that you discussed in your article, "The Problem of Rationality in the Social World" by turning them into basic procedural rules that are definitive of the attitude. In the third section, I tried to formulate the sociological epoche which I named the rule of sociological empiricism. I tried also to formulate the rule of the action frame. The inspiration for both was drawn from what I have learned from your writings. Only the last section of the paper, dealing with some problems encountered with the attitude in use, has much of my own in it. As far as questions of either borrowing or value are concerned, it is neither here nor there.

May I trouble you with two further requests. If you have one to spare, could you send me a reprint of your article, "Making Music Together". Also, I do not know when I shall be able to be in New York to pick up my dissertation

538

Professor Alfred Schuetz

2.

and to talk with you about it. Would you mail it to me? I shall be happy
to pay the mailing charges. My address is:

Personnel Research Board
The Ohio State University
Columbus, 10, Ohio.

For your further interest, I have enclosed two research proposals
that are representative of the kinds of things that I have been concerned with
during the past year at the Personnel Research Board.

I ask to be excused from writing anything further in this letter, except
to say that the past year at the Personnel Research Board was by and large a
successful one. A two day siege of severe physical pain from a kidney stone
has left me without patience.

My wife and I send you our fondest regards and hope that you are in good
health and that your work is going well.

589

January 19, 1954

Dr. Harold Garfinkel
Personnel Research Board
The Ohio State University
Columbus 10, 0.

Dear Garfinkel,

I just returned from a trip of several weeks to Mexico and my voyage in the plane gave me the first and welcome opportunity to study carefully the various papers you were good enough to send me last fall, just before I started to go to Europe. I am, of course, very happy to see the progress in your thinking and also very glad that you felt some of my contributions stimulating enough to use them as starting points for your own work. Of course, it would be a good thing to have you here around for some time and to discuss carefully all the interesting remarks you made on Parsons' and my work. I wish I could give you over the distance some comments on your paper in which you confront my own theory with the one of Talcot Parsons which seems to be a skilful condensation of your thesis which, unfortunately, I had to return also without being able to make the comments I wanted to make. (By the way, I hope the manuscript reached you safely; it was mailed from my office during my absence and I have not heard from you since.) Let us hope your stay in New York will lead you soon to New York so that we can have a heart to heart talk.

Reading your interpretation of Parsons' and my theory, I am not so sure whether there are really such fundamental differences between our "decisions" as you assume to prevail. Of course, I am fully aware that you had to overstate what separates me from Parsons, in order to make your point clear. It might also be that I do not fully grasp the basic difference between what you call the correspondence and congruence theory. Could the difference between Parsons and me rather be interpreted in the difference of the level of research? Parsons thinks that empirical investigations, if carried on far enough and grouped in accordance with the conceptual scheme, will lead by necessity into the insight into problems which could only be handled on a purely theoretical level. I, starting from a basic philosophy, try to explain the empirical facts as special applications of the insight won by phenomenological analysis of the structures of consciousness. The consequence is that Parsons runs into contradictions because he hopes that by coordinating the findings of sociology, behavioristic psychology in the sense of Tolman, antropology, psychoanalyses and the outcome of research concerning small groups, he will really achieve a theory of action.

590

- 2 -

with certain basic categories, such as role, expectations, etc. Un-
fortunately, it turns out that all these basic categories which are
the outcome of his research are equivocal and ambiguous - I counted
at least 7 meanings of the term expectation as used by him - and that
the same holds good for the other concepts fundamental for his theory.
I, in turn, try to start with an application of Husserl's analysis of
the structure of conscious life to the problem of the social world
which is to me basically the world of intersubjectivity as explained
in the natural attitude. From here I try to explain and elucidate the
concrete phenomena of the social world, which is a subject matter of
the social sciences to explain the phenomena of the social world in
terms of the experiences which people living their daily life within
the social world have in their natural attitude and in terms of the
meaning these experiences have for them. In one word, my ideal would
be to end where Parsons starts. Of course, if this job were carried
out systematically, it could be hoped that it would prepare a consist-
ant conceptual form of reference for the use of Parsons' and others
interested in his level of research which would be free from the contra-
dictions and inadequacies which any form of reference derived from mere
empirical findings must needs show.

I am sure that you have understood this, my fundamental
position, and whether and to what extent the conclusions you are draw-
ing from them in your paper are justified could only be discussed "in
the vivid presence" of a face to face relationship. I hope that you
will see your way clear to come once to New York; the problems are
important enough to be carefully examined and I hope that I shall
profit a great deal from your objections and criticisms.

Everything that precedes refers to your paper relating
to the comparison of "decisions on pre-theoretical problems by Parsons
and me", as you call it (by the way, do you think that those problems
are pre-theoretical ones? I think they are highly theoretical.) I
turn now to your notes regarding research on the problem of rationality.
You honored me by introducing your own ideas with a presentation of
my paper in Economica. Of course, this paper has only sketched the
problem involved and even the all too condensed presentation of the
same problem in my Princeton paper which, as you have probably seen,
was published in the Sociological and Phenomenological Journal did
not exhaust it. I feel that you made considerable progress in carrying
on this analysis although certain statements of yours are not
fully understandable to me. I am not quite sure what your concept of
the actor as "communicant" really means. Here, certain problems seem
still to be involved. Moreover, I am not sure to what aspect of Max

591

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Weber's theory you refer on page 8 in speaking of his distinction between formal and substantive reality. I do not know, first of all, which of the various hardly compatible concepts of relativity Weber developed in his theoretical and empirical writings you accept as starting point for your own theory. A very fine piece of work is your chapter on rationality and reasonableness. I hope you will very soon elaborate it into a paper to be made accessible to a wider public.

I like very much your paper on the sociological attitude. Nearly everything you say about the general distinction between the attitude of daily life and attitude of scientific theorising finds me in agreement with you. Also what you say in section C on the specifically sociological attitude would find me in agreement with you if you had called this section "the specific attitude of the social scientist". I think that your description of this specific attitude refers not merely to the sociologist but also to the economist, the student of law, the so-called social psychologist, in brief, to all of the social sciences. What the peculiarity of the sociological attitude within these general attitudes of the social scientist are, has - I think - not been worked out by you. Or do you think that it is in chapter 2 that you have handled this problem in particular? Even here I am not sure that the attitude described by you or the operational rules deriving from it are specifically sociological. Incidentally, I am not sure whether what you call "matters of ontological enterprise" or a principle based upon a theory of existence are correctly described. I can also not see quite clearly why the conditions of being engaged in highly rational activity are only fulfilled in the case of two persons engaged in scientific theorising. I think you are a chess player too, aren't you? If you say that the study of the methodological decisions upon which the actual practice of sociologists are based are practically unknown territory you have my full approval and I hope you will be one of the explorers of this undiscovered treasure island.

As to your research proposal concerning the predictions of the effects to time and rate of supervisory succession upon two performances, I have some difficulty to understand the importance of the Kriegsspiel to your problem but you will certainly have good reasons in using this technique. May be, I do not understand enough the technique of the Kriegsspiel, in order to formulate an opinion. It seems to me that an analogous situation in the social world only God Allmighty could have the role of a referee and he would certainly not follow the rules limiting the announcements he is permitted to make. If you are using on pages 8 and 9 of this paper

593

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA MEDICAL CENTER
LOS ANGELES 24, CALIFORNIA

August 20, 1958

Dr. Alfred Schutz
25 West 81st Street
New York 24, New York

Dear Alfred:

I am writing because I shall be at Harvard for a week during September and would like to stop over in New York City on my way back to California to visit with you and tell you what the state of "Schutz-in-Sociology" is at UCLA, Berkeley, Chicago, Northwestern and other places where I have visited, gained adherents, or sent students.

The date for the Harvard Conference will be either for the week starting September 4 or September 11, and will consist of Parsons and several former students and me. All of us, in various ways, have used Parsons' work as a point of departure. The Conference is to review the present state of Parsons' and our work. I want very much to talk with you before I return to California. I shall make whatever arrangements are necessary to spend whatever time you can find free during the week-end of either September 12-14 or 19-21. I shall write you as soon as I learn which of the two dates has been decided. I do hope that a meeting can be arranged.

Under separate cover I am sending you a package of writings in various stages of intellectual disarray. I send them as a token of my seriousness about and continuing preoccupation with your work. Thus far I have managed to retain the freedom to work out my program using your work as a principal scheme for re-reading the theoretical and empirical concerns of the sociology of common sense situations, not to say the more frequently encountered common sense sociology of theoretical situations.

Last year I was awarded a five-year fellowship from the National Institutes of Health. This gives me great freedom for research and writing in the area of the establishment, maintenance, alteration, restoration of perceivedly normal interpersonal environments. The work is being done under the auspices of the Department of Psychiatry of the UCLA School of Medicine. A book is in preparation on the study of norms and normative orders of activities. Your work on common sense informs every part of it. There is much to tell you.

I close with great esteem and fondest regards.

HG:dj