Alfred Schutz. Biografia

Born in Austria, Schutz emigrated to the United States in 1939 where he taught and wrote part-time, only taking a full-time academic post in 1952. His main publications are: Collected Papers (1971); The Phenomenology of the Social World (1972); and, with T. Luckman, The Structures of the Life- World (1974). Schutz was a major influence in the development of phenomenological sociology in the English-speaking world. He was primarily interested in three problems: ( 1) he wanted to construct an adequate theory of social action, partly based on a critique of M. Weber; (2) he carried out a series of investigations into the constitution of the life-world (q.v.); (3) he tried to investigate the manner in which a sociology which took human action as important could be scientific.
In a dispute with T. Parsons (q.v.), Schutz did much to advance and clarify the problems of action theory and Verstehen (q.v.). His posthumous works included an analysis of the role of relevance in structuring the life-world (Schutz, 1970). See: Phenomenological Sociology.
BibI. Grathoff (ed.) (1978)
[Nicholas Abercrombie et al., The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. 3rd edition. London: Penguin Books, 1994:368]

Alfred Schutz (Vienna 1899 - New York1959) studied law and the social sciences in Vienna under such famous scholars as Ludwig von Mises, Othmar Spann, Hans Kelsen, Friedrich von Wiesser.
The methodological aspects of the sciences of man which were familiar to him were circumscribed by the critique of naturalism, the reflection of conscious life on itself, the understanding of significations, ideation. Soon it became his aim to establish a rigorous philosophical foundation for these aspects and he pursued this ideal throughout his life.
It was Husserl's theory of intentionality and his notions of intersubjectivity and of the Lebenswelt which were to guide his thought and to give it its specific character.
After twelve years of research he published his main work. In 1932: Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt: Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie. In this work he undertook to trace the origin of categories peculiar to the social sciences in the fundamental facts of the life of consciousness, thus establishing a connection between Weber's verstehende Soziologie and Husserl's transcendental phenomenology.
On Husserl's invitation, Schutz weut to Freiburg to join in investigations with a group of phenomenologists in whose work the founder of phenomenology placed much hope. Husserl appreciated the collaboration of the young philosopher and asked him to become his assistant. For personal reasons Schutz had to decline this offer, yet he continued to pay frequent visits to Freiburg and corresponded with Husserl until the latter's death.
The coming occupation by Nazi Germany forced him to leave Austria. He stayed in Paris for over a year, and then decided to emigrate to the United States, arriving there in July, 1939. Through the initiative of Marvin Farber he was asked to join in the establishment of the International Phenomenological Society and to become a member of the editorial board of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. He was appointed lecturer and later professor in the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School For Social Research in New York, where he found colleagues and friends who had also studied with Husserl, especially Dorion Cairns and Aron Gurwitsch. In this favorable environment he took up his investigations again and pursued them in a dialogue with American philosophy and sociology.
It was always a matter of retracing the original constitution of the fundamental skeleton of the life-world which man takes for granted in the natural attitude and which the social scientist rarely makes thematic.
[Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory, Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague. 1971. Cover]

 

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