December 2, 1940

Dear friend

Thank you very much for your kind letter from the 23rd. All that you say about Husserl and his working method is all too true. All I can reply to this is that many authors are practising in the same way. Thomas Mann, for instance, several times said about himself that he attentively put down on paper with great regularity his 800 words each day. By the way, I want to admit that I become more and more reluctant to use in any meaningful way Husserl’s philosophy, insofar it is phenomenological. That is not an argument against the fact that many single analyses are outstanding and exceedingly important. But I can understand more and more the reasons for your aversion. In fact, this is a confession I exclusively make to you. I am still ready to defend tooth and claw Husserl against all positivists.

I was led to this conclusion by a new occupation with Husserl’s basic attitude mentioned above, which I had to envision in the last few weeks, since I will have to give a paper for the Christmas meeting of the American Philosophical Association. It deals with William James’s Concept of the Stream of Thought, and I will send it to you when I have a chance. Furthermore, I have finished the criticism of Parsons and will send it to him first. This critique is Husserl-free and shall be sent to you soon. Parsons requested me to send his new manuscript to you, which I received last spring. But I asked if I could keep it myself in preparation for the meeting I was going to have with him and then send it to you later.

Now, I have finished some urgent work and have a little bit more time. Hence, I asked Mintz to give me your manuscript. I am looking forward to the reading it and hope that you will hear from me about it soon. My professional situation appears to be consolidating since I can count on a salary for a foreseeable time. About employment or even future prospects, I would rather not speak right now. But under the current circumstances, it seems best to me, to keep the cow, which is producing the milk, particularly as the celestial goddess does not appear very benevolent. Very affectionate regards from both of us to you and to your kind wife

Your Schütz

October 20, 1945

Dear friend,

Your kind letter from the 6th gave me great pleasure. It is the only reasonable review of my essay I received, and I want to thank you very much that you, in the midst of your manifold work, went to the time and effort not only to read the essay like no one else did, but also to put your significant remarks down on paper. I am more than satisfied with the fact that we agree in principle. I am sure you understand that the framework of the essay did not allow me to unfold many implications. Even without that, the essay has taken on dimensions beyond what is acceptable. That’s the way it is if you have been working over 7 years on a single thing. The material is partly extracted from the draft of my book about the social person, which I wrote in summer 1937. What an excellent reader you are is, to my pleasure, shown by the fact that you see that my essay is missing an analysis of the existence of the body as a type of integration in the (social) spatial world. My draft started with a chapter which is occupied with the analysis [of the phenomena] of “one’s own body/other’s body,” and which, as I believe, contains the problem you found missing. I have separated all the material that pertains to this problematic and perhaps I will make a self-standing essay out of this chapter. It is almost impossible to answer all the manifold questions you raise by mail, and like you I am sad that our opportunities for extensive discussion are so rare. I will try to make some basic statements about the structure of the world of everyday life and in this way I hope to touch on some of your stated objections.

The world of everyday life is different from all other finite provinces of meaning in the respect that in it—and exclusively in it—working acts in the outer world are possible. Since all communication implies working acts, communication is limited to the world of working. Of course, as you highlighted accurately, this question can only be examined on the basis of the existence of the body in the spatiotemporal world. I tried to denote, maybe not very successfully, with the term “pragmatic” the fact that humans through working can influence and change the outer world, that the possibility to change it and to control it by this changing becomes a motive in the everyday lifeworld. It was not my intention to suggest “rational meaning-giving of life” with this word, and I do not believe that this relationship of motivation I termed (as did many others like Scheler in Erkenntnis und Arbeit) “pragmatic” necessarily implies rational meaning-giving. There is also rationality in other provinces of meaning—without doubt in the theoretical sphere—in which the pragmatic motive is absent. To the contrary, rational giving of meaning inside the world of working is only possible under certain circumstances at all, namely, if the system of relevance which arises from the fundamental anxiety allows choice and decision between “problematic possibilities.” As you know, for Husserl [in Erfahrung und Urteil] “problematic possibilities” are those ones which build a relationship of intersection and occlusion (or covering), because each of them has a certain “weight,” because something speaks for each of them. This is the thought to which my latest essay is dedicated, and perhaps I should follow up on it (if everything concerning publication were not so discouraging). Pragmatic relations of meaning not only can be in existence where no rational giving of meaning is present, they can even run directly contrary to it, thereby making it impossible.

That I speak only of the world of everyday life of the wide-awake grown up adult and not of that of the child is not due to the fact that the phenomena of the world of working could not be shown to the child or that the child would participate in the integration of the spatiotemporal world in some other way. But there are two aspects which make the child’s situation considerably different from that of the wide-awake grown up. First, the experience of the fundamental anxiety is an achievement of the later years of one’s life. As very interesting studies have indicated, the child reacts to the death of others and to the possibility of its own death as if death were an event of the imaginary world, which in reality exists just as little as witches and fairies do. Second, it seems to me as if the experience of the “leap” from one finite area of meaning into another one gets another meaning in the child’s sphere. This is on the one hand, connected with the fact that the ability of the child to dominate the world takes place through other structures than those adults use to dominate the world. On the other hand, especially the sphere of that what is socially taken for granted, which you rightly denoted as “second nature,” equally includes for the child the imaginary world, the world of play, and the world of working. When my Evi was 5 years old, she answered my question what she wanted for her birthday with the remark: “An elephant—but a real one.” To my objection that a real elephant could not pass through the door of her nursery she replied: “I didn’t mean such an elephant—only a ‘play-real’” one. Obviously she had in mind a practicable, three-dimensional toy elephant in opposition to the menagerie of her clipped cardboard elephants which could be brought in a standing position by little wood supports. Similarly [my] boy at the same age differentiated between “real” and “non-real” toy cars, whereas the accent of reality was bestowed upon the ones which were driven by clockwork or could be steered in any way. I learned a lot from both remarks in regard to my essay.

Now on the question concerning the correlation, or better: separation of nature from quasi-nature. Certainly you are right to indicate that the level of civilization compared to the stages [of human development at the level] of animality and elementary tool usage merely only constitutes a “quasi-nature” and that the individual does not base his personal culture on those lower stages but on the social-historical “environment.” Yet, it seems to me that with your remarks you attribute an ontological meaning to my idea of the “natural classification of the world”—it is, as you presumably noticed, related to Husserl’s idea, but not identical to it—, I did not intend this and as far as I can see it is not supported by the text. The world of working in the broadest sense is simply taken for granted by the individual in the world of everyday life; it is simply given and given as the original image of reality, as long as no motive appears which urges us to doubt or question it. The world of working is, as it is, taken for granted and beyond any doubt. To this world of working not only belongs the pure nature of the spatio-temporal physical objects (including the other bodies) which belong to the stage of animality and elementary tool usage, but also, as I believe I have stated, the whole sphere of the (historical-cultural) given social world. This social world thus is an element of the world of working because all forms of its givenness refer back to the communication in the different social relationships which is only possible in the world of working. As far as we find a social-historical “heritage,” it is nothing more than the result of previous working acts of others, of our world of others, the world of contemporaries, the world of predecessors, who have geared into the world and changed it. This fact and nothing else makes it “pragmatic” in the previously indicated meaning. Pure theorizing, which results in no working acts in the primordial reality of the world of everyday life, remains literally “ineffective,” and this is also true for all kinds of mere fantazising. As long as working acts have not taken place in the outer world, and have not changed that world, these histories of meaning do not belong to the historical-social environment at all, which, as already handed down, determines the culture of the “grown-up” and which is as a quasi-nature taken for granted by him without questioning. Doubtless I should have described this issue more clearly.

Completely and absolutely valid is your critique of the phrase that we are lawfully and morally only accountable for our actions, not for our thoughts. Already after reading the galley proofs I wished I had not written that sentence, but that is how it goes, yet I did not decide to delete it. It is the failed result of my aspiration to make more vivid the difficult correlation between the irrevocability of working and the revocability of thinking (the mere “performance”), but in the way it is presented the phrase is badly expressed.

What you say in regard to the relationship between experiment and magic, respectively science, was by itself extraordinaryly interesting for me, and I believe that you are right not to regard the method of verification of experiments as specifically scientific and to find it again in experimental magic, which is in no way less “rational” than science is. In relation to my posing of the problem, I cannot see a difficulty. The experiment, no matter whether it is conducted by magic or the sciences, always consists of working in the reality of the everyday lifeworld; but the category of working can, as explained above, be analysed completely independently from, for instance, whatever rational meaning-giving is involved. Of course, one ought not identify the pragmatic motive with rational meaning-giving—something I never intended.

With regard to another point, I unfortunately cannot agree with you—namely in your interpretation of the different “tensions” of the consciousness as differences of identity. Bergson’s term “attention à la vie” and the differences of tension [of consciousness] correlative to it, in my opinion, have nothing to do with qualitative differences of identity, and I do not know of any place in Bergson’s writing, where he would state such a thing. The highest attention à la vie, or complete alertness, does not denote a level of intensity. In each of the different states of tension of consciousness, there can be, as you rightly state, all kinds of gradations of intensity—the highest intensity can occur during daydreaming, or in dreams when we sleep, whereas the broadest attention à la vie is necessary, but no intensity at all, to buy a bun at the baker’s shop.

Please regard all this as an apologia pro vita sua and again accept my thanks for your kind engagement with my work. I am so little blessed with affirmation or serious critique that I would experience a letter like yours as a great encouragement, even if it would not be from one of the few persons, whom I consider as absolutely competent and whose judgement is unconditionally relevant to me.

To this point I had written, when the postman brought me simultaneously the Koyré Separatum and your essay on Bakunin, the latter of which I eagerly read immediately. Again this is a fascinating/interesting issue and its actuality is amazing.

Between both counterparts, the Czar, with his few marginal notes, seems to me to be the greater fellow! Since Bakunin the business of the revolutionaries has become more rational and promising, but the misery of the time does not even allow an antithesis of such significant figures. The essay, just as it is, is a great accomplishment, but I am sure that its implications will become fully visible only in the context of the complete work, and I would like to hear, where the piece will find its place. Would you grant me permission to give the essay to interested parties, for example, Albert Salomon?

You will be pleased to hear that in a new examination of my boy the doctor again could not find any alteration. Since the observation period spans more than 18 months, he hopes that, if no further accidents happen, there will be no reason to anticipate any worsening of his condition in the years to come. Puberty could be dangerous—but in the doctor’s words: A worsening need “not necessarily” happen.

From your letter to Winternitz I have learned more about your and Lyssi’s life.

Heartfelt greetings and write me back soon.

Yours

Alfred Schütz

April 22, 1951

Dear friend,

Thank you very much for your kind letter from the 15th, which pleased me very much in every respect. I had believed on the basis of some of your former letters that you hold the view that our ways have diverged and that you do not want my engagement in your work. I confess frankly that this impression, which I—probably against your intention—took from several of your letters hurt me very much. Six or seven times I tried to write you back, but I preferred not to send what I have already written, as every correspondence can only make such things worse. I did not want to play the role which Felix Kaufmann did for you, who through his way of seeing the world and the sciences annoyed you for many years, and furthermore I did not want to run the risk of urging you to be more clear either. I only mention this to explain to you my silence, and it is not necessary at all that you respond to this point, because now I can see with a great relief that I obviously saw ghosts, as Winternitz always maintained.

Hayek, whom I met here, told me about the great impression that your lectures in Chicago produced. They must have been quite extraordinary and the introductory chapter, which you kindly sent to me, clearly shows the significance of this task, which I, of course, will await with an intense expectation.

You want me to give an opinion on this first chapter, and I would have to say a lot about it. I hope that after all that I said about your chapter on space—the essay in Social Research—you are convinced of how much I share your basic opinion about the positivistic concept of science and the destruction of theory it has caused. Therefore, I do not have to go further into this most essential question, and all my following remarks should be regarded as comments that build upon the basis of our common fundamental position. Before going into the details, I want to refer to the basic problem I felt while thinking through your argumentation. This problem consists of the ambiguous, in my view, relationship between what is theoretically-relevant (theoretisch-Relevantem) and the concept of value (Wertbegriff), of which latter forms the basis of your criticism on Weber. In February Leo Strauss gave a lecture at the General Seminar of the New School with the title “Max Weber Reconsidered.” I think his perspective is completely consistent with your own. He explained that objectivity in the social sciences is not possible, insofar as the selection of the problem and the choice of the material used and of the methods already inherently imply values. In the discussion, I commented at that time that we had to distinguish between relevance and values in Weber’s sense, in order to avoid carrying on the argument on the basis of ambiguous equivocations. Indeed I have been occupied many years especially with the problem of relevance, and I hope that 1 day I can present something about it.

Let us start with the relationship between the theoretical relevance and the method. You are certainly right to regard the subordination of the former to the latter as one of the most disastrous effects of the positivistic attitude, what is in particular true, if one method is regarded as the “model-method.” (I will get back to this concept). But I believe that this circumstance is not so simple. How can the theoretical relevance be understood? At first, presumably, in the course of a theoretical consideration, a problem proves itself as relevant and is in need of being clarified, as an object, which has necessarily to be examined. That which shall be analysed, that which is to be called into question, with one word, the object of the problem, can only be worth questioning on the ground of an order maintained as taken for granted. (The same is true for the practical relevance, by the way). Accordingly, the first concept of relevance is the one I like to call “topical reference.” What is given up [to me] as theme of my analysis? [or: what are my interests in the object of science (Forschungsobjekt)?] As for the concept of the “topical relevance” you are surely right. There is no method, least of all that of psychological motivation, which is able to determine how the things in question and the things that should be answered can be distinguished from that which is maintained as taken for granted. Only because we are standing in a historic tradition of the given, do we know, from the taken-for-granted sedimentation of that historical situation, what is problematic and what can be regarded as theoretically relevant. (Of course, I do not understand the historical situation as Zeitgeist or other nonsense, just as little as do I contrast “value judgments” with “factual judgments” (which [in a pure state] do not exist at all). As to this point, I think I agree with you and I only tried to translate your remarks in language, which is more familiar to me.

Resumed on April, 27th, 1951

But all this is, as I believe, only a first step. Once the theoretically relevant topic (topical relevance) is comprehended, two tasks appear both for daily life thinking and the sciences: [(1)] Which elements of our knowledge are relevant for the interpretation of the established problem? (2) How far do you have to follow up the problem? I believe that both these questions are also problems of relevance, but these [two] concepts of relevance have to be distinguished from “topical relevance,” nevertheless all three back each other up in a peculiar way. I want to name the second concept of relevance the interpretative one, the third the motivational one.

Now, it seems to me that your concept of the theoretical relevant more or less corresponds with my “topical relevance.” To the theoretical relevant, the method has nothing to contribute, on the contrary, as you said absolutely rightly; the method covers the access to what relevant in this sense. But I would not state the same about the interpretative relevance. Once the problem (the theme) is established—and that independently from methodical considerations—then an ideal [i.e., pure as fully developed] method can teach us which interpretative steps should be made and which material should be used. I think that you will not have any objections about this perspective on the function of the method, because everything I know about your technique to interpret the myth shows me that you yourself intentionally developed a method for comprehending the theoretical relevant metaphysic.

The third concept of relevance, which I called the “motivational” one a short while ago, because it constitutes the motive of the person asking the question, on which level and in which relationships of meaning the observation should take place and to which level of depth it should go. Because finally, in philosophy it is the most essential of all because, when we break off [from philosophizing], we declare our desire for knowledge (Wissbegierde) to be satisfied. All beyond that is just “irrelevant.” In Husserl’s language I would say that it is the motivational structures of relevance which determine how far a theme according to its outer and inner horizons has to be explained. I discovered with satisfaction that you are also familiar with this concept of relevance. All that you say about the effects of the historical tradition, which is the ground of our theorizing, determines the motivational structure of relevance. But if there is actually a problem of the sociology of knowledge, which is legitimate—and I think this is the case—then it is the examination of these structures of relevance: of the living, covered over, lost traditions of knowledge in its curious social distribution. Curiously here the circle closes. If the motive to search for certain levels of depth has lost its power for traditions, then certain problems could not become “topically relevant” any more. They are buried or forgotten or enter the field of what is simply regarded as taken for granted.

All this is of course described very sketchily—parts of it I have already worked out—, and only in order to demonstrate to you, how much and how far I think we agree. Hence, you will understand how to what great extent I concur with your criticism on positivism.

Unfortunately, I am not so sure, if we are in agreement when you turn to the concept of value.

(If my secretary had not with such friendliness allowed herself to dictate the continuation of this letter to the machine, you never would have received a response!)

For many years now, I have avoided using the expression “value” to think through similar problems. I think that the common concept of value contains so many equivocations that its application can only do harm. Just for this reason I tried to get a deeper insight in the underlying systems of relevance.

What does value-freedom actually mean in Max Weber’s sense? This value-freedom cannot refer to the topical relevance. In my opinion, it refers mainly to the relevance, which I called the interpretative one above, furthermore it refers to the fact that the motivational relevance should be independent from what you called the “Zeitgeist.” Hence, I cannot see why value-freedom in Weber’s terms fails to cover the problem with which you are occupied. His introduction of ideal-typical constructs, his search for causal-typical explanations, and also his concept of rationality are methodical postulates, which all together are exclusively related to the right handling of the interpretative relevance. I still believe that these postulates are completely legitimate, if comprehended in this way. It seems very questionable to me that you, just like most of Max Weber’s interpreters, link these methodical postulates to Weber’s theory of the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility. I accept too, that Weber the man was demonically torn between both postulates. But I never have been able to understand how this fact constituted an objection to Weber’s methodology, even though in other respects Weber’s methodology deserves criticism for several reasons. Is not, maybe, the attempt to explain Weber’s contribution to the method of the social sciences as the result of a conflict within his personality an example of the perversion of the sociology of knowledge, which you rightly criticize?

You are certainly right, if you say that Weber was religiously unmusical and that in many cases he confuses the categories of disenchantment with his postulate of rational method. Certainly his problems were thematically different from those that you rightly regard as the essential ones. But this has, as it seems to me, nothing to do with the postulate of the objective purity of methods, which only refers to the interpretative relevance.

This conflict over our interpretation of Max Weber is actually not a new thing, since I remember that I nearly had the same objections when you sent me almost 30 years ago your nice obituary to Max Weber. When I bring up this whole question again I do this because it would maybe be helpful if you could explain in a few words, in what relationship, according to you, that which is theoretically relevant stands to values. Without such an illumination, many readers of your introduction might misapprehend the important train of thoughts it contains.

Finally still some little observations.

P. 3: Is it very appropriate to say that the historicity of human existence consists in the development of typical classifications that are applicable in meaningful concrete contexts? Is not the obverse the case, the concrete is given first and the typical derived from it?

P. 5: I have some concerns about the expression “model method,” and that for two reasons. First, I believe that I shall draw from the writings of a Philip Frank and similar persons the fact that modern physics opposes the model method to the mathematical method. Many readers could understand the expression model method in that sense, which certainly is not the one intended by you. Second, I myself do not know precisely what this expression means to you. Do you mean ideal-typical constructs in Weber’s sense or examples [Vorbilder] and persons to be imitated [Nachbilder] in Scheler’s sense or something else?

I hope you are aware how much all these remarks are developed on the ground of a basic accordance between us.

I do not know if you wanted the manuscript back, so I will attach it, anyway. Give my regards to your wife and warm regards from

Your Alfred Schütz

October 10, 1952

Dear friend,

Thank you very much for your kind letter. You know how pleasant it was to see you and your wife after such a long time. I hope that your troublesome ailments have not come back and that this year will be, in this respect, better than the last one. Marianne has, with much sympathy, asked about you and regrets that she missed you.

Now to your remarks on several of my works. First, I am really pleased that you, in the midst of your several engagements, took your time not only to read them very carefully but also to comment on them. I am pleased and astonished that you liked the article on Santayana. It was actually not meant for publication, but only for a presentation in the General Seminar. Alvin Johnson insisted on publishing it. My primary purpose was to give a reasonable account of Santayana’s theory, and I did not think much of the article—til, in May, I believe, the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy appeared with four very mediocre articles [on his work].

When you, in regard to the Sartre-paper, state that Husserl did not solve the problem of Thou-constitution either, I completely agree with you. However, no matter how you look at it, the Thou-problem is the true crux of Husserl’s phenome­nology, where the whole undertaking fails. I am now occupied with finishing my review for Farber of the “Ideas II,” in which you can observe a highly naive attempt to slur over that problem with idle talk about “empathy” and “communication,” both of which are just taken for granted. On the other hand, the elucidation of the problem could not succeed by the approach you sketched that would depend on understanding the world via a bond based on the identity of beings that are alike. The primordial participation of the existences certainly results in the constitution of the other or the others generally, and the community through Eros or noetic friendship between a differentiated I and a differentiated Thou, on the other hand, is doubtlessly the basis of all concrete and empirical mutual understandings. But how a mutual understanding and accordance in a concrete interpersonal social relationship can be achieved, how we can advance from the knowing of the Being-there of the other to the knowing of his so-Being, we do not learn from Plato and Aristotle either, who, maybe, except for the typology in the Rhetoric of the latter, have not seen a problem concerning this matter.

You criticize me because in my efforts to conduct systematic analyses of choice, action, etc., I excluded the “ethics of virtues and the ethics of values,” the most important part of action, as you say. Well, do I actually do this? I believe that particularly in the “Choosing”-essay I employed Leibniz’s “ethics of virtue and ethics of values,” in order to show that the categories of choice, which he discovered, concern quite general structures of action, and therefore also, the structures of purposeful (I do not want to say “goal-rational”) action, by a widening of the problematic, which is applicable without change. If one considers the ethics of values as the most important part of a theory of action, one has to certainly agree with this perspective within the framework of the problems with which you are dealing and within the framework of a general ethics or a theory of happiness. But my intention points in a quite different, much less, or [maybe more] ambitious direction. I want to clarify particularly the pre-scientific sphere of interest, from which, because it is simply maintained as “taken for granted,” our actions within the social world of everyday life arise, and these actions are seemingly completely independent from all highest values. When it seems to you that the argument that everybody has his sphere of interest means a “retreat,” I can assure you with a good conscience that I am completely clear that it is just and only the “sphere of interest,” namely the interfering systems of the intrinsic and imposed orders of relevance, whose clarification alone—in the sphere of that what is maintained as taken for granted as well as in the sphere of the theoretically elaborated—makes a theory of action possible. For many years I have made efforts to analyze the systems of relevance, but the task is very difficult. I fell out of the habit of speaking of values or intrinsic values or of thinking in these terms, (which, due to the Babylonian confusion, have become almost unusable). It is neither that I do not see the intended ideas of a genuine philosophy, which are related with these terms, nor that, as a “positivist,” I want to exclude these ideas from the sphere of a scientific analysis. Rather my refusal to use such terms results from the fact that I believe that the category of relevance is the broader one, in which the value systems, which are determined, for example, by the ethics of values and the ethics of happiness—can and have to be located. In this respect it is also necessary to mention that in my opinion relevance is in no case restricted to goal-rational action.

I have developed these long explanations because, as it seems to me, they really concern the core of our talks in New York. They explain why I have great sympathy for your problems and had to decline every scientific or philosophical position which does not account for these problems in an adequate way.

You, on the other hand, adopt the attitude towards Gurwitsch’s book: “None of these things I can employ for my problems and therefore I have nothing to do with them.” It is your legitimate right to do so, and against the objection: “That is of no interest for me” or, as they are delicately accustomed to say in this country, “So what?” there is no argument. On this argument one can make a theoretical and a methodological observation: Theoretically the attitude, “In this type of problem I am not interested,” actually proves that there are structures of relevance and spheres of interest, which are independent from or only very indirectly depend on the ethics of virtue and pre-scientific ideas of happiness. Methodologically it seems to me that a theory, which explains more (or tries to explain more), is to be preferred compared to a more limited one. You know how much I admire your work. It stands much too high and it does not need to be legitimated. But why, why, why are you adopting such a monopolistic-imperialistic attitude? In life as well as in the sciences everybody works inside his boundaries, which he sets for himself or which are set by his demon. You cannot cross them without being in danger. But it is also not without danger to forget, that in our father’s house there are many dwelling places.

Be that as it may, I am happy, that my “sphere of interest” includes yours, and I know that you know that. Hence, let me still participate in your work, and may you receive kind regards from

Your Alfred Schutz