Experience and Transcendence

Abstract

The (revised) English translation of this manuscript is by Helmut Wagner. The title of the original was “Die Kontroverse mit Prof. Morris neuerlich durchdacht” (“Reconsideration of the Controversy with Prof. [Charles] Morris”). The occasion of writing the manuscript was the participation by Schutz in 1955 in the Fourteenth Symposium of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, concerned, this time, with signs and symbols. Together with the papers of other contributors, Schutz’s lecture was published in Lyman Bryson, et al., Symbols and Society (New York: Harper, 1955). The lecture has been republished in Collected Papers, Vol. I, pp. 287-356. At the conference Schutz’s lecture was discussed by Charles Morris, and both Morris’ critique and Schutz’s reply were published in the conference proceedings, but not reprinted in the Collected Papers. In 1958 Schutz reread his answer to Morris and found it “in part misleading and beside the point”. He consequently wrote a new and detailed response in German, and the text was subsequently published by Thomas Luckmann in the documentary appendix to Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann, Strukturen der Lebenswelt, Vol. II (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984); the extended text begins on p. 337 and ends on p. 346. It should be noted that Schutz continued his discussion of the topic of experience and transcendence considerably beyond this point, although after p. 347 it can no longer be considered to have been occasioned by Morris’s relatively short remarks. In the heading of the next section, Schutz dropped the reference to Morris and spoke instead of the “Continuation of the Analysis of the Symbol Essay”.