Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) stood simultaneously in the camps of philosophy and sociology, and his writings constitute the framework of a sociology based on phenomenological considerations. Schutz's basic contributions issue from a critical synthesis of Husserl's phenomenology and Weber's sociology of understanding. He proceeds on the basis of the irreducible souce of all human knowledge in the immediate experiences of the conscious, alert, and active individual. In this volume Helmut Wagner has selected and skillfully correlated various passages both from Schutz's book The Phenomenology of the Social World and from his scattered papers and essays.

This volume contains a translation of four early manuscripts by Alfred Schutz, unpublished at the time, written between 1924 and 1928. The publication of these four essays adds much to our knowledge and appreciation of the wide range of Schutz's phenomenological and sociological interests. Originally published in 1987. The essays consist of: a challenging presentation of a phenomenology of cognition and a treatment of Bergson's conceptions of images, duration, space time and memory; a discussion of the meanings connected with the grammatical forms of language in general; a consideration of the relation between meaning-contents and literary forms in poetry, literary prose narration and dramatic presentation; and an examination of resemblances and differences in the inner forms and characteristics of the major theatrical art forms.

This book presents the remarkable correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, emigre philosophers influenced by Edmund Husserl, who fled Europe on the eve of World War II and ultimately became seminal figures in the establishment of phenomenology in the United States. Their deep and lasting friendship grew out of their mutual concern with the question of the connections between science and the life-world. Interwoven with philosophical exchange is the two scholars' encounter with the unfamiliar problems of American academic life―what Gurwitsch called the "passology" of exile. Apart from its brilliant and moving portrait of two distinguished men, the correspondence holds rich significance for current issues in philosophy and the social sciences.