Schutzian Research

Volume 11, 2019

Ingeborg K. Helling
Pages 103-119

One More Phenomenology of the Social World?
Alfred Schutz’s (1932) Response to Fritz Sander’s Der Gegenstand der reinen Gesellschaftslehre (1924) and Allgemeine Gesellschaftslehre (1930)

In his “Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt” (1932; engl. tr. 1967) Alfred Schutz refers frequently and mostly positively to the author Fritz Sander. In contrast to other members of the Viennese social science milieus in interwar Vienna, Sander has been neglected in the abundant literature on Schutz. Following Henrich’s (1991) Konstellationsforschung approach, Schutz and Sander are placed in the setting of interwar Viennese social science. Explicit references to Sander made by Schutz will be described, similarities and differences in their treatments of Max Weber’s concepts of social action and subjective meaning will be examined, and their respective views of a phenomenological grounding of social science will be discussed.