Alfred Schütz

Alfred Schütz grew up in Vienna as the son of a bank official. After an emergency Matura (school-leaving examination) in 1917 and military service on the Italian front, he studied law and social sciences at the University of Vienna from 1918. His teachers included Friedrich von Wieser and Ludwig von Mises in economics, Hans Kelsen in the philosophy of law, and Felix Kaufmann in the philosophy of science. In 1921 he received his doctorate in law (Dr. iur.), with Kelsen as principal examiner. His double life began in 1921: by day secretary of the Austrian Banking Association, and from 1927 authorised signatory and chief legal counsel at the private bank Reitler & Co.; in the evenings and at night a philosopher and social theorist. Husserl later coined the phrase of the "banker by day, philosopher by night". In Vienna, Schütz was one of the rare "circle-wanderers": a founding member of the Geistkreis, the circle established by Hayek and Furth in 1921, a regular participant in the Mises private seminar at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, and a discussant in the Kelsen seminar. From these years came lifelong friendships, above all with Eric Voegelin and Fritz Machlup. In 1932 his principal work "Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt" appeared, published in English as "The Phenomenology of the Social World". Husserl responded enthusiastically, invited him to Freiburg, and offered him an assistantship, which Schütz declined for family reasons. Between 1932 and 1937 he travelled repeatedly to visit Husserl. The Anschluss of 1938 forced him into exile: first to Paris as legal adviser to the Reitler branch there, and on 14 July 1939 onwards to New York. There he continued his work for Reitler & Co. and in 1943 additionally took up a teaching post at the New School for Social Research. In 1944 he became a visiting professor, in 1952 a full professor of sociology and social psychology and chair of the philosophy department. In 1939 he was among the co-founders of the International Phenomenological Society, and from 1940 among the editors of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Schütz died in 1959 in New York. His late work "Strukturen der Lebenswelt" (The Structures of the Life-World), completed posthumously by Thomas Luckmann, appeared in 1975.