Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography (Heritage of Sociology)

This book is comprehensive, tracing Schutz's life in broad overview, then focusing on details of the personal and intellectual relationships that he had with other scholars, and finally exploring the relationship of his work to that of Leibniz, Bergson, and especially Husserl. This comprehensiveness is the strength of the book. Nothing comparable has been provided anywhere else. The most interesting parts of the book, the first on Schutz's life and the last on his uses of Leibniz, Bergson, and Husserl, will be of interest to those who only want a general knowledge of Schutz's work. The middle section, dealing with many predecessors, contemporaries, and successors of Schutz serves as an introduction to the American phenomenological dialogue. Schutz's criticism of objectivist sociology shines through the text.