Table Of ContentHelmut Staubmann · Victor Lidz Editors
Rationality in the
Social Sciences
The Schumpeter-Parsons Seminar
1939-40 and Current Perspectives
Rationality in the Social Sciences
Helmut Staubmann (cid:129) Victor Lidz
Editors
Rationality in the
Social Sciences
The Schumpeter-Parsons Seminar 1939-40
and Current Perspectives
Editors
HelmutStaubmann VictorLidz
UniversityofInnsbruck DrexelUniversityCollegeofMedicine
Innsbruck,Austria Chesterbrook,Pennsylvania,USA
ISBN978-3-319-62376-4 ISBN978-3-319-62377-1 (eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-62377-1
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017958034
©SpringerInternationalPublishingAG2018
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Acknowledgements
ThemanuscriptsofPartIandPartIIIhereinarepublishedthroughthecourtesyof
theHarvardUniversityArchives,TalcottParsonsPapers.
We want to thank Ruth Grathoff and Walter M. Sprondel for permission to
publish the letter exchange in Part III between Richard Grathoff, Walter
M.SprondelandTalcottParsons.
This publication is supported by the Anniversary Fund of the O¨sterreichische
Nationalbank,ProjektNr.15236,TheUnpublishedLegacyofTalcottParsons.
v
Contents
Editors’Introduction:TheHarvardRationalitySeminar. . . . . . . . . . . 1
HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz
PartI OriginalPapersoftheSchumpeter/ParsonsSeminar
TheMeaningofRationalityintheSocialSciences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
JosephA.Schumpeter
DiscussionsontheMeaningofRationalityinAction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
(UnknownAuthor)
AnApproachtotheAnalysisoftheRoleofRationalityinSocial
Action. . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. . 53
TalcottParsons
RationalityinAction:(DiscussionProtocolofthe)MeetingofMonday,
Feb.19,1940. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
DonaldV.McGranahan
TheRoleofIdeasintheExtensionandLimitationofRationality. . . . . 61
WilbertE.Moore
TheRationalMeans-EndSchemaasaToolforEmpiricalAnalysisof
SocialAction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
RainerSchickele
TheProblemofRationalityintheSocialWorld. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . 85
AlfredSchütz
PartII CurrentPerspectives
BoundedRationalityandEmotionsandHowSociologyMayTake
Profit:TowardsanInterdisciplinaryOpening. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
DieterB€ogenhold
vii
viii Contents
TheConceptofRationalityinModernSocialSciences:ACritical
AppraisalofJosephA.Schumpeter’sEssayon“TheMeaningof
Rationality”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
AndreasDiekmann
Schu€tzonRationality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
MartinEndress
Rationality,Norms,andtheSociologicalReconstructionofEconomic
Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
MarkGould
ConceptualizingRationalSocialAction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
VictorLidz
OrdinaryBeauty,OrdinaryUgliness,andtheProblemofRationality. . . 189
AntonioStrati
ContinuityandChangeinParsons’UnderstandingofRationality. . . . . 207
RafVanderstraeten
InchoateSituationsandExtra-RationalBehavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
ChristopherWinship
PartIII LetterExchangeontheRationalitySeminar
LetterExchangeRegardingtheSeminarandPlansforPublication. . . . 247
HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz
TalcottParsonstoAlfredSchuetz(Jan.10,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
AlfredSchuetztoTalcottParsons(Jan.24,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
JosephA.Schumpeter,TalcottParsonsandDonaldV.McGranahanto
Authors(May15,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
JosephA.SchumpetertoTalcottParsons(June12). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
JosephA.SchumpetertoTalcottParsons(June12)(copyoforiginal
handwriting). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
TalcottParsonstoJohnP.Dunlop(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
TalcottParsonstoGottfriedHaberler(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
TalcottParsonstoDonaldV.McGranahan(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
TalcottParsonstoWilbertE.Moore(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
TalcottParsonstoPaulM.Sweezy(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
TalcottParsonstoRobertWaelder(Oct.9,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
PaulM.SweezytoTalcottParsons(Oct.17,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
WilbertE.MooretoTalcottParsons(Oct.22,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
GottfriedHaberlertoTalcottParsons(Nov.8,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
TalcottParsonstoWilburE.Moore(Dec.5,1940). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
TalcottParsonstoWilburE.Moore(March2,1941). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Contents ix
LaterLettersRegardingtheSeminar. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . 265
HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz
RichardGrathoffandWalterM.SprondeltoTalcottParsons
(Dec.4,1973). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
TalcottParsonstoRichardGrathoff(Aug.9,1974). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
RichardGrathofftoTalcottParsons(Sept.2,1976). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
TalcottParsonstoRichardGrathoff(Jul.5,1978). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
RichardGrathofftoTalcottParsons(Oct.9,1978). . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. 278
RichardGrathofftoTalcottParsons(Feb.28,1979). . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. 280
TalcottParsonstoRichardGrathoff(March27,1979). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
NameIndex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Editors’ Introduction: The Harvard
Rationality Seminar
HelmutStaubmannandVictorLidz
The Harvard Rationality Seminar
In the academic year of 1939–1940, an unusual interdisciplinary seminar on the
general topic of Rationality was conducted by a number of faculty members and
advancedgraduatestudentsatHarvardUniversity.Ofparticularinterestthroughout
wasthequestionofhowrationalityshouldfitintothebasicpremisesandcategories
ofintellectuallydisciplinedthoughtabouthumanconduct,especiallyinthesocial
sciences—economics, sociology,politicalscience,anthropology, psychology, and
psychiatry.Ofnote,manyoftheparticipantswerefiguresalreadydistinguishedin
theirrespectivedisciplinesorwho,wenowknow,haddistinguishedcareersintheir
futures.
The present volume is organized about the seminar. The first section presents
documentary materials from presentations to and discussions in the seminar—all
thatremain,webelieve—oressaysthatsomeparticipantslaterpublishedbasedon
their seminar presentations. The seminar materials were collected by Helmut
Staubmannin2013/2014duringasabbaticalinCambridge,Massachusetts,where
hewasabletoretrievethemfromtheHarvardUniversityArchives,predominantly
from the Talcott Parsons Papers. The second section consists of contemporary
essays by a variety of social scientists who reflect either on the major essays
themselves or on aspects of the topic of rationality in relation to human social
action. In a briefer third section, we present correspondence pertaining to the
H.Staubmann(*)
DepartmentofSociology,UniversityofInnsbruck,Innsbruck,Austria
e-mail:[email protected]
V.Lidz
DepartmentofPsychiatry,DrexelUniversityCollegeofMedicine,Philadelphia,PA,USA
e-mail:[email protected]
©SpringerInternationalPublishingAG2018 1
H.Staubmann,V.Lidz(eds.),RationalityintheSocialSciences,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-62377-1_1
2 H.StaubmannandV.Lidz
seminar, including plans to publish papers from it and later reflections about its
importance.
Joseph A. Schumpeter and Talcott Parsons
Joseph A. Schumpeter and Talcott Parsons were the two main figures who pro-
posed,convened,andorganizedtheseminarordiscussiongroup.Bothwereideally
qualified as scholars familiar with developments in sociology and in economics
concerningtheplaceofrationality.Bothhadfocusedtheirinterestsonthetheoret-
icalandconceptualfoundationsofthesocio-economicdisciplinesinverycompre-
hensiveterms.
TalcottParsonswasamongthefirstsocialscientists,afterMaxWeber,tothink
comprehensively and intensively about techniques for constructing frames of
reference for the interdisciplinary study of human action or conduct. In The
StructureofSocialAction,publishedinlate1937,hehadexploredtheconceptual
schemesthatkeysociologistsandeconomistsofapreviousgenerationhadutilized.
He argued that, although the several figures on whom he focused had written in
basicallydifferentintellectualtraditions,they hadsettled upon—he wroteoftheir
having“converged”upon—equivalentsetsofcoreconcepts.Hethendemonstrated
thattheseideas,whenprobed,provedtoderivefrombasicallythesamemethodo-
logical and conceptual assumptions. Parsons called this procedure of identifying
andthenrelyinguponagreed-uponformulationsthemethodofconvergence,andhe
proposed that the essential areas of conceptual agreement could, and should, be
used as an initial formulation of a general frame of reference for sociology. He
maintainedthattheveryfactthatacommonframeofreferencehademergedfrom
disparateandinsomerespectsconflictingintellectualtraditionsspoketoitsfunda-
mental validity and essential nature. Later, in several stages, he explored further
convergencesthroughprobingandtechnicalanalysesoftheconceptualschemesof
a wide range of additional figures, including a number of his contemporaries,
therebyexpandingthescopeandincreasingtheprecisionofhisframeofreference.
Throughouthislifetime,Parsonsheldthatworkswritteninthefieldofeconom-
icswereessentialtoincludeinageneraltheoryofaction.Lookingbacktotheearly
yearsofhisworkduringaseriesofdiscussionshehadwithfacultyandstudentsat
Brown University in 1973, he remembered: “I decided I would make a study of
Marshalltotrytoteaseouthissociologicalideas.Iwrotewhatturnedouttobetwo
papers,whichIsubmittedtoTaussig,whowastheneditoroftheQuarterlyJournal
of Economics, and he kindly accepted them for publication. That was the real
startingpointofTheStructureofSocialAction,becauseIhadakindofafulcrum
inMarshallforsystematizingthecomparisonbetweenMarshall,Englisheconom-
ics,thebackgroundinutilitarianism,andsoon,withDurkheim,Pareto,andWeber.
That was the main jumping-off place of that book and a very decisive one for
me. That’s something that has stayed with me” (Parsons 2006 in Moss and
Savchenko2006).
