Abstract

Drawing partly on unpublished materials from the Sozialwissenschaftliche Archiv Konstanz (Alfred‑Schütz‑Gedächtnis‑Archiv), in this paper I attempt to reconstruct Schutz’s barely explored reception of Marx and Marxism. To this aim, I proceed in four steps. First (1), I trace the very few references to Marxian thought in Schutz’s published work. Second (2), I review Schutz’s mentions of the topic in his correspondences with his friends and colleagues Aron Gurwitsch and Eric Voegelin. Third (3), I give an overview of the books by Marx and other Marxist literature that Schutz had in his personal library. Finally (4), I analyze Schutz’s unpublished lectures on “Dialectics” and “Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge,” two of the only documents where he extensively discusses Marx and Marxism. The reconstruction carried out in the paper is not an end in itself but an effort to contribute to the contemporary ‘critical turn’ in phenomenology.