Editing Talcott Parsons (section)

==Second World War==
In the spring of 1941, a discussion group on Japan began to meet at Harvard. The group's five core members were Parsons, [[John K. Fairbank]], [[Edwin O. Reischauer]], William M. McGovern, and Marion Levy Jr. A few others occasionally joined the group, including Ai-Li Sung and Edward Y. Hartshorne. The group arose out of a strong desire to understand the country, but, as Levy frankly admitted, "Reischauer was the only one who knew anything about Japan."<ref>Telephone conversations between William Buxton and Marion Levy, April 14 and May 19, 2000. In William Buxton and William J. Buxton and Lawrence T. Nichols, "Talcott Parsons and the "Far East" at Harvard, 1941–48: Comparative Institutions and National Policy." ''American Sociologist,'' Summer 2000.</ref> Parsons, however, was eager to learn more about it and was "concerned with general implications."

In 1942, Parsons worked on arranging a major study of occupied countries with Bartholomew Landheer of the Netherlands Information Office in New York.<ref>Talcott Parsons and Bartholomew Landheer, "Memorandum of a Proposed Sociological Study of Social Consequences of Conquest and Occupation in Certain European Countries." Talcott Parsons Collection. Harvard University Archives.</ref> Parsons had mobilized Georges Gurvitch, [[Conrad Arnsberg]], Dr. Safranek and [[Theodore Abel]] to participate,<ref>Uta Gerhardt, ''Talcott Parsons: An Intellectual Biography.'' [[Cambridge University Press]], 2002. p. 90.</ref> but it never materialized for lack of funding. In early 1942, Parsons unsuccessfully approached Hartshorne, who had joined the Psychology Division of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) in Washington to interest his agency in the research project. In February 1943, Parsons became the deputy director of the Harvard School of Overseas Administration, which educated administrators to "run" the occupied territories in Germany and the Pacific Ocean. The task of finding relevant literature on both Europe and Asia was mindboggling and occupied a fair amount of Parsons' time. One scholar Parsons came to know was [[Karl August Wittfogel]] and they discussed Weber. On China, Parsons received fundamental information from Chinese scholar Ai-Li Sung Chin and her husband, Robert Chin. Another Chinese scholar Parsons worked closely with in this period was Hsiao-Tung Fei (or Fei Xiaotong), who had studied at the London School of Economics and was an expert on the social structure of the Chinese village.

===Intellectual exchanges===
Parsons met [[Alfred Schütz]] during the rationality seminar, which he conducted together with Schumpeter, at Harvard in the spring of 1940. Schütz had been close to [[Edmund Husserl]] and was deeply embedded in the latter's phenomenological philosophy.<ref>Alfred Schütz's phenomenology is not a simple "copy" of Husserl but was close: Helmuth R. Wagner, "The Limitation of Phenomenology: Alfred Schütz's critical dialogue with Edmund Husserl." ''Husserl Studies'' Vol.1. No.1. December 1984.</ref> Schütz was born in [[Vienna]] but moved to the US in 1939, and for years, he worked on the project of developing a [[phenomenological sociology]], primarily based on an attempt to find some point between Husserl's method and Weber's sociology.<ref>Alfred Schütz, ''Der sinnhafte Aufbau der Sociale Welt: eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziology.'' Wien: J. Springer, 1932. The work appeared in English under the title: Alfred Schütz, ''The Phenomenology of the Social World''. Northwestern University Press, 1967.</ref> Parsons had asked Schütz to give a presentation at the rationality seminar, which he did on April 13, 1940, and Parsons and Schütz had lunch together afterward. Schütz was fascinated with Parsons' theory, which he regarded as the state-of-the-art social theory, and wrote an evaluation of Parsons' theory that he kindly asked Parsons to comment. That led to a short but intensive correspondence, which generally revealed that the gap between Schütz's sociologized phenomenology and Parsons' concept of voluntaristic action was far too great.<ref>Richard Grathoff (ed.), ''The Correspondence between Alfred Schütz and Talcott Parsons: The Theory of Social Action''. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978 (German version, 1977).</ref> From Parsons' point of view, Schütz's position was too speculative and subjectivist, and tended to reduce social processes to the articulation of a ''Lebenswelt'' consciousness. For Parsons, the defining edge of human life was action as a catalyst for historical change, and it was essential for sociology, as a science, to pay strong attention to the subjective element of action, but it should never become completely absorbed in it since the purpose of a science was to explain causal relationships, by covering laws or by other types of explanatory devices. Schütz's basic argument was that sociology cannot ground itself and that [[epistemology]] was not a luxury but a necessity for the social scientist. Parsons agreed but stressed the pragmatic need to demarcate science and philosophy and insisted moreover that the grounding of a conceptual scheme for empirical theory construction cannot aim at absolute solutions but needs to take a sensible stock-taking of the epistemological balance at each point in time. However, the two men shared many basic assumptions about the nature of social theory, which has kept the debate simmering ever since.<ref>Bennetta Jules-Rosette, "Talcott Parsons and the Phenomenological Tradition in Sociology: An Unresolved Debate." ''Human Studies'', vol.3. 1980. pp. 311–330.</ref><ref>Matthew M. Chew, "The Theoretical Quandary of Subjectivity: An Intellectual Historical Note on the Action Theories of Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schütz." ''Review of European Studies''. Vol.1, No.1, June 2009.</ref> By request from Ilse Schütz, after her husband's death, Parsons gave permission to publish the correspondence between him and Schütz. Parsons also wrote "A 1974 Retrospective Perspective" to the correspondence, which characterized his position as a "Kantian point of view" and found that Schütz's strong dependence on Husserl's "phenomenological reduction" would make it very difficult to reach the kind of "conceptual scheme" that Parsons found essential for theory-building in social sciences.<ref>Talcott Parsons, "A 1974 Retrospective Perspective." in Richard Grathoff (ed.) ''The Correspondence of Alfred Schütz and Talcott Parsons: The Theory of Social Action''. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978. pp. 115–124.</ref>

Between 1940 and 1944, Parsons and [[Eric Voegelin]] exchanged intellectual views through correspondence.<ref>William J. Buxton and David Rehorick, "The Place of Max Weber in the Post-Structure Writings of Talcott Parsons" in A. Javier Treviño (ed.) ''Talcott Parsons Today: His Theory and Legacy in Contemporary Sociology''. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=LeQuire|first1=Peter Brickey|last2=Silver|first2=Daniel|title=Critical Naïveté? Religion, Science and Action in the Parsons-Voegelin Correspondence|journal=European Journal of Sociology|date=2013|volume=54|issue=2|pages=265–293|doi=10.1017/S0003975613000143|s2cid=151239687|url=https://zenodo.org/record/889915|access-date=July 5, 2019|archive-date=September 22, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200922184449/https://zenodo.org/record/889915|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Talcott Parsons and Eric Voegelin, "[https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003975613000192 Correspondence, 1940–1944]," ''European Journal of Sociology'', 54, no. 2 (2013), pp. e1-e64. An Italian translation of the correspondence was published as an appendix in Emmanuele Morandi, ''La società accaduta: tracce di una 'nuova' scienza sociale in Eric Voegelin.'' Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2000.</ref> Parsons had probably met Voegelin in 1938 and 1939, when Voegelin held a temporary instructor appointment at Harvard. The bouncing point for their conversation was Parsons' manuscript on [[anti-Semitism]] and other materials that he had sent to Voegelin. Discussion touched on the nature of [[capitalism]], the rise of the West, and the origin of Nazism. The key to the discussion was the implication of Weber's interpretation of [[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism|Protestant ethics]] and the impact of [[Calvinism]] on modern history. Although the two scholars agreed on many fundamental characteristics about Calvinism, their understanding of its historical impact was quite different. Generally, Voegelin regarded Calvinism as essentially a dangerous totalitarian ideology; Parsons argued that its current features were temporary and that the functional implications of its long-term, emerging [[value-l system]] had revolutionary and not only "negative" impact on the general rise of the institutions of modernity.

The two scholars also discussed Parsons' debate with Schütz and especially why Parsons had ended his encounter with Schutz. Parsons found that Schutz, rather than attempting to build social science theory, tended to get consumed in philosophical detours. Parsons wrote to Voegelin: "Possibly one of my troubles in my discussion with Schuetz lies in the fact that by cultural heritage I am a Calvinist. I do not want to be a philosopher – I shy away from the philosophical problems underlying my scientific work. By the same token I don't think he wants to be a scientist as I understand the term until he has settled all the underlying philosophical difficulties. If the physicists of the 17th century had been Schuetzes there might well have been no [[Isaac Newton|Newtonian system]]."<ref>Talcott Parsons to Eric Voegelin, October 19, 1941. Talcott Parsons collection. Harvard University Archive.</ref>

In 1942, [[Stuart C. Dodd]] published a major work, ''Dimensions of Society'',<ref>Stuart C. Dodd, ''Dimensions of Society: A Quantitative Systematics for the Social Sciences.'' New York: Macmillan, 1942.</ref> which attempted to build a general theory of society on the foundation of a mathematical and quantitative systematization of social sciences. Dodd advanced a particular approach, known as an "S-theory". Parsons discussed Dodd's theoretical outline in a review article the same year.<ref>Talcott Parsons, "Review of Dimensions of Society: A Quantitative Systematics for the Social Sciences by Stuart Carter Dodd." ''American Sociological Review'' Vol.7. No.5. October 1942. pp. 709–714.</ref> Parsons acknowledged Dodd's contribution to be an exceedingly formidable work but argued against its premises as a general paradigm for the social sciences. Parsons generally argued that Dodd's "S-theory", which included the so-called "social distance" scheme of Bogardus, was unable to construct a sufficiently sensitive and systematized theoretical matrix, compared with the "traditional" approach, which has developed around the lines of Weber, Pareto, Émile Durkheim, [[Sigmund Freud]], [[W. I. Thomas|William Isaac Thomas]], and other important agents of an action-system approach with a clearer dialogue with the cultural and motivational dimensions of human interaction.

In April 1944, Parsons participated in a conference, "On Germany after the War", of psychoanalytical oriented psychiatrists and a few social scientists to analyze the causes of Nazism and to discuss the principles for the coming occupation.<ref>Uta Gerhardt, ''Talcott Parsons: An Intellectual Biography.'' Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 110.</ref>

During the conference, Parsons opposed what he found to be [[Lawrence S. Kubie]]'s reductionism. Kubie was a psychoanalyst, who strongly argued that the German national character was completely "destructive" and that it would be necessary for a special agency of the United Nations to control the German educational system directly. Parsons and many others at the conference were strongly opposed to Kubie's idea. Parsons argued that it would fail and suggested that Kubie was viewing the question of Germans' reorientation "too exclusively in psychiatric terms". Parsons was also against the extremely harsh [[Morgenthau Plan]], published in September 1944. After the conference, Parsons wrote an article, "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change", against the plan.<ref>Talcott Parsons, "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change: An Essay in Applied Social Science." ''Psychiatry.'' Vol.8. 1945. pp. 79–101.</ref>

Parsons participated as a part-time adviser to the Foreign Economic Administration Agency between March and October 1945 to discuss postwar reparations and deindustrialization.<ref>Uta Gerhardt, "Introduction: Talcott Parsons's Sociology of National Socialism." In Uta Gerhardt, ''Talcott Parsons on National Socialism.'' New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993. p. 57.</ref><ref>For a further discussion of his influence on the postwar situation and policies on Germany, see Uta Gerhardt, "Talcott Parsons and the Transformation from Totalitarianism to Democracy in the end of World War II." ''European Sociological Review'', Vol.12. 1996. pp. 303–325. For further discussion, see Uta Gerhardt, "Talcott Parsons und die Re-Education-Politik der amerikanischen Besatzungsmacht. ''Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie'', Jg.24. Heft.4. 1998. pp. 121–154.</ref>

Parsons was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1945.<ref name="AAAS">{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter P|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterP.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=April 22, 2011|archive-date=May 15, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110515183157/http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterP.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Taking charge at Harvard===
Parsons' situation at Harvard University changed significantly in early 1944, when he received a good offer from [[Northwestern University]]. Harvard reacted to the offer by appointing Parsons as the chairman of the department, promoting him to the rank of full professor and accepting the process of reorganization, which led to the establishment of the new department of Social Relations. Parsons' letter to Dean [[Paul Buck]], on April 3, 1944, reveals the high point of this moment.<ref>Letter from Talcott Parsons to Dean Paul Buck, April 3, 1944. Talcott Parsons Collection. Harvard University Archives.</ref> Because of the new development at Harvard, Parsons chose to decline an offer from [[William Langer]] to join the [[Office of Strategic Services]], the predecessor of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]]. Langer proposed for Parsons to follow the [[American army]] in its march into Germany and to function as a political adviser to the administration of the occupied territories. Late in 1944, under the auspices of the Cambridge Community Council, Parsons directed a project together with Elizabeth Schlesinger. They investigated ethnic and racial tensions in the [[Boston]] area between students from [[Radcliffe College]] and [[Wellesley College]]. This study was a reaction to an upsurge of [[anti-Semitism]] in the Boston area, which began in late 1943 and continued into 1944.<ref>Uta Gerhardt, "A World from Brave to New: Talcott Parsons and the War Effort at Harvard University". ''Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences'' Vol.15 (3), 257–289, Summer 1999. p. 266.</ref> At the end of November 1946, the Social Research Council (SSRC) asked Parsons to write a comprehensive report of the topic of how the social sciences could contribute to the understanding of the modern world. The background was a controversy over whether the social sciences should be incorporated into the National Science Foundation.

Parsons' report was in form of a large memorandum, "Social Science: A Basic National Resource", which became publicly available in July 1948 and remains a powerful historical statement about how he saw the role of modern social sciences.<ref>Talcott Parsons, "Social Science: A Basic National Resource". In Samuel Z. Klauser & Victor M. Lidz (eds.) ''The Nationalization of the Social Sciences''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.</ref>