The Foundations of the Theory of Social Organization

Abstract

This chapter is a translation by Fred Kersten¹ of Schutz’s review of Tomoo Otaka, Grundlegung der Lehre vom sozialen Verband, published in 1932 by Verlag von Julius Springer in Vienna. The review was originally published in the Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht, Vol. 17, 1937, pp. 64–84.² As Schutz makes clear, Otaka developed a social theory which could be placed, roughly, between Kelsen’s “pure theory of law”, with its limited social implications, and Weber’s sociology of understanding but without its emphasis on the individual. Schutz considered Otaka a close personal friend and a scholar who was his peer. Believing that he owed his honesty to each of such friends he criticized Otaka’s book unsparingly, yet giving it the high praise it deserved at the end of the review.³