Schutz's basic project is to show that ‘the world of objective mind’ can be reduced to the behaviour of individuals. This basic project governs his philosophy and his sociology. After a preliminary examination of his account of how the social scientist proceeds it is shown that Schutz's humanism induces a psychologistic distortion of Husserl's phenomenology which leads to a ‘sociologising’ of his realm of transcendental intersubjectivity. It also leads to a theory of science in which the determining element is the attitude of the scientist. These enable Schutz to present as scientific a humanistic social science and history which are are nothing but special kinds of story-telling. The cost of his humanism is a world in which there can be no science of history and no rational politics.