 Parsons also took courses with Walton Hamilton and the philosopher Clarence Edwin Ayres, both known as "institutional economists".They exposed him to literature by authors such as Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, and William Graham Sumner.Parsons also took a course with George Brown in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and a course in modern German philosophy with Otto Manthey-Zorn, who was a great interpreter of Kant.