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This article introduces the two receptions of Vilfredo Pareto’s works by Talcott Parsons, with a focus on their theoretical and epistemological characteristics as well as the intellectual contexts in which they occurred. The first reception is concomitant with The Structure of Social Action (1937). Parsons then develops a theory of social action backed up by an original interpretation of Pareto’s thought. The second reception corresponds to The Social System (1951). It is associated with Parsons’s project of building a theory of the social system. Parsons then criticizes Paretian sociology’s methodological flaws, while acknowledging its avant-garde character. All in all, these two differentiated receptions of Paretian sociology by Parsons are linked to the development of his theoretical work, from The Structure of Social Action to The Social System.