SOURCE: "Methodological Writings," in Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and Work, translated by Philippa Hurd, Polity Press, 1979, pp. 174-96.

[If] we speak of Weber's methodology today, we mean for the most part those methodological observations which originally appeared separately in periodicals and which were published posthumously in 1922 by Marianne Weber under the title Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Collected Essays on Scientific Methodology). We must realize that these collected texts consisted of casual projects and commissioned work, which for the most part remained fragmentary.

The condition of this source material is in part reasonable for the controversy that divides previous interpretations into two camps; one promotes unity in Weber's scientific doctrine, the other argues for diversity. Both positions were able to put forward good arguments. Doubtless Weber's methodological position itself was defined in the course of decades of research, which for him always took top priority, and as a result his own changes in position must be discussed. On the other hand, many cogent arguments can be settled without necessarily reducing the consequent discussion to one, uniform scientific doctrine.

Moreover, we must realize that Weber's own works on the methodology of the social sciences are connected very closely to their historical background. One set of texts were critical discussions of other contemporary authors, and thus a comprehensive understanding is impossible without knowledge of the writings under discussion. Equally all these contemporary debates and controversies took place within a philosophical context handed down by tradition and amid current social changes, particularly in the contemporary politics of the sciences. The formation and gradual institutionalization of the social sciences—sociology among others—provides an important backdrop to Weber's methodological project. In this condensed sketch of Weber's statements on sociological method, we can only include the historical background in an incomplete form. Equally we will not have the space to discuss both the continuities and the breaks in Weber's sketches.

Weber's work was organized in a way which befitted an important theorist in the methodology of modem sociology, thanks basically to three methodological concepts which we shall discuss below. These are:

1 The concept of Verstehen, or 'understanding'.

2 The concept of the 'ideal-type'.

3 The postulate of 'freedom from value-judgement' (Werturteilsfreiheit).

THE CONCEPT OF VERSTEHEN OR 'UNDERSTANDING'

Seen from the perspective of today's scientific sociology, the formation of 'interpretive sociology' (verstehende Soziologie) appears as an extremely important development which has had wide-reaching effects up to the present day. If we look back at the previous different manifestations and stages of this development, it is possible to recognize the division (albeit relatively arbitrary) of all existing sociological theories into three tendencies—interpretive, functionalist and reductionist. A similar analytical structure is thus made possible for the contents of all research areas in sociology: for action theory and systems theory as well as for all 'intermediary' concepts as, for example, role theory, reference group theory and theories of institutionalization.

It is remarkable that after a lengthy period of relative insignificance in the face of functionalist approaches, the interpretive orientation has at the present time regained considerable international importance. Trends like symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, ethnosociology, phenomenology, etc., have recaptured an important role in international sociological discourse. And as part of this, the persistent references to Weber, albeit frequently critical, are noticeable even when his work generally only constitutes their historical point of departure.

In view of today's extremely wide-reaching scientific and theoretical discussion, above all on the relationship between 'understanding' (Verstehen) and 'explanation' (Erklären), it becomes particularly necessary to comprehend Weber's original position. It is here in particular that cliches and misunderstandings have taken root; for one thing they attempt to tie Weber down exclusively to the interpretive method by presenting him as the 'father of interpretive sociology', and for another they misconstrue 'interpretation' as a method which involves empathy or intuition, both somewhat vague and arbitrary qualities.

In our presentation of Weber's position, we will refer to his later texts (1913-19), in particular to the 'Conceptual Exposition' and the 'Basic Concepts in Sociology' in Economy and Society, in spite of the fact that he had already tackled the problem of the interpretive approach much earlier.

In our previous discussion of his 'General Sociology' [in Max Weber: An Introduction to this Life and Work] we were proceeding from Weber's definition of empirical sociology, according to which it is the science 'concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences'. The interpretive understanding of 'social action' as the object domain of Weber's sociology leads to an investigation into the determining effects of meaning. Weber defines his interpretive sociology as an empirical sociology of the understanding of meaning (Sinn-Verstehen). Its methodological procedure cannot be separated from a causal analytical procedure. Moreover Weber makes explicit an internal connection between the two heuristic strategies. It is precisely this relationship which, according to Weber, establishes the character of sociology as a discipline orientated towards reality.

Thus as we have already explained, 'meaning' is not intended as some preformed ideality but as one real, determining factor in human action. At this point the central premise of every interpretive approach emerges: the actor attaches a 'meaning' to his or her action and this 'meaning' acts at the very least as a contributory determinant to the action. Thus any scientific attempt to analyse human action requires the inclusion of meaning in an explanation of social phenomena.

From this basis Weber distinguishes terminologically between 'direct observational understanding' (aktuelles Verstehen) and 'explanatory understanding' (Motivationsverstehen).

Accordingly 'direct observational understanding' is

'direct rational understanding of ideas';

'direct observational understanding of irrational emotional reactions'; and 'rational observational understanding of actions'.

Motivational or 'explanatory understanding' similarly enquires into the symbolic quality of observable action, but goes one stage further by aiming beyond the understanding of the intended meaning towards an explanation of the manifest action. This is achieved by situating the action within a 'context', i.e. 'rational understanding of motivation, which consists in placing the act in an intelligible and more inclusive context of meaning'. Weber arrives at his definition of 'explanation': 'Thus for a science which is concerned with the subjective meaning of action, explanation [Erklären] requires a grasp of the complex of meanings in which an actual course of understandable action thus interpreted belongs'.

The introduction of the concept of a 'context of meaning' sheds light on that problematic which has frequently led to misunderstandings. Weber proceeds from the 'subjective' meaning of individual actors, but the relativizing formula of the subjectively 'intended' meaning makes it clear that Weber recognizes that this meaning does not have to be the meaning which actually determines the relevant action, and that the individual does not have to be conscious of his/her 'real', actually effective motives for his/her action.

The differentiation we have discussed above between different methodological ways of grasping meaning made it clear that Weber tends particularly towards conceptually constructed, pure types ('ideal types') of different meanings. Just as Weber, in his 'general sociology' had reached the category of '(legitimate) order', from the individual acting subjects via the concepts of 'social action' and 'social relations' he moves up from the construct of a 'subjectively intended meaning' to socially mediated 'contexts of meaning'. Lurking within these are all inter subjectively compulsory (i.e. according to his definition) 'valid' measures of meaning and value within a society, measures towards which individual actors and social groups are oriented. In other words even the (supposedly) subjective meaning is a social meaning, i.e. a meaning which is reciprocal, and oriented towards and mediated by order. 'Action which is specifically important for interpretive sociology is behaviour which

1. in terms of the subjectively intended meaning of the actor refers to the behaviour of others.
2. is in its course in part determined by this meaningful reference, and thus
3. can be explained by the interpretation of this (subjectively) intended meaning.

Even if this position were not formulated unambiguously in the 'Basic Concepts in Sociology', it can still be seen in Weber's entire material work. His investigations into the social order of Antiquity or those on the sociology of religion leave no doubt that the concept of socially constructed meaning is one of Weber's basic conceptions. Weber is always concerned to present meaning as being communicable. However, communicability is always already social and intersubjective and is expressed in changeable, symbolic forms.

To summarize, we can distinguish three variations on the interpretation of the concept of meaning in Weber's work, all of which can be grasped by the method of Verstehen:

1 Meaning as cultural significance, i.e. as 'objectified' meaning in a 'world of meanings'.

2 Meaning as subjectively intended meaning which is intersubjectively comprehensible and communicable.

3 Meaning as functional meaning which is influenced by objective contexts, is intersubjectively mediated and is of functional significance for social processes of change.

If we look, for example, at Weber's investigations into the cultural significance of Protestantism, all these variations can be seen. In these studies, Protestantism can be grasped as the 'world of meanings' under investigation, in which acting individuals and groups interacting with one another seek to realize subjective frameworks of meaning and projects for action. This action, thus defined as 'meaningful', had in turn a function in the origin of capitalism. Only through this could a certain religious meaning influence capitalism so strongly that it had a functionally adequate ('adequate on the level of meaning') effect on this economic form. The religious world of meanings was functional to the capitalist order and vice versa; the level of mediation was, as we have seen, the social, 'meaningful' action of individuals and groups.

Overlying Weber's differentiation of the concept of meaning and the method of Verstehen, there is another factor: Weber expressly stresses the complementarity of Verstehen and 'causal explanations'. 'The "understanding" of a context must always still be monitored as far as possible by the otherwise usual methods of causal inclusion, before an interpretation—however obvious—becomes the valid "understandable explanation".' Weber fought vehemently against those contemporary attempts, particularly by Wilhelm Dilthey and his followers, to create a specific method of the 'human sciences' (Geisteswissenschaften) out of a concept of Verstehen which comes from individual experience, intuition and empathy. On the contrary, Weber seeks neither a natural-scientific nor a human-scientific foundation or method for his sociology, but a social scientific one. In this method, 'meaningful' interpretations of a concrete relationship are despite all the 'evidence' only 'hypotheses by imputation' which require 'verification'.

Causal chains into which instrumentally (zweck-rational) oriented motivations are inserted by interpretive (deutend) hypotheses are directly … accessible by statistical inspection and … are thus accessible via (relatively) acceptable proof of their validity as 'explanations' (Erklärungen). Conversely, statistical data … wherever they suggest the result or consequences of behaviour … are only 'explained' to us when they are also meaningfully interpreted in a concrete instance.

Here we arrive at a substantive definition of Weber's methodological linkage between Verstehen and Erklären. Following his demand for an explanatory control on Verstehen, he asserts, 'Thus interpretation in terms of rational purpose possesses the greatest degree of certainty (Evidenz). By a purposively rational disposition we mean one which is exclusively oriented towards means conceived (subjectively) as adequate for attaining goals which are unambiguously understood'. Although, as we have seen, Weber expressly emphasizes that such an instrumentality of social action is a 'limiting case', he introduces as a kind of yardstick the concept of a 'rationality of correctness' (Richtigkeitsrationalität) in the sense of a rationality of means and ends.

This apparent discrepancy between 'subjective' intention and 'objective' verification disappears if one looks at the pragmatic research justification Weber gives. For his empirical sociology, whatever degree of 'rationality of correctness' an action has is an 'empirical question'. But Weber is in no way insinuating that actual human social behaviour can be determined predominantly instrumentally: 'Looking at the role which "non-instrumental" (zweckirrational) affects and "emotional situations" play in human action … one could equally well assert the exact opposite'. However to be able to achieve understanding (Verstehen) and explanation (Erklären) which can be controlled, Weber introduces the idealtypical borderline case of the supposed validity, i.e. the hypothetical validity of absolute instrumentality and of a 'rationality of correctness'. In other words, he asks how the action would have taken place, supposing this rationality had actually operated. Such a Verstehen means not only investigating the subjectively intended meaning of the actor or actors, but at the same time measures the degree of deviation from a constructed 'type of correctness' (Richtigkeitstyp). Weber confirms this kind of typification in instrumental complexes of meaning in his aim of reaching a maximum of non-ambiguity and conceptual precision. With this strategy, Weber wants to rid the 'interpretive' method of its 'intuitionist' character. He wants to create an intersubjectively verifiable method, with the aid of which the social relations of people and groups, both with regard to their (supposed) subjective creation of meaning, and including socially and culturally imparted and determined orders of value and structural conditions can be both 'understood' and 'explained'.

THE CONCEPT OF THE 'IDEAL-TYPE'

In our presentation of Weber's work we encounter throughout one methodological concept with which Weber is inextricably linked—the concept of the ideal-typical procedure. No other theme in Weber's works on the methodology of the social sciences has aroused such a wide-spread discussion—a discussion which has lasted until today. In this, as in any isolated discussion of Weber's methodological writings, the instrumental significance of this concept is, for the most part, not acknowledged, and this has led to considerable misunderstandings.

In fact, however, the concept of the ideal-typical procedure is inextricably linked to the material part of Weber's work: we have shown that crude outlines of this concept are already recognizable in his Habilitation thesis of 1891. As late as 1904, Weber made use of a defined methodological concept of the ideal-typical method, although we shall not go into the inconsistencies between the earlier and the later formulations here.

When he took over the Archiv in 1904, Weber defined the main exercise of the journal as 'breathing scientific synthesis' into the extensive subject matter of scientific analyses. In tackling this exercise, Weber sees one procedure in particular as being suitable:

We shall have to consider the expression of social problems from philosophical viewpoints to a much greater extent, as in the form of research—called theory in a more narrow sense—of our special area: the formation of clear concepts. Although we are far from thinking that it is valid to squash the riches of historical life into formulae, we are still overwhelmingly convinced that only clear, unambiguous concepts can smooth the way for any research that wishes to discover the specific importance of social and cultural phenomena.

This intention to form 'unambiguous concepts' is the driving idea behind Weber's formulation of the ideal-typical procedure. The development of this method evolved against the background of several scientific and theoretical—and also frequently scientific and political—discourses and developments. Both the so-called Methodenstreit between the historical and the theoretical tendencies in political economy (Gustav Schmoller versus Carl Menger) as well as the controversy within the framework of the schools of 'neo-idealism' (Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel) and 'neoKantianism' (Heinrich Rickert, Rudolf Stammler, Wilhelm Windelband) are the contexts from which Weber formulated his own concept. It is clear from this that neither the concept of 'ideal-type' nor the ideal-typical method were Weber's 'invention'. the idea of a certain methodological procedure linked to the ideal-typical method emerged from a broad discussion which had begun long before Weber's contributions and which carried on after his death—partly without regard to his suggestions. This discussion, which can be characterized through the names of its main participants—Droysen, Lamprecht, von Below, Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, Schmoller and Hintze—centred around the determination of the scientific character of historical writing.

And as in controversies like political history versus cultural history, individual history versus circumstantial history etc., this discussion was about the conflict between the 'natural sciences' which were becoming ever more important, and the established 'human sciences' (Geisteswissenschaften), which were beginning to feel threatened. The controversies of the time were made all the more violent and uncompromising by the fact that political and economic power positions played a role alongside theoretical and methodological problems.

In this intellectual controversy in Germany at the turn of the century, Dilthey, Windelband and Rickert, among others, made the concept of Verstehen the starting point for the division between natural and human sciences. Verstehen was to designate that specific method by means of which one could seek out knowledge of the particular, the individual and the unique, i.e. the alleged sphere of the human and cultural sciences, in which no laws could operate as in the natural sciences.

Weber's essay of 1904 on "'Objectivity" in Social Science and Social Policy', was to represent the fulfilment of Weber's intention in taking over the Archiv, and it appeared in the same first volume of the new series as the 'Preface'. It came up against the fixed positions which stemmed from the idea of a constitutive and unchangeable division of problem areas and of the relevant sciences. In his interpretation both of Verstehen and the ideal-typical method in the context of this debate, Weber wanted to correct those historians who thought that the multiplicity and perpetual modification of historical circumstances did not permit the application of fixed and precise concepts. As he totally agrees with the view of reality as an unordered 'chaos', he pushes the demand for 'sharp' concepts all the more forcibly.

But the unstructured multiplicity of the facta in no way proves that we should construct woolly concepts, but the reverse: that sharp ('ideal-typical') concepts must be applied correctly, not as schemata to assault the historical given, but to be able to determine the … character of a phenomenon with its help: i.e. to indicate to what extent the phenomenon approximates to one or another 'ideal-type'.

Weber's overriding concern was to explain the 'cultural meaning' of historical facts in order to establish some conceptual order in the 'chaos', not to undertake a reconstruction of the past with the help of lists of facts and data. His programmatic demand was as follows: 'We seek knowledge of an historical phenomenon, meaning by historical: significant in its individuality (Eigenart)'. The point of reference for Weber's own essay on the scientific analysis of the cultural importance of the 'unstructured multiplicity of the facta' was, as we saw from the presentation of his work, that Western process of rationalization, whose various manifestations, causes and effects he pursued.

Thus it is the prime task of the ideal-type to incorporate hypothetically the chaotic multiplicity of individual phenomena into an 'ideal' i.e. an ideational course of events. Ideal-types for Weber, are 'ideal' in two respects: on the one hand, they are always based on a concept of logical and ideational perfection and they pursue this through many considerations to a conceivable extreme; on the other hand, they are also related to 'ideas' i.e. they are 'analytical constructs' (Gedankenbilder), thus are plans for thought (Gedanken). The accentuation and synthesis of certain elements and moments of observable reality orients itself towards 'ideas', which are interpreted as crucial for the behaviour of people and groups.

Again and again Weber refuses to see the 'true content' of history or its 'essence' in the ideal-types he develops. He warns repeatedly of the danger of hypostatizing ideal-types as the real, driving forces in history. When he speaks of the 'analytical accentuation of certain elements of reality' he means on the one hand that the ideal-types must be extracted from historical reality, and on the other, that a cosmos of ideational contexts, internally lacking in contradiction, is created by accentuation, to the point of creating a utopian situation. The fact that for ideal-types reality is never taken into consideration, makes them into an exclusively formal instrument for the intersubjective, discursive understanding of historical reality, while this instrument must have the attributes of logical consistency and inner non-contradiction.

At least on the textual basis of the 'objectivity' essay, ideal-types present this heuristic aid to understanding historical phenomena from the viewpoint of its cultural significance. In Weber's last phase, in his work on the first part of Economy and Society, we can see his efforts to found a universal historical sociology with the aid of ideal-typical concepts which would be valid across time. We encounter this intention, and particularly the strategy he put forward of a 'procedure of measuring distance' away from the absolute ends-means-rationality of Richtigkeitsrationalität when Weber first propounds the concept of Verstehen.

Both these positions—chronologically and in content separable from one another—led to the distinction between 'historical' and 'sociological' idealtypes. The former aimed more at the cultural determination of certain historical phenomena, and the latter had an atemporal, systematic character. From his own suggested 'model' of ideal-typical variants, Weber suggests a tripartite and four-part structure. The only clear point to emerge from this is that Weber in no way envisaged the concept of 'ideal-types' as unitary and this caused numerous contradictions in the interpretation controversy.

To summarize our discussion we can draw up the following five points:

1. The ideal-type is a genetic concept, i.e. it releases from a collection of attributes those that are regarded as originally essential for certain 'cultural meanings'. As such its context should be reconstructed in a 'pure' way.
2. The ideal-type is itself not a hypothesis, but it can indicate the direction for the formation of hypotheses. Thus it is not 'falsifiable' by checkingup on historical reality: a too restricted 'adequacy' to empirical circumstances and for a particular line of enquiry, however, compel the continual development of new ideal-typical constructions.
3. The ideal-type serves as a heuristic means to guide empirical research, while it formulates possible viewpoints for the interpretation of social action by oneself and others. A strategy should thereby be made possible which classifies the interminable, meaningless multiplicity of empirical data by reference to an ideational ('ideal') context. The usefulness of an ideal-typical construction is measured by its 'success' in helping understanding.
4. The ideal-type is used in the systematization of empirical-historical reality, in that its distance from the typified construction is 'measured' interpretatively. The ideal-type is a construction—but this construction is derived from reality and is constantly examined against reality, by using the 'imagination' and the nomological knowledge of the researcher. The continual reconstruction and new development of ideal-types should enable an approach to purely nomothetical and ideographical methods, and to purely causally explanatory and purely individualizing interpretive methods. It should also mediate one method via the other.
5. The results which are produced with the aid of the ideal-typical procedure for the explanation and interpretation of historical phenomena underpin a process of re-interpretation which is never-ending. The social sciences belong to those disciplines 'to which eternal youth is granted … to which the eternally onward flowing stream of culture perpetually brings new problems. At the very heart of their task lies not only the transciency of all ideal types but also at the same time the inevitability of new ones'. Here we must point out a principal hypothesis of this procedure: the success of the ideal-typical ordering of historical reality depends on the degree of concordance between the formation of types and concepts of the actors in the given social context, and the formation of types and concepts of the scientists who are investigating these contexts.

THE POSTULATE OF 'FREEDOM FROM VALUE-JUDGEMENT' (WERTURTEILSFREIHEIT)

The so-called 'value-judgement dispute' is an extremely difficult phenomenon to define in the history of science and cannot be reduced to a controversy in a special discipline about a specific, unambiguously localizable problem. The multiple problems which were fought over in this 'dispute' are not merely related to certain sciences like political economy or sociology but they engage with the basic determination of any scientific knowledge. As difficult as it is to determine the actual 'beginning' of this controversy, it is easy to assert that Weber's relevant works were the decisive points of contact for the discussion which has lasted until today particularly his essays "'Objectivity" in Social Science and Social Policy', 1904, 'The Meaning of "Ethical Neutrality" in Sociology and Economics', 1917, and the text of his lecture 'Science as a Vocation', 1919.

If the reception of The Protestant Ethic and the methodological concepts of Verstehen and the ideal-type were frequently the occasion for the creation and perpetuation of misunderstandings, Weber's conception of 'freedom from value-judgement' underwent the most thorough distortion through misunderstanding and trivialization. But this fact cannot be traced back merely to different 'interests', but equally to the extremely complex structure of the situation in which Weber formulated his position. For a comprehensive understanding, and thus for an exhaustive discussion, we must examine at least four contextual areas which partly intersect, namely

1. The philosophical background
2. The theoretical background
3. The organizational background
4. The position and political self-consciousness of German science at the turn of the century

Within the scope of [Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and Work] we can only give a very cursory survey of each area.

1 To reconstruct the philosophical background, what is important is the deep crisis in Europe's historical and social consciousness which took place during the twenty-five years before the First World War. In shorthand, this crisis is known as the 'crisis of historicism'. Despite considerable differences in position among the main participants in the argument at that time, particularly Hermann Cohen, Wilhelm Dilthey, Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch and Friedrich Meinecke, they shared a common denominator in their 'critique of positivism'. Initiated by a variety of shake-ups in the positivist conception of the world and of humanity in general—for example by Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Bergson, Baudelaire, Dostoevski and Proust—the fiction of a rationally ordered world was plunged into confusion, and the gulf between the world of being and the world of meaning was seen increasingly as unbridgeable. From this viewpoint, which was frequently clothed in the garb of Kulturkritik and cultural pessimism, the question emerged of whether a science of history or society would ever be possible. A few historians and sociologists were inclined to think that human subjectivity and irrationality would considerably restrict any science in its explanatory and prognostic value.

Some participants in the discussion of method at the turn of the century, particularly Dilthey, Windelband, Rickert, Meinecke and Troeltsch, who believed in a meaning of history, directed their efforts against this 'relativism' and pessimism. Moreover, this belief was frequently linked to a conviction in the basic rightness of the German politi cal development since 1870-1.

Precisely in order to avert relativism in all areas, these scientists sought an examination of the methodological and epistemo-theoretical foundations of the science of history. To understand Weber's position in this context, we need to understand two very different positions in this epistemological and theoretical discussion. First, the southwest German school of neo-Kantianism represented by Windelband and Rickert, and second, the position of Dilthey. Weber was fundamentally influenced by both groups, personally and theoretically. In part he took over their frameworks of questioning and reached, via an attempt at mediation between the opposing positions, his own orientation, which would become of considerable importance for the following debates—in spite of or even because of the many misunderstandings and fore-shortenings. A comprehensive understanding of Weber's position is not possible without knowledge of how these arguments progressed.

2 The theoretical background means those contexts of argument which dealt with the orientation of the German political economy in the last third of the nineteenth century. The representatives of 'classical' political economy, in particular Wilhelm Roscher, Bruno Hildebrand and Karl Knies as the so-called 'older historical school', had already, around 1850, tried to establish the basis for a historically oriented political economy, which was directed towards empirical science, in order to check the contemporary influence of the prevailing naturalistic and positivistic currents.

As a consequence of changes caused by political influences, particularly through an increased state intervention in economic policy, these concepts of the 'younger historical school' were taken up once again by their acknowledged leader, Gustav Schmoller. In particular the idea of having to include the historical dimension of economic processes was of crucial importance. The close connection of the 'younger school' with practical economic policy led to the institutionalization of the dialogue of science and politics in the Verein in 1872. We will be investigating this briefly in the next section.

During the dispute with the 'younger school', the eighties brought that discussion which has gone down in the history of German economic policy as the Methodenstreit and which can be classified by the two names of Gustav Schmoller and Carl Menger.

In his 1883 work Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften and der politischen ökonomie insbesondere, Menger differentiates the sciences into three groups: historical, theoretical and practical. Accordingly, the historical disciplines are directed towards the understanding of the individual, the theoretical disciplines towards extracting generalities from phenomena, and the practical disciplines are concerned with what should be, with what one must do to attain certain goals for people. In the theoretical mode of research that Menger ascribes to himself, he distinguishes between two variants: the empirical-realistic direction that wants to establish real types; and an exact direction that wants to set up strict laws, comparable to 'laws of nature'.

In the same year, Schmoller responded with an article entitled 'Zur Methodologie der Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften'. In it he emphasized the intrinsic value of the descriptive procedure, because with the aid of 'the descriptive experiences of all kinds, the classification of phenomena which improves the formation of concepts, the typical rows of phenomena and their context of causes can be more clearly recognized in their entire scope'. According to Schmoller, the progress of science did not lie in a further distillation of the precepts of the old dogmatism which have been investigated again and again. Whoever proceeded from hypotheses would only get hypothetical sentences to which one would then try to give the appearance of strict scientific method by using the adjective 'exact'.

Carl Menger felt personally attacked by Schmoller's critique and responded violently to it the same year. In all this it was largely ignored that from the beginning Menger had suggested a mediating position which amounted to acknowledging both positions, the theoretical and the historical. However, the contemporary controversies between 'positivism' and 'historicism', between 'natural sciences' and 'cultural, or rather, human sciences' forced the adoption of frequently simple, dichotomized polarizations. In any case, they effected a systematic reflection on the methodological foundations in all sciences, and particularly in disciplines which were not organized like the natural sciences.

Weber, who engaged with the Methodenstreit in the most intensive way once again took up his position as a mediator. He wanted to detach the controversy from its connection with problems of political economy alone, and to place it in the context of the discussion which we have described as the 'philosophical background'. Weber was influenced greatly by the debate over the relationship between the 'human sciences' and the 'natural sciences', as led by Windelband and Rickert, and this brought him to formulate his concept of a 'science of reality' (Wirklichkeitswissenschaft).

3 Both the philosophical as well as the theoretical background to Weber's concept of freedom from value-judgement meant discussions which were carried out largely in a literary way. Those discussions which were and are described as the actual 'value-judgement dispute' nevertheless found organizational 'stages' on which these debates were performed—especially the Verein, and for Weber in particular the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie.

After the turn of the century three 'fractions' of the Verein's membership, who were made up predominantly of academics, high-ranking civil servants, journalists, trade-unionists, bankers and entrepreneurs became roughly distinguishable. These were a 'left wing', the so-called 'academic socialists' (Kathedersozialisten), comprising Brentano, Sombart, Naumann, Harms and Max and Alfred Weber among others; a 'centre' of Schmoller, Gneist, Nasse and others; and a 'right wing' of Wagner, von Philippovich and others. At the Mannheim conference of 1905 on 'The relationship of the cartels to the state', the discussions became very heated at some of Schmoller's demands for the control of the cartels. These discussions provoked Schmoller to the point of threatening resignation, if the left wing—Naumann in particular—persisted in pursuing its 'materialistic demagogy'. In these initiatory, highly polemical arguments over the understanding of theory and method in the Verein, and indeed of the Verein itself, the left wing demanded that theory and method be made the objects of discussion, while the right wing wanted to prevent such discussions and saw the main task of the Verein as influencing practical social policy—because of which, the themes had to be of a 'practical nature'. Schmoller, in his role as integrator and mediator, strove to keep the Verein as a forum for the discussion and publicizing of science, which could, however, also influence practical social policy. Weber, meanwhile, still very much kept his distance from these affairs.

The 'value-judgement dispute' broke out in its totality at the Vienna conference of 1909, at which Eugen von Philippovich, Weber's predecessor in the Freiburg chair, and as representative of the 'Austrian School' gave the first purely scientific-theoretical paper in the history of the Verein, on 'The Essence of National Economic Productivity'. He presented a survey which charted the history of ideologies and raised the challenges which lie in the concept of national economic productivity. Sombart, Max Weber and Gottl von Ottlilienfeld criticized the scientific uselessness of the concept of productivity as it might hide proper evaluations, and particularly since it was increasingly mixed with the concept of 'national prosperity'. Weber began his vehement campaign against 'a mixture of science and value-judgement' and saw 'the work of the devil in the intermingling of prescriptive notions in scientific questions … work which has frequently richly provided for the Verein'. Von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, Spann, Goldscheid and Neurath spoke out against Weber's position (Tönnies being on his side) in the course of the lively debates. For reasons of Verein policy, they demanded, a fundamental discussion, both on the problematics of 'value-judgements' in the Verein' s proceedings, as well as on the economic character of the political economy, should be postponed until the 1911 sitting in Nuremburg. However, at this sitting, Weber's initial proposal was as follows: 'I would like to suggest that the question of whether we have to exclude value-judgements here or not, or whether they are justifiable in principle, and of how far their exclusion is practicable, be presented once by the Verein committee as a special issue on the agenda'.

In preparation for this special conference, a circular letter was sent out in 1912 at Weber's instigation to the committee members asking them to take up positions. Out of the fourteen authors of the published paper, Epstein, Eulenburg, Rohrbeck and Neurath adopted Weber's position; Hartmann, Wilbrandt, Schumpeter, Spann and Oldenberg turned out to be reconcilable with Weber's position, and only Goldscheid, Hesse, Oncken, Spranger and von Wiese took up more or less overt opposition. The committee meeting on 5 January 1914 from which the publicized positions took the lead and which fifty-two members attended, produced no result and brought the standpoints no closer together. Apart from Sombart, Weber could scarcely find any other advocates for his approach among the younger and middle generations.

The outbreak of the First World War did not completely interrupt the work of the Verein, but it did put an end to the value-judgement discussion. Weber revised his written position in 1912 and published the new version in 1917 in the journal Logos with the title 'The Meaning of "Ethical Neutrality" in Sociology and Economics'. That Weber was still willing to continue working in the Verein in spite of what had happened, is shown by his election to deputy chairman in September 1919.

The second organizational 'stage' on which the 'value-judgement dispute' was played out, and which we need to know about to understand Weber's position in more than a fragmentary way, was the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Society for Sociology), in the foundation of which Weber took a considerable, initiatory part in 1909. Precisely because of his experiences in the Verein, Weber tried to avoid the possible repetition of what were in his opinion unprofitable disagreements. To do this, he suggested on the occasion of his 'invitation' to found the Gesellschaft

The Gesellschaft should … have a purely objective, scientific character. It follows from this that any kind of political, socio-political, socio-ethical, or any other kind of propaganda for practical aims or ideals within or under the name of the Gesellschaft must be excluded. The Gesellschaft may only serve the research of facts and their contexts.

Weber's demand was preserved in paragraph one of the Society's statute, which said:

The aim [of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie] is to promote sociological knowledge by the arrangement of purely scientific investigations and enquiries, by the publication and support of purely scientific works and by the organization of German sociology conferences to take place periodically. It will give equal space to all scientific directions and methods of sociology and will reject the representation of any practical (ethical, religious, political, aesthetic etc.) goals.

The embittered controversies at the two initial sociology conferences in 1910 and 1912, particularly the arguments with Rudolf Goldscheid on the principle of freedom from value-judgement led to Weber's disappointment and resignation, and to his ultimately leaving the Gesellschaft in 1913. Weber saw himself as 'a Don Quixote of an allegedly unfeasible principle'.

4 These three backdrops to the so-called 'value-judgement debate' must be connected to the general position and the—particularly political—self-consciousness of German science in the years before the First World War, if we are to reach a comprehensive understanding from which to derive any adequate evaluation of Weber's position. Such a discussion can, in this book, only serve to highlight certain details.

If the Bismarck years brought stormy developments in the natural sciences to the German university system, these processes nevertheless did not effect any far-reaching identity-crisis in the human sciences. The dominant position of the historians was maintained and the established disciplines and their representatives, basically because of a prevailing liberal-nationalist attitude, kept a fundamental consensus with the political system. However, in time, currents emerged which were called Kulturkritik (critique of civilization) and 'cultural pessi mism', which began to doubt the legitimacy of the politi cal and social order, from the perspective of the 'social question'. The extremely popular writings of Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn, in particular, began to give space to a fundamental critique of the kind of 'false science' that could only confirm the facts, when by contrast the 'ultimate goal' of 'true science' was to formulate value-judgements. They saw something equally untrue in the 'objectivity' of science, 'like that modem humanism, which says that all human beings are of equal value.' Such demands for an evaluative science were thus not only 'a matter taken up by German youth—and a youth that was not spoiled, not badly educated, and not prejudiced' but between 1890 and 1914, such views spread more and more widely. George Hinzpeter, Wilhelm II's tutor, complained at the German state school conference in 1890 that 'personal, spiritual development' had once been considered as 'the highest goal worth aiming at'.

Meanwhile, however, education was merely regarded as 'the means to successful participation in the wild struggle for existence'. In 1902, Friedrich Paulsen stated that the task for German universities was to represent 'in their entirety something like the public conscience of the people with a view to good and evil in politics'.

Such statements, which amounted to demands to create, with the support of the German universities, a conflict-free, ideologically identical society out of German Wilhelminian life were not only taken from instances of (educational) policy, but fell on fertile ground in the universities themselves as can be seen in the activities of the Euken-Bund.

The four contextual areas we have sketched outline the background against which Weber tried to determine his own position. Since these debates stretched across the period from 1890 to 1920, a knowledge of all relevant works in which he discussed the problem of 'values' and 'evaluations' is vital for an exact representation of Weber's position. We shall leave out the modifications of his position in the course of discussion and will try to elaborate the general arguments.

As a way in, we can look at the interpretations of Weber's approach which have been current until today. Accordingly, Weber's demand attests to a 'freedom from value-judgement' for the (social) sciences:

Social scientists must refrain from all evaluating statements, either all the time, or in the practice of their profession, or when they publish the results of their work.

Social scientists must not take on any kind of aesthetic or moral evaluations; 'evaluations' in the sense of distinguishing between true and false are allowed.

Social scientists must not be politically active.

All conceivable ethical and political absolute values, like freedom, equality, and justice are of equal value; science must therefore not accord a higher rank to one over another.

Values and evaluations of social actors are not the subject of the social sciences.

Weber's approach is covered by none of these interpretations. Basically it is divided into two mutually detachable arguments: (1) the demand for 'freedom from valuejudgement' (Werturteilsfreiheit) in the narrow sense; and (2) the problem of 'relevance to values' (Wertbeziehung).

The demand for 'freedom from value-judgement' in the narrow sense

On the first level, Weber's demand for freedom from value-judgement meant

the intrinsically simple demand that the investigator and teacher should keep unconditionally separate the establishment of empirical facts (including the 'value oriented' conduct of the empirical individual whom he is investigating) and his own practical evaluations, i.e. his evaluation of these facts as satisfactory or unsatisfactory … These two things are logically different and to deal with them as though they were the same represents a confusion of entirely heterogeneous problems.

This 'postulate … which they often misunderstand so gravely' and which caused 'unending misunderstanding' and the 'completely sterile dispute', was set up by Weber as a reference to the 'professorial prophecy' which was not uncommon in his time. With explicit reference to university teachers like Treitschke, Theodor Mommsen and Schmoller, Weber condemns the propagation of practical-political ideals in the lecture hall from the lectern, and demands as the 'absolute minimum', as 'a precept of intellectual honesty', the suppression of personal prophecy and the announcement of a 'Weltanschauung'.

Today the student should obtain, from his teacher in the lecture hall, the capacity: (1) to fulfill a given task in a workmanlike fashion; (2) definitely to recognize facts, even those which may be personally uncomfortable, and to distinguish them from his own evaluations; (3) to subordinate himself to his task and to repress the impulse to exhibit his personal tastes or other sentiments unnecessarily.

Only in this way could the 'self-importance', the 'fashionable "cult of the personality" [in] the throne, public office or the professorial chair' which could prejudice the matter, be combatted.

An unprecedented situation exists when a large number of officially accredited prophets do not do their preaching on the streets, or in churches or other public places or in sectarian conventicles, but rather feel themselves competent to enunciate their evaluations on ultimate questions 'in the name of science' in governmentally privileged lecture halls in which they are neither controlled, checked by discussion, nor subject to contradiction.

Weber expressly emphasizes that the 'distinction between empirical statements of fact and value-judgements' which he demands, is difficult and even that he himself has offended against this distinction. Even so, Weber does not dispute the fact that the choice of theme and the selection of subject matter already involves 'evaluations'. Moreover, he stresses that this does not imply 'that empirical science cannot treat "subjective" evaluations as the subject matter of its analysis—(although sociology depend[s] on the contrary assumption)'.

Thus on the 'first level' of Weber's postulate of 'freedom from value-judgement' in science, he asserts that 'evaluations', in the sense of assessments as 'objectionable' or 'approvable', must be separated from statements of empirical facts and circumstances. If a scientist cannot or will not forgo such an evaluation, he must separate his personal standpoint, for which he may not claim any scientific legitimation, from the description of facts, both with respect to his discourse partners and with respect to himself. Science for Weber is a 'professionally run "vocation" … in the service of the self-consciousness and awareness of factual contexts, and not a gift of grace for seers and prophets, bestowing cures and revelations, or an element of the thoughts of sages and philosophers on the meaning of the world'.

The problem of 'relevance to values'

Weber's essential, deep concern goes far beyond what we have just looked at and touches a basic problematic in all sciences, but particularly in all social sciences. This is a question of the 'relevance' and relation of the results of scientific research to the 'values' of the researcher.

Because Weber stresses that the evaluations that lie at the heart of the actions of the individual—whether scientist or the observed acting subject—must not be accepted as 'fact', but can be treated 'as the object of scientific criticism', the question emerges of how empirical disciplines based on the science of experience can settle this task. It is thus a matter of investigating each 'evaluation' with respect to its 'individual social [and historical] conditions', which for Weber can only be possible through an understanding explanation (verstehendes Erklären). This has

high scientific importance: (1) for purposes of an empirical causal analysis which attempts to establish the really decisive motives of human actions; and (2) for the communication of really divergent evaluations when one is discussing with a person who really or apparently has different evaluations from one's self.

In determining this task Weber sees that

the real significance of a discussion of evaluations lies in its contribution to the understanding of what one's opponent—or one's self—really means—i.e., in understanding the evaluations which really and not merely allegedly separate the discussants and consequently in enabling one to take up a position with reference to this value.

Because the 'understanding' (Verstehen) of another's evaluations does not mean its approval, a scientific investigation of each value which might possibly collide with another becomes both possible and necessary.

Although Weber inclines towards and proceeds from an acknowledgement of a 'polytheism' of ultimate values, and that between values 'it is really a question not only of alternatives between values but of an irreconcilable death-struggle, like that between "God" and the "Devil"' (and here there can be no relative measures or compromises), Weber, representing the viewpoint of a 'collision of values', resists the insinuation of 'relativism' with great resolve.

To be able to deal with values and evaluations in an empirical way, Weber puts forward four functions for a scientifically productive 'discussion of value-judgements':

1. The elaboration and explication of the ultimate, internally 'consistent' value-axioms, from which the divergent attitudes are derived …
2. The deduction of 'implications' (for those accepting certain value-judgements) which follow from certain irreducible value-axioms, when the practical evaluation of factual situations is based on these axioms alone …
3. The determination of the factual consequences which the realization of a certain practical evaluation must have … Finally:
4. the uncovering of new axioms (and the postulates to be drawn from them) which the proponent of a practical postulate did not take into consideration …

Such a method of researching 'value-judgements' which constructs ideal-types, in which the analysis of ideas of value, the specification of suitable means and combinations of means for chosen purposes ('values'), the assessment of prospects for success, the assertion of the secondary effects of the available means, the estimation of the 'costs' of the sought-after values and the estimation of the compatibility (in a logical as well as a practical sense) of different values which lie at its centre—such a method displays its 'relevance' to values. With reference to Rickert, Weber uses the concept of 'relevance to values', meaning 'the philosophical interpretation of that specifically scientific "interest" which determines the selection of a given subject matter and the problems of an empirical analysis'. This concept, which is extremely important for the sociology of science, points to the fact that 'cultural (i.e., evaluative) interests give purely scientific work its direction'.

Here, Weber uses again the concept which he formulated in 1904: 'epistemological interest' (Erkenntnisinteresse). Then, he was concerned to emphasize the constructedness of a certain perspective from which one could approach the particular object under investigation. He wrote on his own 'socio-economic' perspective:

The quality of an event as a socio-economic phenomenon is not something which is 'objectively' attached to the event. Rather it is determined by the direction of our epistemological interest, as it emerges from the specific cultural meaning which we attribute to the event concerned in the individual case.

If the (social) scientist wants to approach his or her object of investigation, he or she must do it from the perspective of certain values which the surrounding culture offers. Without such a value-loaded perspective, reality remains an unordered chaos of the multiplicity and contradiction of facts and phenomena. Already, the infinite complexity of reality makes a simple 'description' of events impossible. If, in scientific knowledge, it is a question of discovering the contexts of causation, one needs a knowledge-motivated interest from which one can derive a desire to 'understand' and 'explain' social and historical reality. The task of the cultural sciences, among which sociology numbers, is, according to Weber, to research the reality and operation of 'meaning' and 'significance'. There is no possibility of 'objective' treatment for this task, but merely a research selection by means of 'value-ideas', in which 'culture' is regarded as a particular case.

From the standpoint of the human being, 'culture' is a finite section of the senseless infinity of world events, furnished with meaning and sense … A transcendental precondition of any cultural science is not that we find a certain 'culture', or even any 'culture' valuable, but that we are cultural beings, gifted with the capacity and the will to take up a conscious position with regard to the world and to give it a meaning. Whatever this meaning may be, it will lead us to judge certain phenomena of human interaction in life on the basis of this meaning, and to take up a position in the face of it which is (positively or negatively) significant.

'Epistemological interest' and 'value ideas' establish the 'relevance to values' between the researcher and the object of research, and are of great importance for the results of the research. Which 'value ideas' are selected as determining research and knowledge is not a subjective, arbitrary matter for the individual scientist.

What becomes the object of the investigation and how far this investigation stretches into the infinity of causal relationships is determined by the value-ideas which govern the researcher and his epoch … For scientific truth is only that which desires to be valid for everyone who wants the truth.

This intersubjectively determined and controlled choice of research ideas and interests is the basis for a continuing process of change. With the change in 'cultural problems', i.e. in the 'dominant value-ideas', the points of view by which research is carried out are also changing. This amounts to the 'eternal youth' of all historical disciplines 'to which the eternally progressing stream of culture supplies continually new problems'.

If the 'starting points' of the cultural sciences remain 'variable far into the boundless future', there is however, 'progress' in scientific-cultural research. It lies in a continual process of formation and reformation in scientific concepts, i.e. the 'ideal-types' with which the inexhaustible reality must be grasped.

The history of the sciences of social life is and remains a continual fluctuation between the attempt to order facts ideationally through the formation of concepts … and the formation of concepts from scratch … It is not the incorrectness of the attempt to form conceptual systems in the first place which is expressed here, but the fact that in the sciences of human culture the formation of concepts depends on the posing of the problems, and that the latter is altered alongside the content of culture itself. The relationship of concept and conceptualized in the cultural sciences makes the transitoriness of every such synthesis unavoidable.

To emphasize intersubjective restraint and the control of social-scientific research and to postulate an accumulation of conceptual knowledge changes nothing in the basic transitoriness and fluctuation of all social-scientific 'epistemology'. Decades before the formulation of the concept of 'paradigmatic change' in the sociology of science, Weber recognized the fundamental importance of fixing knowledge to 'value-ideas' and 'epistemological interests', and of their permanent 'revolutionizing'.

But at some time or another the complexion changes: the significance of unreflectedly realized viewpoints becomes uncertain, and one loses one's way in the growing darkness. The light of the great cultural problems has moved on. Then science too prepares itself to change its position and its conceptual apparatus and to look down from the heights of ideation on to the stream of activity.