Some Philosophical Implications of Max Weber's Methodology

Abstract

SINCE Max Weber died seventeen years ago, the fundamental problematics of the social sciences have moved more and more into the LO focus of philosophical discussion. This, no doubt, is partly due to the ever widening interest in sociology and related fields. But seldom, if ever, has the discussion regained the depth of Max Weber's profound insights into the foundations of our historical and social knowledge. Although all of his work on this subject was cast in the same mold of thought, much of it is scattered in various polemics against contemporary authors-mostly writers productive in the fields whose principles were under discussion. These polemic essays, and some of original systematic purpose, were collected in the Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Wissenschaftslehre' and published in this form posthumously. Only slowly and hesitatingly has the guild of professional philosophers entered into the treasure of Weber's methodological views contained in this volume and his other writings. Often enough it seems that what is still being said on such issues as the evaluating procedure and causal imputation in the social sciences would hardly be said if Max Weber's penetrating analyses were more generally known and understood. From this viewpoint a work such as Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre by Alexander von Schelting2 must be highly welcomed. For this author undertakes to interpret Max Weber's epistemological and methodological views in a more systematic and concentrated form than they are presented in Weber's own work. Thus the essential problems subsisting in Weber's position are set in relief as explicitly as may be desired, and the discussion is opened up for the further analysis of their philosophical bearings. This venture appears to be justified in the light of Weber's own view of the nature of all scientific enterprise, which, according to him, is just this: to be forever revisable and at the same time responsible for its own realignment with new discoveries in method and fact. Von Schelting's work, however, reaches beyond a mere interpretation of Weber's methodology. Indeed, the problem of causal imputation in history, as seen by Weber, and an exposition of the categories of "understanding," or knowledge of the subjective modes of human behavior and experience (including the