The Ideal Type as a Max Weber’s Separate Thinking Structure

Abstract

The article considers the ‘ideal type’ as a separate mental construct that was used by various sociologists in order to structure the empirical reality to which their scientific interest was directed. The phrase ‘ideal type’ is a mysterious phenomenon of Weber’s methodology. You can talk about it only by using ‘quotation marks’. This word is clearly not up to the status of a scientific term, since Weber did not offer any definitive definition of the ‘ideal type’. He offered only some descriptions or examples of how an ‘ideal type’ might ‘work’ in a particular case.