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Max Weber: Methods and the Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

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Abstract

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Notes Critiques
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1974

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References

(1) The main contributions are in Stammer, O. (ed.), Max Weber and Sociology Today (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1971)Google Scholar.

(2) Weber, M., Economy and Society, 3 vols. (New York, Bedminster Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Id.Économie et société, vol. I (Paris, Plon, 1971).

(3) Bendix, R. and Roth, G., Scholarship and Partisanship: essays on Max Weber (Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Eldridge, J.E.T. (ed.), Max Weber: the interpretation of social reality (London, M. Joseph, 1971)Google Scholar; Sahay, A. (ed.), Max Weber and Modern Sociology (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971)Google Scholar; Wrong, D. (ed.), Max Weber (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1970)Google Scholar.

(4) Bruun, H.H., Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology (Copenhagen, Munksgaard, 1972)Google Scholar; Prades, J.A., La sociologie de la religion chez Max Weber (Louvain/Paris, éditions Nauwelaerts, 1966)Google Scholar; Runciman, W.G., A Critique of Max Weber's Philosophy of Social Science (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

(5) Bosse, H., Marx, Weber, Troeltsch (Munich, Kaiser & Griinewald Verlag, 1970)Google Scholar; Freund, J., The Sociology of Max Weber (London, Allen Lane, 1968)Google Scholar; Lachmann, L.M., The Legacy of Max Weber (London, Heinemann, 1970)Google Scholar; Weyembergh, M., Le voluntarisme rationnel de Max Weber (Bruxelles, Palais des Academies, 1971)Google Scholar.

(6) Mitzman, A., The Iron Cage: an historical interpretation of Max Weber (New York, Knopf, 1970)Google Scholar; Ringer, Fritz K., The Decline of the German Mandavins: the German academic community 1890–1933 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

(7) See especially Löwith, K., Weber, Max und Marx, Karl, Archiv filr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, LXVII (1932Google Scholar) partly trans, in WRONG (ed.), op. cit.; Gerth, H.H. and Mills, C.W., From Max Weber (London 1948)Google Scholar, Introduction; Flei-Schmann, E., De Weber à Nietzsche, Archives européennes de sociologie, V (1964) 238Google Scholar; W. MOMMSEN, Max Weber's Political Sociology and his Philosophy of World History, in WRONG (ed.) op. cit.; BENDIX and ROTH, op. cit. chs. XII and XIV; and Giddens, A., Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber (London, Macmillan, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(8) Tenbruck, F.H., Die Genesis der Methodologie Max Webers, Kölner Zeit-schrift für Soziologie, XI (1959) 573630Google Scholar; Jaspers, K., Philosophische Autobiographic (Munich 1960)Google Scholar, cited by Prades, , op. cit. p. 94 nGoogle Scholar.

(9) Bruun, , op. cit. pp. 4950Google Scholar.

(10) Weyembergh, , op. cit. p. 151, n. 2Google Scholar.

(11) Tenbruck, , op. cit. p. 625Google Scholar.

(12) J. REX, Typology and Objectivity: a comment on Weber's four sociological methods, in SAHAY (ed.), op. cit.

(13) Hughes, H.S., Consciousness and Society (London 1959), pp. 301–14,324–5, 329Google Scholar.

(14) Cf. Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London 1930) PP. 151–3, 254, n. 170Google Scholar.

(15) The main exception is Bendix, in Max Weber, an Intellectual Portrait (New York 1960), pp. 88–9Google Scholar, which also shows how a sociological approach was foreshadowed in Weber's early study of how institutional functioning is related to social status in stock exchanges. (Cf. also Weyembergh, , op. cit. pp. 113–4Google Scholar). In his fascinating comparative study: Japan and the Protestant Ethic (Bbndix and Roth, op. cit., ch. x), Bendix re-emphasizes the cultural and psychological dimensions, however.

(16) See Walzer, M., The Revolution of the Saints (London 1966) especially p. 312Google Scholar.

(17) Gerth, and Mills, , op. cit. p. 321Google Scholar.

(18) Loc. cit.

(19) Bruun, , op. cit. pp. 206–7Google Scholar.

(20) Runciman, , op. cit. p. 9 nGoogle Scholar.

(21) Bruun, , op. cit. p. 210 nGoogle Scholar. Weyem-Bergh, also points out (op. cit. p. 251 n.)Google Scholar that Jellinek changed his term from Dutch schnittstypus in the first edition of Allgemeine Staatslehre, in 1900, to empirischer Typus in the third edition of 1914. In a footnote to this edition he also assimilated this to Weber's ideal type (Allgemeine Staatslehre (Berlin 1914), p. 40.Google Scholar) See also the discussion of Jellinek's general influence on Weber in Bendix, and Roth, , op. cit. pp. 260–5 and 308–10Google Scholar.

(22) Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action (New York 1937) p. 602Google Scholar. For Weber's confusion between concepts and statements, see Rudner, R., Philosophy of Social Science (Englewood Cliffs 1966), p. 55Google Scholar.

(23) Weber, M., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen 1951) (hereafter Wissenschaftslehre), p. 130Google Scholar.

(24) Weber, M., The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York 1949) (here-after Methodology), p. 100Google Scholar.

(25) Loc. cit. I have varied the translation to fit what I take to be Weber's meaning, The German text is slightly ambiguous. (Cf. Wissensckaftslehre, p. 201).

(26) Methodology, p. 141.

(27) Bendix, and Roth, , op. cit. p. 39Google Scholar.

(28) Methodology, pp. 93–4, 100–1.

(29) Ibid. p. 101.

(30) Ibid. p. 100.

(31) Ibid. pp. 93, 96, 90.

(32) Ibid. pp. 77, 79.

(33) Ibid. p. 101.

(34) Bedeutung is another of Weber's multipurpose terms, thanks to his habit of often using it unqualified by ‘cultural’, ‘causal’ etc. as though it had some intrinsic force. Bruun notes its connection with what he calls “the rather obscure expressions ‘genetischerBegriff’ and ‘genetische Defimition’” (op. cit. p. 204). The obscurity is somewhat dispelled by referring to Cassirer's discussion of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century “theory of the genetic or causal definition”, which Douglas cites in his critique of Durkheim, but which is no less illuminating in regard to Weber. See Cassirer, , The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston 1951), p. 253 sqq.Google Scholar, and Douglas, J.D., The Social Meanings of Suicide (Princeton 1967), pp. 2933Google Scholar.

(35) Cf. Parsons, , op. cit. p. 618Google Scholar: “It is impossible to work out a systematic classification of ideal types without develop ing at the same time, at least implicitly, a more general theoretical system”.

(36) Weber, M., Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York 1947) (hereafter Theory), p. 110Google Scholar.

(37) See the discussion in Rudner, op. cit. ch. III.

(38) Theory, p. 110.

(39) Cf. Rudner, , op. cit. pp. 32–5Google Scholar.

(40) Theory, p. 325.

(41) This abstraction may or may not extend to meanings which incorporate spatio-temporal considerations into structure, depending on the kinds and levels of abstraction aimed at. Examples of structural terms in Weber which include temporal references are ‘authority’ and ‘capital accounting’.

(42) Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action (New York 1937) pp. 615–6Google Scholar.

(43) Cf. Weber's use of “occidental/oriental” and “medieval/modern”.

(44) Marx, K., Capital (London 1970), Vol. I, p. 8 (Preface to the first German edition)Google Scholar.

(45) In Gerth and Mills, op. cit. ch. XIII.

(46) See (e.g.) Bruun, on “dialectical value-analysis” (op. cit. p. 113)Google Scholar and Beroh's, Weyem- discussion of Weber's sociology of religion (op. cit. pp. 275 sqq.)Google Scholar.

(47) Theory, p. 100 n.

(48) Lazarsfeld, P. and Oberschall, A., Max Weber and Empirical Social Research, American Sociological Review, XXX (1965)Google Scholar.

(49) Wrong, (ed.), op. cit. p. 25Google Scholar.

(50) Loc. cit.

(51) Freund, , op. cit. p. 118Google Scholar.

(52) By Fhiedrich, C.J., in Merton, R.K., Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe 1952), p. 30Google Scholar, and elsewhere.

(53) Bruun, , op. cit. p. 103 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(54) Ibid. pp. 53–4.

(55) Runciman, , op. cit. p. 31Google Scholar (Cf. Bendix, and Roth, , op. cit. pp. 282–4Google Scholar).

(56) Ibid. p. 68.

(57) Ibid. p. 72.

(58) Ibid. p. 30.

(59) See Lukes, S., Individualism (Oxford 1973) ch. xvnGoogle Scholar, and Lukes'review of Runciman's Sociology in its Place and Other Essays in Sociology, VI (1972), pp. 156–9Google Scholar.

(60) Theory, p. 88.

(61) See, for instance, Wolff, K.H. (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Glencoe 1950) pp. 1621Google Scholar.

(62) Hobbes, T., The Leviathan (Oxford 1965) p. 123Google Scholar.

(63) Theory, p. 107.

(64) Theory, p. 339.

(65) Runciman, , op. cit. p. 43Google Scholar.

(66) Theory, p. 94; Cf. Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 93 sqq. and Simmel, G., Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (Munich 1923), pp. 35 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(67) Theory, p. 95.

(68) Runciman, , op. cit. p. 43Google Scholar.

(69) Theory, pp. 15–17.

(70) Runciman, , op. cit. p. 67Google Scholar.

(71) Runciman, , op. cit. p. 70Google Scholar.

(72) Postan, M.M., The Famulus (Eco-nomic History Review Supplements, No. 2, London, n.d.), p. 36Google Scholar.

(73) Postan, , op. cit., p. p37Google Scholar.

(74) It is sometimes forgotten that even demographic processes, for example, can only be identified by means of information gathered and recorded in terms of collective meanings—in this case, often widely transcultural meanings.

(75) It is noteworthy that Parsons carried subjective reference over into his “action schema” for Weberian reasons: unless “normative elements” are thought of as pre-existing in the mind of the actor “they can become accessible to an observ er […] only through realisation, which precludes any analysis of their causal relation to action”. (Parsons, T., Structure of Social Action, p. 733Google Scholar). But they are pre cisely normative ‘elements’ of the action, and what is to be investigated is causal relations between this action, defined in terms of its elements, and others.

(76) See the discussion by Roth, Political Critiques of Max Weber, in Bendix and Roth, op. cit. ch. in, and in Wrong, op. cit. ch. xi.

(77) Wrong, op. cit. ch. IV. (I owe the phrase “stressful unity” to Reinhard Ben dix; and ‘quaquaversal’, in this kind of context, to Rodney Needham).

(78) Weyembergh, , op. cit. p. 480Google Scholar.

(79) Mitzman, , op. cit. p. 168Google Scholar.

(80) Gerth, and Mills, , op. cit. p. 11Google Scholar.

(81) Ibid. p. 132.

(82) Mitzman, , op. cit. p. 156Google Scholar.

(83) Auden, W.H., In Memory of Sigmund Freud, Collected Shorter Poems (London 1950)Google Scholar.

(84) Mitzman, , op. cit. p. 3Google Scholar.

(85) Ibid. pp. 4, 7–10, 146.

(86) Aron, R., Les étapes de la pense'e sociologique (Paris 1967)Google Scholar, transl. by Ho-Ward, R. and Weaver, H., as Main Currents of Sociological Thought (London 1968), Vol. II, p. 2Google Scholar.

(87) Ringer, , op. cit. p. 116Google Scholar.

(88) Methodology, p. 72.