Max Weber's Interpretive Sociology, the Understanding of Actions and Motives, and a Weberian View of Man

Weber's interpretive sociology requires the understanding of motives, affectual states, and actions. These are understandable because they themselves represent or embody interpretations. The Weberian statements are shown to be compatible with a conception of the human individual as a being who interprets subjective experiences in terms of cultural categories and guides his conduct by such interpretations.     

Type Methodology and Type Myth: Some Antecedents of Max Weber's Approach*

The methodological proposals of Windelband, Knies, Schmoller, Menger, Simmel, Dilthey and Rickert are surveyed and compared. Two difficulties in the writings are identified: the strict division which is urged (or accepted) between science and history, and the tendency to treat societies as “social wholes,” which have an autonomous existence and are self-developing.     

Max Weber's Science of Composition

Starting from the recently translated biography of Max Weber by Joachim Radkau, this essay re‐evaluates Weber's “science of reality” in relation to his personality, the cultural context of the early twentieth century, and the position of Weber's thought in the sociological canon. The argument progresses through sequentially enlarged analyses, which propose that Weber's general style of thinking is a type of dissonant composition that places emphasis on the many relationships between cultural reality and the concepts derived from it, and not as much on its content. The logic of such a compositional approach to reality is based on similar principles found in sound and music, which Weber in fact uses in a more latent as well as more active form, to pursue his aim of a style of thinking as “aesthetics of dissonance”. The latter is a sort of “methodological wedge” that pries open the many layers of reality. As such, Weber's “science of reality” is an early “classical” example of a recent and much needed call for a social science as the “art of listening”.     

Chronic Disease and Applied Sociology: An Essay in Personalized Sociology*

This essay represents an attempt to combine personal experience and general sociological knowledge in formulating (1) an analytic model of disease and (2) a definition of chronic disease that would help us better understand the trials and tribulations of chronically diseased persons as they cope with their environments. These objectives are achieved but their heuristic value as analytic tools or their utility for pragmatic intervention requires amplification and demonstration. The ideas and themes discussed are viewed as important considerations fur applied sociological pursuits, particularly in medical sociology, but also have broader implications for sociology in general.     

Nationalism, Charisma, and Plebiscitary Leadership: The Problem of Democratization in Max Weber's Political Sociology

Max Weber has typically been regarded as a central thinker in the liberal tradition of social analysis. At the same time, critics have long noted how his democratic commitments were compromised by his nationalism. Drawing on existing criticism, I discuss the importance of charismatic leadership in Weber's thought and its implications for his understanding of the process of democratization. Reconstructing core concepts in Weber's political thought, I analyze how Weber's concept of plebiscitarian leadership unites charismatic domination with nationalism and skepticism concerning effective democratic politics. I show how Weber's concept of plebiscitarian rule grew from deeply held political values and his engagement with German politics. I then generate propositions regarding the problem of democratization in regime transitions and apply them to contemporary charismatic leaders and ethno-nationalist mobilization in post-Communist transitions. I argue that as much as it anticipates the central dilemma of charismatic solutions to political crisis, Weber's thought favors nationalist and plebiscitarian responses to democratization that have been largely discredited by historical experience.     

Some Reflections on the Crisis in Sociology*

Claims that sociology must be divided into closed ideological and paradigmatic camps are critically examined. Convergences among the major analytical approaches are considered and possible explanations explored.     

韦伯关于中国文化论述的再思考

本文针对韦伯的《中国的宗教:儒教和道教》一书中西文化比较研究中的得失提出了个人的一些管见,指出由于时代的局限,韦伯像他那个时代的大多数欧洲思想家一样具有欧洲中心论的思想倾向,这导致他在论述包括中国宗教在内的东方宗教时显露出极高的睿智和洞见,同时也含有许多曲解和误读。譬如,他判定道教是纯粹的非理性,进而把包括儒释道三家学说在内的东方宗教界定为神秘主义类型,并与西方的禁欲主义宗教—文化类型对列成犄角之势,构成了韦伯视野中的东西方文化—历史比较研究的基本格局。文章认为韦伯对中国文化的这些见解既和他的比较研究的理想类型有关,也与他思想深处源于古希腊的理性哲学和中古希伯来的信仰意识所奠定的欧洲文化统一性具有深刻的联系。     

Durkheim's Response to Spencer: An Essay Toward Historicism in the Historiography of Sociology*

Merton has made an important distinction between the “history” any “systematics” of sociological theory, and outlined the valuable functions of the former. Most histories of sociology, however, have been “presetist” or “Whiggish” in perspective; we propose an “historicist” alternative. Within this perspective, Durkheim's response to Spencer is analyzed in three areas: (1) the relation between “individual” and “society;” (2) evolution and social change; and (3) the scope and method of sociology. In these areas, Durkheim's critical style reveals a repetitive theme which is termed “inversion.” The essay concludes by re-affirming Merton's distinction and urging that the “historicist” perspective is the most valid and useful approach to the history of sociology.     

Styles of Intellectualism in Weber's Historical Sociology

The prevailing concept of the intellectual in contemporary sociology is an ideal type derived from Weber. Intellectuals are understood as politically disinterested, socially unattached individuals, who in their subjective intentions pursue knowledge for its own sake. Weber's ideal type thus provides the action framework for a sociology of knowledge that has been used as a direct counterclaim to Marxist theories of ideology. The author challenges this position, arguing that Weber's sociology of religion embraces important elements of a Marxist theory of ideology and thus presents an ambivalent concept of the intellectual that points toward a historicist sociology of knowledge.     

Max Weber, Interpretive Sociology, and the Sense of Historical Science: a Positivistic Conception of Verstehen

Weber's advocacy of understanding and an interpretive sociology is shown to be a consequence of the anthropological premises of his theory of concept formation in history. These premises, which are implied in his Rickertian conception of value-relevance as the foundation of historical knowledge, are that men are interested in understandable historical developments because of their practical involvement in society—they rely on historical knowledge in their efforts to make sense out of the present. While acknowledging this indispensable function of history Weber insists, however, that historical knowledge can strictly justify neither the meaning given to the present nor man's conduct in practical affairs. This is why, in opposition to the mainstream of the Verstehen tradition, he argues against a valuing historical and social science. Yet this separation of values and facts does not entail an option for an irrational decisionism in value matters. On the contrary, it provides the very basis for their rational discussion. Those who impute to Weber the position that empirical knowledge has nothing to contribute to a social praxis but instrumental recommendations do not realize that this makes nonsense of his justification of historical knowledge.