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One of the most outstanding intellectual achievements in the history of classical thought in social sciences which have remained influential up until today are undoubtedly associated with the name of Max Weber. Through a detailed text analysis and a conceptual mapping of the logic of the argumentation, this paper sets out to offer a profound insight into the classical German sociologist's approach to science, both "early" (about 1903/4) and "late" (post-1913), in terms of some fundamental matters of epistemology and methodology. The first part of this paper investigates social economics in terms of its theoretical and methodological foundations and applicability, while the second part looks at interpretive sociology from the same perspectives, with an emphasis on the differences between the two approaches. We argue that Weber's dualist methodological attitude became explicit and dominant in his later writings. In addition, as he brought in focus the theory of social action, he not only became an explicit proponent of methodological individualism, but he also revisited and specified the logic and role of "causal explanation" and "interpretation". Interpretive sociology no longer seeks a causal explanation for individual historical events by applying nomological knowledge, but instead commits itself to finding "causally adequate" explanation for the course and consequences of different types of social actions. Interpretation, in turn, no longer means an analysis of effects concerning the cultural significance of individual historical events in a special sense, but an interpretive understanding of various types of social actions, rational or "irrational", directly or in a motivation-like manner. The paper concludes with a summary designed to highlight key legacies of Weber's oeuvre that have remained valid and valuable for any analytical and empirical research in sociology.
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Only a few writers have attempted to construct a comprehensive philosophy of social science, and of these weber is the most relevant to the present. the structure of his conception places him in a close relationship to donald davidson. the basic reasoning of davidson on action explanation, anomalous monism, and the impossibility of a 'serious science'of psychology is paralleled in weber.
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American Journal of Economics and Sociology
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Rudolf von Ihering was the leading German philosopher of law of the nineteenth century. He was also a major source of Weber’s more famous sociological definitions of action. Characteristically, Weber transformed material he found: in this case Ihering attempt to reconcile the causaland teleological aspects of action. In Ihering’s hands these become, respectively, the external and internal moments of action, or intentional thought and the factual consequences of action. For Weber they are made into epistemic aspects of action, the causal and the meaningful, each of which is essential to an account of action, but which are logically and epistemically distinct. Ihering thought purposes were the products of underlying interests, but included ‘ideal’ interests in this category. Weber radicalized this by expanding the category and making it historically central. This radicalization bears on rational choice theory: if ideal interests have a large historical role independent of material int.
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One of the central problems of sociological theory has always been to demarcate the social domain of reality and to thereby provide sociological research with its own distinctive topic. Because the social domain is created and sustained by human actions, sociology’s classical theorists have naturally been at pains to understand how action can come to acquire a social character. But sharing the question “what is action?” does not mean that we should force their different answers into an artificial unity in the mode of standard philosophies of action. Though one often speaks of the action-theoretical approach in sociology, clearly the notion of action in the sociological classics is not as homogeneous as it may seem. Far from being unsystematic or contingent, the meaning of action is nevertheless too widespread and “polyphonic” to be restricted to one distinct and consistent approach. Current and contemporary theories would provide further evidence. Even theorists who do not call themselves “action theorists” at all, like Bourdieu or Luhmann, cannot avoid considering different notions of action, whether for apologetic or critical reasons. Thus, talk of the “action- theory”-approach in general and its alleged counterparts (like “systems theory” or “structuralism”) has to be treated cautiously. Nevertheless, we think that the classical social theorists share much in common that sets them apart from most philosophers of action and allows for a systematic comparison of the action- theoretical alternatives they offer. First, they do not confine the matter of action to the more or less metaphysical distinction between what is action and what is not; nor do they reduce action to an “exercise of reason” in the Kantian mode. Instead, they treat action and its sociality as practical problems that emerge in the course of life, such as when actors find it difficult to understand one another or experience resistances and constraints. In other words: rather than deal with the question, “what ontological criteria must a behavior meet to count as ‘an action’?” they instead elaborate on the fact that acting and/or activity in daily life takes place under “imperfect” conditions of time pressure, sympathy, dependency, power, role-taking, drives, interests, solidarity. “Action” and “actor” are results, often contested, of dealing with these imperfect conditions. The “idealized rational actor” forecloses analysis of these conditions from the start; furthermore, breaking down these complex social entanglements to a handy difference between “reason” or “instinct” – as we come across in e.g. Korsgaard – is also not an option the sociological “classics” took into consideration. What is more, the classical sociologists articulated “thick” historic examples to show that “action” and “agency” are interweaved with social institutions, habits, values and forms. The analyses of this interpenetration of action and sociality they undertook go much deeper than simply taking note that some, mostly self-evident, process of socialization shapes the conditions of agency and identity. For our protagonists, the social dimension of action stands for more than the social dependency of children or a “deficient” mode of individual autonomy. Their theories are meant to enable systematic analyses and observations of the world of sociable action, in all of its types, objects, and forms. Our discussion of some of these theoretical efforts is organized as follows. We begin with the two uncontested classics of sociology, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, and highlight crucial divergences between their methodological statements and their material investigations. In the case of Weber, his theoretical statements about the methodological priority of instrumentally rational individual actions are belied by his research into the origins of the capitalist work ethic, which stresses instead customs and common values. In the case of Durkheim, his theoretical statements about the “thing-like” and coercive character of society are belied by his research into religious rites, which stresses instead how ritual action generates a meaningful and attractive social world. The remainder of our essay turns to Talcott Parsons and Georg Simmel as representatives of two classical approaches to theorizing the implicit connections between action and sociality never fully addressed by Weber and Durkheim. Simmel’s formal sociology focuses on forms rather than objects of social action and situates the social form of experience as one among many. Parsons’ general theory of action treats systems of social roles as one sub-system of action alongside personality systems and cultural systems, all of which emerge from the problems and contingencies inherent to acting in situations.
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