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Influences on Max Weber's Methodology

Department of Public Administration, University of Karlstad

There may be many reasons for our turning to the classics of social science. We might for instance find it useful to apply their concepts to our present reality, or to utilize them in our recurring discussions in normative issues. In the case of Weber I rather suggest that we turn to him for identity, roots. In the famous Methodenstreit between Austrian marginalism (Menger) and the historicism of the younger historical school (Schmoller) the ever-green tension between theory and history is reproduced. This is still a main paradigmatic divide, as manifested today in both sociology and history. Weber is to be seen as a mediator more than genuine classic His way of developing neo-Kantian methodologies (Rickert's Wertbeziehung) and combining them with marginalist models in constructing his ideal-types allows for intersubjectivity and, thus, testability (rationale Evidenz) Lucid concept-formation in Weber's 'aspect-choice-methodology' is an adaptation of secular tools for the newly established sociology in a mode that could be accepted in the German intellectual setting, with its historicist hegemony.

Acta Sociologica, Vol. 33, No. 1, 15-30 (1990)
DOI: 10.1177/000169939003300102


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