Methodology of Social Sciences

Abstract

Abstract It is neither the conventional etiquette of Weberian scholarship nor a peculiar logical predilection that prompts us to begin a book about intellectuals with a chapter on methodology. To console those with a distaste for the formal and the abstract, let us recall that Weber himself regarded the obsessive methodological discus­ sions of his time with a sense of detachment and even irony. Why then did he defer pursuing his main interest in the grand, substan­ tive sociological and historical questions, to dedicate a few years of his life to methodological reflections, ultimately contributing to what he had dubbed the “methodological pestilence “? There are good reasons to believe that the prime motive of Max Weber to work on methodology was to provide a viable answer to the Methodenstreit, the protracted controversy between the legacy of Enlightenment as represented in the theoretically abstract argu­ ments of the Austrian school of economics on the one side, and the Romantic individualism and historicism of the German historical school on the other.1 Without rejecting the prior suggestion, I would like to advance the thesis that the purpose of Weber’s method­ ological reflections was to mend a problem that was intrinsic to his own universe of discourse. Weber’s methodology represents an immanent attempt to bridge the gap that existed between his own individualistic epistemological and methodological premises, on one hand, and the kind of intellectual apparatus he needed for the pursuit of his interest in substantive civilizational and historical analyses, on the other. It is not reasonable to assume that Weber

Keywords

Related Publications