Max Weber’s Methodology

Fritz Ringer was Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and author of The Decline of the German Mandarins and Fields of Knowledge.

• Acknowledgments Introduction Aspects of Weber's Intellectual Field The German Historical Tradition The Threat of ePositivismi The Revival of the Humanistic Disciplines Weber's Adaptation of Rickert Rickert's Position and Its Problems Weber's Adaptation Against Naturalism, Holism, and Irrationalism Singular Causal Analysis Objective Probability and Adequate Causation The Frameworks and Tactics of Causal Analysis Contemporary Formulations Interpretation and Explanation From Interpretation to Causal Analysis Interpretive Sociology The Ideal Type and Its Functions Objectivity and Value Neutrality The Two Components of Weber's Position through 1910 The Maxim and Ethos of Value Neutrality Contemporary Formulations From Theory to Practice Neither Marxism nor Idealism From Methodological Individualism to the Comparative Analysis of Structural Change An Example of Weber's Practice: The Protestant Ethic Conclusion Bibliography Index

Max Weber’s methodology has traditionally been claimed by two camps: one that wants to steer the social sciences in the interpretive or hermeneutic direction and one that favors a more objectivist or positivistic social science. Fritz Ringer’s book presents a clear and well-written summary of Weber’s methodological position, but it is also a plea to scholars to overcome these differences. Ringer argues that, in the end, all the social sciences need to engage in causal explanation and that Weber’s ideas are still relevant to the project of a causal, objective, and scientific social science… This book is now arguably the most reliable and readable exposition in English of Weber’s complicated methodological essays.