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2021 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

Max Weber’s Empirical Sociology in Germany and the United States: Tensions between Partisanship and Scholarship

verfasst von : Guenther Roth

Erschienen in: Kapitalismus, Herrschaft und Max Weber. Ausgewählte Aufsätze

Verlag: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

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Zusammenfassung

More than any other man of his generation Max Weber remains today influential as well as controversial. Neither intellectually nor politically are scholars done with the man and his work. However, his impact has not been steady over the five decades since his death. At various times Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, Robert Michels, Vilfredo Pareto, and Sigmund Freud have attracted more attention and approbation. Among these members of the „generation of 1890“—as H. S. Hughes has called them—Durkheim emerges, in the long run, as Weber’s closest rival in sociology.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Das historische Verhältnis der Weberschen Soziologie zum Marxismus

Nächstes Kapitel Zur Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte von Max Webers „Protestantischer Ethik“

For an illuminating comparison, see Randall Collins, „A Comparative Approach to Political Sociology,“ in Reinhard Bendix et al., eds., State and Society: A Reader in Comparative Political Sociology (Boston, 1968), S. 42–67.

See Terry N. Clark, „Emile Durkheim and the Institutionalization of Sociology in the French University System,“ European journal of Sociology, IX, No. 1 (1968), 37–71.

Cf. Mark Jay Oromaner, „The Most Cited Sociologists: An Analysis of Introductory Text Citations,“ The American Sociologist, III., No. 2 (May 1968), 124 ff.

Weber habitually put the term Wertfreiheit in quotation marks in order to indicate its technical nature. This usage is retained in the present essay. There is no one English or German term which would make a satisfactory shorthand expression. Weber’s attempt to neutralize emotional reactions to his terminology failed; he complained that „endless misunderstanding and a great deal of terminological – and hence sterile – conflict have taken place about the term ‚value judgment.‘ Obviously neither of these has contributed anything to the solution of the problem.“ Weber, „The Meaning of ‚Ethical Neutrality‘ in Sociology and Economics,“ in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, ed. and trans. Edward Shils and Henry Finch (Glencoe, Ill., 1949), p. 10. In this essay published in 1917–1918 Weber set aside the institutional aspect of Wertfreiheit after some brief remarks. Moreover, the essay omitted references to the Verein für Sozialpolitik, for which he had prepared it in 1913. The early version was not published until 1964; see Eduard Baumgarten, ed., Max Weber. Werk und Person (Tübingen, 1964), pp. 102–39.

For an anecdotal sketch of Scherrer, see Paul Honigsheim, On Max Weber, trans. Joan Rytina (New York: The Free Press; East Lansing: Social Science Research Bureau, 1968), pp. 58 f.

In his methodological essays between 1903 and 1906 Weber has in mind economics whenever he writes of „our science.“ As late as 1919, he spoke of „we economists“ in „Science as a Vocation.“

For details, see my introduction to Max Weber, Economy and Society, edited with Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), section 9. The term Sozialökonomik was introduced by Heinrich Dietzel, Theoretische Sozialökonomik (Leipzig, 1895).

Economy and Society, p. 312.

Like his friends Georg Simmel, Werner Sombart, and Georg Jellinek, Weber took issue with the neo-Kantian philosopher Rudolf Stammler, who maintained the identity of social ideal and social law. Cf. Rudolf Stammler, Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung (2nd rev. ed., Leipzig, 1906). For a sketch of Weber’s arguments against Stammler, see Economy and Society, pp. 325 ff., 32 f., and my introduction, p. lxi. Weber’s two lengthy essays on Stammler have not been translated; see Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1951), pp. 291–383.

The relationship between Jellinek and Weber is traced in my essay „Max Weber’s Strategy of Comparative Study,“ in Neil Smelser and Ivan Vallier, eds., Comparative Methodology (scheduled for publication in 1970 by the University of California Press, Berkeley).

The letter is reprinted in the second edition of Georg von Below, Der deutsche Staat des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1925), p. xxiv. This diplomatic statement addressed to a vociferous opponent of sociology must be taken at face value, since Weber made similar remarks in less personal contexts. For an elaboration, see the essay cited in n. 10.

For an excellent study of the Verein and the tensions between scholarship and politics, see Dieter Lindenlaub, Richtungskämpfe im Verein für Sozialpolitik (Wiesbaden, 1967); for a general background, see Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins. The German Academic Community 1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), ch. 3.

For a discussion of these studies, see Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (New York, 1962), ch. II.

Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen, 1924), pp. 413 f.

Weber, „Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany. A Contribution to the Political Critique of Officialdom and Party Politics,“ Appendix II of Economy and Society, p. 1381.

See Leopold von Wiese, „Die deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie. Persönliche Eindrücke in den ersten fünfzig Jahren (1909 bis 1959),“ Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, XI, No. l (1959), 11–20.

Verhandlungen des Ersten Deutschen Soziologentages, Frankfurt, Oct. 19–22, 1910 (Tübingen, 1911), p. v.

Ibid., pp. 39 f.

Honigsheim, op. cit., p. 60; cf. idem, „Die Gründung der deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in ihren geistesgeschichtlichen Zusammenhängen,“ Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, XI, No. 1 (1959), 8 ff.

Marianne Weber, Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen, 1950), p. 469.

Weber had in mind a research institute rather than a professional association as we understand it today. On the pioneering efforts of Ferdinand Tönnies and Weber, see Anthony R. Oberschall, Empirical Social Research in Germany, 1848–1914 (The Hague, 1965).

Cf. Weber’s post-mortem circular to the participants dated Nov. 15, 1912, in Bernhard Schäfer, ed., „Ein Rundschreiben Max Webers zur Sozialpolitik,“ Soziale Welt, XVIII (1967), 261–71.

On the link between Geiger and Weber, see Kurt Lenk, „Das Werturteilsproblem bei Max Weber,“ Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, cxx (1964), 56 f.; for Tönnies on Weber, see his Soziologische Studien und Kritiken (Jena, 1926), p. 419 f.

Albert Salomon, „German Sociology,“ in Georges Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore, eds., Twentieth Century Sociology (New York, 1945), p. 587.

See Ferdinand Tönnies, „Hochschulreform und Soziologie. Kritische Anmerkungen über Beckers Gedanken zur Hochschulreform und Belows Soziologie als Lehrfach,“ Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, XVI (1920), 212–45; Georg von Below, Soziologie als Lehrfach (Munich, 1920).

On Hintze’s adoption of „value-neutrality“ see Walter M. Simon, „Power and Responsibility: Otto Hintze’s place in German Historiography,“ in Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern, eds., The Responsibility of Power. Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn (New York, 1967), pp. 215–37. On the constitutional differences of opinion between Hintze and Weber see my Social Democrats in Imperial Germany (Totowa, NJ., 1963), pp. 60 ff., 285 f., 296 ff.

For Leopold von Wiese’s concerned comments, see „Zwei Soziologenkongresse,“ Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, old series, IX, No. 3 (1931), 233–43.

For a review of older and newer political critiques of Weber from the perspectives of Marxism, fascism, and natural law, see my „Political Critiques of Max Weber: Some Implications for Political Sociology,“ American Sociological Review, XXX, No. 2 (Apr. 1965), 213–23. In diesem Band Kap. 9.

Cf. ibid., pp. 222 f., and Otto Stammer, ed., Max Weber und die Soziologie heute. Verhandlungen des 15. deutschen Soziologentages (Tübingen, 1965).

For an interpretation of this development in the context of the historical relationship between Marxism and Weberian sociology, see my essay „Das historische Verhältnis der Weberschen Soziologie zum Marxismus,“ Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, XX, No. 3 (1968), 429–47. In diesem Band Kap. 2. For another account, see Renate Mayntz, „Germany: Radicals and Reformers,“ The Public Interest, No. 13 (Fall 1968), 160–72.

For a summary of the Weber reception up to the end of the fifties, see my essay written jointly with Reinhard Bendix, „Max Webers Einfluss auf die amerikanische Soziologie,“ Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, XI, No. l (1959), 38–53. In diesem Band Kap. 1. On some of the uses and misuses of Weber’s work in foreign-area studies, see my essay „Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism and Empire-Building in the New States,“ World Politics, xx, No. 2 (Jan. 1968), 194–206. In diesem Band Kap. 12.

Weber, „Der Sinn der ‚Wertfreiheit‘ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften,“ Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen, 1951), p. 486; cf. The Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. 11. The other Weber quotations in the rest of the essay are from the first nine pages of ibid.

For a recent answer from a liberal perspective, which distinguishes between the social role of the sociologist and the logical possibilities of sociology, see Ralf Dahrendorf, Die Soziologie und der Soziologe – Zur Frage von Theorie und Praxis (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1967).

For reminiscences of classroom propaganda shortly before and after the downfall of Imperial Germany, see Franz Neumann, „The Social Sciences,“ in Neumann et al., The Cultural Migration. The European Scholar in America (New York, 1961), pp. 15 f. Neumann, a prominent member of the Old Left, comments: „I do not consider it the task of universities to preach democracy. In this, I fully stand with the ideas of Max Weber. … But it is most certainly not the function of the universities to ridicule democracy, to arouse nationalist passions, to sing the praise of past systems – and to cover this up by asserting that one is ‚nonpolitical.‘“

On Treitschke, see a letter from Weber’s student days addressed to Hermann Baumgarten, July 14, 1885, in Marianne Weber, ed., Max Weber: Jugendbriefe (Tübingen, 1936), p. 174; the reference in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. 2, is written from a distance of three decades.

Titel: Max Weber’s Empirical Sociology in Germany and the United States: Tensions between Partisanship and Scholarship
verfasst von: Guenther Roth
Verlag: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
Buch: Kapitalismus, Herrschaft und Max Weber. Ausgewählte Aufsätze
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-33938-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-658-33939-5

Copyright-Jahr: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-33939-5_3

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