1st Edition

Max Weber Collected Methodological Writings

Edited By Hans Henrik Bruun, Sam Whimster Copyright 2012
    600 Pages
    by Routledge

    600 Pages
    by Routledge

    Weber’s methodological writings form the bedrock of key ideas across the social sciences. His discussion of value freedom and value commitment, causality, understanding and explanation, theory building and ideal types have been of fundamental importance, and their impact remains undiminished today. These ideas influence the current research practice of sociologists, historians, economists and political scientists and are central to debates in the philosophy of social science. But, until now, Weber's extensive writings on methodology have lacked a comprehensive publication.

    Edited by two of the world's leading Weber scholars, Collected Methodological Writings will provide a completely new, accurate and reliable translation of Weber’s extensive output, including previously untranslated letters. Accompanying editorial commentary explains the context of, and interconnections between, all these writings, and additional useful features include a glossary of German terms and an English key, endnotes, bibliography, and person and subject indexes.

    Max Weber BibliographyIntroduction.  Editorial Preface.  Articles: Roscher and Knies and the Logical Problems of Historical Economics  1. Roscher's 'Historical Method'  2. Knies and the Problem of Irrationality  3. Knies and the Problem of Irrationality.  Accompanying Remarks.  The 'Objectivity' of Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy.  Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences  1. A Critique of Eduard Meyer  2. Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation in the Historical Causal Approach.  R[udolf] Stammler's 'Overcoming' of the Materialist Conception of History.  Addendum to the Essay on R[udolf] Stammler's 'Overcoming' of the Materialist Conception of History.  The Theory of Marginal Utility and the 'Fundamental Law of Psycho-physics'.  'Energetical' Theories of Culture.  Review of Adolf Weber, The Tasks of Economic Theory as a Science, 1909 (excerpts).  On some Categories of Interpretive Sociology.  Declaration.  The Meaning of 'Value Freedom' in the Sociological and Economic Sciences.  Science as a Profession and Vocation.  Contributions and Interventions (excerpts): Association for Social Policy, Mannheim 1905 - Intervention in debate on G. Schmoller's lecture on 'The relationship of cartels to state'.  Association for Social Policy, Vienna 1909 - Intervention in discussion on 'The productivity of the national economy'.  German Sociological Society, General Meeting, Frankfurt 1910 - Business Report.  Intervention in debate on W. Sombart's paper on 'Technology and culture'.  Intervention in debate on H. Kantorowicz's paper on 'Legal science and sociology'.  Letters (excerpts). Notes and Drafts:  1. Note marked 'Rickert’s "values"' (The 'Nervi Fragment'), c. 1902/1903.  2. Note marked 'New sciences', c. 1902/1903.  3. Note on 'immediate experience' and 'human action', c. 1902/1903  4. Note on Wilhelm Roscher, c. 1902/1903.  5. Note on historical method, c. 1902/1903.  6. Note on 'intelligibility' of reality, c. 1902/1902.  7. Note on 'cosmos' and 'development', c. 1902/1903.  8. Note marked 'Development v. Below/E. Meyer', c. 1902/1903.  9. Handwritten beginning of draft entitled 'Georg Simmel as a Sociologist and Theoretician of the Money Economy', c. 1908.  10. 'Fragment on Formal Ethics', c. 1912.  English Key to Glossary.  Glossary.  Index of Persons.

    Biography

    Hans Henrik Bruun is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen. He collaborated on the first comprehensive Danish translation of Weber’s selected writings. His Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology (Ashgate, 2010, 1st edn 1972) has remained a standard reference work on values in Weber’s methodology for over three decades.

    Sam Whimster is Professor at the Global Policy Institute, London, and Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study ("Recht als Kultur"), University of Bonn.  His publications include Reforming the City: Responses to the global financial crisis(2009), Understanding Weber (2007), Essential Weber (2004), Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy (1999) and, with Scott Lash, Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity (1987). He is the editor of the journal Max Weber Studies

    'Hans Henrik Bruun and Sam Whimster have rendered to present and future generations of anglophone Gelehrter and their students a service which amply justifies the labour that it required. It should have been done before, but it will not need to be done again. They have earned the lasting gratitude as well as admiration of the sozialwissenschaftlich fraction of those Kulturmenschen who only English know.' - W. G. Runciman, Times Literary Supplement

    'The translation of Weber’s Wissenschaftslehre into English is a successful project upon which both editors and publisher are to be congratulated. At last Weber’s methodological writings are available in a careful translation, extended with other relevant texts and documents. Work can be done with these texts, for example making connections previously not possible or, as the editors hope, enriching the ‘headings’ presented in their Introduction through progressive re-reading, which will now be able to check the secondary literature related to these texts. No longer will those who command both English and German monopolise these texts. And in this achievement the editors have done a great service to the international study of the writings of Max Weber.' - Hubert Treiber, Max Weber Studies

    'The book [is] the most authoritative and complete collection of Weber’s methodological writings, in any language, ever. It is a model of editing and translation.' Stephen Turner, European Journal of Sociology