Sociological Imagination of Max Weber of Sociological Epistemology

“[Sociology is] ... the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, and any kind of priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.”

— Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action 1922

In this statement of Weber some key points are “meaning of social action”, causal explanation, subjectively meaningful, a priori disciple, which has historical explanation given by famous philosophers and teachers of Max Weber. These intellectuals have profound effects on the sociological epistemology of Weber. Prior to Weber two traditions were present in the Germany. First was Vienna school of Karl Menger, who believed in the British positivistic theories, gave importance on “rational choice theory” and the “law of equi-marginal utility” and the second school was Kantian school of ‘dualism’, which says that knowledge can be divided into two types a) moral science, and b) natural science. Kant said that transcendental and transhistorical moral laws are an integral part of the “practical-cognitive interest”. Moral philosophy gives very basis to humans of becoming social being and it is not based on the meanings given to empirical data and it involves the reflections on moral maxims that are innate and external to human experience.  

Weber agreed with the Kantian division of the knowledge and believed that the use of human intellect to typify ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is useless i.e., intellectuals are not maven at making moral judgement. So, he rejected the Hegelian idea of the conflation of fact and value and said that sociology can tell us about the consequences of our value commitments but it cannot tell us about good and bad. So, empirical judgements and moral judgements are incommensurable.  Philosophers shall be engaged in the discourse of moral science i.e. “philosophization of the knowledge”. So, dualistic source of knowledge is giving the ‘total knowledge’ through ‘philosophisation’ and ‘scientific enquiry’.

Kant postulated that the subjects can find secure and reliable knowledge about the cause-effect relationship among ‘physical’ objects but not for the cultural and historical objects. Dilthey tried to repeat this exercise for history and sociology. Dilthey was the prominent member of the “historical school”, which viewed the historical processes dependent on the interpretative theory not on the positivistic theory.  For him, human history is the product of the human freedom to create a number of ‘cultural objects” like legal system, political system, aesthetic works etc. Dilthey made a distinction between explanation and understanding through his interpretation techniques. Dilthey took a non-positivist stand and later which influenced Neo-Kantians Windelband and Rickert, who classified forms of knowledge in two branches- ‘nomothetic’ and ‘ideographic’ and said that History is ideographic and natural sciences are nomothetic. But Max Weber argued that one cannot tell that history is ideographic and natural sciences are nomothetic. The gap between these two can be filled by sociology, which has both the characteristics of nomothetic and ideographic and have elements of both subjectivity and objectivity.

Weber tells that history is the making of the people and history is not good or bad it can only be understood through the interpretation of context e.g. rise of Nazism, Indian nationalism are the historical events and it can only be understood through interpretation.  Further, he is also influenced by the work of George Simmel, who talks about the “epistemology of actions” and talks that actions always take place in a context. People manifest a given kind of action driven by multiple motives that might have the influence of the culture, history and psychology. Therefore, meanings behind the action should be studied from the epistemological perspective and action should be studied from objective perspective.

Weber finds positivist methodology not accurate as he sees positivists having the prior assumption of structured society and law bound society. He says that sociology should follow the spirit of science but not the methodology. Sociology should be striving for objectivity. Sociology is a science on the basis of its own merit. American sociologists of that time found Weber antithetical to Marx but Weber’s work can be seen as the revision of Marxian notion of ‘materialist history’ as he placed more emphasis on ‘idea’ in the explanation of the great historical processes. But, Weber’s sociology can also be seen as complementing to Marxian analysis and Weber, generally, accepted Marxian conclusion about the capitalism.

Weber is considered as the founder of ‘Interpretative methodology’ in sociological research. He is not inventor of this term and Droysen before him had tried to use this in the history and it was the cornerstone of the Geisteswissenschaften of Dilthey.weber has elaborated this method and applied it to sociology. Like Dilthey, he also differentiated between explanation and understanding. Verstehen is the German word for understanding. Weber is looking into the limits to sociological research through the use of this concept. Weber believed, like any other German historicist that people make their life world through meaningful action giving way to interactional relationship. Why people behave in similar or distinctive way is driven by their subjective orientation. Therefore, a researcher must have to keep himself in a position from where the meanings associated with the behaviours can be interpreted.  

To understand the realities created by the social actors, interpretation is necessary. Further, he said that hermeneutics provides a ground for the sociological understanding of unique historical conditions, cultural objects presents in different society at different points of the time. This method rejects to dialectical method and positivistic methods on the grounds that they neglect cultural diversity, variability of the choice of the people and dynamism of the mind of the actor. This method takes sociology closer to history, conceptualising that sociology has nothing much to do with scientific methods and science.

This method also rejects to mechanical-statistical approach, which can go to the extent of arriving at the conclusion that exchange rate of currency do have strong impact on divorce rate of the country. Weber’s another contribution to the methodology is “causal pluaralism”. Through this, he completes and complements his comprehensive method. He says that in human activity goal and means can be interchangeable, not only because attained goal can become cause but also the relative success of the means can become the cause of the fresh undertakings. Therefore, positivism, based on causal relationships, is engaged in glorifying sociology than appropriately guiding sociological research looking into the limits of the discipline.

Weber divides verstehen into two types. First is ‘Direct Observational Verstehen’, which can study microscopic realities and ‘indirect Explanatory Verstehen’, which can study macroscopic realities like rise of capitalism in west, family structure in Asia. Culture specific macroscopic institutions like caste system, growth of cities can be studied through collection of historical evidences, interpretation of values and norms of people guiding their inter-personal relationship and social action. Therefore, sequence of events, motivational forces should be interpreted to understand the essence of reality.

Weber was acquainted with the imperialistic claims of sociology but his epistemology allowed him moderation to accept sociology as a science in reference to values not to the reality. Weber was also aware about critical aspects of his philosophy and developed “philosophical hypothesis of the inevitable hypothesis of all science, including of course, sociology. He developed the hypothesis of “value-neutrality”. When a researcher understands the essence of reality, he is not using value neutrality.

He writes that Hermeneutical method is looking into limits of mechanical and scientific methods and its inadequacies to understand human behaviours and the outcomes of it. So for the making of sociology, it is imperative that sociology must go for supplementation to scientific methods. Weber indicates that positivists failed to understand the real subject matter of sociology, which is a product of meaningful social action taking place in socio-cultural context. Since the action is dynamic so the structure is experiencing dynamism and diversity.

Therefore, structure study in sociology is qualitatively different from natural sciences. Facts give rise to the growth of theories and theories provide a framework for the analysis of facts in the field of science but in the domain of sociology, people make a reality and we have to study respecting to their subjective perception. So, the subjective understanding of objective reality, what it means to be sociology, is not the meaning attached to the concept of science. We study specific from out of the infinity, that is the making of people driven by choices but for sociology, it is a product of nature subjected to continuity. Therefore when they go for scientific methods, sociology is duty bound to go for hermeneutical method. Weberian sociology is a realistic and reflexive sociology looking into the limits of sociological research. For him, action is, so far, social as long as it considers others behavior. He also makes a distinction between individual behavior and social action.