“[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.
