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Book Review: Max Weber’s Methodologies

T title of this book, with the word ‘methodologies’ in the plural, seems at first paradoxical, since the assumption underlying Sven Eliaeson’s work is that Weber is fundamentally consistent in his methodological writings, so that one might expect to be offered the exposition of this methodology as a single whole. But the paradox turns out to be a linguistic reflection of Eliaeson’s scholarly generosity. What he offers is a ‘twofer’: two books in one, his own systematic discussion being complemented by a review of three main ‘appropriations’ of Weber: by Parsons, by Schütz and by Lazarsfeld/Oberschall. In his discussion of these commentators, Eliaeson manifests his strong doubts about the ‘retrospectivism’ which they exemplify, and which in his view makes them push their interpretations of Weber too far (albeit in different directions). Although Eliaeson concludes that one should in principle try to strike a balance between retrospectivism and a contextualizing approach, his own exposition of Weber’s methodology is marked by his clear (and candidly avowed) preference for contextualism. Eliaeson is no friend of those who want to find an ‘essential Weber’ or a ‘skeleton key’ to the whole of Weber’s work. Although the book can be said to have a central theme, viz., Weber’s ‘methodological value-aspect-choice’ as an expression of the traumatic dilemma of post-Enlightenment modernity, it does not unduly hog the stage. In fact, Eliaeson takes as his point of departure that Weber did not, properly speaking, have a methodological programme at all, but rather tended to respond ad hoc to crucial problems posed by (we might add, exhibited by) other scholars. He was a master at telling us what was wrong with his colleagues, but unfortunately he was often less forthcoming about the details of his own position. Weber’s tendency to be polemical rather than constructive is certainly much in evidence in his treatment of the fundamental demand for value freedom. He constantly reminds his readers of their obligations in this regard, but offers little concrete guidance as to how they should go about living up to these obligations in practice. In the same spirit, his discussion of objectivity – a term which he regularly qualifies by putting it in cautionary quotation marks – tells us far more about the subjective than about the objective elements of the cultural–scientific process. Against this background, it is perhaps a little bold for Eliaeson to introduce into his careful exposition of Weber’s views on value freedom references to ‘intersubjectivity’, a term which evokes concerns about the concrete practicalities of achieving value freedom. The same boldness is apparent when Eliaeson talks of Weber’s ‘scientific value relativism’. In both cases, the terminology harks back to Arnold Brecht’s Political Theory, a monumental work on the methodology of the social sciences which Eliaeson is right to try to resurrect from the relative oblivion into which it has fallen. But, in so doing, he certainly ‘modernizes’ Weber. Moreover, he mainly dwells on the ‘traditional’ interpretation of value freedom: that of keeping scientific inquiry free of the intrusion of values,