Human agents and rationality in Max Weber’s social economics

Abstract

Suggests that, contrary to his neo‐Kantian methodological intentions, there is much textual evidence that Weber was not consistent in following through the non‐realist epistemology involved. In his search for the methodological bona fides of the empirical social sciences, he focused on the distinctive ontological nature of phenomena that originate in human action. Weber rejected the Homo oeconomicus concept of the agent required by exact theoretical economics. He espoused instead a deeper subjectivist understanding of individual human agents whose actions are shaped by the social complex that confronts them. It was this ontological emphasis that led him to devise the concepts of agent rationality and ideal types as foundations for his empirical inquiries. In these seminal endeavours, though, he understated the contingency of human agency that must be contended with and he fell short in understanding the full extent and influence of the situations within which agents must operate. Nonetheless, it is this focus on the fundamental role of subjective but situated human agency that could still find more of a place in the foundations of social economics.