Max Webers "Wissenschaftslehre" in English

Abstract

[MWS 12.2 (2012) 259-271] ISSN 1470-8078 Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre in English: Review essay of H.H. Bruun and S. Whimster (eds.), Max Weber, Collected Methodological Writings (London: Routledge, 2012), 563pp. Hardback ISBN 978-0-415-47898-4. £70.00. Hubert Treiber1 The recently-published edition of Max Weber's Collected Methodolog ical Writings is an impressive piece of work: 563 large pages, a great deal of work for the very experienced H.H. Bruun, the editor largely responsible for the translation. There are several ways in which this text stands out. 1. Neither the selection of texts nor the title of the existing Gesam melte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaflslehre stem from Max Weber, but this careful and reader-friendly translation reproduces that selection, with some exceptions. Left out on the one hand are 'The Three Pure Types of Legitimate Rule' and 'Basic Sociological Concepts'; put in, on the other, are the 'Geleitwort' (pp. 95ff.), the review of Adolf Weber's Tasks of Economic Theory as a Science (1907) (pp. 269ff.), and the 'Declaration' (p. 302). Omissions and additions are governed by the criterion of whether the texts in question are of a 'methodolog ical' nature. It can be objected that the 'Geleitwort', drafted on the occasion of the relaunch of the Archivßr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozi alpolitik in 1904 and long assumed to have been written by Weber, was very probably mostly written by Sombart, as Peter Ghosh has recently argued.2 Its inclusion here relates to the fact that Weber was one of the joint signatories, but mainly that the text provides an important indication of what Weber understands as Togico methodological' (p. 98). Indeed, in 1919 Weber did speak to Siebeck 1. I would like to thank Stefan Breuer (Hamburg) and Peter Ghosh (Oxford) for helpful criticism, and Keith Tribe for the translation. 2. Peter Ghosh, 'Max Weber, Werner Sombart and the Archiv für Sozialwissen schaft: The authorship of the "Geleitwort" (1904)', History of European Ideas 36 (2010): 71-100.© Max Weber Studies 2012, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 260 Max Weber Studies about publishing a 'collection of logico-methodological essays', among which he included this piece.3 When towards the end of the 'Geleitwort' it is stated that 'no journal today would be able to serve social theory in a manner corresponding to the demands of strict sci entific rigour [Wissenschaftlichkeit], which did not also bring about fundamental clarity regarding the relationship between theoretical and conceptual structures and reality, by means of epistemological methodological discussion' (p. 98), then this logico-methodological formulation, intended as an explanation, points to neo-Kantianism, with which Bruun as co-editor and translator has studied long and intensively.4 One could also argue over whether it would have been better to leave out the second of the two Archiv essays of 1907 and 1917 and insert instead the 'remarks relating mostly to method' (MWG 1/11/ p. 246) from Weber's 1908-1909 'Zur Psychophysik der industriellen Arbeit' (MWG 1/11, pp. 246-49). I will discuss this below. It is however of great help to the reader that, at the end of every text, the source is given, together with additional refer ences involving, among other things, the background to the gene sis of the text in question. But the considerable effort made to render this translation as clear and accurate as possible by the inclusion of explanatory additions in square brackets goes at times too far. 2. Following the section of the book including those texts previ ously included in the Wissenschaftslehre, there is a section (pp. 355ff.) which, with one exception (the report to the first meeting of German sociologists in 1910), contains those contributions to discussions made by Weber at that meeting and at the meetings of the Verein für Sozialpolitik in 1905 and 1909, in each case as extracts with the source given. These texts, together with the letters presented in the next section, raise the question of the extent to which the separation of these fragments from their original context is defensible; but given the already great volume of the book it is plausible to argue that oth...