Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology (New Expanded Edition) by Hans Henrik Bruun (review)

Abstract

[MWS 12.1 (2012) 139-146] ISSN 1470-8078 Book Reviews Hans Henrik Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology (New Expanded Edition; Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), pp. xix + 298. ISBN 13: 978-0-75464-529-0. £65.00 (hbk). Published in 2007, Hans Henrik Bruun's Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology is the new expanded edition of a book first published in 1972. After having spent 30 years with politics in the Danish Foreign Service, Bruun returned to science in order to rewrite his interpretation of Weber's assessment of values in his so-called methodological writings. In essence, the main text of his book is still more or less the same. The new introduction, however, has it out with some of the post 1972 interpretations that are of particular interest for an understanding of Weber7 s concepts of value freedom, value relation, value analysis and the ideal type. Bruun admits that his book has no major thesis but rather contains a fairly large number of more or less detailed interpretative conclusions. In fact, this corresponds to the very character of Weber's methodological writings because these texts were written for special occasions and often remained unfinished. According to Bruun, they include antithetical elements, dichotomies and logical inconsistencies. The lack of systematic coherence in Weber7s unusually fragmented contributions inevitably raises the question if it is indeed justified to treat Weber7s methodology as a system atic whole. Brunn does not give a definite answer to this question at all. He rather grasps at making sense of Weber7 s reasoning by means of a close reading not only of his methodological writings but also of the huge remaining bulk of his work, including his letters and unpublished papers. He concentrates on analysing values as problems, preconditions, objects and instruments of scientific inquiry, before he sets science against politics. Though the erudition of Bruun's fine-grained interpretations is without ques tion, the reader looks in vain for a final conclusion, which would have integrated the variety of interpretative conclusions into a coarse-grained narrative. Bruun could have easily formulated such a narrative though. In his speech 'Science as vocation', Weber referred to the decline of the Christian synthesis of the true, the beautiful and the good that had led to a new polytheism which put an end to the belief in an all inclusive whole and drove these value spheres apart. Weber also referred to Charles Baudelaire whose l'art pour l'art was dedicated to strictly separating the sphere of the beautiful from all other social spheres so that artists could follow only aesthetic rules (cf. Bourdieu 1992). Weber adopted Baudelaire's strategy for the sphere of the true, so that scientists could follow only scientific rules. His concept of value freedom, which is thought to avoid a conflation of science with politics and other social spheres, can therefore be described as la science pour la science.© Max Weber Studies 2012, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 140 Max Weber Studies Unfortunately, Weber had started his thinking on methodology under the influ ence of Heinrich Rickert's theory of historical concept formation. According to this theory, value relations constitute the objects of historical research. This caused a bunch of conceptual problems, which Bruun discusses in detail. Nonetheless, with his turn from histoiy to sociology Weber emancipated himself from Rickert's theory. Sociology does not need value-relations because this science is not concerned with historical individuals but with typical modes of social action. Moreover, like science in general, it should also be devoid of judgements drawn from the values of other social spheres. This does not mean, however, as Bruun clearly shows, that sociology is not concerned with values. They are the objects of inquiry insofar as they guide many social actions. Weber's turn from history to sociology followed the transformation from the bourgeois-liberal society of modernity into the mass-democratic society of post modernity (Kondylis 1991). The bourgeois individual was superseded by the homme moyen and the belief that all parts of society could be integrated into a harmonic whole that the bourgeois society had inherited from Christianity...