The Social Thought of Talcott Parsons: Methodology and American Ethos by Uta Gerhardt (review)

Abstract

122 Max Weber Studies Uta Gerhardt, The Social Thought ofTalcott Parsons: (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), xii + 444pp. Hardback I At the Weber centennial in Heidelberg in 1964 planned an assault on Max Weber's legacy, but event into something less one-dimensional than including Jürgen Habermas and Herbert Marcus jamin Nelson and Marcuse had an ensuing publi media. Max Weber and some of those issues from 1964 are still with us, such as the exact nature of the link between Weber and Carl Schmitt, and Schmitt and the Frank furt school. The Carl Schmitt-link is supposed—right or wrong—to be stigmatiz ing. However, as sophisticated critics of the parliamentarian system, Habermas and Schmitt are often seen as being on the same side of the barricades (Turner 1999). Long before the conference—in 1937 and 1950—Parsons had made Weber part of the sociological Parnassus by a fortunate misrepresentation of Weber's ideas. Thanks to Parsons's wishful extension of Weber's ideal-type methodology, he became an adopted part of sociological heritage, even the cornerstone. There were other synthe ses between history and theory, for example outside pundits in intellectual history like Karl Lamprecht who is almost forgotten today. But Parsons's Weber achieved a prominence denied to most of his illustrious competitors. Parsons also played a momentous role in Germany soon after WW2, in terms of the reintroduction of democratic rule and civic culture. Reorganizing the univer sity system was here an important part of his practical work. Helping us to under stand the legacy of Parsons's impact, Uta Gerhardt's book makes great and very informative reading and can be recommended to all students of social science. My only objection is her obsessive criticism of neo-Kantianism, in her understanding the demise and deterioration of a pure German sociology in Diltheyian style. This is the other side of a paradigmatic gulf in Weber studies, but fortunately we can now use full text downloading and with the use of search functions can better check stereotypes about influences traded on, with weak support in the source material. Gerhardt's front stands firm against 'positivism', which she understands in the Spencerian social Darwinist version. But the marginalist tradition is a sort of positiv ism as well, or at least a stand-in for positivism in the famous Methodenstreit, which of course is the background to Max Weber's methodological essays. This unity of sci ence with natural science as proto-type is in common. The issue of parsing Weber somewhere between positivism and anti-positivism is not an easy one, but surely he is not a Diltheyian, since the references to Dilthey are few and only to find in Weber's very first methodological études. This is in con trast to plentiful references to Heinrich Rickert's neo-Kantianism, whose nominalist concept formation aims to provide the means for transparent selection from a vast reality. That Weber is not an adherent of an empathetic approach is clear, since the ratio nal actor model has such a prominent role in his methodological procedure, despite famous statements about Verstehen being a step towards Erklären. He is an anti sociologist within sociology, and belonging to a much longer tradition from Machia velli onwards, including Hobbes and Bentham—and also Gunnar Myrdal.© Max Weber Studies 2014. Book Reviews 123 Weber is also though under the spell of ology than the political economist Weber, rather than visible in the texts, since We knew each other well. Here there was litt readily just talk to one another. One text which is little referred to is seemingly falsifies or at least contradicts t The same goes for his several essays in in ifesting scientific management and 'Ford (p. 88) about the 'unsubstantiated' view phy', characterizing it as 'a view that Ricke untimely death', an odd statement given W erences to Rickert's role for his strategy formation.1 It is, however, true that Ricke which also has its limits just as Karl Jaspe However, the sun also has its dark spots from the excellence and utility of Gerh pre-neo-Kantian gulf is a matter of inter Weber's dependence on Rickert is, it...