268 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2019. dissatisfaction with the Association, the motives for his early and intensive engagement in the GSS, and the reasons for his disenchantment after only two years. Weiß’s elaborate reconstruction of the genesis and substance of the older and newer parts of the ‘Kategorien’ essay, much of it included in his introduction (60-77), is a provocative exercise in Weberian exegesis that will repay careful scrutiny. Finally, there is a larger question. Weiß acknowledges that from the time of his early professorship in economics and finance at Freiburg until his death, Weber saw himself predominantly as an economist (6). The ‘Kategorien’ essay became the conceptual basis for Economy and Society, which was planned as one volume in the encyclopedic handbook project Grundriß der Sozialökonomik (Compendium of SocioEconomics ). It is difficult to see how this essay can be detached from the primacy of economics in Weber’s thought and repositioned as the axial text in a turn to sociology. In what sense, therefore, can it be said that the course of his methodological thought represents such a turn? Guy Oakes Monmouth University Max Weber, Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften. Schriften 1900–1907, edited by Gerhard Wagner with the assistance of Claudius Härpfer, Tom Kaden, Kai Müller and Angelika Zahn (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), xv + 774pp. (hbk). ISBN 9-783-16153-774-5. €349.00. For various—unrelated—reasons, the publication of some of the most important volumes of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe has been delayed almost to the end of the whole series: 2014 gave us the first version of Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus (I/9), and 2016 the final one, coupled with the Die protestantischen Sekten und der Geist des Kapitalismus (I/18). And 2018 saw the publication of the whole bulk of Weber’s work on methodology: First came volume I/12, edited by Johannes Weiss, with Weber’s writings and interventions from 1908 to 1917 on ‘Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit’, followed in November 2018 by volume I/7, with Weber’s essays on ‘Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften’ (1900–1907), edited by Gerhard Wagner—the book which is the subject of the present review. Volume I/7 is a highly important addition to the Weber corpus. First of all, it comprises the bulk of Weber’s published work in the field of methodology (in the narrower, ‘philosophical’ sense of the term); Book Reviews 269© Max Weber Studies 2019. and secondly, it marks, together with the ‘Protestant Ethic’, Weber’s return to scholarly writing after his deep depression around the turn of the century. But there is a further reason why I/7 is of particular interest: While all the major items in it are well known from Marianne Weber/Johannes Winckelmann’s Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre , an edition which has been with us for nearly a century, Gerhard Wagner has also included the transcribed text of a large number of notes written by Weber in Nervi on the Italian Riviera in late 1902 and early 1903. Technically, these notes are reproduced in an ‘Appendix’, but like the printed articles, they are provided with thorough textual and substantive annotations. The text of arguably the most important note, on Rickert’s ‘values’, and of a few others, had already been published, but the major part of the ‘Nervi notes’ included in this volume will be completely new to the reader, and Wagner’s decision to include them must be applauded. One should be clear, of course, about the limited source value of these notes. They reflect off-the-cuff ideas that came to Weber during his work, sometimes as reactions to texts that he had been reading. They never made it into print, but, as Wagner himself notes (623), they can be read as preparatory work for Weber’s printed essays, or as further elaborations of ideas launched in these essays. Even in cases where the notes seem to be written with a view to publication, their non-appearance in Weber’s printed work does not necessarily mean that he rejected them in substance. This is, I think...
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Jan 26, 2024
Tyler Bane 
Open Access
