HE WAY IN WHICH most textbooks on the history of sociology classify Max Weber provides a good example of how people tend to affix labels by seizing on trifles: the pigeon hole assigned to him bears the label 'understanding sociology'-'verstehende soziologie'. If we take the word understanding at its usual connotation, we arrive at the conclusion that Max Weber had a monopoly on understanding society. This seems to be a slight exaggeration, although many sociological publications (including those which invoke Weber's name in vain) could very well be classified as 'non-understanding sociology'. Weber's distinction (not very clearly formulated) between 'understanding' and 'explaining' refers to something that has been known to philosophers for a very long time: namely, that we interpret actions of other human beings by attributing to them the feelings and thoughts which we should have if we carried out such actions. As Fichte showed, the validity of this procedure can never be proved; but neither can it be disproved, and nobody can utter its denial without contradicting himself, for the mere intent to communicate presupposes it. This analogy from subjective experience is not nowadays used in interpreting the behaviour of objects other than the higher animals. Its continuous application does distinguish the study of man and society from other branches of learning, but it in no way distinguishes the thought of Max Weber. In fact, dustmen, historians, detectives, pimps, philosophers all have to rely on their subjective experiences in order to be able to explain and predict the actions of others. Even the most astringent behaviourists, who avoid the humans and concentrate on rats, speak of organisms seeking and escaping. Weber, naturally, never claimed that he invented the procedure of 'verstehen', or that it was in any way peculiar to his way of thinking. It was the commentators who committed this folly. Moreover, when dealing with definite sociological problems as distinguished from the discussion of the method of sociology-Weber (as far as I can recall) never