Weber's Distinction Research Articles

When the State Shatters Families. The US Family Separation Policy of 2018, Cruelty and Patrimonial Sovereignty

AbstractIn 2018, the Trump administration separated thousands of families arriving at the US–Mexico border to ask for asylum in the framework of its “zero-tolerance” policy. This extraordinary act of cruelty violated several provisions of international human rights, refugee, and family protections, many of which the United States itself had drafted, initiated, and championed. The article asks about the understanding of sovereignty that underscored the zero-tolerance policy. Drawing on Max Weber's distinction of several forms of legitimating political authority, the article develops the argument that this policy reflects a patrimonial understanding of sovereignty and how this understanding intersects with notions of family and nation. It specifically discusses these intersections in the case of United States’ sovereignty developing in a settler colonial state and in contested borderlands. By developing this perspective, the article draws out the conditions of possibility under which institutional and structural violence can tip into explicitly cruel policies like those of the US family separations of 2018. The article contributes, on the one hand, to analyze deeply the foundations of US understandings of the state's sovereignty and, on the other hand, to better comprehending which types of sovereignty enable cruelty against migrants and refugees at which points in time.

Reinterpreting Science as a Vocation

Weber's 'science as a vocation' has often been viewed as a therapeutic concept with no functional significance in the fully bureaucratized and professionalized modern science. However, development in the philosophy of science in the last century, especially the Kuhn thesis of the discontinuity of scientific progress and the Duhem-Quine thesis of underdetermination, shows that Weber's distinction between science as a vocation and science as a profession (career) can potentially answer one of the oldest questions in science studies: What makes scientific breakthroughs possible?

Confucianism for the Contemporary World: Global Order, Politial Plurality, and Social Action ed. by Tze-ki Ton and Kristin Stapleton

Reviewed by: Confucianism for the Contemporary World: Global Order, Politial Plurality, and Social Action ed. by Tze-ki Ton and Kristin Stapleton Bin Song (bio) Confucianism for the Contemporary World: Global Order, Politial Plurality, and Social Action. Edited by Tze-ki Ton and Kristin Stapleton. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. Pp. xxix + 273. Hardcover $85.00, isbn 978-1-4384-6651-4 This edited volume consists of papers reflecting upon the significance of the contemporary revival of Confucianism for aspects of the global order such as capitalism, Asian modernity, liberal democracy, civil society, and mass media consumption. Read as a whole, the volume neither advocates a particular interpretation of Confucian thought, nor claims the efficacy of Confucianism in resolving human predicaments. Instead, it conceptualizes the Confucian revival as primarily an on-going social phenomenon and tries to analyze its broader impacts beyond the framework of the three epochs of Confucian intellectual history (classical Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, and contemporary New Confucianism). While immensely appreciating the objectivity of this volume's editorship, my review of it in the following will respond to its varying chapters from the perspective of a Ru (Confucian) scholar currently working in the U.S. Chapter Two "Confucianism, Community and Capitalism: Chen Lai and the Spirit of Max Weber" can stand alone for analysis, because it focuses on a significant and controversial issue concerning the relationship between Confucian ethics, capitalism in East Asia, and Max Weber. Relying upon Weber's distinction of value rationality versus instrumental rationality regarding the role of the Protestant ethic in the generation of capitalism, Els van Dongen finds it contradictory for New Confucians to advocate Confucianism as both a moral project of correcting inhumane practices and a social project of developing modern capitalist economies in East Asia. However, from my perspective, Confucian thought typically does not dichotomize these two forms of rationality as Weber did. Confucius indeed taught "an exemplary person is dedicated to rightness, while a petty person is dedicated to profits" (Analects 4.16), but he also cared about the economic well-being of the people (Analects 13.9), and the Great Learning also taught that people should "do what is right to generate profits" (yi yi wei li 以義為利), a dictum for later Confucian merchants' business practices. In other words, humane means for the prosperity of humanity are appreciated as moral instruments, and hence, a Confucian economic ideal would not allow the aforementioned dichotomy to take place. This means that while we consider the instrumental value of the Confucian ethic in developing East Asian capitalism, we should abandon the concept of linear causality. As a matter of fact, while a Confucian ethic helped to transmit the practice of capitalist economics from the West, it also transformed it so as to add special Asian features suitable for Confucian ethical scrutiny,1 just as Confucius once surreptitiously hinted at what he was always doing: creating while transmitting (Analects 7.1). In this way, no contradiction exists as such. Chapters Three to Seven can be treated as one group of papers addressing the issue of Confucian democracy. We can use a spectrum to indicate the diversity of opinions among scholars who, either authoring chapters or being discussed in them, have advocated a specific Confucian attitude towards Western liberal democracy. The criteria of locating these scholars in the left or right side of the spectrum pertains to how strongly they endorse liberal democracy, and how far-ranging their advocacy of Confucianism is. While embracing the full range of Confucian thought including at least its metaphysics, ethics and politics, Stephen C. Angle constructs concepts of political philosophy from within the Confucian tradition to respond to related global conversations, and he also advocates major premises of liberal democracy such as general suffrage and the independence of the judicial system, as universal, and hence, being welcomed by Confucianism. Therefore, Angle's idea of "progressive Confucianism" stands at the far left since he advocates both liberal democracy and Confucianism in a whole-hearted, thick way. An-wu Lin stands a bit further to the right compared to Angle, because while appreciating that institutions of liberal democracy are conducive to the flourishing of civil society, Lin prioritizes...

Class and status: on the misconstrual of the conceptual distinction and a neo-Bourdieusian alternative.

In this article, we address the classical debate about the relationship between the economic and cultural aspects of social stratification, typically cast in terms of Weber's distinction between class and status. We discuss in particular Chan and Goldthorpe's influential, yet largely unchallenged, attempt to reinstate a strict version of the class-status distinction, mounted as an attack on 'Bourdieusian' accounts. We argue that this is unconvincing in two respects: There are fundamental problems with their conceptualization of status, producing a peculiar account where one expression of status honour explains the other; in addition, their portrayal of the Bourdieusian approach as one-dimensional is highly questionable. In contradiction of a reading of Bourdieu as discarding the class-status distinction, we develop an alternative, neo-Bourdieusian account that recognizes class and status as distinct aspects of stratification, thereby allowing for a subtle analysis of their empirical entwinement. The fruitfulness of this approach is demonstrated by analysing the homology between the space of lifestyles and the social space through Multiple Correspondence Analysis of unusually rich data about lifestyles. Importantly, we highlight the relative autonomy of these spaces: Although they exhibit a similar structure, they do not overlap completely.

The Politics of Academic Freedom: Weber, Westminster and Contemporary Universities

The practices of debate are for Weber inherent to the very concept of scholarship. My aim in this essay is to offer along this line a parliamentary interpretation for Weber's writings on the status of values in the research process. My focus lies in Weber's Wertfreiheit essay and his university writings. I discuss Weber's concept of academic freedom with Quentin Skinner's neo-Roman opposition between freedom and dependence and its application to the Westminster parliamentary politics in terms of free mandate and free speech of the members. Weber's distinction between Wertfreiheit (value freedom) and Wertbeziehung (value relation) rougly corresponds to dualism between debates on the items on the parliamentary agenda and the procedural debates of parliamentary agenda-setting. Although the parallels between parliamentary and academic debate are incomplete, parliamentary analogies to scholarly debates are worth discussing. I further illustrate the parliamentary model of debates and Weber's applications of it with examples from contemporary university politics. It is not difficult to detect striking parallels to the situation of the Wilhelmine Germany and contemporary tendencies to build new forms of dependence for both agenda-setting and debate.

The Paradox of Literary Commercialism in Trollope'sNina Balatka

This essay seeks to situate Anthony Trollope's short 1866 novel Nina Balatka in the context of the market conditions that characterized Victorian literary entertainment. These market conditions, which included a proliferating number of reprinting vehicles, accommodated copying, abridging, and reassembling as legitimate creative procedures and suggest that commercial forces made originality and ownership more difficult to stabilize than nineteenth-century novelists and copyright reformers would have liked. In this light, Nina Balatka's failed attempt to assimilate the figure of the Jew into a conventional marriage plot reflects a problem in Trollope's construction of authorship, a problem that inheres in how literary commercialism and literary professionalism might represent mutually exclusive value postulates. Max Weber's distinction between formal rationality and substantive rationality expresses this apparent contradiction: literary commercialism refers to the formal and impersonal laws of the economic market, while literary professionalism refers to the substantive ethos of service to the community and nation. In underscoring the incompatibility of the Jew and the Christian maiden of Prague, Nina Balatka's unconvincing marriage plot uses the same terms that make Trollope's representation of the novelist as both baker and barrister something of a fantasy.

Leo Strauss's Critique of Max Weber's Distinction between Facts and Values and its Significance in Political Philosophy

Leo Strauss's Critique of Max Weber's Distinction between Facts and Values and its Significance in Political Philosophy

Max Webers Rechtssoziologie und die juristische Methodenlehre. 2nd edition by Jens Petersen (review)

[MWS 14.2 (2014) 269-272] ISSN 1470-8078 Book Review Jens Petersen, Max Webers Rechtssoziologie und die juristische Methodenlehre. 2nd edi tion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 181+xiv pp. ISBN 978-3-16-153159-0. €54.00. In his Max Webers Rechtssoziologie und die juristische Methodenlehre Jens Petersen has drawn much needed attention to Max Weber's sociology of law. Considerably ear lier Hubert Treiber had argued that an 'elective affinity' exists between Weber's 'Rechtssoziologie' and his 'Religionssoziologie', and this 'elective affinity' is his notion of rationalization (Treiber 1984: 7-8, 56-59). Despite this close relationship between Weber's 'sociology of law' and his 'sociology of religion', the former has been relatively neglected in contrast to the latter. Petersen clearly makes this point in his preface where he notes that an 'entire library' can be filled with books on Weber's 'sociology of religion' whereas only a few volumes have been devoted to his 'sociol ogy of law' (p. vi). Like Treiber, Petersen recognizes the importance of rationaliza tion for Weber's sociology of law (p. 37). However, rationalization is only one, albeit a major, component, thus he focuses primarily on Weber's legal methodology. In this way Petersen intends to draw more attention to Weber's 'Rechtssoziologie'. As Hubert Treiber noted in his review of the volume on law ('Recht') in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe Weber's sociology of law is difficult to understand, in part because its history had not yet been so thoroughly investigated and because of the difficult nature of the material. However, Treiber also notes how crucial law is to Weber's general sociology and he commends the editors of the 'Recht' volume for helping to clarify its origins and providing some much needed historical context (Treiber 2011). Although Petersen follows others in noting that one of Weber's greatest contribu tions to the sociology of law is with the recognition of the importance of the process of rationalization, he Petersen goes beyond them in his emphasis on certain aspects of rationalization; for example, Weber's distinction between 'law creation' ('Rechtss chöpfung') and 'law finding' ('Rechtsfindung') (pp. 36-39). Regarding the former, Weber emphasized that humans rationally make laws and rejected the idea that divinities arbitrarily decree them. Regarding the latter he underscored how legal analysts were able to deduce increasingly specific legal findings from the more gen eral norms. In addition, Weber warned about the tendency of lay people to believe that legal thinking vacillated between vague legal theories and hair-splitting judicial decisions. What was warranted was an empirically-based system of legal principles that included clearly articulated judicial concepts (pp. 40-43). For Weber, this system should be clear and complete, that is, it needs to be readily understandable, not have any gaps; and, it should be free from internal contradictions (pp. 54,61,64-66, 79). Weber's clear implication was that a great many earlier legal philosophies were fun damentally flawed. One of Petersen's greatest services in this regard is his juxtapo sition of Weber's new 'sociology of law7 against the 'legal methodological doctrines' ('juristische Methodenlehre') of his time and he does so by pointing to the specific© Max Weber Studies 2014, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 270 Max Weber Studies problems Weber had with three important legal methodological doctrines: the pure theory of law, common law, and natural law. Weber objected to the first because it is too abstract and appears to lay people as being 'alien to life' (pp. 102-103); he objected to the second because it relies solely on experience and rejects logic (p. 87); and he objected to the third because it was not so much a legal doctrine as it was a theological one, and a Catholic one at that (pp. 75-77). Having dispensed with Weber's criticisms of the existing legal approaches, Petersen turns his attention to reconstructing Weber's own approach. Petersen draws a connection between Weber's sociology of law and his doctrine of method; both are heavily involved with conflict and with values. Regarding the first, there is no doubt that Weber believed that his methodology was crucial but...

“You Can't Control Me!” Cultivating Authority in a Struggling Urban High School

Background/Context Current research on urban school reform has stressed the importance of strong student–teacher relationships in creating engaging learning environments for students. This article contributes to this growing literature by showing the challenges and possibilities as teachers tried to reclaim authority and cultivate strong student–teacher relationships after a violent teacher assault and subsequent reform efforts stripped them of the remaining vestiges of their institutional authority. Focus of Study This research examines seven classrooms at an urban, comprehensive high school one year after a teacher attack occurred at the school. Drawing on various theories about power and authority in schools, I argue that Weber's distinction between power and authority is critical for teachers who work in schools that are struggling with similar circumstances. In doing so, I show that the degree to which these different approaches created engaging learning environments and restored meaningful teacher–student relationships depended on the type of authority structures that the teachers used. Research Design Qualitative, ethnographic methods were used to explore and analyze the various approaches that teachers used in their classrooms to restore order and reclaim their authority. Purposive sampling was used to represent the range of approaches that teachers used. Classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers and youth were conducted on a regular basis during the yearlong study. Observations and interviews were coded and analyzed to understand the benefits and limitations of the various approaches that teachers used in their classrooms. Findings/Results I describe and analyze seven approaches that I witnessed during my observations at Washington High School. The first three approaches illustrate teachers who relied on power, instead of authority, to control their classrooms. These teachers fall into the following categories: abdicated power, autocratic power, and relinquished power. The next three approaches depict teachers who tried to cultivate authority, yet failed because students did not recognize their authority as legitimate. I refer to these as thwarted authority, partitioned authority, and goal-oriented authority. In contrast, the last example, apprenticed authority, describes a teacher who used legitimate authority to control his classroom. This example suggests that if the students genuinely recognize the teacher's authority as legitimate, then the classroom will become a meaningful learning environment for students despite the overwhelming challenges at this school. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings from this study suggest that many of these approaches failed to generate the authority necessary to restore relational trust and student engagement. However, the one teacher who used what I called apprenticed authority created an engaging classroom environment by providing his students with real, but limited, forms of authority in his classroom. Focusing on the relationship between teachers and students, this study provides scholars and practitioners with a way to understand how Weber's distinction between power and authority is critical for educators who wish to find a way to create authority in institutions, like this struggling high school, where they have lost the institutional authority that teachers normally possess.

Garrison versus Douglass on the abolition of slavery: An Ethics of Conviction versus an Ethics of Responsibility

[MWS 13.2 (2013) 254-263] ISSN 1470-8078 Garrison versus Douglass on the abolition of slavery: An Ethics of Conviction versus an Ethics of Responsibility Fred Guyette Keywords: William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, abolition of slavery, ethics of conviction, ethics of responsibility, Constitution of the United States. William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was a prophetic visionary com mitted to the immediate abolition of slavery in America, but only if it could be accomplished by peaceful means. Frederick Douglass (1818 1895) had even greater reason to abhor slavery. Douglass had been born into slavery and had suffered its evils firsthand. For a decade, Garrison and Douglass worked together to end slavery. Having begun as friends, however, they fell out with each other over the question of which strategy was best for achieving the goal they both desired: liberty for America's slaves. Here I offer a brief account of (1) Max Weber's essay, 'Politics as a Vocation', anticipating that it will shine a helpful light on the politi cal differences between Garrison and Douglass; (2) Garrison's non violent vision for the immediate abolition of slavery; (3) Douglass' greater willingness to forge connections between the rhetoric of lib eration and armed intervention at the national level; and (4) their eventual estrangement from each other. (5) In light of the differences between Garrison and Douglass, the final section returns briefly to Weber's distinction between an ethics of conviction and an ethics of responsibility in order to explore their meaning for the vocation of the political leader as Weber sees it. A Brief Account of Weber's Essay, 'Politics as a Vocation' Max Weber's essay, 'Politics as a Vocation', makes an illuminating distinction between an ethics of conviction and an ethics of respon sibility.1 Weber originally prepared this text for a public talk given 1. Max Weber, 'Politik als Beruf', Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Munich, 1921):© Max Weber Studies 2013, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. Guyette Garrison versus Douglass on the abolition of slaver 255 at Munich University on 28 January 1919. Germany had lost many, many soldiers in The Great War, and Weber's speech focused on the vexing problem of political and military leaders who had so far refused to take responsibility for the devastating consequences of their decisions.2 It is likely that the primary target of Weber's critique was General Erich Ludendorff, who was publicly blaming everyone else for Germany's disastrous losses. Ludendorff did his best to shift responsibility away from himself and on to the liberal Republicans of the Weimar Government who had replaced Kaiser Wilhelm II and subsequently accepted the conditions of The Treaty of Versailles; the Bolsheviks who had organized labor strikes in key German indus tries; the Christians whose desire for peace only masked their moral weakness; and especially The Jewish financiers, who Ludendorff blamed for putting profits ahead of patriotism. Weber began his inquiry into the moral nature of political leader ship by describing the state as 'a human community that (success fully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory'.3 Any state will have a few leaders and many more people who follow them —otherwise 'anarchy' will reign. In light of their serious moral responsibilities, it is important to con sider how those leaders are granted 'legitimacy' in their roles. Weber outlines three different kinds of justification that make it possible for a leader to exercise political power.4 (1) First, there is the authority of the patriarch or the patrimonial prince, rooted in ancient custom or the traditions of the 'eternal yesterday'. (2) Secondly, there is the authority of charisma, which inspires devotion and confidence in the revelation mediated by the prophet or in the heroism displayed by the militari/ leader or in the vision that animates the leader of a polit ical party. (3) A third form of domination, grounded in statutes and rules, is exercised by the leader of a bureaucracy. Though Weber does give some attention to the other two types of authority, he is primarily interested in exploring the moral nature of charismatic leadership. In order for politics to be a vocation...

Sociological concept of morale

The author first discusses the overall unity of the total normative regulation, from which it is separated in the late Roman empire the right, but only in the new century and the morale. There are analyzed the relationship between the moral and ethical reflection and Weber's distinction between pure ethics will (Gesinnungsethik) and ethics of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik). The morale is determined by the good as the highest value, as a specific form of social norms but also as a kind of human behavior. These three definitions can be combined in an integrative approach. There are examined the dimensions of moral statements, subjective and objective side of morality, as well as the difference between morale and morality. A general notion of morale can not be defined in substantive but only in formal way . The formal definition is a constituent of general as well as of sociological concept of morale and it is related to morality as a social phenomenon. Its essence is to define the morale by specific norms, the characteristics of the internal and external mandatory (with the pricks of conscience as the most distinctive moral sanction and control exercised by the formal not institutionalized or diffuse society ), and in consideration of morality as a social process (actions of people associated moral norms ). The basic types of social moral process - being, education, functioning and changing of morale are described. There are briefly analyzed the influence of society to the morale and social function of morale, with special emphasis on the relationship between law and morale.

Il concetto di comunitŕ: quale spendibilitŕ per la sociologia urbana?

- My article makes some questions about the heuristic actuality of community as a concept for the urban sociology. Two meanings of community will be considered, the socio-cultural and the socio-spatial one; however, the first one will be stressed, where community is a quality of social relations. So, my framework will be the Weber distinction between community and association; I think it can be used more than the Toennies one in the current context. In other words, it is a question to insert such concept of community in a reflection about urban sociology, trying to individuate the sociospatial implications of community as a quality of social relations. In this sense, the link between community and natural area is extremely important. So, the concept of natural area is the one to focus on; in particular, I will stress that it can be only partially overlapped to community as a quality of social relations, and such overlapping is more and more problematic today. However, despite the difficulty in speaking about natural areas, I think that community is still useful at a micro-level; in fact, the way in which affectional soSummaries cial actions chart the urban space is a very important field of study. So, a shift from an "area" to an "interstice" logic should be required.Key words: community, natural area, urban interstices, affective action.

Through thick and thin: rationalizing the public bioethical debate over therapeutic cloning

Beauchamp and Childress (1994) elaborated an approach to bioethical deliberations based on four universalistic principles. This framework of ‘principlism’ has been criticized from within biomedical ethics as insufficient and problematic. However, this article considers a more radical sociological critique by John Evans (2002) that rejects the entire approach of defining ‘principles’ a priori. This sociological critique is based on classical sociologist Max Weber's (1925) distinction between instrumental (‘thin’) and substantive (‘thick’) rationality. As an exploratory assessment of Evans' critique, his conceptualization of ‘thin’ versus ‘thick’ rationalization is applied to a large sample of Anglo-American press coverage ( n = 5126) of the bioethical controversy surrounding therapeutic cloning. Given the role of mainstream news media as a key arena for the discursive framing of biomedical research and its ethical implications, the findings raise important questions about principlism and the mediation of bioethical debates on issues such as therapeutic cloning.

Charisma in a Mission Context

Religious scholars disagree about the nature and locus of charisma. Is charisma a quality possessed by individuals, an authority projected upon leaders by their followers, or a force generated by ritual behavior? Followers of Max Weber locate charisma within individual leaders, drawing a sharp distinction between charismatic religious movements and institutionalized religious organizations. This article notes that many successful missionaries have wielded charismatic authority and tests Weber's notions about charisma by examining the case of George Leslie Mackay in Taiwan (1872–1901). The author concludes that Weber's distinction between charismatic and institutionalized leadership does not fit missionaries like Mackay. The article also concludes that in North Taiwan, both the personality of Mackay and the cultural context of his mission were crucial to the formation of a new charismatic sect.

Class and Status: The Conceptual Distinction and its Empirical Relevance

In this article, we return to Max Weber's distinction between class and status as related but different forms of social stratification. We argue that this distinction is not only conceptually cogent, but empirically important as well. Indeed, class and status do have distinct explanatory power when it comes to studying varying areas of social life. Consistent with Weber's assertions, we show that economic security and prospects are stratified more by class than by status, while the opposite is true for outcomes in the domain of cultural consumption. Within politics, class rather than status predicts Conservative versus Labour Party voting in British general elections and also Left-Right political attitudes. But it is status rather than class that predicts Libertarian-Authoritarian attitudes.

The Morality of Value- and Purpose-Rationality

Max Weber's distinction between purpose- and value-rationality is almost universally accepted in administrative theory. Its precise meaning is, however, unclear. In this article, more insight into the nature of Weber's distinction is claimed by approaching it from a (neo-) Kantian perspective. It is claimed that the Kantian contrast between autonomy and heteronomy of the will and the distinction between absolute and relative ends is at the heart of Weber's distinction. This implies that the distinction has paradoxical underpinnings as it is rooted in a moral context that does not fit Weber's sociological approach.

Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. By William Lee Miller. (New York: Knopf, 2002. xvi, 515 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0–375–40158–X.)

Lincoln's Virtues is an ambitious and elegant intellectual biography of Abraham Lincoln that succeeds admirably in uncovering the “moral meaning” of his life while enhancing “our understanding of Lincoln as a real human being in a real world” (pp. xii–xiii). William Lee Miller challenges a rising tide of cynicism about Lincoln's motives and methods by dissecting the political, social, and intellectual foundations that underlay his key moral judgments. Miller applies Max Weber's distinction between an “ethics of responsibility,” which denies the existence of pure and absolute alternatives, and a contrasting “ethics of abstract purity,” devoted to idealism and even perfection (p. 197). In Miller's estimation, Lincoln was morally as well as intellectually self-educated and developed an intuitive “ethic of responsibility” that recognized the limitations of American society and government. Lincoln eschewed perfection as impossible, proposing “our most intelligent judgment of the consequences” (p. 212) as the best that society can achieve. He therefore framed—and defended—his moral judgments on a foundation of intellect rather than faith. In his youth, Miller demonstrates, Lincoln struggled with essential Christian doctrines, eventually accepting and even celebrating them on the basis of reason rather than belief. The same ethic led Lincoln to reject evangelical religion for assuming too much personal freedom independent of social institutions—the “real world.” Similarly, he never viewed his own moral judgments as absolutes nor imposed them on others.

The Relevance of Weberian Ethics for Contemporary Journalism

Max Weber's distinction between expedient and value rationality and an ethic of responsibility and of ultimate ends is regarded as a theoretical tool to analyse the relationship between the mass media and politics in democracies. Weber considers journalists as an example of the combination of value-based rationality and adherence to an ethic of ultimate ends. In contrast, he considers politicians as an example of the combination of expedient action and ethics of responsibility. Intending to test one part of Weber's theory - his assumptions about journalists - the authors examined two aspects of journalistic predispositions - general views on journalistic rules of conduct and specific judgements on behaviour in concrete situations. In an experimental design six groups of newspaper editors were confronted with different options. Their reactions indicate that journalists generally and in concrete situations make value-based decisions when deciding whether to print a story or not. In contrast, journalists generally claim to adhere to an ethic of responsibility although they base their arguments on an ethic of ultimate ends in concrete situations. The consequences of this contradiction are discussed.

DIALOGUES OF THE NATIONS: Revisiting Visions and Its Critics

Critics of Visions in this symposium raise three general questions. The question of inclusiveness is addressed by linking pertinent criteria to the book's aims; that of justifying national traditions by reviewing pertinent evidence; and that of the viability of dialogue by arguing that responsive communication does not entail full agreement. A number of particular issues the critics raise are addressed by the book's arguments regarding the relation of the discipline of sociology to its philosophical background, the international setting of early sociology, Durkheim's individualism, Weber's distinction between naturalism and interpretability, Marx's treatment of Feuerbach and of nationalism, and the relation between power and knowledge. This response concludes by explicating the proposal that the time may be ripe to rejoin a number of the elements of Aristotelian social science that had been delegated to various national traditions of social theory in the modern era.

Dialogues of the Nations: Revisiting Visions and Its Critics

Critics of Visions in this symposium raise three general questions. The question of inclusiveness is addressed by linking pertinent criteria to the book's aims; that of justifying national traditions by reviewing pertinent evidence; and that of the viability of dialogue by arguing that responsive communication does not entail full agreement. A number of particular issues the critics raise are addressed by the book's arguments regarding the relation of the discipline of sociology to its philosophical background, the international setting of early sociology, Durkheim's individualism, Weber's distinction between naturalism and interpretability, Marx's treatment of Feuerbach and of nationalism, and the relation between power and knowledge. This response concludes by explicating the proposal that the time may be ripe to rejoin a number of the elements of Aristotelian social science that had been delegated to various national traditions of social theory in the modern era.