The social thought of talcott parsons

6 Talcott Parsons 1968, The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory With Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers New York: McGraw Hill 1937; 3rd edition, N

Talcott Parsons

Uta Gerhardt Methodology and American Ethos

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The social thought of Talcott Parsons : methodology and

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Preface vii

PART I Themes

PART II TeneTs

2 A Product of Modern European Civilization: Translating

into English Max Weber’s Die protestantische Ethik und

der Geist des Kapitalismus 57

3 A Charter for Modern Sociology: The Social System and

PART III DIAlogs

4 Encounters with the Frankfurt School: A Story of Exile,

5 Beyond Sociological Imagination: The Controversy with

C Wright Mills over Power and Knowledge 191

6 “… will not down:” The Clash with Utilitarianism in the

Name of the American Societal Community 237

and its greatest strength lies

in its deep spiritual and moral self-consciousness.

Thomas Mann

“I am an American” (1940)

The Disobedient Generation,1 a collection of autobiographical accounts of American, British, French, German, and Italian sociologists, documenting how some dismissed their intellectual mentors in the 1960s, makes Parsons a bygone thinker of yesteryear In that fateful-cum-fruitful decade, says Jeffrey Alexander,

“Talcott Parsons saw the other side of the pattern variables, and the strain modernity placed on men, but believed that balance could be preserved by hearth and home.”2 John Hall remembers how in these formative years, “the spirit of the time and a background in history made me critical of the consensual theories

of Talcott Parsons,”3 when he himself, he recollects, was “much concerned with forces of social change.”

It seems odd that Parsons, arguably the greatest English-speaking sociologist

of the twentieth century, should have been disowned by his students among The

Disobedient Generation, considering that he himself, Parsons, the doyen of the

discipline in the 1950s, had rebelled against the sociology well established in the United States only decades earlier His foremost achievement as a young scholar,

as has been maintained elsewhere and will be argued again in this book, was that

he rejected Social Darwinism which was the dominant creed well into the 1930s.4

Indeed, he used a quote from Crane Brinton’s English Political Thought in the

Nineteenth Century5 dismissing the theory of Herbert Spencer, then a towering

authority in social science in America, in the very first passage of The Structure of

Social Action:6 “Who now reads Spencer? … His God has betrayed him We have evolved beyond Spencer.”7

1 Alan Sica and Stephen Turner (eds) (2005), The Disobedient Generation: Social

Theorists in the Sixties (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).

2 Jeffrey C Alexander (2005b), “The Sixties and Me: From Cultural Revolution to

Cultural Theory,” in Sica and Turner (eds), The Disobedient Generation, 37–47, p 38.

3 John A Hall (2005), “Life in the Cold,” in Sica and Turner (eds), The Disobedient

Generation, 129–40, p 134; the next quote is from the same page.

4 Uta Gerhardt (2002), Talcott Parsons: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press), Chapter 1: “Understanding The Structure of Social Action”

discusses “The Long Shadow of Darwinism,” 22–32.

5 Crane Brinton (1933), English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century

(London: Benn).

6 Talcott Parsons (1968), The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory

With Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers (New York: McGraw Hill

1937; 3rd edition, New York: The Free Press).

7 Ibid., 3

Little did the believers in human diversity and social change among the

contributors to The Disobedient Generation realize that Parsons in the 1960s was

neither a conservative, nor did he deny the forces of social change On the contrary, his pledge for America meant that he advocated, for one, “full citizenship” for Black Americans.8 This should have convinced his students of yesteryear, instead

of giving them cause for distancing themselves from his groundbreaking work

In other words, the vision of the social thought of Parsons that the sociological canon entertains, needs revision and repair urgently The folklore that he promoted outdated structural-functionalism, nothing else, should be abandoned

My book makes one determined effort to set the record straight Parsons, I argue, was a classic whose work followed Max Weber, the doyen of the twentieth century The 17 books (including seven volumes of collected essays) and nearly

200 scholarly articles that he published in his lifetime, were all meant to follow

in the footsteps of Weber, the giant on whose shoulders he stood In my view, Parsons set an agenda for sociology, applying as he did the conceptual approach

of Weber, suitably amended by the philosophy of Alfred N Whitehead, an opener for our discipline until today No mere exegesis of Weber’s writings was on his mind, but he used the social thought of Weber together with work of American

eye-as well eye-as British scholars, among them George Herbert Mead and John Maynard Keynes, to mention but two, to set up a panorama of modern industrial society in its undeniable humanity It seems vital to understand this intellectual project

In regard of Weber, this book puts Parsons’s first major opus, The Structure

of Social Action, in line with his translation into English, published in 1930, of

Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.9 The analytical focus

of his world-famous The Social System, published in 1951, is also Weberian And

Weber is still on his mind in the 1960s—now supplemented by the other towering classic, Émile Durkheim10—right until his last, unfinished, book manuscript of the

1970s, The American Societal Community (published recently under the title of

American Society).11

One vantage point of both Parsons and Weber, which this book dwells on, is that methodology, the use of heuristic constructs in conceptual schemes, is the guarantor of systematic social science That is to say, Weber as well as Parsons

8 Parsons, “Full Citizenship for the Negro American? A Sociological View,”

Daedalus, vol 94, 1965, 1009–54; see also Chapters 6 and 7 below

9 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott

Parsons (1930) (London: Allen and Unwin, New York: Scribner’s Sons); see also Chapter 2 below

10 See especially: Émile Durkheim, La division du travail social (originally, 1893), 2nd Edition, 1902 (Paris: Félix Alcan); translated 1933: Émile Durkheim on the Division of

Labor in Society, being a translation of his De la division du travail social (New York: The

Macmillan Company).

11 Talcott Parsons (2007), American Society: A Theory on the American Societal

Community, edited and with an introduction by Guiseppe Sciortino (Boulder, CO:

Paradigm).

opposed positivism that had been established originally in the theories of, notably

Spencer in the 19th century who emulated Charles Darwin First in his Dr phil

dissertation on the theory of capitalism of Weber, Parsons realized how important methodological grounding is for concept formation, the endeavor that was first

introduced into modern sociology in Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money (first

published in 1900).12 Parsons honored the European tradition, if only in the subtitle

of The Structure of Social Action, namely A Study in Social Theory with Special

Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers

Weber’s principles of “Objektivität” and “Wertfreiheit,” the hub of Weberian

Wissenschaftslehre,13 became a must for Parsons’s social thought, suitably adapted to the American philosophical tradition “Objectivity,” for Weber, meant that conceptual schemes are neither realist nor idealist, but explanation hinges

on analytical schemes.14 “Value freedom,” for Weber, meant that no ideology should interfere with sociological thought: When his friend Robert Michels joined syndicalism in Italy and soon became a follower of Mussolini, Weber discontinued their relationship (he could not tolerate such “ethics of conviction,” even in a friend), and Marxism was another credo that had nothing to do with scientific thought.15 Parsons followed Weber on both these counts The modern sociology

that he explicated, from The Structure of Social Action to The American Societal

Community, followed the methodological program of Weber How much the

conceptual frame of reference matters in modern sociology, this book documents

in extensive detail Nevertheless, I should add, both Weber and Parsons when

they opposed weltanschauung in social thought, felt inclined, even urged, to

have a standpoint and take sides in the political debates of the day Parsons, as it happened, became an ardent enemy of Nazism as he joined the Harvard Defense Group in the 1940s, opposed McCarthyism in the 1950s, and in 1968, as President

of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, helped Russian dissident Andrej

Sacharov to publish a sensational peace plan in the New York Times, to mention

but some of Parsons’s politics—though all his life he was as loath as Weber had been to compromise his scholarship

12 Georg Simmel (1900), Philosophie des Geldes (Munich and Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot; 2nd Edition, 1907) Translated, 2004: The Philosophy of Money, by Tom

Bottomore and Davis Frisby from a first draft by Kaethe Mengelberg (London: Routledge)

13 Max Weber (1922b), Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, edited by

Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr; 3rd edition, 1968) A partial translation

of rather doubtful quality is: The Methodology of the Social Sciences – Max Weber (1949),

translated and edited by Edward A Shils and Henry A Finch, with a foreword by Edward

A Shils (New York: The Free Press).

14 Max Weber (1904), “Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und

sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 3rd Edition,

146–214.

15 Max Weber (1917a), “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und

ökonomischen Wissenschaften,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 489–540

My other vantage point where Parsons and Weber are close, is that they take account of history That is, society has a history that the sociologist should take note of, when conceptual analysis targets empirical society that invokes history

Weber’s posthumously published classic Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy

and Society), given its title by its editor Marianne Weber when the original working

title had been Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte (The Economy and the Social Orders and Powers), established the historical nature

of society through the use of analytical types For instance, there are, as Weber stipulated, three “pure” types and a further eight types of legitimate authority, and Weber uses these types as he makes sense using this typology of historical

society (societies) In The Structure of Social Action, Parsons merges Weber’s

“pure” types so that two comprehensive structures of social action emerge—one anomie standing for dictatorship, named after lawlessness originally explained by Émile Durkheim,16 combining the types of traditional and charismatic authority, the other integration emulating Weber’s type of rational-legal authority denoting modern society Weber had taken the contemporary world of his day, the German and British Empires plus America at the turn of the centuries, additional to the vast range of historical societies he had studied, as he set out to explicate variations

in the relationship between the economy and the structures of order and power Parsons likewise took for the grounding of his theory the society as experienced, the empirical world of the day, from the 1930s when National Socialism reigned

in Germany and Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States, to the 1960s and beyond when in the United States the Civil Rights Movement set the agenda for

modernization of that modern society In the preface of The Structure of Social

Action, he saw as his subject matter “the main features of the modern economic

order, … ‘capitalism’, ‘free enterprise’, ‘economic individualism’, as it has been variously called.”17 In the introduction to The Negro American, a book for which

President Lyndon B Johnson wrote a foreword, Parsons addressed as the subject matter in the book, in his “Introduction: Why ‘Freedom Now’, Not Yesterday:”—

“the type of social change now occurring.”18

History mattered for Weber in his times of fierce competition between nation states, often monarchies, rarely democracies, in the era culminating

in World War I, with its aftermath of revolution and transformation mainly in Europe History matters for Parsons in the 1930s and 1940s when mostly fascist dictatorships reigned in most of Europe and democracy prevailed at any rate in the United States, where liberalism withstood the Great Depression and sustained the

16 Émile Durkheim (originally in French, 1893), The Division of Labor in Society (re-edition, New York: The Free Press, 1964); Durkheim (originally in French, 1897), The

Suicide: A Study in Sociology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952)

17 Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, xxii.

18 Parsons, “Introduction: Why ‘Freedom Now’, Not Yesterday”? in: Parsons and

Kenneth B Clark (eds), The American Negro (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin 1966),

p xxiv.

war effort History in the 1960s, for Parsons, meant equality in America, though

it had not been realized fully in two centuries of its history, but a real perspective

of social change was being opened up at last In Parsons’s work, as this book documents, the United States play the role of the society capable of historical change, when the society of the day fosters the empirical basis for the concept formation that sociological thought stands for

In the tradition of Weber who made conceptual schemes imperative for modern sociology, Parsons envisages the “American ethos.”19 The term is central in his

second major work, The Social System, the masterpiece still noteworthy worldwide

until today—though somewhat notorious with some of its all too outspoken critics The idea of democracy is the model that Parsons sets, to follow wherever dictatorship gives way to constitutionalism, replacing constraint by consensus—this major baseline of Parsons’s social thought should be brought out clearly Parsons’s sociology, I venture in this book, explores the merits and achievements

of democracy, the most advanced type of society in the history of mankind For him, the United States are the model to emulate worldwide—in the sense that the most advanced industrial society and also the oldest modern democracy can help sociology focus its conceptual perspective He chooses America—though a society far from perfect—for the model that emulates his conceptual perspective, because historically the United States had been a democracy, in his lifetime, for nearly 200 years That there was vast scope for further improvement, he is the

first to acknowledge It is in this vein that he speaks of “American ethos” in The

Social System,20 explicating the value-orientation pattern that signals democracy

and stands for modernity The mental image to follow is not the American dream, but the “American ethos.” Such orientation combines “ethos” with “American;”

it is not only the image American society tends to cultivate for itself—ethos that means the real-life pattern—but it also stands in social science for the knowledge interest that Weber related to “Objectivity”-cum-“Value freedom,” the principles

of adequate methodology

The four parts of this book are symmetrically organized though unequal

in length and number of chapters Part 1 which consists of Chapter 1, outlines Parsons’s sociological project, detailing four main themes in the three phases of his intellectual biography Part 2 focuses in two chapters, 2 and 3, on the early work and “middle phase,” with special reference to the translation of Weber’s essay on

Protestantism and modern capitalism, and The Social System, the classic work that

encompassed structural-functionalism, when it was soon amended and eventually replaced by a different approach altogether Part 3 traces the debates that Parsons was involved in, as they gave rise to and accompanied constant revision of his conceptual framework, during the time when his late oeuvre took shape Chapters 4–6 recapitulate the controversies with the Frankfurt School, C Wright Mills, and utilitarianism that resurfaces in the economism of, for one, Gary Becker Part Four,

19 See especially, Chapter 3 below.

20 Talcott Parsons (1951), The Social System (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press), 108.

one long chapter, Chapter 7, the longest in the book, delineates three realms where Parsonian social thought may still be an eye-opener today—the study of social inequality, civil society, and globalization, respectively The Epilogue goes back

to methodology and the “American ethos,” connecting them with Weberian social thought

This book has many fathers and mothers, the colleagues and friends who encouraged my going back to Parsons again and again: I felt that I could argue

a novel understanding of Parsons’s social thought My special thank-you goes to Bernard Barber, devoted good friend, who never tired of reminding me that my prose should be analytic, never too narrative—though I am afraid that he might have found this book a bit too much on the narrative side nevertheless I also thank Anne Rawls who has supported my scholarship on Parsons throughout Our debates on American sociology were an idea-giver and a reminder that not all has been said about social theory That American ethos and methodology are the foci

of Parsonian social thought, is the theme of this book My profound thanks go to all who helped me clarify this view Needless to say, all shortcomings are entirely

my own

Two last comments: throughout, I use the male mode of speaking when I refer

to both men and women as actors, authors, thinkers As a female, I hope to be granted the liberty of speaking of men when the reference is to both men and women

The chapters are organized as if they were essays, to make it possible to read each on its own, though their order is roughly chronological The reader may choose which chapter to read at a time, as he goes along The literature in the various chapters is documented fully in each of them, in footnotes placed at the bottom of the pages A full bibliography plus a name and subject index are added

at the end of the book

Themes

Positioning the Parsons Project

In volume IV of Theoretical Logic in Sociology, The Modern Reconstruction

of Classical Thought: Talcott Parsons, published in 1983 and influential until

today, Jeffrey Alexander honored Parsons as a classic whose work he respected, but could not help rejecting his accomplishments.1

Alexander charged Parsons with a two-fold methodological error: mistaking formalized social theory for empirical reality,2 and also embracing neo-positivism through the systems approach with its four-cell action schemas,3 was methodologically erroneous

Also, supposedly a two-fold presuppositional error needed mention In his early work Parsons apparently endorsed idealism as he shunned from a multidimensional model that would have been viable empirically,4 and in his late oeuvre allegedly perceived the social (societal) community unduly harmonious when empirical evidence showed how highly ambivalent cultural structures are.5

More than 25 years later, Alexander still targets Parsons for presumed idealism.6 In 2002, in his presentation at the Russell Sage Foundation Conference

1 Jeffrey C Alexander (1983), The Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought:

Talcott Parsons, vol IV in Theoretical Logic of Sociology (Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press).

2 Parsons supposedly claimed empirical status for his theoretical argument, and substantiated this claim with the convergence between, for one, the theories of

Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, in The Structure of Social Action, says Alexander:

“‘Convergence,’ for Parsons, is equivalent to empirical verification.” Ibid., 155.

3 Parsons allegedly mistook the “elements in the interchange analysis” for “the nature

of systems,” warned Alexander, such that reality was lost sight of when systems and their elements were the only theme: “Interchange would allow him to ‘deduce,’ formally, every segment of institutional life.” Ibid., 174.

4 “On scrutinizing the densely argued pages of The Structure of Social Action,

one cannot avoid the conclusion that Parsons is not sure whether he is arguing for a multidimensional theory or simply against an instrumentalist one.” Ibid., 213.

5 “By conducting a series of powerfully multidimensional arguments which are distinctly sociological – which consider norms only as they interact with political, economic, and value exigencies – Parsons himself demonstrates the absurdity of his claims.” Ibid., 275–6.

6 In The Civil Sphere, Alexander stresses against Parsons the dynamic, that is,

conflict-prone, side of social life, which he, Alexander, in Modern Reconstruction of Classical

Thought (241–54) had dealt with in the subchapter entitled “The Tilt Toward Pattern

Maintenance and Integration: Interchange and the Distortion of Parsons’ Generalized

commemorating the centenary of Parsons’s birth, Alexander specifies for the societal community “The Promise and Disappointment of Parsons’s Concept,”7

considering “the dialectics of modernity.”8 Parsons should have exposed the contradictory rather than consensual forces, Alexander charges:

To reconstruct a more satisfactory theory of the societal community, one would have to look closely at how processes of anti-universalism, which have often led to destruction rather than progress, were (and are) built into the processes and definitions of modernity itself … If the endemic and dangerous persistence of particularism and exclusion is theorized, then one must dispense with the utopian idea that value consensus will produce social integration, much less justice.

To disagree with Alexander as he lectures Parsons for utopianism, means to raise doubts in defense of Parsons Alexander seems to adopt the criticism voiced since the 1950s However, Parsons’s merits have been rediscovered gradually since the 1980s

The new beginnings took a decade It became obvious from authentic sources that Parsons had conceptualized the economy as he analyzed society,9 had focused

on modernity,10 and had analyzed National Socialism.11 No longer could Alvin Gouldner’s 1970 strictures hold sway, which had made the Harvard department

responsible for The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology.12 No longer was the urge

Concept.” Jeffrey C Alexander (2006), The Civil Sphere (New York: Oxford University

Press), 568 See also below, Chapter 7

7 Jeffrey C Alexander, “Contradictions in the Societal Community: The Promise and Disappointment of Parsons’s Concept,” in Renée Fox, Victor Lidz, and Harold Bershady

(eds) (2005), After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the Twenty-First Century (New

York: Russell Sage Foundation), 93–110.

8 Ibid., 106; the next quote is from the same page.

9 Robert J Holton and Bryan S Turner (1986), Talcott Parsons on Economy and

Society (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

10 Roland Robertson and Bryan S Turner (eds) (1991), Talcott Parsons – Theorist of

Modernity (London: Sage)

11 Talcott Parsons on National Socialism (1993), edited and with an introduction by

Uta Gerhardt (New York: Aldine de Gruyter)

12 Alvin Gouldner (1970), The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books) It should be mentioned that Gouldner’s criticism was also directed against Harold

Garfinkel and Erving Goffman, both deemed authors of morally reprehensive theory.

felt as in the 1970s, to “de-Parsonize Weber,”13 but rather the need arose to establish the Weberian Parsons.14

re-Vigorous debate in the last two decades has yielded criticism15 but also praise, the latter sometimes fraught with pedagogic effort.16

Nevertheless, things have improved considerably over the last decade The

2005 special issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology has no unduly critical

overtones,17 and the American Journal of Economics and Sociology of 2006

stages a comeback for Parsons the economist, acknowledging that he emphasized the social aspects of the economy.18 At any rate, no longer is he judged an ardent supporter of the capitalist nation-state,19 neither is he said to have chosen his

13 Jere Cohen, Lawrence E Hazelrigg, and Whitney Pope (1975a), “De-Parsonizing

Weber: A Critique of Parsons’s Interpretation of Weber’s Sociology,” American Sociological

Review, vol 40, 229–41; Talcott Parsons (1975c), “Comment on De-Parsonizing Weber,” American Sociological Review, vol 40, 666–70; Jere Cohen, Lawrence E Hazelrigg, and

Whitney Pope (1975b), “Reply to Parsons,” American Sociological Review, vol 40, 670–

74

14 Uta Gerhardt (2005b), “The Weberian Talcott Parsons: Sociological Theory in

Three Decades of American History,” in Renée Fox et al (eds), After Parsons (New York:

Russell Sage Foundation), 208–39.

15 Two criticisms: Bruce Wearne (1989), The Theory and Scholarship of Talcott

Parsons To 1951: A Critical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), and

Gabriele Pollini and Guiseppe Sciortino (eds) (2001), Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action and Contemporary Debates (Milan: Franco Angeli).

16 Two pedagogic efforts: In the 1970s, Jackson Toby rewrote Parsons’s two

companion volumes Societies and The System of Modern Society, uniting them into one book under the title The Evolution of Societies, to make Parsons’s prose better readable—

an endeavor that Parsons, curiously, seems to have welcomed personally More recently, Victor Lidz means to explain Parsons’s interaction media, taking the motives of a dean in

a hypothetical case of a faculty decision about tenure to be explicable in Parsonian terms

of power, influence, etc., invoking money, power, influence, and value-commitments, the media of interaction—as if Parsons had not conceptualized these media as so-called “non zero-sum” phenomena in terms that are not what everyday language makes them out to be

See, Talcott Parsons (1977b), The Evolution of Societies, edited and with an introduction

by Jackson Toby (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall); Victor Lidz, “Language and the

‘Family’ of Generalized Symbolic Media,” in Xavier Trevino (ed.) (2001), Talcott Parsons

Today: His Theory and Legacy in Contemporary Sociology (Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield), 141–76.

17 The special issue: The Journal of Classical Theory, vol 5, no 3, November 2005

The articles focus on the sociology of the economy, sociology of religion, etc

18 The special issue: The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol 65,

no 1, January 2006 Additional to printing a transcript from a Seminar that Parsons gave

at Brown University in 1973, the special issue’s articles appreciate his contribution to economic themes cogently.

19 See, William Buxton (1986), Talcott Parsons and the Capitalist Nation-State:

Political Sociology as a Strategic Vocation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

intellectual predecessors on the grounds that he wished to promote his career at Harvard.20

In 2007, Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council since 1999, on behalf of the American Sociological Association, edited an authoritative history entitled Sociology in America.21 This book has not taken notice of Parsons as the icon of American social thought, however Some authors

in this collection see him even following in the footsteps of Herbert Spencer,

the theorist whose work he declared “dead” in The Structure of Social Action,22

merely because, on the occasion of the re-edition of Spencers The Study of

Sociology in 1961,23 Parsons wrote an introduction to that book The charge is that he returned to Spencer in the 1960s with no apparent apprehension.24

Others in Sociology in America claim that Parsons returned to positivism

in the 1950s.25 Calhoun criticizes such endeavor: “Parsons’ functionalist theory would by the 1960s provide one of the dominant images of a disciplinary

mainstream (in all senses of the term disciplinary),”26 when he endorses the

criticism of C Wright Mills who, in The Sociological Imagination in 1959, had

“satirized” Parsons’s functionalism as “grand theory” behind which allegedly lurked a “lack of critical attention to public problems.” Calhoun applauds Mills:

“In a range of books through the 1950s he had pursued intellectual analyses that

could also reach broad publics, with Power Elite most prominent.”27

My interpretation makes a fresh start This chapter places Parsons in the middle of modern theory My first theme is “The Quest for Methodology” that puts him into the historical perspective of the cultural sciences, for one, and looks at “The Politics of Theory” in defense of democracy My second theme

20 See, Charles Camic (1992), “Reputation and Predecessor Selection: Parsons and

the Institutionalists,” American Sociological Review, vol 57, 421–45.

21 Craig Calhoun (ed.) (2007), Sociology in America: A History (Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press)

22 Craig Calhoun and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (2007), “Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and

Hierarchy: ‘Mainstream’ Sociology and Its Challenges,” in Calhoun (ed.), Sociology in

America, 367–410, especially p 379

23 Parsons, “Introduction” (1961d), in the reprint of: Herbert Spencer, The Study of

Sociology (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press).

24 Daniel Breslau: “Years after declaring Spencer’s death, Parsons elaborated a structural functionalism that may have owed more to Spencer than Durkheim and Weber.” Daniel Breslau (2007), “The American Spencerians: Theorizing a New Science,” in

Calhoun (ed.), Sociology in America, 39–62, p 61 Breslau’s reference: Jonathan Turner (1985), Herbert Spencer: A Renewed Appreciation (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage)

25 See, for example, George Steinmetz (2007), “American Sociology Before and After World War II: The (Temporary) Settling of a Disciplinary Field,” in Calhoun (ed.),

Sociology in America, 314–66, especially p 350.

26 Craig Calhoun (2007), “Sociology in America: An Introduction,” in Calhoun (ed.),

Sociology in America, 1–38, p 35; the next three quotes are from the same page

27 For more discussion on Parsons and Mills, see Chapter 5 below

is that he entered into and was targeted by fierce controversy, sketched in the section “The Torment of Debate.” My third theme is the legacy of his approach,

30 years after his death, for sociology today, carrying the torch of Weber, in the section “The Imprint of Time.”

The Quest for Methodology

Spencerian Positivism and Its Enemy, German Philosophy

Unquestionably, Spencer did not invent positivism, neither did he coin the name sociology Both, to be sure, were accomplishments of Auguste Comte, the self-taught apostle of social thought who proposed that society be planned under the

maxime, savoir pour prévoir, prévoir pour règler Obviously, the Comtean analysis

lacked any semblance to what Max Weber was to call “value freedom:” Comte had

no use for the distinction between Sociological Inquiry, on the one hand, and social

engineering, on the other

Spencer’s earliest treatise, entitled Social Statics: Or The Conditions Essential

to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed, first appeared

in 1851.28 The book was a treatise in moral philosophy, intent on proving that the governing principle of social life was human nature expressed in faculties on which depended the advance of civilization This principle, Spencer stated, underlay the

“laws of social existence,”29 the most important of which was what he called “the law of equal freedom.” This law entailed that human happiness was greatest when and if individuals acted in conjunction with the conditions of society that were most congenial to the perfection of humankind On that note, the principle of society was,

he asserted, “the law of the perfect man—the law in obedience to which perfection consists.”30 Social statics, the structure that fitted progress best, guaranteed that everybody be free to “exercise his faculties”31 to the full Otherwise, one would

be punished through, notably, falling into poverty or suffering from physical or mental deficiencies Therefore, the more imperfect men were being allowed to exist, Spencer opined, the more the continuous improvement of civilization was being threatened As to individuals, inferior social status or any other stigmatized condition was punishment in Spencer’s eyes, due to the person’s failure to use his faculties to the full:

28 Herbert Spencer (1851), Social Statics: Or the Conditions Essential to Human

Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed (London: John Chapman),

republished 1970 by Gregg International Publishers Ltd., Farnborough, UK

29 Ibid., 11; the next quote is from the same page

30 Ibid., 55

31 Ibid., 76; the next quote is from the same page, emphasis original.

Now if God wills man’s happiness, and man’s happiness can be obtained only by the exercise of his faculties, then God wills that man should exercise his faculties;

that is, it is man’s duty to exercise his faculties; for duty means fulfilment of the Divine will That it is man’s duty to exercise his faculties is further proved by the fact, that what we call punishment attaches to the neglect of that exercise.

Progress, in particular, came through the law of equal freedom This was evident because the most prosperous societies were also the most advanced culturally, Spencer maintained The dynamics of evolution meant perfection, that is, those nearer perfection were also the more civilized races or classes They had every right

to defend their prerogatives against those less civilized or privileged From this understanding of history as guarantor of progress, Spencer condemned the poor-laws as well as general education These modern institutions presumably posed undue constraints upon the most successful (who were also the most civilized)

in societies where the government made the rich pay for the welfare of the less affluent The modern welfare state was seen to hinder rather than facilitate progress toward the perfection and the utmost happiness of humankind, respectively.32

This was the philosophical doctrine for which Spencer claimed objectivity as moral thought He maintained that he looked at the facts and could thereby arrive

at substantiated insights What, then, were these facts? They lay, he suggested, in evolution as it entailed progress toward the best possible purpose of history, the perfection of mankind However, if mankind did not learn the lessons of history,

he warned, suffering would continue to take its toll in the world He explained that the primordial heritage had to be honored by mankind This meant that the present unsatisfactory state of facts would not change unless the most cultivated enjoyed the fullest liberty, and the less cultivated or less able would die early and,

The justification for these assumptions, for Spencer, lay in historical determinism:

32 For this theme in Spencer’s social thought, see Chapter 25, 311–29, in Social Statics

where he warned against the poor-laws, and Chapter 26, 330–56, where he denounced national education, that is, general schooling that supposedly impeded the natural sense of self-preservation in the élite

33 Social Statics, 413.

Derived, therefore, as it is, directly from the Divine will, and underlying as it does the right organization of society, the law of equal freedom is of higher authority than all other laws The creative purpose demands that everything shall

be subordinated to it Institutions and social forms must just marshal themselves

he stated The following passage made this plain:

If a sentiment responds to some necessity of our condition, its dictates must be respected If otherwise—if opposed to a necessity, instead of in harmony with one, we must regard that sentiment as the product of circumstances, of education,

of habit, and consequently without weight However much, therefore, the giving

of political power to women may disagree with our notions of propriety, we must conclude that, being required by the first pre-requisite to greatest happiness—the law of equal freedom—such a concession is unquestionably right and good 35

Spencer’s earliest work, no doubt, contained in nuce the doctrine of natural

selection This doctrine dominated the discussion on the progress of civilization during the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century

To be sure, it was Spencer from whom Charles Darwin in the late 1850s borrowed

as he did the idea of natural selection.36

Although Darwin, it seems, invented the terms “survival of the fittest” and

“struggle for existence,” it was Spencer, in 1852, who first discussed these themes

in his A New Theory of Population: Deduced from the General Law of Animal

Fertility.37 The booklet was directed against then contemporary hopes that new developments in agriculture plus a certain “procreative inability” caused by

“excessive alimentation,” as the introduction to the American reprint of 1852 phrased it, could prevent overpopulation.38 Spencer squashed such hopes: fertility

in humans, he maintained, followed the same laws as in subhumans, even

non-34 Ibid., 195–6.

35 Ibid., 179–80.

36 See, for further discussion: Gerhardt (2001c), “Darwinismus und Soziologie Zur

Frühgeschichte eines langen Abschieds,” Heidelberger Jahrbücher, vol 45, 183–214.

37 Spencer (1852), A New Theory of Population: Deduced from the General Law

of Animal Fertility Republished from the Westminster Review, for April 1852 With an

Intoduction by R.T Trall, M.D (New York: Fowlers & Wells).

38 Ibid., 6.

vertebrae organisms An all-pervasive “self-adjusting law,”39 he stated, aimed at the perfection of the race and, consequently, fitness was the condition for survival, that

is, existence He reasoned:

Everywhere vigorous life is the strength, activity, and sagacity whereby life is maintained; and equally in descending the scale of being, or in watching the decline of the invalid, we see that the ebbing away of life is the ebbing away of the ability to preserve life 40

The highest organic life, men, particularly those who embodied the highest evolutionary state of the species, above all modern Englishmen, arguably the most civilized, Spencer asserted, commanded superior intelligence, a sure condition for survival,

That which we call rationality is the power to combine or co-ordinate a great number and a great variety of complex actions for the achievement of a desired result … [B]y choosing right modes, right times, right quantities, right qualities, and performing his acts in the right order, [the husbandman, Spencer’s example] attains his end But if he have done too little of this, or too much of that, or have done one thing when he should have done another—if his proceedings have been badly coordinated; that is, if he have lacked intelligence, he fails 41

Improvements in agriculture could not guarantee life for the rapidly increasing population in the modern world, Spencer asserted, because the laws of nature were being broken That is, those who survived, according to natural law, were and should

be the fittest They should be the least weak, the most cunning, in one word: the better race Those who could not survive the hardships of life, he believed, should not have the right to live They should not be sustained through the help given them from modern medicine or the support offered them in the modern welfare state, he demanded

To substantiate this postulate, he claimed that the famine in Ireland, in the 1840s, had served the purpose of eliminating the weakest, those least fit for survival

in the struggle for existence:

This truth we have recently seen exemplified in Ireland … For as those prematurely carried off must, in the average of cases, be those in whom the power

of self-preservation is the least, it unavoidably follows, that those left behind

to continue the race are those in whom the power of self-preservation is the greatest—are the select of their generation 42

39 Ibid., 7.

40 Ibid., 13.

41 Ibid., 11.

42 Ibid., 42.

Spencer in his later works—they were widely influential for decades—elaborated

further on these ideas Among his other books were the four-volume Principles of

Psychology, the six-volume Principles of Ethics, and the three-volume Principles

of Sociology, additional to the vastly successful The Study of Sociology, first

published in 1873 and in its 11th edition in 1884.43

Spencer’s sociology did not go unchallenged, however Against Spencer’s

sociology-cum-philosophy of history—but also John Stuart Mill in The Logic of the

Moral Sciences, the Sixth Book of A System of Logic ratiocinative and inductive, being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation,44—German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey directed fierce criticism Dilthey’s strictures against Spencer but equally Comte and Mill became the vantage point from which Georg Simmel, in the early 1890s, launched a sociology that differed completely from that of Spencer, the beginning of modern sociology

as we know it today

Dilthey’s influential classic Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften was first

published in 1883.45 Dilthey dedicated his book to Paul Yorck von Wartenburg with whom, as a student, he had discussed the feasibility of a critique of historical reason The idea had been to supplement Immanuel Kant’s critique of pure reason, which dealt mainly with the natural sciences, with a critique of historical reason

suited for the social (cultural) sciences In the introductory chapter of Einleitung in

die Geisteswissenschaften, Dilthey spelled out his knowledge interest: he wished

not only to analyze society in its multifaceted reality in the modern world, but also make it clear that science concerning society together with history was different from knowledge about nature The issue was, he explained, that the human mind was special Society as a subject area, therefore, was different from nature The mind in society and history did not function on laws that governed nature To pinpoint the sciences purporting to society and history, Dilthey coined the term

Geisteswissenschaften—a term in the plural, literally meaning the sciences of the

43 Spencer (1870–1872), The Principles of Psychology, 4 volumes (London: Williams

& Norgate); (1899) The Principles of Ethics, 6 volumes (originally, 1879) (New York: Appleton & Co.); (1876–1896) The Principles of Sociology, 3 volumes (London: Williams and Norgate); (1873) The Study of Sociology, 11th Edition (London: Kegan, 1884)

44 John Stuart Mill (1843), The Logic of the Moral Sciences, Book VI A System of

Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, 8th Edition (London: Longmans, Green,

Reader, and Dyer, 1872), reprinted (1988) (Peru, IL: Open Court)

45 Wilhelm Dilthey (1883), Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften Versuch einer

Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte Erster Band, 9th

Edition, 1990 (Stuttgart: B.G Teubner, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) The book

has been translated into English twice: Introduction to the Human Sciences: An Attempt

to Lay a Foundation for the Study of Society (1988), translated and with an introductory

essay by Ramon J Betanzos (Detroit: Wayne State University Press); Introduction to the

Human Sciences (1989), with an introduction by Rudolf Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi (eds)

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)

mind.46 These Geisteswissenschaften analyzed intellectual processes constituting

cultural phenomena.47 These in turn were analyzed in their contexts, either a

particular society or historical epoch Geisteswissenschaften, therefore, constituted

a new type of cultural science, one analyzing socio-cultural phenomena in their setting that involves the human mind Society, conceptualized in the terms that invoke history, requires a special analytical approach, Dilthey felt He therefore

introduced a special method, one suitable only for Geisteswissenschaften The method was systematic understanding, Verstehen It was the method to analyze

meaning structures that explain experienced reality—a method clearly different from what Mill and Spencer had proposed Dilthey hastened to clarify that such

Verstehen was a cultural-science accomplishment, a method of scientific explanation

in its own right:48

Such method is in opposition to what recently the so-called positivists suggest as they ground their conceptualizations in the natural sciences and derive the idea

of science from the latters’ view of nature, thereby assuming that they know from their vantage point which intellectual endeavors deserve the name and rank of science 49

Chapters 14–17 in Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften took Spencer as

well as Comte and Mill to task Dilthey charged them with an obvious failure to conceptualize their subject matter adequately, when he judged that their method was not suitable for the purpose of explanation of social life as they presumed Chapter 14 criticized not only sociology but also the then current philosophy

of history—the latter including Karl Marx’s critique of political economy Such contemporary approaches, Dilthey felt, mistook historical life for the outcome of laws

that presumably were general as well as deterministic But Geisteswissenschaften

focused on empirical phenomena that belonged into socio-historical contexts, a fact that made them different from the knowledge derived from deterministic laws The

46 Dilthey’s Geisteswissenschaften were to replace Mill’s moral sciences, dismissing

the idea that the sciences should merely extend their realm to society and history, but retaining the idea that the moral dimension was crucial

47 The translation into English of Geisteswissenschaften is often Human

Sciences, which catches Dilthey’s tenet that the human mind matters most, an arena for intersubjectivity, the foundation for society and history

48 Rather than comparing the various translations of Dilthey’s books that are on the market as to how they render into English the German original, I use my own translations into English, accompanied by the German original in footnotes.

49 Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, 5 In the original: “Eine solche

Methode steht in Gegensatz zu einer neuerdings nur zu häufig gerade von den sogenannten Positivisten geübten, welche aus einer meist in naturwissenschaftlichen Beschäftigungen erwachsenen Begriffsbestimmung des Wissens den Inhalt des Begriffs Wissenschaft ableitet und von ihm aus darüber entscheidet, welchen intellektuellen Beschäftigungen der Name und Rang einer Wissenschaft zukomme.”

Geisteswissenschaften, he emphasized, analyzed social reality as reality when they

were veritable Wirklichkeitswissenschaften.50

Chapter 15 charged that sociology emulating natural science missed its own subject matter, historical reality Dilthey proved that a sociology that aimed to be a natural science set itself a task that was impossible to fulfil Chapter 16, under the headline of “Their Methods Are Wrong,”51 declared Comte’s idea of a hierarchy

of sciences, with sociology the culmination of biology, as untenable as was Mill’s positivism:

In Mill you hear the monotonous and boring clatter of the words induction and deduction, which now can be heard from the quarters of many a foreign land The entire history of the sciences of the mind is proof that this idea of so-called

“assimilation” is misguided The sciences of the mind have a basis and structure entirely different from that of the natural sciences In the sciences of the mind, the

subject matter are units given, not inferred We understand their inner reality In

the intellectual process, we understand first and then we develop the knowledge from there The process of analysis is that a totality is originally given to us, and from the unmediated knowledge we proceed toward further understanding: this

is how things work and have always worked in the history of the sciences of the mind 52

50 The concept Wirklichkeitswissenschaften—literally translated, sciences of

reality—was coined by Dilthey to emphasize that historical events and developments are

the baseline for philosophical, or geisteswissenschaftliche, explanation Simmel as well

as Weber adopted Dilthey’s concept Simmel used the term in his treatise denouncing the philosophy of history—from which he warned—in 1892; Weber used the term in his essay

on the “objectivity” of knowledge in the social sciences, in 1904 See, Georg Simmel (1892),

“Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie,” in Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works), vol 2 (1989) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 297–421, especially 348–9; Max Weber (1904), “Die ’Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher

und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 3rd

Edition (1968), edited by Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr), 146–214, especially 170–71 For the distortion of the idea of Wirklichkeitswissenschaft in the work

of Hans Freyer, an advocate of authoritarianism at the end the Weimar Republic, see below

51 Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, 104–9 In the original: “Ihre

Methoden sind falsch.”

52 Ibid., 108–9 In the original: “Bei Mill besonders vernimmt man das einförmige und ermüdende Geklapper der Worte Induction und Deduction, welches jetzt aus allen uns umgebenden Ländern zu uns herübertönt Die ganze Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften ist ein Gegenbeweis gegen den Gedanken einer solchen ‘Anpassung.’ Diese Wissenschaften haben eine ganz andere Grundlage und Struktur als die Natur Ihr Objekt setzt sich aus gegebenen, nicht erschlossenen Einheiten, welche uns von innen verständlich sind, zusammen; wir wissen, verstehen hier zuerst, um allmählich zu erkennen Fortschreitende Analysis eines von uns in unmittelbarem Wissen und in Verständnis von vornherein besessenen Ganzen: das ist daher der Charakter der Geschichte dieser Wissenschaften.”

Eventually, in Chapter 17, Dilthey identified positivism with an attempt to replace history with formulae that were all but meaningless:

From such formulae which pretend to explain the course of history, no fruitful truth has come Nothing but metaphysical fog The thickest fog is with Comte who converts the Catholicism of de Maistre into the shadow image of hierarchical guidance for society from science 53

To summarize: Spencer established sociology as a natural science indebted to the principles of the “survival of the fittest” and the “struggle for existence.” But Dilthey in no uncertain terms condemned such sociology To be sure, sociology in the 1880s was that of Spencer, supplemented by the earlier writings of Comte and extending into the positivism of Mill Dilthey rejected their idea that sociology could explain society in the terms of the laws of nature

It was from the vantage point of Dilthey that Georg Simmel, a young philosopher at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, in the early 1890s,

addressed the question of sociology anew He analyzed society in Über sociale

Differenzierung (1890) and focused on methodology in Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (1892) The new perspective came to fruition in 1894 in

his programmatic essay entitled “Das Problem der Sociologie.”

Georg Simmel’s Plea for Perspectivism

Simmel’s On Social Differentiation, his first book, carried the subtitle Sociological

und Psychological Investigations.54 Its first chapter, in accordance with Dilthey’s

idea of Geisteswissenschaften, dealt with epistemology, that is, methodology For

one, sociological laws are impossible, Simmel stated, insofar as individuals are not atoms of society but actors in history Second, on this background, society consists of reciprocal relations between actors in the objective (trans-individual) structures in history Epistemology means that no laws govern the social lives of individuals but, rather, individuals are part and parcel of reciprocity structures in social life:

53 Ibid., 112 In the original: “Aus diesen Formeln, welche den Sinn der Geschichte auszusprechen beanspruchen, ist keine fruchtbare Wahrheit geflossen Alles metaphysischer Nebel Bei keinem ist er dichter als bei Comte, der den Katholizismus de Maistres in das Schattenbild einer hierarchischen Leitung der Gesellschaft durch Wissenschaft wandelte.” The reference was to Joseph-Marie de Maistre, a French philosopher of the early nineteenth

century who belonged to a group of thinkers who called themselves les idéologues.

54 Georg Simmel (1890), “Über sociale Differenzierung Sociologische und

psychologische Untersuchungen,” Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe, vol 2 (1989), 109–295

It seems that this early book of Simmel has not been translated into English yet I use my own translations

Contrary to processes for entire groups that have been the usual object for sociological thought so far, my investigation concerns the position and the fate

of individuals engaged in reciprocity, which in turn ties the individuals together and thus makes for the social whole 55

In the course of the book, Simmel made constant remarks directed against Charles Darwin but also, a commonplace in the 1890s, Darwin’s disciple and

fellow-traveller Spencer For instance, in the chapter dealing with The Social

Niveau,56 Simmel explained that the modern type of social organization means differentiation in the structure of society The niveau of intellectuality reached in modern history, he stated, was beyond what Darwin’s and, similarly, Spencer’s notion of nature could envisage Their idea of progress toward perfection, therefore, was ludicrous:

Nature knows no means-end-relationship in that form that is meant to procreate

mechanically a large number of products some of which by chance manage

to better adapt to the environmental circumstances than others, which in turn presumably makes them best suited for the assumed ends To be sure, nature does not command a realm where any kind of procreation would satisfy given teleological requirements We are unable to subscribe to the old saying that nature always chooses the shortest path to reach its ends; since nature has no ends, it makes no sense to see nature as having short or long ways; therefore, to apply this principle to social ends or means is pointless 57

Simmel’s next book made the quest for methodology imperative for social

thought—and for sociology to disavow Spencer but follow Dilthey from

Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften instead Simmels Die Probleme der

55 Simmel, Über sociale Differenzierung, 138 In the original: “Im Gegensatz zu

den Bewegungen der ganzen Gruppe, die sich dem sociologischen Denken als nächstes Objekt darboten, sollen die folgenden Überlegungen im wesentlichen die Stellung und die Schicksale der Einzelnen zeichnen, wie sie ihm durch diejenige Wechselwirkung mit den andern bereitet werden, die ihn mit diesen zu einem socialen Ganzen zusammenschließen.”

56 Ibid., 199–236.

57 Ibid., 128 In the original: “Die Natur kennt keine Zweckmäßigkeit in der Form,

dass sie eine große Anzahl von Produkten mechanisch hervorbringt, von denen dann zufällig eines besser als die anderen sich den Umständen anpassen kann und sich dadurch als zweckmäßiges erweist Aber sie hat kein Gebiet, auf dem jede Hervorbringung von vornherein und unbedingt gewissen teleologischen Forderungen genügte Den alten Satz, dass die Natur immer den kürzesten Weg zu ihren Zwecken einschlage, können wir in keiner Weise mehr anerkennen; da die Natur überhaupt keine Zwecke hat, so können auch ihre Wege nicht durch eine Beziehung zu einem solchen als lange oder kurze charakterisiert werden; deshalb wird auch die Übertragung dieses Prinzips auf das Verhältnis zwischen den socialen Zwecken und ihren Mitteln nicht zutreffen.”

Geschichtsphilosphie58 explained the new sociology in three comprehensive chapters.

Chapter 1 outlines the philosophical connotations of the world in the individual mind—the psychological conditions that historical research needs to take account

of, as the first edition of the book (1892) said, the inner conditions of historical knowledge, the second (1905).59 Research is always conducted under a certain standpoint, a researcher’s point of view, and the subjective perception enters into, and is vital for, any kind of understanding of historical objects No knowledge is possible, to note, unless the researcher takes a standpoint This contradicts historian Leopold von Ranke, the towering authority in nineteenth century historiography:

If Ranke desires to extinguish his self in order to see things as they were by themselves, he would be utterly unsuccessful if his wish were fulfilled After his self would have been extinguished, nothing would remain for him wherefrom to investigate other men’s selves 60

Chapter 2 shows that historical laws can only be the laws that a researcher finds

in history, which are not always the same and can change even during a scientist’s own lifetime and over his oeuvre In fact, laws are valid only for a limited period

of time and apply only to one or the other specific context The catchword is

interest—what Weber was to call the knowledge interest of the social scientist:

What is decisive in the value of knowledge that makes the claim for truth is the researcher’s interest connected with it Even if knowledge appears logical

in a given framework of science, it will only be worthwhile if it is valuable to the researcher pursuing it for its own sake; since knowledge becomes important

58 A translation into English is: (1977), Problems in the Philosophy of History: An

Epistemological Essay Translated, edited and with an introductory essay by Guy Oakes

(New York: Free Press)

59 Simmel referred to epistemology in the second edition when he had referred to psychology in the first The reason was that Dilthey in the meantime had published a treatise

on psychology – and Dilthey’s idea of psychology differed markedly from what Simmel wished to convey For further discussion, see: Uta Gerhardt (1992), “Die Konzeption des Verstehens und der Begriff der Gesellschaft bei Georg Simmel im Verhältnis zu Wilhelm

Dilthey,” in Annali di Sociologia/Soziologisches Jahrbuch, vol 8 – I, 245–74; and also Gerhardt (2001a), Idealtypus: Zur methodologischen Begründung der modernen Soziologie

(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 102–34

60 Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 321 In the original: “Wenn

Ranke den Wunsch ausspricht, er möchte sein Selbst auslöschen, um die Dinge zu sehen, wie sie an sich gewesen sind, so würde die Erfüllung dieses Wunsches gerade seinen vorgestellten Erfolg aufheben Nach ausgelöschtem Ich würde nichts übrig bleiben, wodurch man die Nicht-Ichs begreifen könnte.”

only from the standpoint of a researcher, it does not matter under what formal conceptual category this knowledge might belong 61

Chapter 3 deals with meaning in history, the perspectivism that makes the researcher

organize a subject matter according to his principal theme—one Hauptsache, to use

Simmel’s term.62 The researcher has to choose from, or select, an array of available empirical evidence when he investigates whatever is of interest to him On that note, there is no objective knowledge and all analysis is conducted from a particular standpoint, with a particular perspective in view That is, only perspectivist knowledge can claim “historical adequacy:”

Not only is the method that one main axis be constructed through an empirical phenomenon, as if it were the whole, not rooted in any objective behavior of things, but the “principal theme” thus created will often appear far from decisive Consequently, auxiliary or opposite tendencies will also appear convincing to such a degree that the putative principal theme may look as if it were not even the predominant aspect of the phenomenon 63

Nevertheless, the resultant heuristic constructs may resemble an “idea” of an empirical phenomenon, when constructs are the methodical devices to make social life understandable intersubjectively:

Inasmuch as [historical or social] events are condensed into an ever shorter formula or a generalized abstraction, they appear as if they had been reduced to their “idea,” a reference unit in relation to which other, less central tendencies in the phenomenon may take on the character of apparent arbitrariness, externality,

or isolation 64

61 Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 349 In the original: “Das

Entscheidende für den Wert einer an sich wahren Erkenntnis ist doch nur das Interesse, das sich an sie knüpft Sie mag einem vorangestellten Begriff von Wissenschaft noch so sehr genügen, so wird man ihr nicht nachgehen, wenn sie nicht an sich wertvoll erscheint; thut sie dies aber, so ist wiederum sehr gleichgültig, in welche formale Begriffskategorie sie gehört.”

62 See, Gerhardt, Idealtypus, 120–22.

63 Simmel, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, 397 In the original: “Es

ist nicht nur von vornherein ein im objektiven Verhalten der Dinge nicht begründetes Verfahren, die Hauptsache als das Ganze zu behandeln, sondern auch die ‘Hauptsache’ wird keineswegs in allen Fällen sich als unbedingt sichere darstellen, und die Neben- und Gegenströmungen werden vielfach ein Quantum zeigen, das die Hauptsächlichkeit der Hauptströmung ernstlich in Frage stellt.”

64 Ibid., 398 In the original: “[I]n dem Maß, in dem die Ereignisse in knapperen Sätzen, in allgemeineren Abstraktionen zusammengedrängt werden, erscheinen sie auf ihre ‘Idee’ zurückgeführt, der gegenüber die anders gerichteten Nebenerscheinungen den Charakter der Zufälligkeit, Äußerlichkeit und Isolierung tragen.”

Simmel’s essay of 1894, “Das Problem der Sociologie,”65 gave the final blow to

Spencerian sociology He minced no words to make sociology a Geisteswissenschaft

that has nothing to do with positivism as proclaimed by Spencer, the contemporary

so much better known

Simmel separated a “research tendency that has falsely been declared the science of sociology” from “sociology in the narrower sense,”66 the latter his

own Not merely a “name for the totality of modern human sciences,”67 it is one discipline among many, one with a special subject matter embedded in the division

of labor between various (social) sciences “Society in the widest sense,”68 to be sure, means the entire world in its empirical vastness But society as the subject matter of sociology denotes the forms of sociation only In this vein, the sociology that is a viable science, does what the arguably awkward statement conveys:Sociology as a special discipline … selects one prominent social subject matter from the totality of the history of mankind, that is, it analyzes relevant issues that

are to be found in the society; or, to say it with somewhat paradoxical brevity, it

investigates as its subject matter in the society what is “society.” 69

65 Georg Simmel (1894), “Das Problem der Sociologie,” in Georg Simmel

Gesamtausgabe, vol 5 (1992) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 52–61 Simmel had the

essay translated into English, French, and Italian Over a decade later, the introductory chapter of Soziologie, his second major opus, carried the same title “Das Problem der Soziologie.” It relied on the idea of 1894 but revised and extended it A translation into

English appeared as early as 1895: Simmel, “The Problem of Sociology,” Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol 6, 412–23 The introductory

chapter of Soziologie was also translated into English and published in two parts, “The

Problem of Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology, vol 15, 1909/1910, 289–320, and

“How is Society Possible?,” American Journal of Sociology, vol 16, 1910/1911, 372–

91 Another translation of the earlier text was by Kurt H Wolff, originally from 1950, later incorporated into Donald Levine’s collection of texts from Simmel published in the

series Heritage of Sociology See, Simmel, “The Problem of Sociology,” in Georg Simmel

on Individuality and Social Forms (1971), with an introduction by Donald Levine (ed.)

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), 23–35; reprinted from Georg Simmel, 1958–

1918: A Collection of Essays, with Translations and a Bibliography, by Kurt H Wolff

(editor and translator) (Columbus: Ohio State University Press) The translation is marked erroneously “1908.”

66 Simmel, “Das Problem der Sociologie,” 53 The passage in the original: “Soll es nun statt einer bloßen Forschungstendenz, die fälschlich zu einer Sociologie hypostasiert worden ist, wirklich eine solche geben, so muß das Gesamtgebiet der allumfassenden socialen Wissenschaft in sich arbeitsteilig gegliedert, es muß eine Sociologie im engeren Sinne ausgeschieden werden.”

67 Ibid., 52 In the original: “ein zusammenfassender Name für die Totalität der

modern behandelten Geisteswissenschaften.”

68 Ibid., 54 In the original: “Gesellschaft im weitesten Sinne.”

69 Ibid., 57 In the original: “[D]ie Sociologie als Einzelwissenschaft … löst eben das bloß gesellschaftliche Moment aus der Totalität der Menschengeschichte, d.h des

Simmel’s plea for methodology as he reinvented sociology entered into his seven extensive essays on what sociology could achieve,70 essays that eventually

became chapters in his second major opus, Soziologie.71 Alas, all this did not find a friendly audience Simmel’s methodological approach that worked so well with the explanation of empirical historical phenomena, was not hailed by his contemporaries as a seminal achievement

To summarize: Simmel, the founder of modern sociology as we know it, was the predecessor of the social thought that Parsons came to elaborate Simmel’s plea for objectivity achieved through methodology was not widely honored in his time He was not recognized by his contemporaries nor appreciated well into the twentieth century,72 for what he stood for He remained an outsider among philosophers in his own time, when many perceived him as merely a sociologist, and was hardly

recognized by German or American sociologists until the 1960s and later, because

many felt that he offered a theory unduly philosophical

Not even Max Weber who relied on Simmel’s Die Probleme der

Geschichtsphilosophie in his own conception of “objectivity,” would acknowledge,

or recognize, Simmel’s greatness

Max Weber’s Heuristic Concept Formation

Weber’s essay “Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” written in 1904,73 was the next step in the saga of modern sociology

Geschehens in der Gesellschaft, zu geordneter Betrachtung aus; oder, mit etwas paradoxer

Kürze ausgedrückt, sie erforscht dasjenige, was an der Gesellschaft ‘Gesellschaft’ ist.”

70 He analyzed, in chronological order, the themes of authority subordination) (first in English, 1896), the size of the group or society (in English, 1898), Secrecy (in English, 1904), Poverty (in German only, 1907), to name but some of the

(superordination-themes that became chapters of Soziologie

71 See further: Gerhardt, Idealtypus, 177–222.

72 Although Donald Levine and his co-authors mean to show how Simmel was appreciated in the United States from the late 1890s onwards, they do not comment on the fact that Albion Small, the devoted translator of Simmel’s works, denounced Simmel for apparent deviations from what sociology supposedly meant in America, whereupon Small discontinued his interest in Simmel Levine et al also do not comment on the fact that Robert Park and Ernest Burgess in their famous collection of essays and excerpts demonstrating that sociology was a science, took Simmel for a follower of the idea that sociology emulated natural science, putting excerpts from his work side by side with excerpts from, among others, Darwin and Spencer See, Donald N Levine, Ellwood B Carter, and Eleanor Miller Gorman (1976), “Simmel’s Influence on American Sociology,”

American Journal of Sociology, vol 81, 813–45; Robert E Park and Ernest Burgess (eds)

(1921), Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press)

See also Chapter 2 below

73 Max Weber (1904), “Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis” (see footnote 50 above) The translation usually used in the

The essay introduced Weber as one new editor of Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und

Sozialpolitik, a well-known social-science journal mainly devoted to economics

previously, now the birth place of the conception of ideal types.74

The essay had two parts Part I made scientific knowledge, empirically grounded, an accomplishment distinct from value judgment Presuppositions of what society is, or should be like, to note, had nothing to do with science Social science be no advocate for any kind of perfection of humankind Such advocacy where it surfaces, says Weber, aims at non-empirical ends

Part II emphasized the researcher’s knowledge interest in the cultural sciences—in the plural—beyond any laws that may be detected in historical phenomena:

Concerning the result of theoretical work in the abstract theories of prices, interests, or rents, occasionally the following exorbitant claim has been made: [it is said that] these theories in some kind of analogy to the laws of physics

could be used to deduct from given real premises quantitatively definite results

– that is, laws in the strictest sense – that supposedly are valid for the reality

of life, on the grounds that the economy of mankind in the case of given ends supposedly is unequivocally “determined” by men’s means Such claim overlooks the fact that even in the most simple case where such results might be

achieved, the totality of historical reality including all its causal relationships must be taken for “given” as well as known Furthermore, even if our finite mind could grasp this kind of knowledge, no explanatory value of an abstract

theory can be certain The naturalistic prejudice inherent in concepts that wish

to create something similar to the natural sciences, has led to misconceptions concerning the meaning that theoretical ideas can have 75

English-speaking world is by Edward A Shils and Henry A Finch, in the 1949 volume, The

Methodology of the Social Sciences – Max Weber (New York: Free Press) A critical review

of this translation, long overdue, has not yet been undertaken

74 Although the literature on ideal types is vast, only relatively few interpretations have pictured Weber’s methodology for what it was—an attempt at systematic concept formation for empirical sociology (and economics) on the background of history One notable for its clarity of interpretation and adequacy of textual documentation is, Dieter

Henrich (1952), Die Einheit der Wissenschaftslehre Max Webers (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr)

75 Weber, “Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” 188 In the original: “Für das Ergebnis der theoretischen Arbeit, die abstrakten Preisbildungs-, Zins-, Renten-usw.-Theorien, wurde demgemäß hie und da phantastischerweise in Anspruch genommen: sie könnten, nach – angeblicher – Analogie physikalischer Lehrsätze, dazu verwendet werden, aus gegebenen realen Prämissen

quantitativ bestimmte Resultate – also Gesetze im strengsten Sinne – mit Gültigkeit für die

Wirklichkeit des Lebens deduzieren, da die Wirtschaft des Menschen bei gegebenem Zweck

in bezug auf die Mittel eindeutig ‘determiniert’ sei Es wurde nicht beachtet, dass, um dies

Resultat in irgendeinem noch so einfachen Falle erzielen zu können, die Gesamtheit der

jeweiligen historischen Wirklichkeit einschließlich aller ihrer kausalen Zusammenhänge

From this vantage point, Weber introduced the ideal type, a systematic device

to explain historical phenomena These are images of “synthesis, that are

often called ‘ideas’ of historical events,”76 indeed mental images (in German:

Gedankenbilder), that “unite certain relationships and processes of historical

life into a basically integrated cosmos of imagined structures.”77 To clarify:

“In terms of contents, this construction is like some utopia because it is being reached through mental exaggeration of certain elements of reality.”78 As for the

purpose of such heuristic construction: “It is not an account of reality but it is a

useful device to approach clarity in our taking note of various such accounts.”79

In other words,

The ideal type is a mental image that represents no empirical reality, let alone

“essential” reality, and it is far from serving as a scheme under which reality

as a specimen might be subsumed But it has the meaning of a pure ideal

limiting concept that serves as a reference unit to measure reality when its

empirical contents is being ascertained, with which it is being compared Such

concepts are devices with which we construct relationships with a view upon

the category of objective possibility, relationships that are judged adequate by our imagination as the latter is oriented towards and has learned from reality.80

als ‘gegeben’ gesetzt und als bekannt vorausgesetzt werden müsste und dass, wenn dem endlichen Geist diese Kenntnis zugänglich würde, irgendein Erkenntniswert einer abstrakten

Theorie nicht vorstellbar wäre Das naturalistische Vorurteil, dass in jenen Begriffen etwas den exakten Naturwissenschaften Verwandtes geschaffen werden solle, hatte eben dahin geführt, dass man den Sinn dieser theoretischen Gedankengebilde falsch verstand.”

76 Ibid., 190 In the original: “jene Synthesen, welche man als ‘Ideen’ historischer

Erscheinungen zu bezeichnen pflegt.”

77 Ibid In the original: “Dieses Gedankenbild vereinigt bestimmte Beziehungen und

Vorgänge des historischen Lebens zu einem in sich widerspruchslosen Kosmos gedachter

Zusammenhänge.”

78 Ibid In the original: “Inhaltlich trägt diese Konstruktion den Charakter einer

Utopie an sich, die durch gedankliche Steigerung bestimmter Elemente der Wirklichkeit

gewonnen ist.”

79 Ibid In the original: “Er ist nicht eine Darstellung des Wirklichen, aber er will der

Darstellung eindeutige Ausdrucksmittel verleihen.”

80 Ibid., 194 In the original: “[Der Idealtypus] ist ein Gedankenbild, welches nicht

die historische Wirklichkeit oder gar die ‘eigentliche’ Wirklichkeit ist, welches noch viel weniger dazu da ist, als ein Schema zu dienen, in welchem die Wirklichkeit als Exemplar eingeordnet werden sollte, sondern welches die Bedeutung eines rein idealen Grenzbegriffes

hat, an welchem die Wirklichkeit zur Verdeutlichung bestimmter bedeutsamer Bestandteile

ihres empirischen Gehaltes gemessen, mit dem sie verglichen wird Solche Begriffe sind

Gebilde, in welchen wir Zusammenhänge unter Verwendung der Kategorie der objektiven Möglichkeit konstruieren, die unsere, an der Wirklichkeit orientierte und geschulte

Phantasie als adäquat beurteilt.”

Dilthey had destined the Geisteswissenschaften for cultural analysis placing the

individual into history and society, and ideal-type analysis in similar manner looks

at what is special, not general, in social life:

The purpose of ideal-type concept formation is throughout, to bring into sharp

focus not what is general in the species but, on the contrary, what is special in

individual cultural phenomena 81

“Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” Weber’s masterpiece on methodology, doubted Heinrich Rickert’s philosophy of values when it emulated, although Weber failed to acknowledge this explicitly, Simmel’s idea of perspectivism.82

Shortly after he had published “Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und

sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis” and before he finished his treatise The Protestant

Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, in the summer of 1904, Weber corresponded

with Rickert on the idea of ideal type:

Indeed, I should find some such category necessary in order to be able to separate

“value judgment” from “value-related judgment.” I gave it this name because in everyday language we speak of “ideal limiting case,” “ideal purity” of a typical course of events, “ideal constructions” etc., without invoking something that ought to be And also because what Jellinek in his general theory of the state calls ideal type seems perfect only in a logical sense, not as a “model.” Needless to say, the concept needs further clarification 83

81 Ibid., 202 In the original: “Denn Zweck der idealtypischen Begriffsbildung ist es

überall, nicht das Gattungsmäßige, sondern umgekehrt die Eigenart von Kulturerscheinungen

scharf zum Bewusstsein zu bringen.”

82 For the thesis that Weber’s methodology did not follow Rickert’s philosophy of historical knowledge as some commentators on the Weber-Rickert-nexus think, see: Gerhardt (forthcoming), “Neue Fragen zur Methodologie Max Webers,” in Martin Gessmann (ed.),

Das Problem philosophischer Schulen im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter)

An interpretation of the difference between values and value-relations in Weber’s work, acknowledging Weber’s critique of Rickert, for one, in Weber’s “Politics as Vocation,” is:

Henrik H Bruun (2007), Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology New

Expanded Edition (Aldershot: Ashgate)

83 The original German: “In der Tat halte ich eine ähnliche Kategorie für notwendig,

um ‘wertendes’ und ‘wertbeziehendes’ Urteil scheiden zu können Wie man sie nennt, ist ja Nebensache Ich nannte sie so, weil der Sprachgebrauch vom ‘idealen Grenzfall’, ‘idealer Reinheit’ eines typischen Vorgangs, ‘idealen Konstruktionen’ etc spricht, ohne damit ein Sein-sollendes zu meinen Ferner weil das, was Jellinek in der allgemeinen Staatslehre Idealtypus nennt, als nur im logischen Sinne perfekt gedacht ist, nicht als ‘Vorbild’ Im übrigen muss der Begriff weiter geklärt werden.” Typed Letter, Max Weber to Heinrich

Rickert, June 14, 1904 Preussisches Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Berlin-Dahlem, HA IV

Nachlass Max Weber, no 30, vol 4, 94 (the handwritten letter is catalogued under No 25,

Weber defended his ideal-type methodology against Rickert who opposed it.84 Weber

had read Rickert’s Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, in its

first edition, as he traveled in Italy in late 1902 and early 1903 He had written to Marianne, his wife, “As much as you may squeeze R’s concept of ‘value’, what you

get out of it is always some meaning in the terms of ‘valuable for knowledge’.”85

That is, Weber found, knowledge from the standpoint of the researcher is the only answer to the problem of values, despite Rickert’s views In a second handwritten note, Weber endorsed Simmel’s approach openly: “The remarks of Simmel, ibid.,

p 76 bottom of the page, were less misleading in this respect than Rickert’s ‘values’ could be.”86

Obviously, Weber looked to Simmel more than Rickert in this matter Simmel had stated,

Teleological conceptions may involve causal thinking Epistemologically, teleological knowledge stands between objective and subjective knowledge under the category of the plausible, and the pure subjectivity of its basic idea has

at least some objectivity in so far as it can be projected upon the real course of events 87

vol 4, 78–9) The reference was to: Georg Jellinek (1900), Allgemeine Staatslehre Das

Recht des modernen Staates, Erster Band (Berlin: O Häring)

84 Indeed, Rickert was never able to understand why ideal types were necessary for historical research He could not see what they contributed to the problem of objectivity—or, rather, “objectivity” (in inverted commas), in Weber’s terms In the third and fourth editions

of Rickert’s seminal Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung published in

1921, one year after Weber’s untimely death, Rickert stated that Weber’s methodology had followed his, Rickert’s, philosophy of science He went on to criticize Weber, however, for the idea of ideal type, an idea that he, Rickert, could find neither essential nor convincing

Heinrich Rickert (originally, 1902) (1921), Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen

Begriffsbildung Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften Dritte und

vierte verbesserte Auflage (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr) The argument was repeated in the fifth edition, in 1929.

85 The quotation in: Henrik H Bruun (2001), “Weber on Rickert: From Value

Relation to Ideal Type,” Max Weber Studies, vol 1, 138–60, p 158 In the original: “So sehr

man Rs Begriff ‘Werth’ … schütteln mag, es fällt nichts Anderes heraus als die Bedeutung

’wissenswerth’.”

86 From ibid., 150 In the original: “Die Bemerkungen Simmels a.a.O S 76 unten waren hier weniger missverständlich als Rickerts ’Werthe’ es sein konnten.” The passage in

Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie to which Weber referred here dealt with teleology

in history Simmel stated there that meaning in history was connected with the knowledge interest of the researcher, with a vengeance: the researcher investigating a central theme

is not free to invent the facts as he pleases Interpretation has to rely on what scientific knowledge is available on the subject matter, lest the analysis be useless

87 Georg Simmel (1892), Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie Eine

erkenntnistheoretische Studie (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot), 77; also, Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (1989), 385–6 In the original: “Die teleologische Betrachtung

When Weber came to write about authority, religion, law, etc., from about

1909 onward, the long manuscripts that were to become chapters of Wirtschaft

und Gesellschaft, he used heuristic concepts throughout.88 In Wirtschaft und

Gesellschaft, he clarifies that heuristic concepts safeguard “objectivity” in modern

sociology The perspectivism grounded in the researcher’s knowledge interest, also guarantees “value freedom:”89

As does all science, interpretation always aims at evidence Evidence in understanding can be either rational (and this may mean either logical or mathematical), or intuitive: emotional, artistic-receptive Rationally evident in

the field of action is particularly what can be understood intellectually fully and

clearly in its context of intended meaning Intuitively evident in an action is what can be understood in its experienced emotional context … For scientific analysis

using types, all irrational, emotionally caused meaning structures of behavior

that have an influence on action are best conceptualized as “deviations” from a constructed pure means-end-rational course of action 90

ist sozusagen eine Funktion der kausalen Sie steht erkenntnistheoretisch zwischen dem objektiven und subjektiven Verhalten des Denkens in der Kategorie des Plausiblen, und die reine Subjektivität ihres Grundgedankens hat wenigstens soweit eine objektive Färbung, dass er auf den realen Verlauf der Dinge projiziert werden kann.” The passage followed on from that at the foot of p 76, to which Weber referred explicitly.

88 For a reconstruction of two subchapters from Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, one

from the sociology of religion, the other the sociology of law, epitomizing how ideal-type

analysis figures in Weber’s explanations, see: Gerhardt, Idealtypus, 251–65.

89 For Weber’s discussion of “value freedom” (in inverted commas), see especially his “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ in den ökonomischen und soziologischen Wissenschaften”

(originally, 1917, based on a memorandum written in 1913), in Gesammelte Aufsätze

zur Wissenschaftslehre, 489–540 See also, “Wissenschaft als Beruf” (original, 1917), in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 582–613, translated: “Science as a Vocation,”

in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1948) Translated, edited and with an introduction

by H.H Gerth and C Wright Mills (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 129–56.

90 Max Weber (1922a), Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Grundriss der verstehenden

Soziologie 4 Auflage (1956) Edited by Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr),

2 The translation is my own In the English translation adopted by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, the passage reads as follows: “All interpretation of meaning, like all scientific observations, strives for clarity and verifiable accuracy of insight and comprehension

(Evidenz) The basis for certainty in understanding can be either rational, which can be

further subdivided into logical and mathematical, or it can be of an emotionally empathic or artistically appreciative quality … For the purposes of a typological scientific analysis it is convenient to treat all irrational, affectually determined elements of behavior as factors of

deviation from a conceptually pure type of rational action.” Max Weber (1968), Economy

and Society An Outline of Interpretive Sociology Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (editors

and translators) (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), 5–6

Weber in the “substantive” chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft practised in his

analysis what he preached in his methodology However, even his few followers

in the 1920s did not see how his analytical work and his methodological program belong together His quest for methodology was lost even on his followers, and he became as much a forgotten classic as Simmel throughout much of the

twentieth century Only in The Structure of Social Action, when Parsons pleaded

for methodology, although he did not endorse ideal types, Weber’s idea of social science acquired a new lease of life

To summarize: Weber endorsed fully-fledged methodology proposing heuristic concept formation in sociological analysis He put the program into practice in

his seminal work, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Nevertheless, this achievement

was hardly recognized German philosopher-cum-sociologist Hans Freyer in his

Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft, published in 1930,91 meant to rescue Weber from his followers in Weimar democracy, only to make Weber a forerunner

of the plebiscitarian Führerstaat, apparently an apostle of some charismatic

leadership regime Parsons, in the 1930s, was nearer Weber’s original idea than many a sociologist in Europe or the United States—although Parsons did not follow Weber but Alfred North Whitehead and Lawrence Henderson as he endorsed methodology in social theory

As an aside, one aficionado of Weberian methodology in the 1930s might

be mentioned The early work of Alfred Schütz, the Austrian philosopher who

emulated Weber as he introduced ideal types into verstehende Soziologie, in his seminal treatise Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, might have been an eye-

opener to Parsons in his understanding Weber, had he only taken adequate notice

of that work.92 Alas, Parsons had no knowledge of Schütz then—and when he did correspond with Schütz upon the latter’s emigration to New York, the two thinkers would not recognize each other for being as close as they were in their Weberian concerns

Parsons’s Program for Social Science in the Modern World

From The Structure of Social Action, to his unfinished major work, The American

Societal Community written between 1972 and 1979, unpublished in his lifetime,93

91 Hans Freyer (1930), Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft Logische

Grundlegung des Systems der Soziologie (Leipzig und Berlin: B.G Teubner).

92 Alfred Schütz (1932), Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt Eine Einleitung in

die verstehende Soziologie (Vienna: Julius Springer) The book was translated into English

more than 40 years later under the title, The Phenomenology of the Social World (1967) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press)

93 The unfinished book has been published recently under the title, American Society:

A Theory of the Societal Community, by Talcott Parsons, with an introduction by Guiseppe

Sciortino (ed.) and with a preface by Jeffrey C Alexander (2007) (Boulder, CO: Paradigm)

Parsons followed the agenda of methodological perspectivism in the theoretical study of empirical society:

It takes its lead from the relevance of a theoretical scheme to an empirical system,

or phenomenon, not from the allegedly independently “given” features of that empirical phenomenon This is not in the least to suggest that a set of empirical facts about American society are irrelevant to the study, but rather that the selection among facts by criteria of theoretical relevance, and their organization

to bring out more general features of the object of study, will not be arrived at by stating some facts and letting the facts speak for themselves 94

Notably, the first sentence in The Structure of Social Action dismissed Spencer’s political philosophy, through quoting from Crane Brinton’s English Political

Thought in the Nineteenth Century: “Who now reads Spencer”?95 Parsons’s knowledge interest was anti-Spencer, anti-positivist, anti-utilitarian:

Spencer was, in the general outline of his views, a typical representative of the later stages of development in a system of thought about man and society which has played a great part in the intellectual history of the English-speaking peoples, the positivistic-utilitarian tradition What has happened to it? Why has it died?

The problem was how to distinguish theory from empirical fact, since positivism, the problematic line of thought, tended to collapse social theory with historical facts by ideologically doubtful “empiricism:”

[A]ll empirically verifiably knowledge—even the common-sense knowledge

of everyday life—involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense The importance of this statement lies in the fact that certain persons who write on social subjects vehemently deny it They say they state merely facts and let them “speak for themselves.” But the fact a person denies that he is theorizing

is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements This is important since “empiricism” in this sense has been a very common methodological position in the social sciences 96

The methodological stance that theory and facts are perspectivist requires a given conceptual standpoint to denote what the facts are Parsons looks to Lawrence Henderson as he clarifies: “In this study a fact is understood to be an ‘empirically

94 Ibid., 23.

95 Parsons (1937), The Structure of Social Action, 3; the next quote is from the same page He quoted from Crane Brinton (1933), English Political Thought in the Nineteenth

Century (London: Ernest Benn), 226–7 Brinton’s book discussed in separate chapters,

among others, the political philosophies of Spencer, Mill, and Jeremy Bentham

96 Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, 10

verifiable statement about phenomena in terms of a conceptual scheme.’”97 He invokes Alfred N Whitehead’s philosophy of science, to clarify that science uses concepts whose validity has to be tested constantly.98 He follows Whitehead as

he argues against empiricist approaches that deny the legitimacy of theoretical abstraction:

They maintain, that is, that there is an immediate correspondence between

concrete experienceable reality and scientific propositions, and only in so far as

this exists can there be valid knowledge In other words, they deny the legitimacy

of theoretical abstraction It should already be evident that any such view is fundamentally incompatible with the view of the nature and status of theoretical systems which is a main foundation of this whole study 99

In other words, empiricism à la Spencer or positivism in general is not the road

to take

Parsons’s own voluntaristic theory means that the modern world be explained

on the background of the work of the four social scientists from Europe whom he focuses on, devising a two-pronged theory of the structure(s) of social action The society of his day, the 1930s, was divided between a dictatorship in much of Europe and the democracy in the Anglo-Saxon countries.100 He elucidates the two-pronged conception of structure[s] of social action, through the theories of the four “recent European writers” who contributed, he proves, valuable ideas for empirical (though never empiricist) explanation He finds that one pole of the two-edged structure

of social action is anomie, whose notorious elements are force and fraud but also charisma and ritual The other pole is integration that involves legality, security, and rationality based on reciprocity

97 Ibid., 41.

98 Whitehead had argued convincingly that to take theory as if it were the empirical reality, meant to commit a “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” He explained about seventeenth-century science that it had been overcome in its assumptions about reality by the empiricism of the eighteenth century, for a reason The mistake in the earlier thought,

he showed, was one of “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” He wrote: “It does not follow, however, that the science of the seventeenth century was simply wrong I hold that by a process of constructive abstraction we can arrive at abstractions which are the simply- located bits of material, and at other abstractions which are the minds included in the scientific scheme Accordingly, the real error is an example of what I termed: The Fallacy

of Misplaced Concreteness.” Alfred N Whitehead (1925), Science and the Modern World

The Lowell Lectures, 1925 (New York: Macmillan), reprinted 1953 (New York: The Free

Press), 58

99 Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, 23.

100 See also, Gerhardt, “National Socialism and the Politics of The Structure of Social

Action,” in Bernard Barber and Uta Gerhardt (eds) (1999), Agenda for Sociology Classic Sources and Current Uses of Talcott Parsons’s Work (Baden-Baden: Nomos), 87–164