[1] Weber declares: "the Archiv [Archives] will struggle relentlessly against the severe self-deception which asserts that through the synthesis of several party points of view, practical norms of scientific validity can be arrived at. It is necessary to do this because, since this piece of self-deception to mask its own standards of value in relativistic terms, it is more dangerous to the freedom of research than the former naive faith of parities in the scientific demonstrability of their dogmas" (1949, 58).
[2] The translation is altered in the italicized word. Thereafter, all italicized translations have been altered.
[3] This study is based on the Kantian epistemology. Kant discovered and formulated the limitation of human cognitive faculty. According to Kant, human sensible intuition has no perception of eternal, changeless, transcendental quality of the object. Sensible intuition is multiple and subjective representation of the object, but not perception of the essence.
[4] Durkheim also abandons the inquiry to the essence: "it [science] cannot possibly aim at a statement concerning the essence of reality" (1938, 42).
[5] For Marx, the material force of production "remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice" (1978 164).
[6] Soren Kierkegaard writes his thought about the judgement of other' s action: "The Scriptures teach: ' Judge not, that ye be judged' [Matthew 7:1]. This is expressed in the form of a warning, an admonition, but it is at the same time an impossibility. One human being cannot judge another ethically, because he cannot understand him ethically, because he cannot understand him except as possibility. When therefore anyone attempts to judge another, the expression for his impotence is that he merely judges himself" (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846)
[7] Normative discipline, especially ethics, focuses on what one "should do" without taking into consideration of "what is" of the custom, tradition, and law of the empirical world. This study takes the Kantian presupposition that the moral law of "ought" is the law of a priori (transcendent), not the social facts in the Durkheimian sense, or the logic of the material structure in the Marxian sense. Social science cannot prove or reject the normative validity of the Sermon on the Mount.
[8] Weber also distinguishes the value-judgment free analysis from the value-judging academic discussion: "It is certainly not that value-judgments are to be withdrawn from scientific discussion in general simply because in the last analysis they rest on certain ideals and are therefore subjective in origin" (1949, 52).
[9] Stephen Kalberg calls Weber' s viewpoint "methodological individualism." Kalberg contrasts Weber' s individualistic method to Durkheim' s collective method: "Individual act, for Weber, not social organisms or collectivism. Nor can social reality be adequately explained if persons are viewed as merely responding to scientific laws, the social facts of Durkheim, evolutionary forces, or the putative necessity for societies to fulfill certain functions" (p. 25). However, be cautious that Weber' s method does not take individualism as a system of values. Weber says: "it is a tremendous misunderstanding to think that an individualistic method should involve what is in any conceivable sense an individualistic system of values" (1968, 18).
[10] The Weberian term understanding is also based on the Kantian epistemology, in which the term refers to the outcome of thinking from the combination between concepts and sensible intuitions. Kant says: "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" (p. 93).
[11] Weber points out the possible guidance of ideal-types for the acting person: "An ideal type might --and this is indeed quite often the case-- have also been present in the minds of the persons living in that epoch as an ideal to be striven for in practical life or as a maxim for the regulation of certain social relationships" (1949, 95).
[12] Marx reduces social phenomena into the "general law" of material production: "religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law" (1978, 85). For Marx, there is no value-idea but "the general law of value" (1867, Capital)
[13] This Weber' s negation of empirical facts as such is a quite opposite to Durkheim' s presupposition that the sociology should treat "social facts as things" (1938, 16).
[14] Weber also rejects Marxian quest for the "ultimate" cause and the view of historical materialism. Weber says: "In my opinion, the view of historical materialism, frequently espoused, that the economic is in some sense the ultimate point in the chain of causes is completely finished as a scientific proposition" (1968, LXX).
[15] Marx presupposes the materialistic viewpoint: "The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness" (1978, 4).
[16] Durkheim puzzled the science that "can teach us nothing about what we ought to desire." He says: it (value-judgment-free science) leaves darkness in our heart. Science thus loses all, or almost all, practical effectiveness and, consequently, its principal justification for existence. Why strive for knowledge of reality if this knowledge cannot serve us in life? (1933, 47-8).
[17] Kant denies the false assumptions that the existence of God, Freedom and Immortality can perceive by pure reason. He says: "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge [of the existence of God, Freedom and Immortality], in order to make room for faith. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the preconception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, always very dogmatic, which wars against morality" (p. 29).
[18] In much wisdom is much grief: one that increases knowledge increases sorrow (Ecclesiastic 1: 18 ).
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