Moriyuki Abukuma
This study argues a Weberian methodology of sociological studies, contrasting Emile Durkheim's and Karl Marx's methodologies. These three methodologies have quite different views and value-ideas (Wertideen). This study does not indiscriminately treat these three methodologies in a well-balanced way. Rather this struggles against the "self-deception" of "the synthesis of several party points of view" (Weber 1949, 58). [1] First of all, this study takes Max Weber's methodology as the fundamental viewpoint of sociological study. For the following arguments, Durkheimian and Marxian methodologies are supplemental and negative, even though both reach crucial problems of the methodology. Precisely, this study finds Durkheim's positive arguments only in the functional observation, and Marx's only in the ideal typical construct. To make the contrasts clear, this study focuses on the differences between Weber and Durkheim (subjective meaning versus collective personality, thought ordering versus social facts, and ideal type versus average type), and between Weber and Marx (conditions versus essence, uniqueness versus general law, idea versus interest, and worldview struggle versus class struggle). In the last analysis, however, this study rejects Durkheim's and Marx's views and assumptions on behalf of conscience and faith.
This study pursues Weber's following mission of social science:
Our aim is the understanding of the characteristic uniqueness of the reality in which we move. We wish to understand on the one hand the relationships and the cultural significance of individual events in their contemporary manifestations and on the other the causes of their being historically so and not otherwise (1949, 72).
One of the most important tasks of cultural science including history, religion, politics and sociology is to understand "the historical force of idea in the development of social life" (Weber 1949, 54 ). [2] To achieve this task, social scientific work needs to attribute the specific causal relationships between the cultural value-ideas and the development of social life.
To begin with the methodological arguments, this study takes Weber's following claim:
No science is absolutely free from presuppositions, and no science can prove its fundamental value to the man who rejects these presuppositions (1946, 153).
Every description of an empirical fact cannot escape from the presupposition. Even a simple excerpt from of a historical documentary reflects the presupposition of the document's writer. There is no description without presupposition. This study rejects the assumption that "the knowledge of historical reality can or should be a presuppositionless copy of objective facts" (Weber 1949, 92). "All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view" (Weber 1949, 81). This study confronts the self-deception of the "presuppositionless" scholar who "unconsciously approaches his subject matter, that he has selected from an absolute infinity a tiny portion with the study of which he concerns himself" (Weber 1949, 82).
The presupposition cannot be proved by scientific means; it can "only be interpreted with reference to its ultimate position toward life, which we must reject or accept according to our ultimate position towards life" (Weber 1946, 143). The presupposition is a belief or conviction. There is no room to prove its universal validity. Therefore, the following arguments on the methodology are the battle between different views, values, and faiths, which every student of sociology presupposes as his/her own. There is no objectively valid methodology as such. On what presuppositions, beliefs, and value-ideas the analysis is based is the very issue of methodology. The presupposition of a method cannot be value-neutral. Every methodology presupposes the significance and meaning of certain value-ideas, that is, the value-judged purposes and goals.
From the above conviction, this study takes the first presupposition that there are "objectively valid truths" of social scientific knowledge (Weber 1949, 51). Weber states:
We presupposed the existence of an unconditionally valid type of knowledge in the social sciences, i.e., the thought ordering of empirical social reality (1949, 63 ).
Weberian sociology understands the objective sociological knowledge as "the thought (denkende) ordering," which means the conceptual constructs of empirical reality. The thought ordering is constructed according to the category of meaning and its empirical manifestation ("Evidenz") (Weber 1968, 5). Weber argues:
The objective validity of all empirical knowledge rests exclusively upon the ordering of the given reality according to categories which are subjective (1949, 110).
However the thought ordering of reality is only possible from certain subjective value-ideas, by which the researcher is motivated. Weber discusses the relationships between value-ideas and empirical reality:
These value-ideas are for their part empirically discoverable and analyzable as elements of meaningful human conduct, but their validity cannot be deduced from empirical facts as such (1949, 111).
Rather, the objectivity of the thought ordering rests on the adequacy of the relationships between value-ideas and reality. Such knowledge, however, is only meaningful to those who hold the value. Weber notices the peculiarity of sociological knowledge:
The means available to our science offer nothing to those persons to whom this truth is of no value (1949, 110).
Therefore, the objectively valid truth of empirical knowledge is belief and conviction. Weber discloses the problems of empirical disciplines:
In what sense are there in general 'objectively valid truths' in those disciplines concerned with social and cultural phenomena? This question, in view of the continuous changes and discipline, its methods, the formulation and validity of its concepts, cannot be avoided. We do not attempt to offer solutions but rather to disclose problems (1949, 51).
Thus, the faith in the objectively valid truths of sociological knowledge is the first presupposition of this study.
Sociological knowledge is the knowledge of the "relationships" of empirical reality. Human cognitive faculty cannot formulate the "essence" and "objective meaning" of reality, but just perceive the "condition and effect" and "subjective meaning" of reality. [3] Sociological conceptualization constructs only "subjectively adequate" meaning and "plausible" interpretation of social action, not "objectively correct" meaning or "true" interpretation. In the concept of meaning, Weber distinguishes the empirical sciences from the normative disciplines:
In no case does it [meaning] refer to an objectively 'correct' meaning or one which it 'true' in some metaphysical sense. It is this which distinguishes the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, from the dogmatic disciplines in that area, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics and esthetics, which seek to ascertain the 'true' and 'valid' meanings (1968, 4).
As for the sociology of religion, Weber focuses on the conditions and effects, not on the essence:
The essence of religion is not even our concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of a particular type of social action (1968, 399).
Weber abandons the inquiry to the "essence" of social reality or the "real" meaning and "true" causal relationships. [4] This is a fundamental difference from Marx's inquiry of the "essence" of empirical reality. According to Marx, society is the essence of human beings:
The human essence of nature exists only for social man. Society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature (1844, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts).
Marx presupposes that material forces of production are the "real" basis of the "essence" of human beings:
This sum of productive forces, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as substance and essence of man (1978 165). [5]
Marx attempts to offer the "real" solution of human suffering by his knowledge of the "essence" of empirical reality. As a communist, Marx convinces that the communists "bring their existence into harmony with their essence in a practical way, by means of a revolution" (1978 168). I firmly rejects such Marxian assumption of social scientific knowledge which can percieve the essence of social reality. This study claims the limitation of human cognitive faculty, although there is no scientific proof of this claim.
This study also presupposes that the sociological analysis should be free from value-judgments. This study claims that the value-judgment-free analysis is "an imperative requirement of intellectual honesty" (Weber 1949, 2). [6] One should be aware of "the logical (prinzipielle) distinction between existential knowledge, i.e., knowledge of what 'is', and normative knowledge, i.e., knowledge of what 'should be'" (1949, 51). Weber rejects the false assumption that the empirical knowledge can teach us the criteria of value-judgments. He argues:
We cannot learn the meaning of the world from the results of its analysis, be it ever so perfect; it must rather be in a position to create this meaning itself. It must recognize that renewal views of life and the universe can never be the products of increasing empirical knowledge (1949, 57).
The task of empirical science is to provide the objective truths of empirical knowledge, not "to provide binding norms and ideals" (Weber 1949, 52). Value-judgments are rather the task and responsibility of an acting person. The ultimate standard of value-judgments should be a matter of conscience and faith, not of empirical knowledge. [7] Weber argues:
As to whether the person expressing these value-judgments should adhere to these ultimate standards is his personal affair; it involves will and conscience, not empirical knowledge. An empirical science cannot tell anyone what he should do (1949, 54).
Thus this study rejects Durkheim's and Marx's value-judging methodologies. Durkheim discusses what is good for society and what is bad, and what criteria should be used for the judgment of a healthy or pathological societies. He explicitly rejects the science that can "not teach us what end should be pursued" (1938, 47). He tries to give "the ultimate end" of social facts "in order to determine not what is but what is desirable" (1938, 47-8). Marx's methodology too prescribes what ought to exist and commands the struggle for the ideal of communism. Marx claims:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, but an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things (1978, 162).
Here is "no longer a matter of the purely theoretical procedure of treating empirical reality with respect to values but of value-judgments" (Weber 1949, 98). Marx "amalgamated" an ethical imperative "with an abstraction drawn from the empirical process" (Weber 1949, 95). Both Durkheim and Marx claim that value-judgements are the matter of reason and empirical knowledge, not of faith and conscience of an individual personality. This intellectualism of value-judgments is what this study must reject by all effort.
The claim of the value-judgment-free study, however, does not mean that value-relationships (Wertbeziehungen) should be excluded from the scientific analysis. [8] The significance of cultural society originates from its specific value-relationships. The meaningful "thought ordering" of empirical reality is only possible in the relation to its value-ideas. Without relating to a significant value-idea, a detailed description of empirical facts does not make sense. One has to select significant facts related to value-ideas to make the order of the empirical reality. Weber contends that meaningful knowledge comes from the investigator's subjective value-ideas:
Without the investigator's value-ideas, there would be no principle of selection of subject-matter and no meaningful knowledge of the concrete reality (1949, 82).
A selection of social facts is value-oriented; every selection has been done according to researcher's own value-idea. Weber argues that the assumption of social facts as such is self-deception:
If the notion that those standpoints [cultural values] can be derived from the facts themselves continually recurs, it is due to the naive self-deception of the specialist who is unaware that it is due to the value-ideas (1949, 82).
Thus, this study rejects Durkheim's presupposition that there are "social facts as things," which hold "an independent existence outside the individual consciousness" (Durkheim 1938, 30).
The claims of the value-judgment-free analysis on the one hand, and of the selection of empirical facts according to own value-ideas on the other, reveal not self-contradiction but the unavoidable tension between empirical knowledge and belief in values. To repeat, this study does not offer the solution, but attempts to unveil the problems of social sciences
The above claims, however, also presuppose the objective value of the individual personality that makes value-judgments and decisions of social action according to one's own conscience and belief. Weber states:
We regard as objectively valuable those innermost elements of the personality, those highest and most ultimate value-judgments which determine our conduct and give meaning and significance to our life (1949, 55).
This claim is contrasted to Durkheim's assumption that "collective conscience" makes value-judgments and decisions of social action in stead of an individual conscience. Defining collective conscience as "the totality of social likenesses," Durkheim sees that collective conscience functions to enforce its "likenesses" to the members of a society (1933, 80). He says:
Even as contrary states of conscience enfeeble themselves reciprocally, identical states of conscience, in exchanging, re-enforce one another. it may impose itself upon us" (1933, 99).
This study sharply opposes such Durkheimian assumption of collective conscience. The responsibility of social action is of an individual since he/she makes value-judgment and takes the action by his/her own will. If a man took an action beyond his decision like mentally disabled person, he cannot be responsible for his action because it was not his decision. The responsibility of value-judgement and action presupposes the will and freedom of an individual, not of collective personality.
Human beings are not just social animals who behave collectively and functionally and is governed by the laws of need and interest, but cultural individuals who, by their own will and belief, act according to value-ideas and their meanings. Weber claims:
We are cultural beings, endowed with the capacity and the will to take a deliberate attitude towards the world and to lend it significance (1949, 81).
Thus the individual is the first key of Weber's methodology: "Interpretative sociology considers the individual and his action as the basic unit" (1946, 55). [9]
Understanding is the second key of Weber's methodology, i.e., "the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences" (1968, 4). In the Weberian terminology, understanding comes from the thought ordering of empirical reality according to the categories of meaning. [10] Without meaning, there is no understanding (Weber 1982, 180). The category of meaning consists of means-end schema. Weber discusses:
That which is intelligible or understandable about it [meaning] is thus its relation to human action in the role either of means or of end; Only in terms of such categories is it possible to understand objects of this kind (1968, 7).
According to the logical function and structure of the means-end schema, an action can be objectively related to its meaning (Weber 1982, 185; 429). Weber states:
The question of the appropriateness of the means for achieving a given end is undoubtedly accessible to scientific analysis (1949, 52).
The meaning of social action is of an individual, that means subjective. The subjective meaning "exists only as the action of one or more individual human beings" (Weber 1968, 13). Sociological understanding is always an understanding from specific subjective viewpoints of meaning (Weber 1982,181). Weber discusses his viewpoint of the subjective meaning for the sociology of religion:
The external courses of religious action are so diverse that an understanding of this action can only be achieved from the viewpoint of the subjective experiences, ideas, and purposes of the individuals concerned --in short, from the viewpoint of the religious action's "meaning" (1968, 399 ).
The understanding of the subjective meaning is, however, has its limitation, that is, "the more hypothetical and fragmentary character of its results" (Weber 1968, 15). There is the danger of arbitrary interpretation of the subjective meaning. To be objective, first, one needs to related the meaning to social action adequately, and not to isolate just psychological or material situations and relations (Weber 1982, 429). Second one needs to compare the relationships with "the largest possible number of historical or contemporary" corresponding social actions (Weber 1968, 10). Weber discusses this point:
Verification of subjective interpretation by comparison with the concrete course of events is, as in the case of all hypotheses, indispensable (1968, 10).
Third, one needs to interpret the meaning from "the total picture" of the cultural background (Weber 1946, 294). For these preliminary purposes of comparison and comprehension, functional and collective observations of social action may be useful and even indispensable. Before proceeding to the ideal typical analysis of the subjective meaning, this study need to discuss the functional-collective observation.
A functional observation is based on the presupposition that social phenomena correspond to the "functions" and "needs" of the social organism. Functional observations are well demonstrated by Durkheim. He defines the term function as follows: "It expresses the relation existing between these [societal] movements and corresponding needs of the organism" (1933, 49). The functional observation also presupposes society as collective personality that has a will and purpose, "a meta-empirical totality regulated by norms" (Weber 1949, 111). Durkheim further explains:
We use the word "function," in preference to "end" or "purpose," precisely because social phenomena do not generally exist for the useful results they produce. We must determine whether there is a correspondence between the fact under consideration and the general needs of the social organism (1938, 95).
The functional observations are based on the average types of social action, which presupposes the coherency and uniformity of mass action as corresponding to the atomic parts of the organic whole. The rare occurrence of a peculiar and exceptional type of social action is excluded or ignored on behalf of the average type of mass action. An exceptional case is regarded as the deficiency of the average type of social action. The functional observation with its collective concepts and average types serves as the preliminary and expository purposes for the understanding sociology. Weber explains the significance of the functional observation:
First this functional frame of reference is convenient for purposes of practical illustration and for provisional orientation. In these respect it is not only useful but indispensable. Secondly, in certain circumstances this is the only available way of determining just what processes of social action it is important to understand in order to explain a given phenomenon (1968, 15).
The functional observation is the first step to endeavor the meaningful understanding of empirical reality.
However, if a functional analysis is involved in value-judgments, it becomes dangerous to the objective truths of empirical reality. Weber points out the danger of the functional analysis:
If its [functional] cognitive value is overestimated and its concepts illegitimately reified, it can be highly dangerous (1968, 15).
Durkheim's functional analysis is involved in value-judgments and oversteps the realm of empirical discipline. He overestimated the analysis, claiming that "all aspects of a society --institutions, roles, norms, etc.-- should serve a purpose and that all are indispensable for the long-term survival of the society" (1938 17). Durkheim claimed that the standard of ethical conduct should come from social facts:
Our idea of ethics must be derived from the observable manifestation of the rules that are functioning under our eyes, rules that reproduce them in systematic form (1938, 23).
For this end, Durkheim set the criteria of value-judgments from the viewpoint of medical condition:
For societies as for individuals, health is good and desirable; disease, on the contrary, is bad and to be avoided (1938, 49).
In turn, he interpreted that the average types of social action are normal and healthy; the exceptional types of social action are pathological and morbid:
The normal type merges with the average types, and that every deviation from the standard of health is a morbid phenomenon (1938, 56).
Thus, Durkheim tried to give a substantive empirical content to ethical norm. He refused the moral law of a priori and, instead, assumed that the moral laws are observable in social facts. Weber opposes such Durkheimian assumption:
This attitude [ethical science with empirical foundations] sought to deprive ethical norms of their formal [transcendental] character and through the incorporation of the totality of cultural values into the ethical sphere tried to give a substantive [empirical] content to ethical norms (1949, 52).
Durkheim's attempt of value-judgments goes not just out of scientific truth, but also rejects the objective value of an individual. He rejected the value of individual's responsibility of judgments and actions on behalf of collective personality and social criteria of value-judgments. This study opposes such collective assumptions. Sociological studies must avoid this pitfall.
After all, the functional observations are "only the beginning of sociological analysis" (Weber 1968, 15). By a functional analysis, one "can only observe the relevant functional relationships and generalization on the basis of these observations" (Weber 1968, 15). However, the functional observation cannot analyze the "cultural significance and its casual relationships" since the cultural significance cannot be deduced from the uniformity and commonality of sociological laws and functions (Weber 1949, 75). Only an ideal typical analysis can fulfill this task, going "beyond merely demonstrating functional relationships and uniformities" (Weber 1968, 15).
The ideal typical analysis can accomplish something which is never attainable in the functional analysis, "namely the subjective understanding of the action of the component individuals," which is deeply related to the uniqueness and value-ideas of culture (Weber 1968, 15). The term ideal type has two meanings: (1) a logically consistent type of concepts and (2) a pure type of value-ideas.
At first, an ideal type is a tool of sociology. It is like a natural scientific tool such as a telescope to see an articulated portion of reality, or like a thermometer to measure its thermal position. Or an ideal type is like a carpenter's working tool to make an ordered shape of materials to fit to the constructing work. More specifically, "an ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, concrete individual phenomena" (Weber 1949, 90).
In other words, an ideal type is constructed in "the highest possible degree of logical integration" for the purpose of clear-cut terminology and theoretical differentiation. Because it is impossible to draw sharp boundaries in the flux of historical reality, only "the artificial simplicity of ideal types," which can seldom be found in history, can present us with the understanding of its specific importance in the most consistent and logical forms (Weber 1930, 98). Weber explains a function of ideal types:
The more sharply and precisely the ideal type has been constructed, thus the more abstract and unrealistic in this sense it is, the better it is able to perform its functions in formulating terminology, classifications, and hypotheses (1968, 21).
However, an ideal type is not a hypothesis. It is rather a category and a construct for the understanding. Weber explains:
The ideal typical concept will help to develop our skill in attribution in research: it is no hypothesis but it offers guidance to the construction of hypotheses. It is not a description of reality but it aims to give unambiguous means of expression to such a description (1949, 90).
He rejects the false assumptions of theory that (1) the end and the goal of social science is "to order its facts into a system of concepts," that (2) the content of the theory is "to be acquired and slowly perfected through the observation of empirical regularities," and that (3) the construction of hypotheses and their verification is finally completed, and "hence deductive science emerges" (1949, 106).
The end of sociology is to understand the empirical reality, not to abstract the essence. In other words, ideal typical concepts are just means to serve for the end of the understanding. Weber takes a Kantian epistemology:
The concepts are primarily analytical instruments for the intellectual handling of empirical facts ... the concepts are not ends but are means to the end of understanding phenomena (1949, 106 ).
The concept-constructs, i.e., the theory, should not be confused with reality.
Yet, an ideal type may mean more than a technical tool. It can be "a representation of the idea (Gedankenausdruck)" of the culture. Weber takes the example of the idea of capitalistic culture:
Each of these can claim to be a representation of the idea of capitalistic culture to the extent that it has really taken certain traits, meaningful in their characteristic features, from the empirical reality of our culture and brought them together into a unified ideal-construct (Weber 1949, 91).
The ideal type aims to construct a meaningful ordering from the chaotic flux of empirical reality. For this purpose, an ideal type can serve as a heuristic device of the unique value-ideas of cultural society. Weber discusses:
We can make the characteristic features of this relationship [ideas and historical phenomena] pragmatically clear and understandable by reference to an ideal-type. This procedure can be indispensable for heuristic as well as expository purposes (1949, 90).
By this accentuated construct, one may discover the significance of the specific cultural value-ideas. An ideal type can be "the idea of the historically given (modern) society" (Weber 1949, 90). [11]
The end of an ideal typical construct is to understand the uniqueness of cultural individuality, not the formulation of theory. For this end, "the thesis that the ideal science is the reduction of empirical reality of laws, is meaningless" (Weber 1949, 80). It is not because cultural events are objectively less governed by empirical laws, but because the thesis conceals the value-idea of the culture. [12] The value-idea of culture is not revealed in any general law. Weber argues:
The significance of a configuration of cultural phenomena and the basis of this significance cannot however be derived and rendered intelligible by a system of analytical laws (1949, 76).
The more general the types of social action are, the less the cultural significance of such types. Weber contends:
The more general, i.e., the more abstract the laws, the less they can contribute to the causal attribution of individual phenomena and, more indirectly, to the understanding of the significance of cultural events (1949, 79).
In other words, the understanding of the uniqueness is not the recognition of sociological laws, but the knowledge of the meaningful relationships between the value-ideas and the social life. However, for the means of valid attribution of causal relationships, the sociological laws are valuable and even indispensable. Weber discusses:
If the causal knowledge of the historians consists of the attribution of concrete effects to concrete causes, a valid attribution of any individual effect without the application of nomological knowledge --i.e., the knowledge of recurrent causal sequences-- would in general be impossible (1949, 79).
Sociological laws are tools to grasping social reality, but not social reality as such. Weber concludes:
The knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our thinking for attaining this end (1949, 80).
An ideal typical analysis does not strive for objectivity in the "true" motivation of social action, the "correct" causal relationships, and the "valid" interpretation. This is the limitation of our cognitive faculty toward social reality. Rather, an ideal typical construct strives for objectivity in the category of "possibility," the "adequacy" of the cause-effect relationships, and the "plausibility" of the interpretation. In other words, the category of the thought ordering is not the "mechanical," the cause-effect relationships are not attributed to "accidental," and the interpretation is not "arbitrary." Weber discusses:
It [the ideal typical construct] is a matter here of constructing relationships which our thinking accepts as plausibly motivated and hence as objectively possible and which appear as adequate from the nomological standpoint (1949, 92).
The validity of an ideal type does not depend on empirical facts as such. Social facts "can never become the foundation for the empirically impossible proof of the validity of the value-ideas" (Weber 1949, 111 ). [13] Rather the validity is derived from the fact that an ideal type gives the meaning of empirical reality. Weber argues:
The objectivity of the social sciences depends rather on the fact that the empirical data are always related to those value-ideas which alone make them worth knowing and the significance of the empirical data is derived from these value-ideas (1949, 111 ).
However, a value-idea is the subjective meaning of social action. The interpretive understanding always remains a plausible interpretation. Weber says:
It cannot on this account claim to be the causally valid interpretation. On this level it must remain only a peculiarly plausible hypothesis (1968, 9).
This limitation of validity comes first from the flux of subjective motives. Weber argues the unconscious motivation of social action:
In the great majority of cases, actual action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-consciousness or actual unconsciousness of its subjective meaning... In most cases his actions is governed by impulse or habit" (1968, 21).
If the unconscious driving force is not analyzed, the interpretation remains less valuable. Sociological studies have to analyze the concealed motives. Weber points out the unconscious motives:
In the first place the conscious motives may well, even to the actor himself, conceal the various motives and repressions which constitute the real driving force of his action. Thus in such cases even subjectively honest self-analysis has only a relative value (1968, 9).
Thus, a task of the sociologist is "to be aware of this motivational situation and to describe and analyze it, even though it has not actually been concretely part of the conscious intention of the actor" (1968, 10).
To unveil unconscious motivation, one needs to employ sociological experiments through empathic imagination and rational thinking. The empathic experiment ("einfühlende Phantasie") (Weber 1972, 2) is, in an articulated imagination, to set aside one's own conventional habituation, and to enter the actor's situation empathetically. Weber explains:
The means employed by the method of understanding explanation are not normative correctness, but rather, on the one hand, the conventional habits of the investigator and teacher in thinking in a particular way, and on the other, as the situation requires, his capacity to feel himself emphatically into a mode of thought which deviated from his own and which in normatively false according to his own habits of thought (1949, 41).
Of course, the empathic experiment does not mean that the researcher has to approve of the actor's value and belief. Understanding the actor's motivation is nothing to do with approving it. One does not need to be a Buddhist to understand Buddha.
In addition to the empathic imagination, the comparison and attribution of value-relationships requires a researcher's deliberate attitude toward the chaotic chain of reality. It is called the thinking experiment ("gedanklichen Experiment") (Weber 1982, 2). Weber explains:
The thinking experiment (which) consists in thinking away certain elements of a chain of motivation and working out the course of action which would then probably ensue, thus arriving at a causal attribution (1968, 10).
Employing these experiments, a researcher strives for the objectivity of the thought ordering of empirical reality.
Weber's ideal type is contrasted to Durkheim's average type. As already discussed, Durkheim's analysis employs average types of social action, which are based on uniformity and commonality. He contends:
It is the function of the average organism that the physiologist studies, and the sociologist does the same (1938, 56).
An average type can be formulated with accuracy only where the social action is the same differing merely in degrees. However, in most cases, the historically significant kinds of social action are qualitatively different. None of those social actions can be considered average types. They must always be ideal types. Therefore, in the case of culturally significant actions, one needs to employ the concept from "not any empirical average type" but from "occasional outstanding examples" (Weber 1930, 71; 200). Weber discusses:
The goal of ideal-typical concept-construction is always to make clearly explicit not the class or average character but rather the unique individual character of cultural phenomena (Weber 1949, 101).
The uniqueness of social action is not an ordinary type, but an extraordinary type.
Weber's ideal type is also contrasted to Durkheim's collective concept of social reality. Collective concepts such as states, churches, associations, business corporations and communities serve as a means of "valuable knowledge of causal relationships" (Weber 1968, 13). As for preliminary terminology and comparison, it is even indispensable to treat socially coherent actions as if they were a unified whole, i.e., "a collective personality" (Weber 1968, 14). Collective concepts function as a harbor of further investigation of chaotic empirical reality. Weber discusses:
The constructs of the natural law and the organic theories of the state have exactly the same functions. It serves as a harbor until one has learned to navigate safely in the vast sea of empirical facts (1949, 104).
However, "there is no such thing as a collective personality which acts" (Weber 1968, 14). Here Weber rejects Durkheim's presupposition of collective personality as "the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens" (Durkheim 1933, 79). When sociological surveys refer to a collective concept, they mean "only a certain kind of development of actual or possible social actions of individual persons" (Weber 1968, 14). Since collective personalities are "not subjectively understandable," they must be treated as the results of the actions of individual persons (Weber 1968, 13). Weber argues:
For the subjective interpretation of action in sociological work these collectivity must be treated as solely the resultants and modes of organization of the particular acts of individual person, since these alone can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action" (1968, 13).
Yet, a collective concept may became a value-idea, i.e., "a meaning in the minds of individual persons, partly as of something actually existing, partly as something with normative authority" (Weber 1968, 14). In particular, the value-idea of the nation-state, or nationalism, has become a decisive identity of one's meaning of life and an absolute authority about what is right and wrong. The idea of nationalism has demonstrated a historical force of modern society. Thus, a collective concept as an ideal type may become "a powerful, often a decisive, causal influence on the course of action of real individuals" (Weber 1968, 14). In spite of such significance of collective ideas, once again, social action has to be treated as the action of an individual, not as collective coherence.
For the treatment of collectivity, Weber is also contrasted to Marx who regarded the collective entitiy of class as a fundamental force of history. Marx viewed that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (1978, 473). For Marx, "the class (which) is the ruling material force of society, the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships" (1978, 172). For Weber, on the other hand, a class is merely a possible base for "communal action" represented by "economic interests" under the "market situation" (Weber 1946, 181-2), yet it "does not in itself constitute a community" (Weber 1946, 184). With in the same class the people may have opposing interests with one another, and more importantly they may not share the same belief and the view toward life and the world. Against Marxian material and logical interpretation of history, Weber insists that "empirical-historical events occurring in men's minds must be understood as primarily psychologically and not logically conditioned" (1949, 96).
In the history of power struggles, the class struggles of material interests are ambiguous and inaccurate. Human beings struggle for power not just from economic interests but also from the social prestige, a psychological interest. Weber argues:
Man does not strive for power only in order to enrich himself economically. Very frequently the striving for power is also conditioned by the social honor (1946, 180).
The psychological interest of social prestige is far more persistent and decisive in the history of power struggles than material interests. Thus, Weberian methodology rejects the Marxian concept of class and the supremacy of material interests.
After all, an ideal type is just "a conceptual construct (Gedankenbild)" ; it is "neither historical reality nor even the true reality" (Weber 1949, 93). It is never "a model of what ought to exist" (Weber 1949, 90). One has to distinguish the analytical construct of an ideal "type" in the strictly logical sense of the term from the imperative maxim of an ideal "model" in the ethical sense. Weber discusses the distinction:
the idea of an ethical imperative, of a model of what ought to exist is to be carefully distinguished from the thought construct, which is ideal in the strictly logical sense of the term (1949, 91-2).
An ideal typical construct "requires a sharp, precise distinction between the logically comparative analysis of reality by ideal types in logical sense and the value-judgment of reality on the basis of ideals" (1949, 98). An ideal typical construct has nothing to do with value-judgments or "any type of perfection other than a purely logical one" (1949, 99). This distinction between "the conceptual ideal type" of value-ideas and "the normative ideal model" of value-ideas is crucial for the presupposition of objectively valid truths of empirical knowledge. "To judge the validity of such values is a matter of belief" (Weber 1949, 55).
The danger of ideal typical construct lies in the confusion of theory with reality. Weber points out the irresistible temptation of the confusion:
The danger of this procedure [ideal typical construct] lies in the fact that historical knowledge here appears as a servant of theory instead of the opposite role. It is a great temptation for the theorist to mix theory with history and indeed to confuse them with each other. There is an almost irresistible temptation to do violence to reality in order to prove the real validity of the construct [of ideal type] (1949, 102-3).
Marx's ideal typical construct falls into this confusion of the theoretical construct as the real force of historical reality. "Marxian laws and developmental constructs" are ideal types as long as "they are used for the assessment of reality" (Weber 1949, 103). But "as soon as they are thought of as empirically valid or as real effective forces," Marxian theories make value-judgments of social action (Weber 1949, 103). Marx claimed validity for his communist value-judgments of historical reality. In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx declared what "real" socialism is and commanded a communist prophecy: "WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE" (1978, 500). Marx also insisted the "real effective forces" of communist logic and ideal, which could offer the real solution of human suffering. Marx viewed that a "communist revolution" would transform the natural form of individuals "into the control and conscious mastery of these power" (1978, 164). As a communist, Marx believed that communists "bring their existence into harmony with their essence in a practical way, by means of a revolution" (1978, 168).
Marx's theory went beyond the realm of the empirical knowledge and became the profession of ideology. Weber firmly rejects Marxian materialism and communism:
The so-called materialistic conception of history as a Weltanschauung [worldview] or as a formula for the casual explanation of historical reality is to be rejected most emphatically (1949, 65). [14]
It is true that social actions are directly governed by material, psychological and ideological interests, not by value-ideas. Interests rule every corner of social life, even the nuances of religious refinements. Weber describes the pervasion of interests:
The indirect influence of social relations, institutions and groups governed by material interests extends (often unconsciously) into all spheres of culture without exception, even into the finest nuances of aesthetic and religious feeling (1949, 65).
However, at the crucial point of culturally important action, value-ideas have determined more or less unconsciously the course of social action. Weber writes the historical force of ideas:
Not ideas, but material and ideal [ideological] interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the world images that have been created by ideas, like a switchman, have determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest (1946, 280).
Human beings are not just governed by the overwhelming powers of material interests, but also moved by the revelations of meaningful worldview. As one of the most important sociological understandings, Weber contrasts "value-idea struggles" to Marx's "class struggles." Weber contends:
The conflict occurs not merely, as we are too easily inclined to believe today, between ' class interests' but between general views on life and the universe as well (1949, 56).
Weber rejects Marxian materialism that "all cultural phenomena can be deduced as a product or function of the constellation of material interests" (Weber 1949, 68). [15] The rejection of materialism, however, has nothing to do with the observation of powerful material interests in actual reality. The overwhelming presence of material interests does not justify its ethical value. Rather the criteria of ethical conducts is beyond the empirical existence. To repeat, one should not confused what "should do" with what "exists." The ideal of what should be has nothing to do with the power of interests. Of course, there are amalgamations and elective affinities between ideas and interests. However, an idea has its own nature and right, which cannot be reduced to "function" "ideology" or "reflection" of any interests and needs (Weber 1946, 269). Weber takes the example of religious ethic:
It [religious ethic] receives its stamp primarily from religious sources, and, first of all, from the content of its annunciation and its promise. then it is at least usual that religious doctrines are adjusted to religious needs [interests]. Other spheres of interest could have only a secondary influence (1946, 270).
An idea becomes a power of history only when an individual internalizes it as the subjective meaning of his/her life and struggles with the realization of his/her worldview. From this point of view, Marxism became a worldview of communism. As a sociologist, Weber analyzes "the purely logically persuasive force" of Marxian worldview (Weber 1949, 96). Weber explains why Marxism prevailed among "the minds of laymen and dilettantes":
Their need for a causal explanation of a historical event is never satisfied until somewhere or somehow economic causes are shown (or seem) to be operative. they then satisfied their dogmatic need to believe that the economic factor is the real one, the only true one (1949, 68-9).
The historical power of Marxism came not just from the material and ideological interests, but from the individual's belief in the communist theodicy, the value-idea and promise of communist revolution. Ideas are indeed the historical force of the development of social life (Weber 1949, 54).
In conclusion, this study attempted to disclose the problems of sociological studies. This methodology presupposed that sociological study should be free from value-judgments for the sake of the objectively valid truths of the empirical knowledge. Freedom from value-judgments requires researcher's self-control from the temptations. Durkheim and Marx did not follow this "elementary duty" of social science (Weber 1949, 98). Freedom from value-judgments, however, never means that value-relationships should be excluded from sociological studies. Rather any meaningful work originates from researcher's value-ideas and his/her striving for the objectivity of value-relationships. The goal of this methodology is to understand the characteristic uniqueness of socio-cultural reality. Such sociological knowledge is "the thought ordering" of cultural reality, not the general laws of social action or the abstraction of empirical reality. Yet sociological laws and principles serve as a means of the objective attribution of value-relationships. As for the preliminary terminology and comparison the functional and collective observations are necessary. The functional observations employ collective and average types of the concepts. The cultural uniqueness, however, is only analyzable and understandable as the subjective meaning of an acting individual. The functional analysis cannot access the subjective meaning of an acting individual; it is the sociology "from without" (Durkheim 1938, 29). Only ideal typical analysis makes it possible to understand the subjective meaning by employing empathic and thinking experiments. The ideal typical analysis is the sociology "from within" (Weber 1982, 430). Ideal types have double meanings: a logically consistent type of concepts and a pure type of value-ideas. An ideal types serve first as tools for theoretical differentiation and as heuristic devices for the understanding of value-ideas. An ideal type can also be a representation of cultural value-ideas. The objectivity of the ideal typical construct depends on "the category of objective possibility," "the adequacy of the causal relationships" and "the plausibility of the interpretation" (Weber 1949, 79-80). However, the construction of ideal types is based on researcher's subjective value-ideas. The value of an ideal typical construct depends of the significance of its particular value-ideas. The researchers and readers, according to their own belief and worldview, have to accept or reject the viewpoint of an ideal typical analysis.
A sociological study does not offer value-judgments or the knowledge of what one should do. Then, what is the use of sociological studies? [16] A social scientific study can offer the empirical principle and consequence of a certain social action. Weber argues the use of sociological knowledge:
We can then provide the acting person with the ability to weigh and compare the undesirable as over against the desirable consequences of his action. Science can make him realize that all action and naturally, according to the circumstances, inaction imply in their consequences the espousal of certain values (1949, 53).
A sociological study can also offer insight into the meaning and significance of an action. Weber continues:
We can also offer the person, who makes a choice, insight into the significance of the desired object. We can teach him to think in terms of the context and the meaning of the ends he desires, and among which he chooses (1949, 53).
More important, a sociological study can offer an understanding of struggling value-ideas within an acting individual. Weber says:
One of the most important tasks of every science of cultural life is to arrive at a rational understanding of these ideas for which men either really or allegedly struggle. This does not overstep the boundaries of a science (1949, 54 ).
A sociological study can understand and follow emphatically the desired end and the ideals, which one wants to peruse. A sociological analysis can even critically judge them in terms of logical and formal consistency. Thus, a sociological analysis can aid the acting person in being aware of the value-idea of an action.
Making sure, however, to conclude a value-judgment and a decision is matters of conscience and faith and of the responsibility of an individual personality, not of empirical knowledge. The sociological study is only an aid and nothing more. Weber distinguishes the task of empirical science and that of the acting person:
To apply the results of this analysis in the making of a decision, however, is not a task which science can undertake; it is rather the task of the acting, willing person: he weighs and chooses from among the values involved according to his own conscience and his personal view of the world. The act of choice itself is his own responsibility (1949, 53).
The ideas of "conscience" and "ethical personality" as the highest values of human beings, are unique cultural products (Weber 1949, 55). The idea of ethical personality is the inner ideal of ascetic Protestants who struggled for the responsibility and the inner unity of an individual before the command of God and the power of sin. The idea of conscience is a fundamental force of the pneumatic Puritans, especially the Quakers and the Baptists, who advocated to freedom of religious belief and the inner authority of conscience for one's action.
The criteria of value-judgments come from the imperative of one's conscience and faith; it does not depend on the social facts of Durkheim or on the mode of material condition of Marx. Weber rejects the Durkheimian and Marxian assumption that the empirical knowledge can offer value-judgments. Thereby, he makes room for conscience and faith. In this sense, Weber's contribution to sociology has been compared to Kant's to philosophy, who disclosed and criticized the false knowledge of philosophy "in order to make room for faith" (Kant, 29).[17]
Yet there is the most serious tension between scientific knowledge and religious belief. Weber states:
The self-conscious tension of religion is greatest and most principled where religion faces the sphere of intellectual knowledge (1946, 350).
This tension "between the value spheres of science and the sphere of the holy is unbridgeable" (Weber 1946, 154). At a certain point, a genuine religious faith requires "the sacrifice of the intellect" (Weber 1946, 154-5). It is not easy to abandon one's intellectual quest and need: "only the disciple offers the intellectual sacrifice to the prophet" (Weber 1946, 154).
The intellectualists who hold intellectual knowledge as the ultimate value, on the other hand, refuse any religious values and use the knowledge to support their standpoint. For the advocates who hold conscience and faith as the ultimate criteria of value-judgments, such intellectualism becomes "the worst devil." Weber expresses his standpoint:
I also do so [self-control from value-judgments] from precisely the standpoint that hates intellectualism as the worst devil (1946, 152).
At this tension, knowledge is like a two-edged sword. For what purpose one uses knowledge is an essential matter of one's value-idea and world image. Knowledge can serve both destructive and creative purposes. In deed, scientific knowledge has often destroyed traditional customs, religious beliefs and magical taboos. Weber discusses the tension:
An ethical conviction which is dissolved by the psychological 'understanding' of other values is about as valuable as religious beliefs which are destroyed by scientific knowledge, which is of course a quite frequent occurrence (1949, 14).
If a religious belief is dissolved by sociological knowledge, it would have no worth to believe. Such destruction of superstition and magic will prepare for the transcendental basis of religious beliefs and ethical presuppositions. The truth of knowledge purifies religious faith, and faith creates the value of knowledge, although the tension is unavoidable. [18]
Life is "a irreconcilable death struggle" among value-ideas (Weber 1949, 17). One has to be aware of the struggle as long as one wishes to be faithful to one's own conscience. Here is a battlefield of good and evil, of the true value and the false one. This battle among value-ideas is "the fate of the time that has eaten from the tree of knowledge" (Weber 1949, 57). Weber describes:
It is really a question not only of alternatives between values but of an irreconcilable death-struggle, like that between God and the Devil. Between these, neither relativization nor compromise is possible (1949, 17).
In everyday life, ordinary people do not usually realize such tension and conflict. Rather they do not want to be aware of such tension. Weber explains the nature of the routinized existence:
The shallowness of our routinized daily existence in the most significant sense of the word consists indeed in the fact that the persons who are caught up in it do not become aware, and above all do not wish to become aware, of this partly psychologically, part pragmatically conditioned motley of irreconcilably antagonistic values. They avoided the choice between God and the Devil and their own ultimate decision as to which of the conflicting values will be dominated by the one, and which by the other (1949, 18).
At the intrusion of everyday needs and material and psychological interests, the irreconcilable struggle of value-ideas are relativized and compromised. Weber warns such deceptions of the devil:
Mind you, the devil is old; grow old to understand him. This does not mean age in the sense of the birth certificate. It means that one has to see the devil's ways to the end in order to realize his power and his limitations (1946, 152).
"Be simple-hearted as doves" for intellectual honesty and conscience, but "be wise as serpents" against the intrusions of interests and the deceptions of relativism, syncretism, and especially intellectualism (Matthew 10:16).