Weber's Discussion of the Objects of the Social Sciences

Weber, who lived from 1864 to 1920, comes from a tradition of philosophy originating in Kant whom we met in Chapter 3, as it was developed through the ‘neo-Kantian’ school of philosophy at Heidelberg.

Weber seems to have been ‘captured’ by sociology, but he was a man of immense learning and could equally well be classed as an economist, a historian or a scholar of law. Like all really important thinkers, he overflows the disciplinary labels we might try to put on him. The one thing certain about him is that he conceived of the social sciences as primarily concerned with meaning, and in particular with individual meaning or the ways in which shared cultural meanings affected the actions of individuals. We might describe Weber as an ‘ontological individualist’: the world studied by the social sciences is made up of individuals interacting together. There are no collective social entities such as classes except in a limited sense that we will consider shortly, nor can we talk about social structures or overarching social phenomena which impose themselves on individuals.

Weber’s starting point is that the social sciences study meaningful action as opposed to behaviour - movements which are the end result of a physical or biological causal chain (Weber 1922, 1947). As I write I blink, but I do not deliberately blink for some purpose of which I am conscious, and I do not attach a meaning to my blinking, even though in some circumstances others might do so. If, for example, I were talking to a psychoanalyst, he or she might take my blinking as indicating that I am being troubled by some unconscious and possibly rather embarrassing desire. There is an important point here: in Weber’s various classifications, we are not dealing with absolute distinctions but with continua. We can think of the merging of behaviour into meaningful action without being able to draw a distinct line between them. The nasty cough which follows my cold might also be useful for drawing attention to my presence.

Meaningful action, as opposed to behaviour, still doesn't take us to the proper object of the social sciences. We have to go one step further to meaningful social action, action which is directed to another human being. The classic example here is that a cyclist might be engaging in meaningful action - riding her bike along country lanes for pleasure; her collision with another cyclist is not action at all, it is intended by neither; the argument that they have afterwards, however, is meaningful and social.

Weber goes on to distinguish four different types of meaningful social action. The first two are distinguished by the fact that they are carried out primarily for the satisfaction that they bring, not to achieve any other purpose in the world. The first is traditional (Weber 1922, 1947: 116) action, which we carry out because we have always carried it out: if somebody asks me why I am doing this I say because it has always been done. This is rare in contemporary society, although there are elements of it in everyday life - perhaps in some family routines which often have a long life and bring a sense of comfort.

Weber's second type of meaningful action is affectual action - that is, action based on emotion. Such action is on the borderline of the rational: if I am overwhelmed by my feelings then it is less rational or not rational at all, but if I guide my feelings into actions geared to achieve something, then it is closer to the rational. If I lose my temper and hit my friend, I am not acting rationally; if I am angry with my friend and decide to avoid him for a while, or discuss why I am angry, I am acting more rationally.

The third type of action is also on the borderline of properly rational action. It is for Weber a feature of human beings that we are valuing creatures and there is a class of actions which are oriented to ultimate values, values which we choose but cannot justify on any rational basis. Once we have chosen a value, however, we can make rational sense of actions we take in pursuit of it. Here for the first time an exterior purpose comes into play. If I am a Christian, I can, in Weber's terms, find no rational reason for my belief, but the actions as a result of my belief can be understood as rational. It is rational, for example, that if I am a Christian I should go to church and pray and adopt certain attitudes to my neighbours.

Finally there is action oriented towards achieving something in this world - practical action, the sort we take every day that is directed towards concrete, achievable ends.

More dominant is the practical-rational attitude to education: that it has some purpose outside itself. We must increase the proportion of children going to university in order to keep up with our competitors. We must increase student numbers in the natural sciences for the same purposes. From the individual point of view one pursues education not for enjoyment, the pleasures of learning or the discipline of learning for its own sake but in order to get a better job and earn more money.

The true object of sociology, and of the social sciences generally, is, then, meaningful, rational, social action, action to which the actor gives a meaning, directed to other people, intended to achieve practical purposes in the world. This is what we mean by instrumental rationality, since it is the use of rationality in order to bring about change in the world in the interest of the actor. This distinguishes this conception of rationality from other conceptions of rationality which can be found in the social sciences and which will be discussed in the following chapters.

This conception of rationality is intimately bound up with Weber's sociological histories of the world religions: Confucianism (Weber 1915, 1951), ancient Judaism (Weber 1921, 1952) and Hinduism and Buddhism in India (Weber 1921, 1958), culminating in his classic study of modern European Christianity, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1904-05, 1930). His argument was that the difference between Western Europe and North America and the rest of the world, that enabled capitalism to develop first in these areas, was the presence of a specific religious ethic, ascetic Protestantism, which indirectly encouraged the development of capitalism, a system in which instrumental rationality dominates. The value-oriented rationality of particular Protestant groups contributed towards the development of instrumental rationality, the ‘rational calculability' of modern capitalism.