INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL

NEUTRALITY IN MAX WEBER AND WERNER SOMBART

FREDDY RAPHAEL
University of Human Sciences Strasbourg

W. Sombart and M. Weber have been influenced by the theory of under-

standing (Verstehen) from W. Dilthey. The latter contrasted the explanation
of natural phenomena with the understanding of the facts of mental life. The
understanding, as J. Freund emphasized it,considers life as a primitive
fundamental fact which has to be comprehended in its integrity, without
decomposing it. Opposed to observation and experimentation, which remain
external and alien to their subject, it tries to coincide in a structural manner
with the always moving and active life of the mind, developing as a whole in
a concrete and particular context So, it concerns a rational and discursive

procedure which obeys the usual laws of logic, but without being purely
rational as an argumentation, because it is based, in addition, on the indispen-
sable sympathy for the intelligence of the particular.2
Max Weber was the first to study, on the basis of a sociological inquiry
oriented towards understanding, the religious motivations of economic ac-
tivity.In so doing he paved the way towards an understanding of the impor-
tance of the religious factor in the consciousness of economic life, and
indirectly of political, social and cultural life in general. He definitely left
behind the traditional method of social sciences, characterized by crude objec-
tivism and positivism, which because of their unilateral approach were devoted
to establish solely a causal connection of a mechanical or dialectical order
between economy and religion. His merit is that he introduced more flexible
categories, often not statistically determinable, such as vocation (Beruf),
asceticism or the growing rationalization of life. His method is thus reflective
as well.3 The subject of Webers interpretative sociology is the analysis of
human activity in all its forms together with its unfolding and its effects.
Contrary to most of the sociologists of his time, who oriented themselves
towards a more or less mechanical model, concentrating their inquiries on
material determinations, such as the environment, geography, technology,
means of production, he included more spiritual elements as tradition, the type
of socialization or communalization, moral rules, and, more generally, the

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

174 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

mentality. He did, however, not conceive this interpretative sociology as an

alternative to the explanatory and purely causal sociology, but as an indispens-
able complement to it. It goes without saying that it is more difficult to
establish an imputation concerning economic development starting from no-
tions as little discernible with precision as vocation or ascesis than starting
from technical inventions. Undoubtedly dispute is always in the air because
the determination essentially depends on an evaluation, but one would not deny
the suggestive value of the procedure for the analysis of social reality. All in
all, it would, in the current state of research within the social sciences, even be
anti scientific to eliminate such possibilities at deciphering, only because one
cannot establish them with just as much preciseness as an immediately observ-
able fact.4 As has been emphasized by J. Freund,5 Weber has linked together
the two operations of explanation and understanding in order to point at one
and the same procedure, called understanding explanation (verstehende Erkla-
rung) or explanatory understanding (erklrendes Verstehen). Sociology, if
it will fulfil the plenitude of its scientific vocation, must be at the same time
explanatory and understanding. He defines understanding as follows: the
interpretative grasp of the meaning present in one of the following contexts:
a) as in the historical approach, the actually intended meaning for concrete
individual action, or, b) as in cases of sociological mass phenomena, the
average of, or an approximation to, the actually intended meaning, or, c) the
meaning appropriate to a scientifically formulated pure type (an ideal type) of
a common phenomenon.6
In the first volume of the 1902 edition of Der Moderne Kapitalismus W.
Sombart attempts from both a social-psychological and historical point of view
to go back to the prime mover of the phenomena, proposing a unified and
ordered explanation of the determining motives which provoke, at a given
epoch, the actions of economic agents .7 This causal genetic approach has to
enable him to lay bare a unitary social system, which lays behind the historical
events. In Die Drei Nationalkonomien W. Sombart assigns to sociology, just
as Max Weber, the task of understanding. He defines this understanding as
the grasping of meaning (Sinnerfassen) and affirms that it is impossible to
understand, and a fortiori to know, natural phenomena: All natural phenomena
appear to me as an enigma which I cannot resolve; all natural phenomena
remain in myself a miracle so deep that my mind cannot penetrate into it.8
On the other hand social phenomena are always accessible to understanding.
It is the personal experience of the sociologist as well as his knowledge of the
rules of the game, which allow him to understand society.
Max Weber and Werner Sombart both confirm that it is important to
comprehend the purpose or motive of an activity in order to be able to render

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 175

it a meaning. But this meaningful interpretation must be, subsequently, jus-

tified by causal interpretation; one has to realize, however, that one can never
establish all the causes that have provoked an event. In The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber explicitates his view on the correlation
between religion and economy refusing with the strongest determination any
univocal or unilateral causality; on the other hand he acknowledges openly that
he only analyzes one among the diverse causes of capitalism, not because it is
a more valuable one than other ones, but because, up till now, it has hardly

received any attention at all. He admits, moreover, that the connection, estab-
lished by him, can be reversed, as one can consider as well the way capitalism
had influenced ethics and religion, because, so he says, protestant asceticism
was in turn influenced in its development and its character by the totality of
social conditions, especially economic.9 The fundamental problem for Max
Weber is analyzing in which sense certain religious beliefs determine the
emergence of an economic mentality, in other words the ethos of an economical
form. 10 As J. Freund observes, 11it has nothing to do with establishing a causal
and mechanical connection between Protestantism and capitalism, but with
exploring the factors which have contributed to the moulding of the specific
nature of western civilization, which is characterized by growing rationaliza-
tion. Weber attempts to analyze the meaningful behaviour of religious men to
the extent where it stems from a particular logic, from an intelligible organiz-
ation of the mind and the existence which, even though it is not scientific itself,
is however not devoid of meaning.12 Weber defines very clearly the subject
matter of his investigations: We only wish to ascertain whether and to what
extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the
quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world. 13 He insists on the
reciprocal interaction between material bases, social and political forms of
organization, and spiritual options; he resolved to examine whether there exist
certain elective affmities between forms of religious belief and professional
ethics. Not until he had clarified how, and in what direction, religious move-
ment had affected the development of material culture he attempted to es-
timate to what extent the historical development of modern culture can be
attributed to those religious forces and to what extent to others. 14 The relation-
ships between economics and religion are not uniform. Not only they vary
according to the epochs, and, given the circumstances, they may be friendly or
hostile, but, as Julian Freund emphasizes, all these activities bring along
tensions and internal activities which depend solely on themselves. In fact, one
can confirm with Raymond Boudon,15 that Weber did not so much try to
establish a causal relationship but looked for a structural homology between
two phenomena: Capitalism is explained, not by demonstrating a cluster of

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

176 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

causes and historical circumstances, but by demonstrating a parallelism be-

tween two structures, that of the behaviour of the capitalist entrepreneur, on
the one hand, that of the puritan mentality, on the other hand... The relation
between the two terms is a result of their structural identity.
For W.Dilthey historical intelligibility has to be analyzed in terms of actions
or institutions guided by intentions 16 and they are, consequently, closely
connected to values. In The World ofMind,17 he emphasized that what is really
going on reveals itself irrespectively from the feeling of its value and its ideal:
That which is essential in the manifestations of life is the expression of the
living system of values which is in them, and this essence expresses itself in
turn by ideas and norms which govern from within the manifestations of this
life. Max Weber denies value judgments any right of existence within the body
of science, but he does in no way exclude value commitment. Despite the fact
that Max Weber, already from 1904 on, reflected on the scientific status of the
social sciences,18 it is only in his later writings that the term Wertfreiheit
(value-freedom), which had been translated by Julien Freund as axiological
neutrality,19 becomes a major concept. Axiological neutrality has the function
of warning us against the imperialism of one value and the activity it supports,
not only because there is no final doctrine or world view, but also because
each value acquires different meanings according to the epochs. 20 Economism
does arrive at ignoring, at denying and denaturizing each phenomenon, which
resists its univocal interpretation. In fact, according to Max Weber, one cannot
explain by economics alone all the economic phenomena. The explanation of
everything by economic causes alone is never exhaustive in any sense what-
soever in any sphere of cultural phenomena, not even in the &dquo;economic&dquo; sphere
itself.21 The value commitment governs the interpretation of events and
phenomena, including causal imputation and the construction of ideal types.
Basically, it is because the value commitment is inherent to the work of the
specialist that no explanation will ever be final and that it always and neces-
sarily will be interpretative. Economics and social sciences are inevitably
hermeneutic enterprises. Henceforth the interest taken by Weber in Ver-
stehen : there is always, at a given moment, a definite limit to the purely causal
explanation and there is no other way to cope with that than to associate it with
interpretative understanding.22 One ought to recognize that, within the social
sciences, the explanations provided only are adequate in terms of specific
points of view, which are incapable to restore fully the real course of things.
The value commitment is one way to evaluate theoretically the events and
phenomena. Henceforth the necessity to respect the axiological neutrality in
order not to pass this theoretical evaluation for a personal or partisan stand. It
gives an indication to the researcher that he is himself a prisoner of certain

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 177

values, that he has to become conscious of them in order not to substitute them
implicitly for the values which represent men and the events which he is
studying. Put differently, he must avoid to rise to the level of scientific
knowledge that which is only the expression of his personal convictions.23
There is no universal commitment to value, from which we could deduce
reality or, still, to which we could reduce it. There is no absolute objectivity,
because objectivity itself is grounded in values. Axiological neutrality not
only warns the scholar against the temptation to let his personal convictions
pass for the research results, but demands too that he does not identify value
with being, owing to the confusion of the ratio cognoscendi with the ratio
essendi. This means that it refuses any substantification of values by means
of the universalization of a determined and particular commitment to value.
Any value is a judgment.24
To apply the principle of axiological neutrality Max Weber appeals to the
ideal-type. It concerns in no way a concept which permits to judge the value
of a phenomenon or still to hypostatize it. It is only an instrument intended for
a better understanding of a phenomenon, but which does not provide us with
a full description of it. The ideal type is only a means, always revisable and

amendable, in view of producing order out of the chaos of facts and rendering
them intelligible.25 The partial and analytical approach, characteristic for
causality, necessitates too the selection of certain aspects from a phenomenon,
which one deems relevant for his investigation, in order to distinguish, thanks
to the elaboration of different models, a complex and confused reality. We have
to do with a coherent and rigorous construction, which will, however, never
master the infinite diversity of the real. In each instance, it is the chosen
commitment to value which will impose the selection of facts, without any
exclusiveness whatsoever of the different points of view. The epistemological
fallacy would consist of attributing, in the last analysis, a superior validity to
one viewpoint at the cost of other ones.

It is from his friend, the jurist Georg Jellinek, that Weber borrowed the
concept of ideal type, which would be developed by Georg Simmel too. But
already at an earlier stage, the neokantian School of Baden, represented by
Windelband, Rickert and Lask, considered historical science, which was
interested just as much in the particular as in the general, not as a reproduction
or a copy of the real, but as a conceptual reconstruction. Heinrich Rickert26
confirmed that the real is inexhaustible, because it is infinite in a two-fold way,
intensionally and extensionally, whereas knowledge is always limited by the
very conditions of its performance, namely its conceptual tools. Science (...)
cannot embrace the totality of the real; thus it cannot be a picture (Abbildung)
of it, but it is the transformation (Umbildung) of the real, in the very moment

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

178 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

when it forms its concepts (Begriffsbildung) to comprehend it. In his

Allgemeine Staatslehre, which dates from 1900, Georg Jellinek contrasted the
empirical type from the ideal type, heuristic instrument, which is not confined
to reproduce reality slavishly, but unfolds, by all means subjectively, models.
In his Philosophie des Geldes, which Max Weber had read shortly before
writing his study on Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy, G.
Simmel27 recalled that most of the time the sociologist elaborates concepts,
which have not been backed up by experience. This peculiar method, which
consists of building concepts through selecting features and magnifying them,
provides us with a knowledge of the world which corresponds to our faculty
of understanding... Our intellect is only capable of grasping reality from within
the limits of pure concepts, which, granting that they move away from reality,
show their legitimacy to the extent that they permit us to interpret this reality.
Each careful examination pertaining to the conceptual elements of an his-
torical account shows that the historian, the moment he tries to go beyond the
plain description of concrete relations to determine the cultural significance of
a particular event, as simple as it may be, thus in order to characterize it, uses
and must use concepts which, in general, can be made more precise in a
rigorous and univocal way only in terms of ideal types. To the presupposi-
tionless description of a concrete isolated phenomenon, the singularity of
which does not permit comparative study at all, Max Weber opposes the
abstracting synthesis (abstrahierende Zusammenfassung) of that which is
common to a number of concrete phenomena. It is impossible to grasp with
sufficient precision the singular aspects of a phenomenon with the help of
generic concepts, because, by nature, they only comprehend the general. The
ideal type is an intellectual construction which has the function of coping with
this shortcoming; it is worked out to grasp the historical and sociological
singularity of a phenomenon. Julien Freund28 defines the ideal type as a
framework of the mind, rational and utopian at the same time, which rearranges
in a coherent way diverse elements of an empirical reality, emerging in a
diffuse, discrete and isolated manner, in order to demonstrate them from a
specific point of view. To define univocal concepts, sociology is constraint,
starting from the different historical, economical and religious structures, to
elaborate pure ideal types, which in each case involve the highest possible
degree of logical integration by virtue of their complete adequacy on the level
of meaning. But precisely because this is true, it is probably seldom if ever that
a real phenomena can be found which corresponds exactly to one of these

ideally constructed pure types. The case is similar to a physical reaction which
has been calculated on the assumption of an absolute vacuum.29 That is why
the idealtypical constructions of social activity elaborated by economic theory

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 179

are alien to reality (wirklichkeitsfremd). Indeed, the sociologist always

wonders how one would act in the case of a rationality with ideal finality, and
at the same time oriented in a purely economical sense, to aid in the under-
standing of action not purely economically determined, but which involves
deviations arising from traditional restraints, affects, errors, and the intrusion
of other than economic purposes or considerations.30 The ideal type does not
at all correspond to an empirical average nor to a generalization of features
common to all the members of a group. It is a stylized reconstruction which

singles out certain specific, unique traits of the studied phenomenon.31 It is a

boundary-concept, by which one measures reality in order to clarify the
empirical content of certain of its most significant elements. Unnecessary to
search in the order of things such a framework in its conceptual purity: it is a
utopia. The historians task will consist of determining, in each particular case,
to what extent reality corresponds to or is removed from this ideal framework.
The concept of ideal type is fundamental to the epistemological doctrine of
M. Weber. It is in agreement with the global design of his sociology which
aims at disclosing the rational structure of a historical whole, without depriving
causal relations of their practical nature. An ideal type is formed by the
one-sided accentuation of one or more viewpoints and by the synthesis of a
great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and
occasionally absent
concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-
sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Gedanken-
bild).32 It corresponds with a conceptual construction, a utopian
rationalization which, while not exhausting the diversity of the real, accen-
tuates the characteristic traits of it. The ideal type tends to lay bare the logical
structure of a singular reality in order to disclose the permanent traits, the ones
which do not vary according to the fluctuations of life. It embodies an
elaboration of a mental construct (Gedankenbild), which brings together
certain relationships and events of historical life into a complex, which is
conceived as an internally consistent system. Substantively, this construct has
a utopian character, which has been arrived at by the analytical accentuation
of certain elements of reality.33 Max Weber confirms, at the outset of his essay
on the spirit of capitalism,34 that the viewpoints from which he analyzes this
historical phenomenon are in no way the only possible ones. As it is the same
with every historical phenomenon, other viewpoints would reveal us other
traits as the essential ones. He defines, for instance, capitalism above all as the
rational domination of an irrational impulse and as the search, within a
continuous and rational enterprise, of rentability. He is thus concerned with
the capitalism of industrial enterprises, with the possibility of an exact calcula-
tion, with a rational organization and the rational control of free labour, with

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

180 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

the utilization of exchange possibilities on a free market, the natural sciences

and technology. It is a conceptual construct (Gedankenbild) which is neither
historical reality nor even the &dquo;true&dquo; reality. It is even less fitted to serve as
schema under which a real situation or action is to be subsumed as one instance.
It has the significance of a purely ideal limiting concept with which the real
situation or action is compared and surveyed for the explication of certain of
its significant components. Such concepts are constructs in terms of which we
formulate relationships by the application of the category of objective pos-
sibility. By means of this category, the adequacy of our imagination, oriented
and disciplined by reality, is judged.35 Each ideal type of capitalism con-
stitutes a relative abstraction, which discerns certain aspects of the phe-
nomenon at the cost of other ones. It is possible, or rather, it must be accepted
as certain, that numerous, indeed, a very great many, utopias of this sort can
be worked out, of which none is like another, and none of which can be
observed in empirical reality as an actually existing economic system, but each
of which however claims that it is a representation to the extent that it has really
taken certain traits, meaningful in their essential features, from the empirical
reality of our culture and brought them together into a unified ideal-con-
struct. 36
Werner Sombart equally recommends the appeal to ideal types. But, in his
Die Drei Nationalokonomien,3~ he blamed Max Weber for not having, in his
opinion, fully worked out and defined with precision this concept in a logical
perspective, free from any prejudice. This is the reason why, after Weber, the
concept of ideal type was not only applied to social or religious phenomena,
such as christianity or modern capitalism, but to historical characters as well.
The latter ones are, according to W. Sombart, not appropriate fort he construc-
tion of ideal types. He opposes, as far as he is concerned, the ideal type to
the real type. The first one embodies, in all its purity, the essence (Wesen)
of the studied subject; to arrive at that, one ought to remove secondary elements
and to accentuate (Steigerung) the essential traits (Wesensmerkmale). In
the elaboration of an ideal type any value judgment must be banished. On the
contrary, the real type grasps the contingent and historical aspect of the studied
subject; one constructs it with the help of empirical elements, accidental and
relative traits.
Those who still defend that the knowledge of historical reality can be a
presuppositionless copy of objective facts, will deny the value of the
ideal-type. Others will consider the unfolding of a historical utopia as a
fallacious method or still as a trivial game with respect to the objectivity
demanded by scientific research. And, in fact, so Weber writes, whether we
are dealing simply with a conceptual game or with a scientifically fruitful

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 181

method of conceptualization and theory-construction can never be decided a

priori. Here too, there is only one criterion, namely, that of success in revealing
concrete cultural phenomena in their interdependence, their causal conditions
and their significance. The construction of abstract ideal-types recommends
itself not as an end but as a means.38 In fact, as Jean Baechler underlined,39
all reflection on the most vast historical wholes, if it will not lose itself in the
eclectic juxtaposition of partial accounts, is condemned to construct and to
observe these wholes starting from a unique point of view, revealed by a
process of a one-sided development of one of their major aspects (the city, the
empire, capitalism, underdevelopment). This leads, at the end of such a path,
to the construction of the structure of this whole, i.e. the logical system which
accounts for its component parts and their necessary links. As we have seen
above, one obtains, according to the one-sided chosen point of view, for one
and the same phenomenon different ideal types, which are all valid within their
own limits. The different constructions, which discern the same subject, enable
us to comprehend its complexity, while putting them into a reciprocal perspec-
tive. Its result is the perpetual reconstruction of those concepts through which
we seek to comprehend reality. The history of the social sciences is and remains
a continuous process passing from the attempt to order reality analytically

through the construction of concepts and the reformation anew of concepts on

the foundations thus transformed.~ Occasionally, the ideal typical method
not only accentuates the originality of the considered historical individual, but
also comprehends it only in one of its manifestations; because of this it
promotes stability and coherence at the cost of more profuse and stirring
dynamics. Nevertheless we do not agree with Jean Baechler that such a
conceptualization is necessarily a static one. It can account for macrosocial
change, because even the slightest attention to the performance of certain
elements gives insight into the way the past, by force of habit, persists and still
works through todays world, while the utopia, which is already at work,
introduces elements of the future. It is on behalf of the epistemological
imperative, which demands that one is conscious of the relativity of the
elaborated ideal types, that Weber had criticized Marxism which gives undue
preference to the materialist viewpoint, by hypothesizing it. Henceforth the
error of considering his essay on &dquo;The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of

Capitalism as a simple refutation of Marxism. Indeed, Weber was the first to

warn us for such a misinterpretation: But it is, of course, not my aim to
substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic
causal interpretation of culture and history. Each is possible.41 In other words,
the two interpretations are legitimate within the value orientation chosen at the
outset and they complement one another. They are equally valid to the extent

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

182 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

that they have been carried out according to the norms of scientific investiga-
tion.
Such a misinterpretation is founded on a superficial reading of Max Webers
work, and inspired by the bold declaration he made before the students of the
University of Vienna in 1918, when he presented his lecture as a positive
refutation of historical materialism. It is a misinterpretation which reduces
Weberian analysis to a refutation of Marxism, to an attempt to derive economic
behaviour from religious consciousness. To be sure, in The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism, he denounces the doctrine of the more naive
historical materialism42 and the superficial ideas of the theorists of the
superstructure .43 But although he makes a mock of those to whom no causal
explanation is adequate without an economic (or materialistic) interpretation,
he nevertheless underlines that he considers the influence of economic devel-
opment on the fate of religious ideas to be very important.,44 Max Weber was
one of the rare scholars of his time to have insisted on the contribution of Marx

and, more particularly, on his analysis of the determining nature, depending

on circumstances, of economy and class struggle. Still, he has always rejected
what he called the metaphysics of Marx, because it implies that the phenomena
of production are always, in the last analysis, the determinant ones. He
recognizes an idealtypical, that is to say, hypothetical value to the ideas of
Marx, but challenges the fact that it is sufficient to represent reality. Indeed,
because of the intensional and extensional infinity of the real, the latter always
remains beyond all conceptual construction, which is necessarily finite and
limited owing to the initial presuppositions. He thus identified certain explana-
tions of Marx with hypostases.45 Weber condemned the causal monism of
Marxism. But Marxism rightly refused to turn history into a metaphysical
subject, to which real human beings would be simply subordinated because it
are men, who, by praxis, create their own history. Nonetheless, all these human
activities are materially conditioned: Even the fantasmagories in the human
brain are sublimations resulting necessarily from the process of their material
life, which one can establish empirically and which are founded on material
bases. That is why morality, religion, metaphysics and all the rest of ideology
and their corresponding forms of consciousness lose at once all appearance of
autonomy. They do not make history, nor do they develop; on the contrary, it
are human beings who, while developing their material production, transform
their material relations, with this reality which is familiar to them, and their
thought and the products of their thought.46
Karl Marx has, in his early works, for a long time dealt with the relation
between religion and economy, but in an ideological and polemical way. While
making from religion a superstructure reacting dialecticaly to the economic

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 183

substrate, he has misinterpreted the problem by reduction which evena

metaphysics would fail to justify. He thus neglected the problem of the essence
of the religious phenomenon depriving it of all autonomous activity. Moreover,
the relation he has established between the two orders is so general that it can
only lead to a philosophical dogmatism and not to concrete historical or
sociological research. Finally, by acting as an adversary to religion and
capitalism, he has settled himself in an unfavorable position to perceive the
positive relations which could have existed historically, in all their variations,
between these two activities. 47 At the first congress of the Association of
German Sociologists, in 1910, Max Weber shouted: I hear protests against the
declaration from one of the orators, according to whom one sole factor, be it
technology or economy, can constitute the final or real cause of a phe-
nomenon. If we consider the different causal chains, we see that sometimes we

pass from technical to political and economic ones, etc... All that is in constant
evolution. I think that the affirmation of historical materialism, according to
which economy is, in a specific sense, the final point in causal filiation, is not
all acceptable from a scientific point of view.48 Weber thought that any
activity whatsoever can play the part of a liberating or subjecting force. No
activity has the ontological privilege, economy no more than politics, to be
exclusively liberating. The fallacy committed by Marx was that he attributed
only to economics the monopoly of liberation. Every sort of activity can
function as a brake or obstacle to development inasmuch as it can favourize it.
Max Weber confirms that identical economical infrastructures can correspond
to different political and ideological superstructures. It is not true, as Marx
pretends, that the mill is at the base of feudalism, and the steam engine at the
base of capitalism, because the age of the mill, which has endured until modem
times, has produced all sorts of cultural superstructures within all sorts of
domains.
To sum up, Weber rejects Marxism because it made from economy the
foundation of historical development, attributing it to the role of ultimate
condition of all human activity. This is a value judgment which has nothing to
do with science, just as much as the theory which makes from religion or
politics the condition which determines, in the last analysis, all other human
activities. That is why, so he writes in his essay on objectivity, we will only
point out here that naturally all specifically Marxian &dquo;laws&dquo; and developmental
constructs - insofar as they are theoretically sound - are ideal types. The
eminent, indeed unique, heuristic significance of these ideal types when they
are used for the assessment of reality is known to everyone who has ever

employed marxian concepts and hypotheses. Similarly, their perniciousness,

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

184 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

as soon as they are thought of as empirically valid or as real &dquo;effective

forces&dquo;.49
In his conclusion of The Protestant Ethic he explains, as we have seen, that
his intention is in no way to oppose a spiritualist interpretation to a materialist
one. The two interpretations are possible and equally valid as long as they are

willing to remain heuristic means, but they both are equally useless to historical
truth as soon as they claim to reach final conclusions. This means, that,
according to Weber, all world views are valid insofar as they do not pretend to
be more than mere value commitments. They become dangerous and antiscien-
tific the moment they transform this value commitment into value judgment,
and, in doing so, contribute to maintain the antagonism of values. He does not
condemn a one-sided vision of the world - it can be useful and sometimes
necessary - but one must remain conscious of the relativity of the procedure.50
Weber blames Marx not for having emphasized the part economy could play
as a factor, either conditioning or conditioned, but for having attributed to it
the role, in the final analysis, of a determining function. Economics is a ground
for the explanation of things, but it is not a preponderating nor a sufficient one.
Weber rejects the systematization of value commitment, because systematiza-
tion is the result of a value judgment which favours one factor in the name of
belief or opinion.51
Julien Freund52 has refuted the assertion that the work of Max Weber is
directed against Marxist explanation. To be sure, Weber criticizes the over-
simplification of certain formulations from theorists of historical materialism,
but his target was not so much Marxs philosophy itself, but rather vulgar
marxism of his time. It is also true that he did not accept to transform religion
into a superstructure, because his view on causality, according to which
everything is always determined by multiple factors without any possibility to
subsume them systematically under one and the same phenomenon. On this
point, he disagrees with marxist epistemology, because it corresponds neither
to the spirit, nor to the presuppositions of science. Nonetheless, his essay has
no negative intention, namely refuting Marxism, but a positive one, in this

sense that it tries at the same time to show the complexity of sociological

explanation and to clarify one aspect of the origin of modern capitalism. While
studying the meaningful behaviour of the religious being, Max Weber does not
claim at all to refute historical materialism by making economic behaviour
dependent on religious options, in stead of perceiving in it the superstructure
of a society which infrastructure would be constituted by the relations of
production. Weber wanted to demonstrate that the behavioral patterns of
people within diverse societies are only intelligible in terms of the general view
these people shaped from their existence; the religious dogmas and their

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 185

interpretation are integral parts of these world views.53 He is, however,

opposed to a certain marxist dogmatism which considers in the final analysis,
religious phenomena merely as a reflection of the economic substrate. Weber
rejects all one-sided determinism, because an economic ethic is no simple
function of forms of economical organizations, as vice versa, it does not create
these in a univocal way. Consequently, it would be out of the question for him
to substitute a causality of religious forces to a causality of economical forces.
The one-sided approach of historical materialism, which tends to reveal the
economical causes of historical facts, is valid as a method of analysis, but will
never constitute a global interpretation of history. Weber insists on the recipro-
cal influence of religious convictions and economic conduct; it shows how
religious conduct directs and conditions in part the other human activities and,
respectively, appears to be conditioned by them. 54 The relations between
economy and religion are too complex in order to let themselves be reduced to
a one-sided and mechanical causality. For Weber the economical ethic of a

religious system is defmed by practical incentives toward actions which are

rooted in the psychological contextures and religious practice. But, an econ-
omic ethic is never determined by religion alone, and always has to a certain
degree a genuine autonomy. Geographical, economical and historical facts
determine, however, to the highest degree, the scope of this autonomy. Things
being as they are, religious determination of the lifestyle is likewise one - I
really say one - of the determining factors of economic ethic. It goes without
saying, that the religious lifestyle is in turn deeply influenced by economical
and political factors, acting through given geographical, political, social and
national limits.55 It are the material and ideal interests, and not ideas, which
govern directly human conduct. But the images of the world suscitated by ideas
have very often determined, playing the role of switchmen, the paths along
which the dynamic of interest has paved the way for human conduct. In the
tremendous confusion of interdependent influences.56 To be sure, Max
Weber has attached more importance to spiritual factors than to socio-
economical conditioning. But this results from the arbitrary nature of all
selection. This has to do with the heuristic move and no longer with the belief
in determination by religious ideas. He wants to reveal the part played by the
religious factor in the development of different civilizations as well as the way
in which it has itself been in turn influenced in its development and its
character by the totality of social conditions, especially economic,.57 He does
not search for causal relations in one sense. He explains first of all religions
by the situation of classes which have created or received them, then he follows
the consequences of the force, which is characteristic for religious ideas. He
sticks to underline that religious ideas themselves simply cannot be deduced

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 186 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

from economic circumstances (...); they contain a law of development and a

compelling force entirely their own.58 He studies the original logic, ideologi-
cal and affectionate at the same time, of a religious system and the transforma-
tions it undergoes, through the successive restructurations which have been
operated by different generations of believers and different social layers. Far
from postulating an immediate action of theological doctrines on economic
conduct, the Weberian thesis assumes the existence of indispensable media-
tions, in particular the psychological motivations arising from religious be-
liefs. 59
Werner Sombart was among the members of the Verein fir Sozialpolitik the
most enthusiastic admirer of Karl Marx. Still in 1902, in the first edition of Der
moderne Kapitalismus, he writes what separates him from G. Schmoller, i.e.
the postulate of an explanation in the final analysis, which would be valid for
all historical phenomena and their analysis in terms of social systems, in short,
that which I call the specific conceptual framework. I could also say, that which
separates us, is Karl Marx.60 W. Sombart questioned progressively his ad-
herence to historical materialism. In Der Biirger6l he examines the thesis
which says that philosophical and religious requirements, far from having
provoked the capitalist spirit, only embody the reflection of certain economic
conditions which find their expression in a certain economic mentality. He
acknowledges that, whatever the genius of its founding father, religion can
establish itself only if certain preliminary conditions are fulfilled in the external
context. But, according to him, these preliminary conditions are not solely of
an economic nature, but belong to a biological and ethnological order as well.
The adoption of a religion (or, to a much lesser extent, of a philosophy)
depends on the general state of a people, on the composition of its blood, on
its social conditions. In order that a religion takes root and develops in a certain
direction, the nation must have a certain disposition., Just as much as a seed
cannot germinate on a naked rock, humanitarian and philosophical religion will
not exert any influence on rude and ignorant barbarians.62 The economical
problems have slowly but surely taken pride of place in the sphere of interest
of Western man. W. Sombart observes that a religion undergoes the influence
of economical conditions to an extent which is all the stronger as history goes
on. Distancing himself somewhat from the Weberian thesis, he confirms that
the formation of different calvinist movements within Protestantism very
neatly bear the hallmark of advanced capitalism and that of Puritanism ended
up by acknowledging that the bourgeois way of life was compatible with the
state of grace, it already was influenced and forced by economic conditions.
We know to which point it was, by its very nature, alien to capitalism. The
puritan preachers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would gladly have

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 187

wished to hell the cult of Mammon, in order to replace it by an economical

organization based on cultivation of the soil and handicraft, because it would
offer a framework more adapted to their anti-worldly doctrines. But is was too
late. They could no longer close the eyes to capitalist progress, as Lutheranism
had done in Germany in that time, overwhelmed by the most profound econ-
omic misery.63 To prove this, he only refers to the fact that, in order to expand
their truths of salvation, the Puritans appealed to representations and images
borrowed from economic life. It is in this way they conceive of the saint as
having an accounting of his sins, making a distinction between capital and
interests, which lends to the sanctification of life the character of simple
business affair.64 Anyway, for Sombart, the accumulation of richness was no
less a deciding factor for the genesis of capitalism than the moral forces.
Never and under no circumstances can purely moral aspirations bring forth
economic forms. Here one has to do with a misunderstanding against which
Max Weber had already fiercely protested, when they accused him of having
the intention of deducing the entire capitalism from religious motives.65
Conversely, Sombart emphasizes the decisive influence which is exerted by
religious ideologies on economic life. From the moment that a religious system
is settled, the doctrines of which it is composed and which enlighten the
supersensible aura act in turn on life in general, on economic life in particular.
And it would even be amazing if the state of the mind of economic subjects
would escape from the influence of these systematically elaborated and im-
peratively proclaimed moral commands. 66 He acknowledges that religious
ideas have played an important role in the establishment of capitalist spirit.
However, this influence has considerably diminished whenever the economic
system was firmly settled. As long as an economic system is still on its way
to completion, as long as everyone is free to adopt the economic conduct which
pleases him, the moral doctrines and moral maxims which ensue from it have,
in order to unfold themselves, much more space than at the time when the
different branches of the economic system have attained their full and complete
development, when all the procedures and all the steps are, so to say, mecha-
nized, when the economic subjects are forced, in spite of themselves, to adopt
a determinate line of conduct 67

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

188 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY

NOTES

1 J. Freund, Les Théories des Sciences Humaines, Paris 1973, 90.

2
Ibid
, 90.
3 J. Freund, Religion et Economie, Bulletin des Amis de lUniversité de Louvain
, 1973,
56.
4 J. Freund, La Prise de Conscience Economique et le Facteur Religieux, Colloque de
Louvain, 1972, 36-17.
5 J. Freund, Les Théories, op. cit., 125.
6 Max Weber, Economy and Society, New York 1968, 9.
W. Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus,
7 Leipzig 1902, Vol. 1.
8 Die Drei Nationalökonomien, München-Leipzig 1930, 194.
W. Sombart,
9
of Capitalism London-Sydney 1985,
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ,
183.
10 Ibid.
11 J.
Freund, Sociologie de Max Weber, Paris 1966, 178.
12 R. Aron, Les Etapes de la Pensée Sociologique, Paris 1967, 540.
13 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, op. cit., 91.
14 ., 92.
Ibid
15 R. Boudon, Les Méthodes en Sociologie, Paris 1969, 102.
16 W.Dilthey, Introduction à lEtude des Sciences Humaines, Paris 1942, 29.
17 W. Dilthey, Le Monde de lEsprit , T.1, Paris 1947, 271-272
18 Max
Weber, The Methodology of Social Sciences, New York 1949, 50-112.
19 J. Freund, La neutralité ., Section M,
axiologique, Cahiers de lI.S.M.E.A no. 29,
1977,411-483.
20
, 417.
Ibid
21 Max
Weber, Methodology, 71.
22 J. Freund, La neutralité axiologique, op. cit., 459.
23
., 460.
Ibid
24
Ibid., 460.
25 Max Weber, Methodology, 92.
26 J. Freund, Les Théories, op. cit., 180 Sq.
27 G. Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, Leipzig 1900, 135.
28 J. Freund, La neutralité axiologique, op. cit., 445-446.
29 Max Weber, Economy and Society, op. cit., 20.
30
Ibid., 21.
31 P. Besnard, Protestantisme et Capitalisme, Paris 1970, 53.
32 Max Weber, Methodology, op. cit., 90.
33 ., 90.
Ibid
34 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, op. cit., 47-48.

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015

 INTERPRETATIVE SOCIOLOGY AND AXIOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY 189

35 Max Weber, Methodology, op. cit., 93.

36
., 91.
Ibid
37 W. Sombart, op. cit., 245-246.
38 Max Weber, Methodology, op. cit., 92.
39 J. Baechler, Les Origines du Capitalisme, Paris 1971, 14.
40 Max Weber, Methodology, op. cit., 105.
41 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 183.
42
., 55.
Ibid
43
., 56.
Ibid
44
., 277.
Ibid
45 J. Freund, La Ville selon Max Weber, Espaces et Sociétes
, 16, 1975, 48.
46
LIdéologie Allemande, Paris
K. Marx and F. Engels, 1968, 51.
47 J. Freund, La Prise de ., 39.
conscience, op. cit
48
Verhandlungen des Ersten Deutschen Soziologentages, Tübingen 1911, 101.
49 Max Weber, Methodology, op. cit., 103.
50 J. Freund, Max Weber, Paris 1969, 44.
51 .
Ibid
52 J. Freund, Religion et Economie, op. cit., 29.
53 R. Aron, Les Etapes, op. cit., 540.
54 J. Freund, Sociologie de Max Weber, op. cit., 182.
55 Max Weber, Einleitung, in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, Tübin-
gen 1978, 238-239.
56 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 91.
57 ., 183.
Ibid
58
Ibid 277-278.
.,
59 P.Besnard, Protestantisme et Capitalisme, op. cit., 21.
60
, op. cit., XXIX.
W. Sombart, Der Moderne Kapitalismus
61 W. Sombart, Le Bourgeois, Paris 1926, 327 sq.
62 Ibid., 328.
63
., 329.
Ibid
64
., 330.
Ibid
65 ., 334.
Ibid
66 ., 330-331.
Ibid
67
.,331.
Ibid

Downloaded from cdy.sagepub.com at University of Manchester Library on March 23, 2015