Interpretative sociology

Weber's methodological essays were mostly written within the context of the specific problems which occupied him in his early empirical works; they document a struggle to break out of the intellectual confines of the traditions of legal, economic and historical thought within which he was originally trained. In the methodological essays, sociology is treated as subordinate to history: the main problems of interest in the social sciences are deemed to be those concerned with questions possessing definite cultural significance. Weber rejects the view that generalisation is impossible in the social sciences, but treats the formulation of general principles mainly as a means to an end.

The very direction in which Weber's own empirical writings led, especially as manifest in the massive Economy and Society, caused a certain change in emphasis in this standpoint. Weber did not relinquish his fundamental stand upon the absolute logical disjunction between factual and value-judgements, nor the correlate thesis that the analysis of unique historical configurations cannot be carried through solely in terms of general principles, these latter being only of prefatory significance to such a task. In Economy and Society, however, the focus of Weber's interest moves more towards a direct concern with the establishment of uniformities of social and economic organisation: that is, towards sociology.