Abstracts

Max Weber Studies Vol. 1 No. 2 (May 2001): 138-160

Weber On Rickert: From Value Relation to Ideal Type

H.H. Bruun

The role of values is a central feature in Weber’s methodology, and the strong influence of Heinrich Rickert on Weber in this respect, is usually taken for granted. Basing itself on coments by Weber on Rickert in a number of, mostly unpublished, manuscript sources this paper re-assesses Weber’s dependence on Rickert’s concept of ‘value-relation’. The paper demonstrates that Weber distances himself from Rickert’s terminology and from its philosophical implications, stressing instead the active aspect of commitment in the concept of ‘value’. The paper further argues that Weber sees his concept of the ideal type as a methodological tool more useful in practice, and more liable to safeguard the ‘value freedom’ of social science,than the concept of ‘value relation’.