Review Article

Theory, Culture & Society

0(0) 1–10
A Century After Weber ! The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:

and Simmel sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0263276420958460
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcs
Thomas Kemple
University of British Columbia

Abstract
This essay reviews two recently published volumes of the Max-Weber-
Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) which contain writings on methodological ques-
tions and theoretical problems concerning ‘objectivity’, ‘interpretive understanding’,
and ‘value-freedom’. Since many of these texts explicitly address Weber’s views on
the writings of Georg Simmel, the essay treats these volumes as an occasion to
commemorate the legacy of these two classic theorists of modern capitalism a
hundred years after their death. In addition to considering new scholarship on
these thinkers, the essay also highlights their relevance to problems and questions
still being posed and contemplated today.

Keywords
methodology, objectivity, Simmel, values, Weber

Max Weber, Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften. Schriften 1900–1907.
Edited by Gerhard Wagner, with the assistance of Claudius Härpfer, Tom Kaen,
Kai Müller and Angelica Zahn. Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe I/7. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2018, xv + 774pp (hbk). ISBN 9-883-16153-774-5. E349.00.

Max Weber, Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit. Schriften und Reden 1908–
1917. Edited by Johannes Weiß with the assistance of Sabine Frommer. Max-
Weber-Gesamtausgabe I/12. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018, xv + 648pp. (hbk). ISBN
9-3-16150-296-5. E269.00.
Writing in the early 20th century, Max Weber paused to look back on the
intellectual world of the early 19th century in a way that speaks uncan-
nily to our own dilemmas in the early decades of the 21st century.
Literary scholars and social scientists, he mused, seem to waver between
the extremes of ‘material seekers’ and ‘meaning seekers’ – those who
tirelessly gather facts, statistics, and documents on the one hand and
those who impatiently collect worldviews, essences, and profound ideas
on the other (‘Stoffhuber’ and ‘Sinnhuber’, alluding to Theodor Fischer’s

Corresponding author: Thomas Kemple. Email: kemple@interchange.ubc.ca

Extra material: http://theoryculturesociety.org/
2 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

cynical caricature of approaches to Goethe’s Faust). In concluding this

article (which has since become canonical), ‘The ‘‘Objectivity’’ of
Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy’, he uncharacteristically
trails off with a poetic flourish that contrasts starkly with the dense
scholarly prose of the rest of this programmatic piece. He suggests that
in an age where everyone who works in the cultural sciences must be a
specialist, the occasion to reflect on how each fact is somehow anchored
in ultimate ‘value ideas’ only rarely presents itself. Nevertheless, points of
view that had once seemed to illuminate one’s field of study may change
their colour as ‘the way forward fades away in the twilight’:

The light shed by the great cultural problems has moved on. Then
science, too, prepares to find a new standpoint and a new concep-
tual apparatus, and to contemplate the stream of events from the
summits of thought. It follows the stars that alone can give meaning
and direction to its work:
. . . the new impulse awakens,
I rush to drink its eternal light,
The day before me, and behind me night,
The heavens above me, under me the waves.

[. . . der neue Trieb erwacht,

Ich eile fort, ihr ew’ges Licht zu trinken
Vor mir den Tag und hinter mir die Nacht,
Den Himmel über mir und unter mir die Wellen.]
(MWG I/7: 234; CMW: 138, quoting Goethe’s Faust, lines 1085–8; I
provide my own translation of the two volumes under review using
the abbreviation MWG, followed by the corresponding English
translation listed in the bibliography – Weber, 2012 – using the
abbreviation CMW.)

Weber’s striking figural turn might be taken as an invitation for us to

take a moment to reflect on his own legacy, if not from the ‘summits of
thought’ then from the vantage point of historical hindsight a hundred
years after his death.
With the recent publication of two major handbooks (Müller and
Sigmund, 2014; Hanke et al., 2019), several planned commemorative
conferences and special journal issues, and the completion this year of
the Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works), we seem to be leav-
ing the ‘collect and correct’ phase of Weber scholarship and entering into
an era of ‘the search for significance’ in light of new problems that con-
cern us today. The Gesamtausgabe, which has been under construction
since 1982, comprises 47 massive volumes of Weber’s published writings,
manuscripts, correspondence, and lecture notes meticulously presented
Kemple 3

according to the formidable historical-critical principles of German

scholarship. Working within the rules of editorial restraint and interpret-
ive minimalism, each volume is handled with varying degrees of intellec-
tual license according to each editor’s sense of the scholarly importance
and contemporary relevance of these writings. For instance, Gerhard
Wager’s 32-page introduction to MWG I/7 may be compared to
Johannes Weiß’s 92-page introduction to MWG I/12 (see the recent
reviews by Oakes, 2019, and Bruun, 2019). The most substantial pieces
in these two volumes first appeared in pathbreaking journals such as the
Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Archive for Social Science
and Social Policy), including the ‘objectivity’ essay (cited above), which
Weber co-edited, and Logos, which Georg Simmel co-founded in 1910
(including the influential essay on ‘value-freedom’ discussed below).
Most were republished shortly after Weber’s death in collections edited
by his wife Marianne, and selections in English appeared after the
Second World War in a volume edited by Edward Shils and in numerous
journals and anthologies. (The most comprehensive collection is now the
Complete Methodological Writings edited by Henrik Bruun and Sam
Whimster in 2012.) From this publication history we can see that the
fate of Weber’s legacy and the fortunes of his writings have themselves
been subject to the shifting lights of cultural problems, historical events,
and intellectual concerns that he himself anticipated.
Besides speaking poignantly to the changing meanings of intellectual
work and new methods of scholarship today, these two volumes surpris-
ingly reveal Weber’s indebtedness to the writings of Georg Simmel, the
centenary of whose death was commemorated in 2018 with several con-
ferences, special journal issues, and monographs (the 24 volumes of
Simmel’s collected works in German were completed in 2016). Essays
by Weber included in Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften
(On the Logic and Method of the Social Sciences), writings from 1900–7,
contain over a dozen strategic references to Simmel, including an
extended discussion acknowledging Simmel’s original formulation of
the concept of ‘Verstehen’. Likewise, Verstehende Soziologie und
Werturteilsfreiheit (Interpretive Sociology and Freedom from Value-
Judgment), writings from 1908–17, opens and closes with notes and
drafts from Weber’s close readings of Simmel. For the first time we
can now locate precisely the key points of convergence between these
two classics of social theory – especially their relational approach to
social reality from the starting point of ‘interpretive understanding’ –
as well as the places where they diverge – particularly with respect to
Weber’s commitment to ‘objectivity’ and ‘causal explanation’. Since
many of these questions are still raised or revisited today, it is worth
following the light that Weber’s references to Simmel shines on these
often forbidding writings. Even as these two thinkers ‘gaze on the hea-
vens above’ while navigating ‘the turbulent waves beneath’, each pursues
4 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

in different ways what today we would call an anti-foundationalist theory

of knowledge and a relational conception of reality.
In contrast to the brilliant start of Weber’s career, with appointments in
Freiburg and Heidelberg as a young man in the 1890s, Simmel struggled
for most of his life as an untenured ‘extraordinary’ professor in Berlin,
despite his popularity among students and growing list of publications.
After Weber’s nervous breakdown in 1897 forced him to leave the class-
room for almost two decades, among the first books he read on his road to
recovery was Simmel’s Philosophy of Money (the first edition appeared in
1900, the second in 1907) and Problems in the Philosophy of History (the
first edition as well as the revised one of 1905). In the so-called ‘Nervi-
notes’ that Weber wrote during his convalescence on the Italian Riviera in
late 1902 and early 1903, he reflects on the relationship between empathy
(or in-feeling: Einfühlung) and common sense (or evidence: Evidenz); on
the difference between intuition and intelligibility; and on the contrast
between rationality and irrationality, in part through his reading of
Simmel. The latter treats irrational psychological processes in terms of
‘intelligibility’ rather than systematically in terms of their ‘lawfulness’,
he notes (Nur ‘‘Verständlichkeit’’ nicht ‘‘Gesetzlichkeit’’ der psycholo-
g[ischen] Vorgänge; MWG I/7: 660). Developing these points in
‘Roscher and Knies and the Logical Problems of Historical Economics’,
a sprawling three-part essay published in the Archiv in 1903–5, Weber finds
in Simmel’s work ‘by far the most elaborate beginnings, from the point of
view of logic, of a theory of ‘‘understanding’’ [die logisch weitaus entwick-
elsten Ansätze einer Theorie des ‘‘Verstehens’’]’ (MWG I/7: 308; CMW:
59). Again noting the lack of a systematic method for employing this
concept, he nevertheless acknowledges how Simmel distinguishes ‘the
objective ‘‘understanding’’ of the meaning of a statement from the subject-
ive ‘‘interpretation’’ of the motives of a person who is speaking and acting
[das objektive ‘‘Verstehen’’ des Sinnes einer Äusserung von der subjektiven
‘‘Deutung’’ der Motive eines (sprechenden oder handelnden) Menschen]’
(MWG I/7: 310; CMW: 60). Despite his misgivings over Simmel’s inability
or unwillingness to elaborate on the implications of this contrast between
‘objectively valid’ and ‘subjectively intended’ meanings, Weber takes this
understanding of ‘Verstehen’ as the starting point for his own.
Weber eventually arrived at his own perspective on ‘sociology’ as a
distinct discipline with its own method of interpretation and explanation
after a long and sustained struggle with Simmel’s work, and after con-
fronting the many approaches to sociology taken by fellow members of
the German Sociological Association, which he co-founded in 1910 with
Simmel and others (see the eight contributions he made to these discus-
sions in MWG I/12: 201–91, 302–28; and my commentary in Weber,
2005). In his final statement in the opening chapter of Economy and
Society, ‘Basic Sociological Concepts’, he defines sociology as ‘a science
that seeks interpretive understanding [deutend verstehen] of social action
Kemple 5

and thereby causal explanation [ursächlich erklären] of its course and

effects’ (Weber, 2019: 78; translation modified). The two aspects of this
now canonical definition, which he specifies in terms of degrees of
‘intended meaning’ or ‘understanding’ on the one side and of ‘objective
possibility’ or ‘adequate causation’ on the other, refine his earlier attempts
to identify the parameters of the field in his pivotal 1913 essay in Logos,
‘On Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology’. Here too the significance
of Simmel’s sociological writings is palpable, not just in Weber’s formu-
lation of these categories but also for his overall conception of the ‘inter-
pretive understanding’ of social action. Weber follows Simmel’s concern
with dynamic processes rather than with static states of group formation,
contrasting ‘types of communalization and association [Typen der
Gemeinschaftung und Vergesellschaftung]’ before specifying how each pro-
cess is characterized by either ‘communal or societal action
[Gemeinschafts- oder Gesellschaftshandeln]’ with regard to affective,
rational, customary, informal, and institutional contexts (MWG I/12:
406–18; CMW: 281–8; this scheme provides the structure for the first
draft of Economy and Society, which he was working on at the time,
but is reduced to a few pages in the final version).
Significantly, Weber’s earlier excerpt notes on Simmel’s Soziologie
shed new light on their shared approach to the study of social relation-
ships and social interactions. For instance, Weber is intrigued by
Simmel’s perspective on ‘society’ as ‘the reciprocal interaction between
individuals [die Wechselwirkung von Individuen]’, while insisting that
‘reciprocity is always only potentially present! [Das Gegenseitige ist
stets nur potentiell vorhanden!]’ (MWG I/12: 528, 529). As he argues
in commenting on Simmel’s discussion of domination and subordination
in Soziologie, ‘Absolute coercion would no longer be ‘‘sociological’’, since
[there would be] no ‘‘interaction’’ (conceptual play?) [Absoluter Zwang
wäre nicht mehr ‘‘soziologisch’’, da keine ‘‘Wechselwirkung’’
(Begriffspielerei?)]’ (MWG I/12: 539). Weber is even more skeptical of
Simmel’s analogies between organisms and individuals, even calling them
‘not at all true [gar nicht Wahr]’ and ‘sheer nonsense [reiner Unsinn]’
(MWG I/12: 529, 535). Despite their differences, each thinker begins
with a relational and processual understanding of social reality even as
they disagree on exactly how to assess the degree to which such relations
are actually manifested, not just in theory but in practical and institu-
tional contexts.
Weber is less likely to be remembered today for his particular
approach to ‘interpretive sociology’ than for his principled distinction
within the social sciences between ‘knowledge of ‘‘what is’’ and of ‘‘what
ought to be’’ [Erkenntnis des ‘‘Seienden’’ und des ‘‘Sollenden’’]’, as for-
mulated in one of his most cited essays, ‘The ‘‘Objectivity’’ of Knowledge
in Social Science and Social Policy’ (MWG I/7: 145; CMW: 101).
Already in this early piece from 1904 he notes that this distinction is
6 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

not reducible to the contrast between professional neutrality and fanat-

ical partisanship, nor is it a question of allowing ‘the ‘‘idea’’, in the sense
of the ideal, grow out of the ‘‘idea’’ in the sense of the ‘‘ideal type’’’
(MWG I/7: 210; CMW: 130). Instead, he argues, analytical constructs
such as ‘ideal types’ are heuristic devices for acquiring ‘knowledge about
the culturally significant aspects of the manifestations of life [die
Lebenserscheinungen in ihrer Kuturbedeutung zu erkennen]’ (MWG I/
7: 181; CMW: 116). Not only is knowledge of cultural significance related
to and conditioned by values (wertbezogen), but such knowledge is also
refracted through the value ideas of the investigator, as if in the soul’s
mirror (‘die Farbenbrechung der Werte im Spiegel seiner Seele’; MWG I/7:
191; CMW: 120). In this regard as well, the personal and perspectival
approach Weber embraces is closer to Simmel’s view than is usually
acknowledged, who concludes his famous essay ‘The Metropolis and
Mental Life’ with the reminder that, whatever our personal values or
feelings about cities, ‘our task is not to complain or condone but only
to understand’ (Simmel, 1997: 184).
Simmel’s training as a philosopher and his vocation as a sociologist
arguably afforded him a greater freedom than Weber allowed himself in
exploring the connection between statements about ‘what is’ and judge-
ments concerning ‘what ought to be’. Simmel ultimately arrived at a
metaphysical resolution to the tension between these ways of approach-
ing ethics and existence in terms of what he calls ‘the individual law’,
where ‘life, proceeding in its totality as Ought, means law for the very
same life that proceeds in its totality as Actuality’ (Simmel, 2010: 107).
Weber’s way of addressing these questions is notoriously more intellec-
tually restrained and discipline-specific, especially in ‘The Meaning of
‘‘Value-Freedom’’ in the Sociological and Economic Sciences’, published
in 1917 in Logos, the journal which Simmel co-founded and where many
of his later essays also appeared. Rather than puzzle over broad philo-
sophical problems, Weber focuses on the particular institutional condi-
tions under which explicit distinctions between practical evaluations
(appealing to value-judgements) and strictly academic arguments
(based on factual statements) are both relevant and necessary. For this
reason, the origins of the essay as an intervention at a 1914 conference of
the Association for Social Policy is key to understanding his larger socio-
logical argument (and its place with the conference discussions included
in MWG I/12: 302–82). Often overlooked in discussions of Weber’s
repeated insistence on the logical and principled separation between
facts and values is how he highlights the rhetorical and the institutional
contexts in which this distinction becomes relevant or required. For
example, he emphasizes how the lecture hall (Hörsaal), the professor’s
podium (Katheder), the academic journal, and the scholarly society
(Gesellschaft, Verein) may each invoke some version of the postulate of
‘value-freedom [Wertfeiheit]’ as a condition for ensuring the intellectual
Kemple 7

integrity (intellektuelle Rechtschaffenheit) and professional office (Amte)

of scholarship, and often as a matter of university policy
(Universitätspolitik) (MWG I/12: 445–59; CMW: 304–10; on Weber’s
own rhetorical performance of these principles see Kemple, 2014: 29–
59). In addition to his familiar admonitions against ‘prophets’, ‘propa-
gandists,’ and ‘demagogues’ in the classroom, Weber notes that an
empirical or theoretical treatment of ‘progress’ in the aesthetic sphere
is not necessarily a value-laden question of personal taste or collective
preference. Referring in this context to Simmel’s Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche, he notes that ‘artistic progress’ need not be evaluated in
terms of aesthetic or ethical criteria but can also be assessed in light of
the evidence for increasing psychic differentiation, the expansion of cul-
tural horizons, and the intensification of intellectual refinement among
artists and publics alike (MWG I/12: 484; CMW: 321).
Weber and Simmel spent their final years living and working in cities
away from where they had always felt most at home, with Simmel moving
from Berlin to Strasburg in 1914 to take up his first position as an ‘ordin-
ary’ professor until his death in 1918, and Weber relocating in 1918 from
Heidelberg to Vienna and then Munich where he taught until his death in
1920. While their methods of research and styles of scholarly argumenta-
tion often seem antiquated to us now, their efforts to formulate a social
theory of modern capitalism still resonate with us today (Kemple, 2018: 56–
8). In the words of Weber’s ‘Accompanying Remarks’ to the inaugural
issue of the Archiv in 1904, the task of this new generation of scholars
should be to advance ‘the historical and theoretical investigation into the
general cultural significance of capitalist development’ [die historische und
theoretische Erkenntnis der allgemeinen Kulturbedeutung der kapitalis-
tischen Entwicklung]’ (MWG I/7: 130; CMW: 97). Weber’s draft of an
unpublished essay with the working title ‘Georg Simmel as Sociologist
and Theorist of the Money Economy’ (from 1908, around the time he
was reading and taking notes on Soziologie) clarifies the similarities and
differences in their approach to this task. Weber praises the ‘absolute abun-
dance of new ideas and subtle observations of fundamental importance’ in
Simmel’s writings, where ‘even erroneous results contain a wealth of stimu-
lation for one’s own further reflections’ (MWG I/7: 101; CMW: 418). At
the same time, he also expresses ‘reservations’ over the ‘contradictions’,
‘failures’, and ‘way of dividing the air and uniting it again’ that often
enrage readers of Simmel’s work (MWG I/7: 102–3; CMW: 419). In any
case, Weber states that his own misgivings are decidedly intellectual and
scholarly rather than political or personal in view of their shared search for
a clear and accurate understanding of where they differ and when they
disagree. As he argues in general terms in the essay on value-freedom:

The true meaning of a discussion of values is to grasp what the

opponent (or oneself) really means – the value, that is, which is
8 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

the real [wirklich], not just the apparent, concern of each of the two
parties – in order to make it at all possible to define a position
[Stellungnahme] with respect to that value. From the point of view
of the demand for the ‘value-freedom [Wertfreiheit]’ of empirical
analysis, it is therefore far from sterile, let alone absurd, to discuss
valuations: but if discussions of that kind are to be useful, one has
to realize what their true purpose is. The elementary precondition of
such discussions is to understand that ultimate valuations may in
principle and irreconcilably diverge: Neither ‘understanding all [alles
verstehen]’ and ‘forgiving all [alles verzeihen]’ nor a mere under-
standing [Verständnis] of the other person’s position in itself will
in any way lead to approval. It may just as easily, and often with far
greater probability, lead one to realize that agreement is not pos-
sible, as well as why – and where – it is not possible. (MWG I/12:
465; CMW: 312)

Whatever Weber’s differences with Simmel, including the contrasting

positions they had with respect to method or ‘ultimate values’, their dis-
agreements were tempered by a common commitment to intellectual
openness and modified by their shared interest in self-clarification.
What separates us most sharply from the intellectual world of Weber
and Simmel is the degree to which the scholarly profession is now shaped
not just by political commitments or national concerns but above all by
economic forces and capitalist interests. Weber was especially tireless in
defending ‘academic freedom’ in the university against the political inter-
ference of the Prussian Ministry of Education, to which he owed his own
career, and in defending unconventional colleagues like Simmel against
the corrupting influence of anti-Semitism and other anti-intellectual
prejudices (see his writings on the University Teachers Congresses
between 1908 and 1911 in Weber, 2008, and the review of MWG I/13,
Hochschulwesen und Wissenschaftspolitik by Whimster, 2019). Today,
university researchers and teachers must confront the new powers of
corporate funding and an ethos of managerialism along with the old
networks of patronage, sexism, and careerism which threaten free
inquiry. Towards the end of ‘Science as a Vocation’, Weber confesses
that he himself has always taken for granted that scholarship is an object-
ively valid calling, a value-judgment which he does not need to pro-
nounce in the lecture hall because it is the very precondition of
academic life. In response to those young people of his day ‘who hate
intellectualism as the worst of devils’, he quotes Mephistopheles’ advice
to a young scholar who boasts of his ‘awakening new impulse’ (in a
version of Faust’s speech earlier in the play which Weber himself had
Kemple 9

quoted as a young man, and which I cited at the beginning of this essay):
‘‘‘Reflect: the devil is old; grow old to understand him [Bedenkt: der
Teufel, der ist alt, so werdet alt ihn zu Verstehen]’’’ (CMW: 350, quoting
Goethe’s Faust, lines 6817–18). Just as Weber asks us to resist the temp-
tation to run away from ‘the devil of the intellect’ by acquainting our-
selves with the limitations and possibilities of this devil, if not by
confronting our own inner demons, so Simmel invites us to look
beyond the antinomies of the modern worldview inherited from the pre-
ceding century (Simmel, 2007). Ironically, each looked back to the cen-
tury of Goethe for inspiration concerning how to act on ‘what the day
demands’, if not for the sake of their own scholarly vocations then for
guidance in their ordinary lives (CMW: 353; Simmel, 2010: 109). Today
we would do well to recall what the age of Weber and Simmel can still
teach us, and what it cannot.

References
Bruun, Hans Henrik (2019) Review of MWG I/7: Zur Logik und zur Methdodik
der Sozialwissenschaften. Max Weber Studies 19(2): 275.
Hanke, Edith, Scaff, Lawrence A. and Whimster, Sam (2019) The Oxford
Handbook of Max Weber. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kemple, Thomas (2014) Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s
Calling. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kemple, Thomas (2018) Simmel. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Müller, Hans-Peter, and Sigmund, Steffen (eds) (2014) Max-Weber Handbuch:
Leben, Werk, Werkung. Stuttgart: Metzler.
Oakes, Guy (2019) Review of MWG I/12: Verstehende Soziologie und
Werturteilsfreiheit. Max Weber Studies 19(2): 260–268.
Simmel, Georg (1997) The metropolis and mental life. In: Frisby, David and
Featherstone, Mike (eds) Simmel on Culture. London: SAGE, pp. 174–183.
Simmel, Georg (2007) Kant and Goethe: On the history of the modern
Weltanschauung, trans. Bleicher, J. Theory, Culture & Society 24(6): 159–191.
Simmel, Georg (2010) The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Chapters with
Journal Aphorisms, trans. Andrews, JAY and Levine, DN. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Marx (2005) Remarks on ‘Technology and Culture’, trans. and ed.
Kemple, Thomas. Theory, Culture & Society 22(4): 23–38.
Weber, Max (2008) Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political
Vocations, trans. Well, Gordon C., ed. Dreijmanis, John. New York: Algora
Publishing.
Weber, Max (2012) Complete Methodological Writings, trans. Bruun, Hans
Henrik and ed. Whimster, Sam. London: Routledge.
Weber, Max (2019) Economy and Society: A New Translation, trans. Tribe,
Keith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Whimster, Sam (2019) Review essay on MWG I/13: Hochschulwesen und
Wissenschaftspolitik: On academic freedom. Max Weber Studies 19(2):
246–259.
10 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

Thomas Kemple is Professor of Sociology at the University of British

Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His recent works include Simmel
(Polity Press, 2018) and Writing the Body Politic: A John O’Neill
Reader (Routledge, 2020), co-edited with Mark Featherstone.