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The Sociological Quarterly
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Max Weber's Verstehen
WEBER, like all other scholars in social science who are justifiably
dignified with the label "great," was concerned with the construc-
tion of a conceptual scheme oriented toward the explanation of
the nature and the determinants of social conduct. Thus, Weber
conceived of sociology as the science with the task of "the inter-
pretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive
at a causal explanation of its course and effects." 1 Social action, to
Weber, meant action on the part of individuals participating in
social relationships. According to Weber, "interpretative sociology
considers the individual and his actions as the basic social unit,"
and he felt that the task of sociology was "to reduce [certain cate-
gories of human interaction] to 'understandable' action." 2
Social action, in the Weberian sense, is distinguished from mere
behavior. Action which is oriented toward inanimate objects, for
example, does not qualify. Action is "only social if, and then only
in so far as, it takes account of the behavior of someone else." "
Further, action involves more than mere contact of individuals.
Being jostled about by people in a crowded department store does
not, according to Weber, constitute social action. Action of a social
character "is confined to cases where the actor's behavior is mean-
ingfully oriented to that of others." In short, behavior which is
intentional, and which is oriented toward the behavior of other
human beings qualifies as social behavior.5
Intentional behavior, meaningful behavior, and subjectively
understandable behavior are, all three, synonymous with regard to
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158 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
Verstehen. However, when these terms are used to render, in Eng-
lish, the concept Verstehen, much confusion is generated. This re-
sults, it seems, from a failure on the part of Weber's critics to keep
in mind that the concept is a methodological tool to explain not
all behavior, but behavior which is of a social nature. This would
exclude from consideration all behavior which is strictly reflexive,
much "mystical" behavior, and practically all behavior of those
persons who are severely deranged mentally. In this connection
Weber points out:
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Max Weber's Verstehen 159
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160 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
vidual (or individuals) involved. For example, the "nice man" is
motivated to act, in regard to the small child, as a "nice man" is
expected to act in order to live up to the normative expectations
of this role. However, his reasons, or internal motivations, for want-
ing to fulfill these expectations (i.e., why he does it), depends
upon inner or internal "tensions." If he wishes to impress the small
child's mother, who is a widow, he will act in the prescribed way
toward her child. He might not "give a hang" about the child; he
is solely concerned with impressing the mother. In order to deter-
mine this, one would have to delve into his inner motivations. Ex-
ternal motivation, then, refers to "a complex of subjective mean-
ing which seems to the actor himself or to the observer an ade-
quate ground for the conduct in question." ", We can thus clearly
see that simply portraying the role of "nice man" is sufficient rea-
son for an adult male's conduct in the stiuation described above.
It would certainly appear so to both the actor and the observer.
If this were not true, the actor would be unable to conceal his
inner motivations from the mother and from the observer. Under-
standing of this variety is labeled by Weber understanding which
is adequate at the level of meaning. In the "nice man" example used
above, it is possible to discern a "single sufficient reason for a cer-
tain type of behavior." 12
A more complete interpretation of the situation described above
could be obtained through understanding which is causally ade-
quate. "A causally adequate interpretation is achieved when the
probability of a recurrence of a phenomenon under the same cir-
cumstance is empirically determined." '1 This simply means that
a particular individual involved in a (not necessarily continuous)
series of similar situations will probably behave in a similar man-
ner. The "nice man," for example, who defines the situation of being
confronted by the widow's child as requiring conformist type
behavior, might define other similar situations as requirements for
conformist behavior. Confronted with the parents of an unmarried
woman to whom he is attracted, he might wish to impress them
in order to get them to encourage the daughter to pursue the re-
lationship. As a matter of fact, almost all young men would define
the situation in this way. However, a causally adequate interpre-
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Max Weber's Verstehen 161
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162 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
Social facts are in the last resort intelligible facts .... It is because
. . there is always an inside story, or in other words a meaning, in
human affairs that we never attain more than partial or relative
truth. Here is the paradox of knowledge. The only things we know
as immutable truths are the things we do not understand. The only
things we understand are mutable and never fully known.'5
According to MacIver, facts that we can fully know are facts
known only from the "outside," while things that we can understand
are known from the "inside." 16
This does not mean that we must go inside the individual psyche
to understand social action, but that we must go inside the social
situation to understand it. When referring to facts obtained by
"inside" information, Maclver points out that "we must project
ourselves into the situations we are investigating. We must learn
the values and the aims and the hopes of human beings as they
operate within a particular situation. There is no inside story of why
a meteor falls or why a liquid freezes." 17
Thus, to understand a social action or actions, we need not
search the mind of the individual actor or actors in the same way
that psychologists or psychiatrists would; but by knowing enough
about the nature of the situation in which the action takes place,
we are able to infer (external) motivation.
In view of the above comments, it is obvious that Weber's con-
ceptual scheme of interpretation, of which the process Verstehen
is the basis, is to be applied only to social situations, and that
any knowledge obtained by application of the scheme is primarily
14 Peter A. Munch, "Empirical Science and Max Weber's verstehende Soziologie,"
American Sociological Review, 22:29 (Feb., 1957).
'1 Robert M. MacIver as quoted by Harry Alpert, "Robert M. MacIver's Con-
tributions to Sociological Theory," in Freedom and Control in Modern Society (edited
by Morroe Berger, Theodore Abel, Charles H. Page (New York: D. Van Nostrand
Co., 1954), p. 291.
16 Ibid.
'7 Ibid. (emphasis added).
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Max Weber's Verstehen 163
knowledge about the nature of the situation, and not primarily
knowledge about individuals.
The above observations can be upheld by reference to a few
statements by Kaufmann regarding a card game, an analogy for
which he acknowledges indebtedness to Weber. He states:
18 Felix Kaufman, Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1944), p. 162.
19 Nicholas S. Timasheff, Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth (New
York: Random House, 1957), p. 149 (emphasis added).
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164 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY
cially generated motivations for behaving in a particular manner.
The desire to become accepted by one's peers is certainly observ-
able in action, and could certainly be regarded as external motiva-
tion of action. Further, it is easy to observe that those individuals
desiring acceptance by peers will act in accordance with the norms
and values of the peer group. All of this is explicable in socio-
logical terms. If there are, in addition, deep-seated psychophysical
factors which dictate the need for acceptance by peers, then this is
one of the problems to be dealt with by psychology.
It seems to me that all of the above comments lend support
to the notion that Weber's Verstehen might best be viewed as a
methodological tool designed to discover the nature of the situa-
tion-including in the concept, "nature of the situation," the co-
ersive forces (i.e., normative prescriptions, observable values held
by the different individuals composing the situation, and the ap-
parent goals of these individuals in terms of their known values
and situational norms)-in which human social action takes place.
It seems that some of the critics of Weber's Verstehen have
failed to take the above observations into account. In view of
this charge, it might be instructive to consider briefly Abel's criti-
cisms since they are extremely pointed and fairly representative.
In his evaluation of Verstehen, Abel identifies two limitations:
(1) "its dependence upon knowledge derived from personal ex-
perience," and (2) "it is not a method of verification." 20 According
to Abel, these limitations render Verstehen virtually useless as a
methodological tool. However, a closer look, with the position taken
in the preceding pages in mind, will reveal that Abel is overlook-
ing some important distinctions made by Weber.
First, in regard to the charge that Verstehen is necessarily intro-
spective, the distinction between internal and external motivation
(as defined here) is overlooked. For example, Abel uses the hy-
pothetical case of the neighbor going to chop wood upon experi-
encing a sudden drop in temperature to illustrate the important
role played by introspection when Verstehen is used to explain this
behavior.21 One very simple fact that he overlooks is that the be-
havior of the hypothetical woodchopper reacting to this hypothet-
ical drop in temperature is not involved in a hypothetical social
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Max Weber's Verstehen 165
situation. Since Weber's scheme is designed to explain social action
(i.e., action resulting from reciprocal interrelations with other indi-
viduals), and since Abel's hypothetical situation is nonsocial, it
would be reasonable to assume that Weber's scheme would not be
applicable. If Abel had recognized this, "Case I" could have been
eliminated from his description and criticism of Verstehen.
Secondly, in stating that Verstehen adds nothing to the statis-
tical operations that establish the high correlation between rate
of marriage and rate of crop production, Abel is overlooking that
statistical correlations of this sort without Verstehen are useless. For
example, it is conceivable that a statistical correlation could be es-
tablished between the number of Protestant ministers and the
amount of rum consumed in the state of Illinois. However, this
does not prove or necessarily even indicate that Protestant minis-
ters are heavy drinkers of rum. A great deal more than statistical
correlations are necessary for adequate interpretation of statis-
tical correlations. The operation Verstehen establishes the rele-
vance or irrelevance of statistical correlations.
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