Re: Weber, Weberians and rationality

These are not comments directed toward the main thrust of this message but
merely some observations on some points made in passing.

Carl Dassbach

>>I have always found Weber hard to understand until upon reading J.
>>Schumpeter 'History of Economic Thought' (Schumpeter of course belonged to
>>Weber's intellectual milieu) I grasped that Weber primarily considered
>>himself an ECONOMIST.

Well, maybe this is Schumpeter's reading of Weber but my impression is that
Weber considered himself, at least intially, a scholar of the law.  One
could read Weber as an economist but I think a sociologist is more accurate.
After all, Weber was interested in the motives and meanings underlying all
forms of action but tended, at least in my opinion, to focus on economic
action because of its centrality in social life and because of its
foundational importance for the type of action which Weber considered
characteristic of modernity, namely, "rational action."

While I find the observation that the key to Weber is Schumpeter
interersting and perhaps useful, I would also say that the reverse is even
more true.   I have an article forthcoming that argues that one can't
understand Schumpeter, especially on the question of the clustering of
innovations that initiate a long wave, unless one reads Weber.  Like Weber,
Schumpter was interested in action ( a point which is largely forgotten in
the discussion of Schumpter becuase of the emphasis on innovation as "thing"
where, in fact, Schumpter was interested in innovation and even more
importantly, the consequences of innovation, as "conduct").  But unlike
Weber, who felt that we could, to some extent,  explain/understand the
motives and meanings underlying action, e.g. the irrational and
"otherworldly" concern with salvation as the basis for the rational and
"innerwordly" pursuit of profit, Schumpeter maintained that motives can not
be understood.  Nonetheless, an adequate explanation of economic phenomena
for Schumpeter means sifting to economic behavior until one reaches what he
calls the "non-economic" bottom - the motives underlying the behavior.  Once
you reach this point, you can, at least as an economist, go no further.



>Thus the concept of the `ideal type' which is hard to grasp


only becuase of the tendency among most people to conflate the meaning of
the term ideal and therefore see an "ideal" type as expressing or relating
to some "ideal" or desired state when, in fact, an ideal type refers to an
"ideational" type - something existing in the realm of ideas ala Plato.