The anti-essentialism of Max Weber

pp. 97-120

in: Robert Albritton, Dialectics and deconstruction in political economy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

It may seem a little strange to include a chapter on Max Weber in a book that is centrally concerned with dialectics and deconstruction. That I do so stems not only from his enormous influence, but also from his anti-essentialism, which has been particularly brought out and emphasised by numerous thinkers reflecting on his relation to deconstructivist thought broadly conceived. Furthermore Weber was concerned with many of the same problems as I am, particularly the reifying and reductionist tendencies associated with abstract general theories in the social sciences. His solutions are different from mine because he did not think that any sort of Hegelian dialectic was consistent with the understanding of the complex interaction of relatively autonomous spheres in the history of our social life. Indeed his neo-Kantian ontology and epistemology would seem to preclude dialectical logics from the social sciences at the outset.