Abstract
The metaphysical principle of the logical separation of ‘facts’ and ‘values’ has always been closely associated with positivistic philosophies. In the social sciences, however, its strongest and most influential advocate has been Max Weber, who derived it from Kant rather than from Hume. In Weber’s writings, the implications of the fact/value dichotomy (or his version of it)1 are rigorously traced out in respect of a series of problems; I shall treat here only those concerning the logical status of the differentiation of facts and values, and the relation of values within ‘calculi’ or ‘hierarchies’ of values.
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Notes
Cf. Hanna Feinchel Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) pp. 220 ff.
Weber, ‘“Objectivity” in social science and social policy’, in Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949) pp. 51–2, 54.
W.D. Hudson, The Is/Ought Question: a collection of papers on the central problem in moral philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1969 [New York: St Martin’s Press, 1970]).
J.R. Searle, ‘How to derive “ought” from “is”’, in Hudson, The Is/Ought Question; Speech Acts: an essay in the philosophy of language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969 [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970]) pp. 54 ff.
For various relevant discussions, see John H. Schaar, ‘Reflections on authority’, New American Review, vol. 8, 1970; Pitkin, Wittgenstein, pp. 280 ff;
Pitkin, Wittgenstein, pp. 280 ff; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890–1920 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1959);
Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) pp. 97 ff.
Weber, Economy and Society (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968) vol. I, pp. 212 ff.
Pitkin, Wittgenstein, pp. 280–2. The implications of this for Weber’s sociology of law are traced through beautifully in M. Albrow, ‘Legal positivism and bourgeois materialism: Max Weber’s view of the sociology of law’, British Journal of Law and Society, vol. 2, 1975.
Cf. Pitkin, Wittgenstein, p. 234; cf. also Charles Taylor, ‘Neutrality in political science’, in Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967) pp. 48 ff. Consider in this regard the sort of statement that frequently appears in Weber’s writings: ‘The dignity of the “personality” lies in the fact that for it there exist values about which it organizes its life.’ Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. 55 (my italics).
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (London: Allen Lane, 1978) p. 271.
Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society (London: Gollancz. 1979) pp. xxviii. 33.
Cf. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) -the classic discussion of this issue.
See David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) concluding chapter.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon 1972)
Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).
Barbara Sichtermann, Femininity: The Politics of the Personal (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986) p. 2.
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1965).
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© 1993 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Cassell, P. (1993). Critical Theory. In: Cassell, P. (eds) The Giddens Reader. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22890-4_7
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