Sociology's known-unknowns: biology, emotion, instinct, selection
Economy & Society new translation of ‘bible’ by Keith Tribe [transitioning to Tribe]
Max Weber wrote:
[MGH: Extracts in order of appearance from Chapter 1: Basic Sociological Concepts, starting with preamble on general method, viz. e.g. ‘emotions’ and ‘empathy’]
Sociology, in the meaning understood here of a word often used in quite different senses, shall mean: a science that in construing and understanding social action seeks causal explanation of the course and effects of such action. By “action” is meant human behaviour linked to a subjective meaning on the part of the actor or actors concerned; such action may be either overt, or occur inwardly—whether by positive action, or by refraining from action, or by tolerating a situation. Such behaviour is “social” action where the meaning intended by the actor or actors is related to the behaviour of others, and the action is so oriented.
Methodic Foundations
1. “Meaning” is here either a) the actual meaning that is … subjectively intended by one actor in a historically given instance, or … subjectively intended by several actors in approximating the average of a given number of cases … Alternatively it is in a conceptually constructed pure type, the meaning subjectively intended by actor or actors conceived as a type. … But it is not, for instance, some kind of objectively “correct” meaning, nor any such “real” meaning arrived at metaphysically. Here lies the difference between the empirical sciences of action—of sociology and of history—and those dogmatic sciences, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, and aesthetics, that seek the “correct” and “valid” meaning of their objects of study.
2. There is an entirely fluid border separating meaningful action from what is here called merely reactive behaviour, that is, behaviour unrelated to a subjectively intended meaning. A very significant part of all sociologically relevant behaviour, especially purely traditional action … can be found directly on this border. Meaningful action, in other words action that can be understood, is in many cases entirely absent from psychophysical events, or is in other cases only evident to the specialist. Mystical events, which are by definition only incompletely communicable in words, cannot be fully understood by those untouched by such experiences. On the other hand, one’s capacity to replicate action is not a condition of its being understood: “One need not be Caesar to understand Caesar”. The capacity of fully and inwardly “reliving” something (Nacherlebbarkeit) is important to clarity (Evidenz) of understanding, but is not an absolute condition for the construal of meaning. The understandable and the nonunderstandable elements of an event are often blended and related to one another.
3. All construal of meaning aspires to a condition of being self-evidently true (Evidenz)—this is common to all the sciences. This self-evident quality of understanding can be either of a rational character (and as such, either logical or mathematical), or founded on an empathetic reliving—hence, emotional or involving an artistic receptiveness. In the domain of action, that which is rationally evident primarily takes the form of that which can be exhaustively and transparently understood intellectually. Action that is evident empathetically involves the full inner reliving of an experienced emotional context. That which is rationally understandable (defined here as meaning that is, directly and unambiguously, intellectually accessible) is most fully developed with respect to meaningful contexts created by the relation of mathematical or logical propositions.
We understand the meaning quite unambiguously when someone, in thought or in argument, employs the proposition 2 × 2 = 4, or makes use of Pythagoras’s theorem, or completes a chain of reasoning “correctly” (and so to our own way of thinking). We likewise understand if, for given ends, he uses “facts of experience” that we “know” to be valid when selecting those “means” that are, in our own experience, unambiguously appropriate to his action. Any construal of such rationally oriented purposive behaviour possesses—for an understanding of the means employed—the greatest possible degree of Evidenz. A lesser degree of Evidenz, but one quite sufficient for our need of explanation, is used to understand “errors” (including here problems whose elements have become entangled one with another) to which we ourselves might be susceptible, or whose origins can be empathetically realised (einfühlend erlebbar).
On the other hand, we are very often not capable of understanding the self-evidence of many of the ultimate “purposes” and “values” to which, in our experience, human action can be oriented. While we might possibly be able to understand them intellectually, the more radical the divergence of such ultimate values from our own, the greater also our difficulty in understanding them by empathetically reliving them in imagination. We must, then, as circumstance dictates, be satisfied with construing them intellectually; or, failing that, simply accept them as givens, making the best of such intellectual or empathetic appreciation as can be mustered in understanding the course that action motivated by them takes. Among these belong, for example, many acts of religious or charitable virtuosity whose motivating force is inaccessible to those not susceptible to their appeal. Also included here is extreme, rationalistic fanaticism (involving, e.g., “human rights”) whose imperative eludes those who have radically rejected any such mandate. The more we are prey to emotional reactions such as anxiety, anger, ambition, envy, jealousy, love, enthusiasm, pride, vengefulness, piety, dedication, desires of every sort, and their (from the standpoint of purposively rational action) irrational consequences, the greater the degree to which we are capable of reliving them emotionally as self-evident. And even when they far exceed our own capacities in intensity, we are nonetheless able to understand their meaning empathetically, and take account intellectually of the orientation and chosen means of action motivated by them.
For a scientific approach that constructs types, all irrational, affectively conditioned, meaningful contexts for behaviour that influence action are best studied and represented as “diversionary elements” with respect to a constructed, purely purposively rational course for such action. For example: explanation of the course taken by a stock exchange panic will first establish what would have happened if action had not been influenced by irrational emotions, following which these irrational components are introduced as “disturbances.” Similarly, in the case of a political or military action, it would first be established how things would have developed if the action had been informed by complete knowledge of circumstances and participants’ intentions, consequently selecting those purposively rational means that in our experience appeared most appropriate. Only after this has been done is it possible to impute causal influence to these conditional irrationalities determining deviations from this construct. The construction of rigorously purposive-rational action therefore in these cases furthers the self-evident clarity of a sociology whose lucidity is founded on rationality. In this way, a type is presented (“ideal type”) in relation to which real and concrete action, influenced by all manner of irrationalities (affect, mistakes), can be understood as a “deviation” from action directed by purely rational behaviour.
To this extent, and only for the purposes of methodic convenience here, is the method of a sociology of Verstehen “rationalistic.” This procedure should not be understood as a reflection of sociology’s rationalistic prejudice, but only as a means, a method. It should not, for instance, be reinterpreted as a belief in the real predominance of the rational in life. It suggests absolutely nothing about the extent to which, in reality, actual action might or might not be determined by a rational evaluation of ends. (Which is not to deny that there is a constant danger of misplaced rationalistic construction. Experience, unfortunately, shows this to be all too manifest.)
4. All sciences of action treat events and objects devoid of meaning in terms of the manner in which they stimulate or result from, or foster or inhibit, human action. “Devoid of meaning” is not the same as “lifeless” or “nonhuman.” Every artefact—for instance, a machine—can only be construed and understood by reference to the meaning that human action of possibly quite diverse kinds has given, or has sought to give, to its production and use; in the absence of such reference, the artefact remains entirely beyond understanding. What is therefore here “understood” is the relation of the artefact to human action, as a “means” or as an “end” envisaged by actor or actors, and to which their action is oriented. Understanding of such objects can only be effected through these categories. By contrast, without an intended meaning all events or circumstances—animate or inanimate, human or nonhuman—remain senseless so long as they cannot be related to the “means” and “ends” of action, but merely stimulate, foster, or inhibit such action.
Perhaps the flooding of the Dollart [river] in the late thirteenth century had “historical” significance, prompting a pattern of resettlement that had considerable historical significance. Mortality and the life cycle, from the helplessness of the child to that of the elderly, naturally has preeminent sociological significance on account of the different ways human action has been, and is, oriented to this existential fact. A different category is represented by unintelligible (nicht verstehbar) empirical propositions regarding the experience of physical or psychophysical phenomena (fatigue, habituation, memory, etc.), together with, for instance, euphoric states typical of certain forms of ascetic mortification, or typical differences in the speed, form, and precision of modes of reaction. Ultimately, the substantive issue here is the same as with any other factor that cannot be understood: both the pragmatic actor and the application of understanding take account of them as “data”.
The detachment of MGH’s Chapter 1 binding is very meaningful ‘data’.
[MGH: There follow Chapter 1 extracts explaining how Weber thought sociology must or should deal with biological and psychological unknowns of social action]
There is the possibility that future research might also find regularities underlying action taken to be meaningful that cannot be understood, although this has not yet happened. Hereditary biological differences … for example, would have to be accepted by sociology as given data if statistically persuasive proof were produced indicating their influence on the form taken by sociologically relevant behaviour—that is, social action in its relation to meaning. Such acceptance would be equivalent to that granted to physiological facts such as the nature of nutritional need, or the effect of ageing on action. Recognition of its causal significance would not, of course, alter the tasks of sociology, or of the sciences of action in general, in the slightest; this would remain the construal and understanding of meaningfully oriented action. Sociology would, as it does today, introduce at certain points into its construal and understanding of motivational contexts only those facts that could not be understood (e.g., that particular goal-directed action recurs with a typical “frequency, or the degree of its typical rationality, using a cephalic index, skin colour, or any other kind of physiologically heritable characteristic). …
… The method of so-called organic sociology … seeks to explain mutual social action by starting with the “whole” (e.g., an “economy”), and proceeding to interpret the individual and his behaviour in much the same way that physiology relates the location of an anatomical “organ” within the “household economy” of the organism, considering it, for instance, as an element contributing to the maintenance of the whole. (As with the well-known dictum from a lecture by a physiologist: “The Spleen. We know nothing about the spleen, gentlemen. That deals with the spleen.” In fact, the person in question “knew” rather a lot about the spleen: its position, size, shape, and so on. But he could not say what its “function” was, and he called this incapacity “knowing nothing”.) How far this kind of functional consideration of the relation between “parts” and a “whole” is definitive for other disciplines must remain undiscussed here; we know that the biochemical and biomechanical perspective do not allow this to limit them. For a sociology seeking to construe events, this much can be said:
1) This functional frame of reference serves for practical illustration and provisional orientation (and is as such extremely useful and necessary, although it must be said that an overestimation of its cognitive value and a faulty conceptual realism can have very detrimental effects.) And —
2) In some circumstances, this is the only way of identifying social action whose construed understanding is important to the explanation of context. But the task of sociology (as understood here) simply begins at this point. In the case of “social forms” (and in contrast to “organisms”), we can rise above the mere registration of functional relationships and rules (“laws”) typical of all “natural science” (where causal laws are established for events and patterns, and individual events then “explained” on this basis) and achieve something quite inaccessible to natural science: namely, an “understanding” of the behaviour of participating individuals, whereas we do not, for example, “understand” the behaviour of cells, but merely register them functionally, and then determine their activity by reference to rules.
The superiority of constructive over observational explanation is, of course, bought at the cost of the substantially more hypothetical and fragmentary character of its results. Nonetheless: this is what is specific to sociological knowledge.
The extent to which we find the behaviour of animals meaningfully “understandable,” and vice versa (both of these being of a very uncertain nature and of problematic scope), must here remain unexamined. Hence likewise the extent to which there could theoretically be a sociology of the relation of humans to animals (whether pets or hunting animals)—many animals “understand” commands, anger, love, hostility, and quite obviously often do not react to these in an exclusively mechanical and instinctive way, but with respect to some consciousness of meaning and experience. The extent of our empathy with the behaviour of “primitive men” is certainly no greater. But we either lack any certain means of establishing the subjective situation for an animal or can assess it only in a very incomplete way—the problems of animal psychology are known to be both interesting and also riddled with pitfalls. Animals associate, of course, in the most varied manner: there are monogamous and polygamous “families,” herds, packs, and even functionally structured “states.”
(The degree of functional differentiation of these animal sociations is in no respect matched by the degree of physical or morphological differentiation in the development of the species concerned. The functional differentiation displayed by termites, and consequently that of their artefacts, is far greater than is the case for ants and bees.) In these cases, the purely functional perspective establishes what, for the time being, is the most definitive knowledge attainable by research: ascertaining the conditions for the preservation of animal societies (their sustenance, defence, reproduction, and social reconstitution) together with the functions of specific types of individuals—“kings,” queens,” “workers,” “soldiers,” “drones,” “propagators,” “surrogate queens,” etc.).
Anything beyond this was for a long time mere speculation, or investigation of the degree to which heredity or environment contributed to the development of these social proclivities … Genuine scientific research is at one in agreeing that this restriction to functional knowledge is a necessary one that, it is hoped, has to be accepted only on a provisional basis. For not only would one want insight into the degree to which functions were “important for the maintenance” of such individually differentiated types, something that is relatively easy to effect; and so gain some sense of the degree to which this differentiation can be explained without assuming the inheritance of characteristics, or in reverse, assuming such inheritance (and in this case, how we might construe this assumption). We would also want to know
1) what determines the specific form assumed by the differentiation of an originally neutral, undifferentiated individual;
2) what moves the differentiated individual to behave on the average in such a way as to actually further the interest in survival of the differentiated group.
Wherever research has made any progress in this respect, it has been through experiments with solitary individuals, demonstrating or hypothesising the presence of chemical stimulation or physiological circumstances such as nutritional processes or parasitic castration. Today, even an expert would find it hard to say how far there might be grounds for the problematic hope of substantiating experimentally “psychological” or “meaningful” orientation. The idea that we could have a verifiable picture of the psyche of these individual social animals founded on meaningful “understanding” seems scarcely attainable even as an ideal objective. In any case, it is not from this direction that we might expect “understanding” of human social action; rather it is the reverse: human analogies are used in such research, and this has to be so. But we might perhaps expect that these analogies will become of use to us in posing the question of how in the early stages of human social differentiation we might judge the relation between purely mechanical, instinctive differentiation and the domain of individual meaningful understanding, and hence conscious rationally formed differentiation. A sociology of Verstehen has to be quite clear on this point: that in the very earliest times of human development, the first of these factors is entirely dominant, and in later developmental stages a sociology of this kind must continue to register their constant influence—indeed, their decisively important influence.
“Traditional” action and large areas of “charisma” (wherein lie the seeds of psychic “contagion” and hence sociological spurs to developmental processes) are, in fact, very close to those phenomena conceivable only in biological terms, and which are either inaccessible to construed understanding and motivational explanation, or if in some way accessible, then only in a very fragmentary fashion. But none of this absolves a sociology of Verstehen from its obligation to do what it alone can do, while conscious of the narrow limits to which it is confined. …
… We certainly need to know first of all what kind of action is functionally important for “survival” (and more, the maintenance of a specific “cultural distinctiveness”!), together with its importance for a deliberate development of a type of social action. Only then can we pose the question: How does this action come about? What motives define it?
One first has to know what a king, an official, a businessman, a pimp, or a magician does—the action that alone stamps them as of this category; hence, before we can move to any analysis, it is important to know with what typical “action” we are dealing … Only this analytical perspective is capable, and should be capable, of the sociological understanding of individual human beings (and only human beings) differentiated by type …
… The structuring concepts of sociology are ideal typical not merely overtly, but also inwardly. Agents engage in real action for the most part in a drearily half-aware condition, perhaps entirely unaware of its “intended meaning.” The actor “senses” meaning more indefinitely than consciously or positively acknowledges it, and generally acts by instinct or habit. Only occasionally, often involving the very frequent repetition of the same action among individuals, does anyone become conscious of a rational or irrational meaning. Genuinely effective, fully conscious, and explicitly meaningful action is always in reality quite a marginal case. Analysis of reality through historical or sociological study has to keep this circumstance constantly in mind. But this should not prevent sociology from constructing concepts by classifying the possible “intended meanings,” as if action were actually conducted with conscious orientation to its meaning. Sociology must constantly keep in view this distance from reality when dealing with substantive, concrete reality, taking into account both its degree and nature. …
… Typical, repeated mass conflict and competition eventually leads, despite all manner of decisive but accidental twists of fate, to the “selection” of that actor who has the greater endowment of those personal qualities essential for success. These qualities might be quite various: greater physical strength or unscrupulous cunning; greater intensity of intellectual capacity; greater stamina; a superior demagogic technique; a greater devotion to superiors, or to the flattering of masses; greater originality or greater social adaptability; more extraordinary qualities, or on the other hand, a greater than average degree of ordinariness. Whatever traits possessed by adversaries, the conditions of conflict and competition work in favour of those who, besides all conceivable forms of such qualities, belong to the orders to which behaviour in the course of conflict is oriented—whether it be traditional, value rational, or purposively rational. Each of these influences the prospect of social selection. Not every form of social selection is a “contest” in the senses used here. “Social selection” means rather that particular forms of comportment, and probably also of personal qualities, are favoured in the possibility of achieving a certain social relationship … There is no implication here that this Chance of social advantage will be necessarily realised in “conflict,” or indeed whether the biological Chance of survival of the type is thereby improved, or damaged.
We shall only talk of “conflict” where there is genuine competition. All previous experiences demonstrate that conflict is really inevitable only in the sense of “selection”; only in the sense of biological selection is it inevitable in principle. Selection is “eternal” since no means can be conceived that might eliminate it. A rigorously pacifist order is only able to deal with conflict by seeking to eliminate the specific means, objects, and aims of conflict. But this would mean only that other forms of conflict would emerge through open competition. Even on the utopian assumption that all competition was eliminated, conditions would still lead to a (latent) process of selection over Chancen of existence and survival, favouring those with opportunities available to them by virtue of biology or of education and upbringing. The elimination of conflict is limited empirically by social selection, and limited in principle by biological selection.
“Conflict” and “selection” that involves social relations must naturally be distinguished from the conflict of individuals for Chancen of existence and survival. In this case, one can only use these concepts in a metaphorical sense, for “relationships” only exist as substantive meanings determined by human action. “Selection” or “conflict” between them means that a particular form of action is displaced over time by another, involving the same people, or a different group of people. This can happen in different ways. Human action can be —
a) consciously oriented to: the disturbance of particular, existing social relationships, or to the disturbance of more generally defined social relationships whose substantive meaning corresponds to particular action; or be oriented to an attempt to prevent their foundation, or persistence. Examples would be to seek the destruction of a “state” by war or revolution, or of a “conspiracy” by bloody suppression, the control of “concubinage” by police measures, and of “usurious” commercial dealings by denial of legal protection and punishment; or by consciously seeking to favour the existence of one category over another—individuals or a number of conjoined individuals might pursue such ends. It can also be —
b) the unanticipated consequence of a course of social action and the many circumstances conditioning it: that specific relationships, or specific forms of relation (i.e., the corresponding action) have a reduced Chance of persistence or of reformation. Changes to natural and cultural conditions of all kinds work in some way or another to alter the differential Chancen of survival of different social relationships. Anyone can in such circumstances talk of the “selection” of social relationships—for example, that among states the “strongest” (in the sense of the “fittest,” the best adapted) prevails. It must be remembered, however, that this alleged “selection” has nothing to do with the selection of human types in either the sociological or the biological sense. In every single case, one must examine reasons for the displacement of Chancen for this or that form of social action and social relationship; or for the shattering of a social relationship; or for the basis for it being allowed to persist as compared with others. …
The legitimacy of an order can be guaranteed:
I. purely inwardly, either
1. purely affectively: by instinctive dedication; or
2. value-rationally: by belief in its absolute validity as the embodiment of ultimate, obligatory values (ethical, aesthetic, or of whatever kind); or
3. through religion: by the belief that salvation depends on inner adherence to the order;
II. also (or only) by expectations linked to specific external consequences, hence given interests, but also by expectations of a quite particular kind.
… Communalisation is in the sense intended here normally the most radical opposite of “conflict.” But this should not divert our attention from the fact that it is quite normal for there to be violation (Vergewaltigung) of all kinds in the most intimate communalisations with respect to those who are more pliant emotionally, and that “selection” by type, leading to a diversity in Chancen of existence and survival, occurs within these communities in just the same way as anywhere else. By contrast, sociations are very often purely compromises between antagonistic interests, compromises that eliminate (or seek to eliminate) just one element of this antagonism, while leaving unaltered the existing conflict and competition over Chancen arising from it. “Conflict” and community are relative concepts; conflict can assume many forms, the means used being violent or “peaceful,” and the degree of ruthlessness with which such means are applied is likewise quite variable. And as has already been stated, every order of social action, however constituted, in some way permits pure and actual selection to exist in the competition between different human types over life-Chancen.
Not every quality, situation, or behaviour shared in common engenders communalisation. For example, the possession of a common biological stock thought to be a “racial” characteristic naturally implies no communalisation among those so identified. External restrictions arising from the environment on marriage and commercial relations might well impose similarities arising from their common orientation to this external environment. But even if they react similarly to this common situation, this does not constitute communalisation, nor in itself does the mere “feeling” of sharing a common situation and its consequences do so. It is only when on the basis of this feeling that their behaviour is in some way mutually oriented that a social relation is formed among them, not only a relation between each of them and their environment, and it is only when this social relationship is registered as such that a “community” can be said to have formed. …
[The following are in Chapter 2 Basic Sociological Categories of Economic Action]
… Economic orientation can be traditionally or purposively rational. Even where action has been extensively rationalised, the influence of tradition remains relatively important. As a rule, rational orientation bears primarily on managerial action, whatever the nature of this management might be. The emergence of rational economic action out of an instinctive and reflexive search for food, or from traditionally accepted inherited technologies and customary social relations, has, to a great extent, been influenced by noneconomic, extraordinary events and deeds, along with the pressure of necessity where there has been an increasingly absolute or (recurrent) relative constraint on the provision of subsistence. …
… Both accounting in natura and monetary calculation are rational technologies. But they by no means exhaust all forms of economic activity. There is also activity that is in fact economically oriented, while lacking any form of calculation. Such action can be traditionally oriented or affectively determined. All primitive human questing for sustenance is related to an instinctive animal search for food. The degree of calculation involved in fully conscious but affectively oriented action—such as religious devotion, warlike arousal, and feelings of piety—is very limited. Bargaining is ruled out “among brothers” of a tribe, of a gild, or of belief; among family, comrades, or youths either no account is kept, or it is very flexibly “rationed” in times of necessity (a modest onset of calculability).
MGH’s home copy in 2017 became cold winter fuel for wood burner.
From ‘Translation Appendix A’ by Keith Tribe:
Chance —A central and consistently recurring term in the text that draws attention to Weber’s emphasis on contingency. It is, however, used in rather different ways. Primarily it covers the senses of both “chance” and “opportunity”. A “future chance” can best be understood as an “option” in the technical financial sense with which Weber would, of course, have been quite at home, given his study of commodity markets in the 1890s. A fourth sense is that of “calculable probability,” which is clearly what Weber often has in mind. Taking advantage of the fact that the singular of this term is the same in both languages, the term has been left untranslated throughout the text to draw attention to the regularity with which Weber uses it. The plural in German is Chancen.
Deutung, deuten—Translated as “construal,” “construction,” or the act of construing empirical reality.” This term has often been translated as “interpretation” or “interpretive,” but interpretation implies the use of a target language grid through which a source language is understood: A is understood in terms of B. By contrast, “construing” something is a more open process, not confined to the translation of a language, since a statement or an action can be open to variant construals and constructions within the same language or semiotic apparatus. As argued by Hans Henrik Bruun, Deutung is the medium through which the goal, Verstehen, is achieved. See the discussion under Verstehen below.
Verstehen—Generally here rendered as “understanding,” its standard meaning in German. This concept plays a central role in Chapter 1 where Weber argues for a verstehende Soziologie; the term, however, first emerges in Weber’s writings in 1897.56 This collocation is often rendered as “interpretive sociology,” running together the act of interpretation and the condition of understanding, and also interfering with the translation of Deutung (see above). Parsons (pp. 87–89, nn. 2, 3) notes that he does not adhere to a consistent translation of the term, using also “subjectively understandable,” “interpretation in subjective terms,” and “comprehension.” These synonyms bring with them serious problems and are here eschewed; as far as possible, the term Verstehen is translated as “understanding” or “understandable,” and where absolutely necessary, the German term is allowed to stand. As Peter Ghosh makes clear, there are allusions here that can be misleading: there is an everyday sense of “understanding” meaning grasping what someone has just said, thus implying a communicative match between what was intended and what was “understood,” as opposed to the more complex retrospective “understanding” of conduct in terms of a particular context that addresses itself not to the agent’s intentionality but to the context in which such an intentionality can be formulated. It does not therefore necessarily imply that the agent is “understood” in the first sense. Ghosh also points out that Weber routinely qualified his use of the term (nacherlebend, erklärend, deutend), and suggests that he actually favoured Deutung as less ambiguous. Ghosh himself favours translating Deutung as “construction” or “construal,” such that deuten refers to a process and verstehen to its outcome. This is a helpful distinction that is followed here, given the strongly processual character of Weber’s conceptual armoury.
The Source:
Max Weber, Economy and Society [Part 1], A New Translation, edited and translated by Keith Tribe, Harvard University Press, 2019
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.