Max Weber
Legitimation, Method, and the Politics of Theory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6350102 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sheldon S Wolin (Princeton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1981 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 401-424 |
| Publication date | 1981-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/009059178100900308 |
| OpenAlex | W255815300 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 47 |
| References cited | 2 |
AX WEBER IS widely regarded as one of the founders of twentieth-century social science and probably its greatest practitioner. Modern and ancient theorists commonly believed that founding-or giving a form or constitution to collective life-was reckoned to be the most notable action of which political man is capable. It is superior to other types of political acts because it aims to shape the lives of citizens by designing the structure or dwelling which they and their posterity will inhabit. In describing this extraordinary action, political theorists often had recourse to architectural metaphors: the founder lays foundations. No such images were invoked to explain the routine acts that occur in the daily life of a polity. Ordinary action is commonly described as doing, effecting, or bringing something about. If political actors are to bring something about, they presuppose conditions that make possible the action in questicn and the means for doing it. They also presuppose a context that permits the action to be understood and interpreted. The founder is quintessentially an author of political presuppositions. By analogy, to found a form of social science entails an act of demarcation that indicates the subject-matter peculiar to the science, the kind of activities that are appropriate (e.g., empirical inquiry), and the norms that are to be invoked injudging the value of the results produced by the activities. These demarcations beconme presuppositions of subsequent practice. Weber was engaged in founding when he wrote the following
Epistemology · Legitimation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
International Organization As Technocratic Utopia
Governing Failure - Provisional Expertise and the Transformation of Global Development Finance
Legitimating Identities
Politics and Social Visions
The Work of Politics
Taking political normativity seriously
State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples
Encounters at the end of the world
Max Weber on Religion and Political Responsibility
Science as an Ethical Mode of Life
Can power be self‐legitimating? Political realism in Hobbes, Weber, and Williams
Hannah Arendt's political theory
Any Given We
Judicial power and constitutional tensions
Is Constructivist Ethics an Oxymoron
Re-reading Weber, re-conceptualizing state-building
Inner migration or disguised reform? Political interests of Hermann Lotze's philosophical anthropology
Power Holders and Social Dynamics of Participatory Development and Reconstruction
Political realism, legitimacy, and a place for external critique
Politics, Epistemology and Method
Conceptual framework for a study of authority
Schooling in the ‘Iron Cage’ and the Crucial Role of Interpretive, Normative, and Critical Perspectives in Social Foundations Studies
Mystification and rationality
El poder en Max Weber
Entre science et politique. La conjonction du positivisme et du décisionnisme dans la sociologie du droit de Max Weber
Legitimating Identities
Crisis and Renewal in the Social Sciences and the Colonies of Ourselves
Reading Max Weber
Enchantment, Weak Ontologies, and Administrative Ethics
Restoring the Family to Civil Society
Bad Conscience For a Nietzschean Age
Between Charisma and Domination
In Affirming Them, He Affirms Himself
Social Science and Liberal Values in a Time of War
Can realism save us from populism? Rousseau in the digital age
Objectivity, Political Order, and Responsibility in Max Weber’s Thought
Reading Kafka's Trial Politically
Making sense of critical theory's economic gap
Max Weber's Concept of Legitimation in Hinduism Revisited
Max Weber and the Ethos of Politics beyond Calculation
An 'ancient sense of politics'? Weber, Caesarism and the Republican tradition
Max Weber as a critic of Bismarck
Public Space and the Public Sphere
Shell as Hard as Steel" (Or, "Iron Cage)
Les fondements rationnels et sociaux des passions politiques
Books and canon building in sociology
Doing authority
| Unique citing works | 47 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,09 |
| Citation span | 1983 - 2025 (43) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 47 |