Leo Strauss's Confrontation with Max Weber

A Search for a Genuine Social Science

Bibliographic Data

ID6401143
AuthorsNasser Behnegar (corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume59
Issue1
Pages97-126
Publication date1997-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670500027170
OpenAlexW2038635846
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited28

An analysis of Leo Strauss's difficult and relatively neglected criticism of Max Weber inNatural Right and Historyreveals the fundamental difficulties that political science, and social science more generally, must overcome in order to be a genuine science. In Strauss's view, the inadequacy of the fact-value distinction, which is now widely acknowledged, compels a re-examination of Weber's denial of the possibility of valid knowledge of values. Strauss identifies the serious ground of this denial as Weber's insight that modern philosophy or science cannot refute religion. Believing that philosophy or science cannot ultimately give an account of itself that meets the challenge of religion, Weber maintained a “tragic” view of the human situation. Strauss also expresses profound doubt about the possibility of philosophy or science, but ultimately he suggests that a certain kind of study of the history of political philosophy might resolve the conflict between philosophy and divine revelation, and, therewith, the “value problem

Criticism · Denial · Epistemology · Natural (archaeology · Order (exchange · Philosophy of science · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory