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Max Weber's 'Objectivity' Reconsidered, edited by Laurence H. McFalls. Toronto, CN: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 389pp. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 0802092241.
Overheated postmodernist battles of the 1990s and related "science wars" would have benefitted from engaging Weber's "Objectivity" essay, which offers an alternative to radical relativism and naive realism. Framing policies for a journal that Weber co-edited, this methodological reflection ultimately grappled with substantive social science issues and their relation to public problems. Like Nietzsche, however, Weber believed that the dawning post-traditional epoch compelled critical thinkers to examine their belief in "truth." The "Objectivity" essay still has a fresh tone and ethical force more than a century after it was drafted. Weber argued that serious intellectual work was becoming the job of specialists, operating with agreed upon methods and concepts and taken for granted normative and epistemological foundations. But in the essay's last paragraph, Weber predicted that major cultural change would spur foundational reflection about social science's problems, tools, and practices, and their reconstruction. His belief that such a moment had arrived likely motivated his essay. The same case could be made for reconsidering it today, and bringing the English language version of his methodological essays back into print.
Commemorating the centennial of "Objectivity," Laurence McFalls's collection addresses Weber's methodological ideas in relation to his substantive work, other social theories, and recent research. Contributors were encouraged to reflect upon the impact of Weber's ideas on their own...