Much More than a Mere Translation — Talcott Parsons’s Translation into English of Max Weber’s Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus: An Essay in Intellectual History

Uta Gerhardt

Abstract: The essay focuses on the young Parsons, discussing his translation of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (first published in 1930). Parsons’s understanding of Weber in his Dr. phil. dissertation is one backdrop to his translation, whereas another is American sociology in the late 1920s. In my view, Parsons’s comprehension of Weber’s methodology as used in The Protestant Ethic is closer to Weber’s original than that of the recent retranslation published in 2002. As an accomplishment fitting his intellectual biography, Parsons’s work in the 1930s rescued Weber’s thought from certain misconception at the hands of the Nazis.

Resumé: Cet essai rend compte de la pensée du jeune Talcott Parsons, de manière d’analyse de sa traduction en l’anglais de Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. En rela- tion de cette traduction par Parsons, il est important de se rappeler que Parsons a préparé son thèse à Heidelberg sur l’idée du capitalisme de Weber, et d’ailleurs qu’on considère par contexte que la sociologie américaine dans les années 1920 était forcement liée au utilitarisme darwiniste de Her- bert Spencer ou suivit la tradition positiviste dans laquelle les travaux de Weber étaient manifeste- ment méconnues. Je vais présenter l’évidence que la compréhension de la méthodologie socio- logique de Weber qu’on peut trouver dans la traduction de Parsons était beaucoup plus satisfaisante que celui des autres traductions qui ont été faites depuis 1930, même celui de 2002. Un effort admirable de Parsons dans les années 1930 était qu’il a sauvé par adaptation en anglais l’œuvre de Weber dont la pensée était menacée d’être détruite ou déformée en Allemagne par les Nazi.

The translation of Max Weber’s classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has never been dealt with as an achievement in its own right (Weber 1920, Weber 1930).1 Instead, various reissues of Parsons’s translation have been

1. Henceforth, the Parsons translation of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capital- ism (originally published 1920), will be cited as The Protestant Ethic, and referenced as “Weber (1930).”

Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 32(1) 2007 41 42 Canadian Journal of Sociology dismissive of his accomplishment (e.g., Giddens 1976). The author of the recent retranslation, Stephen Kalberg, had this to say about his reasons for deeming Parsons’s translation dated:

[W]hereas the 1930 translation of PE was oriented mainly to scholars and students steeped in a liberal arts canon, today’s readership is more general and less acquainted with the great works of the past. This new translation is long overdue. (Kalberg 2002: v) Despite such judgement, the question must be raised whether Parsons’s translation not only commands historical value, but also outshines the more recent retranslation. As for the history of sociology, it should be remembered that Parsons’s translation of The Protestant Ethic helped rectify some flagrant misinterpreta- tions of Weber in the late 1920s. The only two accounts aptly appreciating Weber’s work in the English-language world were Frank H. Knight’s translation of General Econonomic History (Weber, 1927) and Richard Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Tawney, 1926). Parsons, who was familiar with Tawney’s interpretation but was also aware that Tawney had misunderstood Weber’s idea of the “historical individual,” invited Tawney to write the introduction of the 1930 translation. From the standpoint of contemporary sociology, the question arises whether Parsons, as a translator of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic, was better able to understand Weberian methodology than his successor.

The Problem: Parsons’s Translation Then and Now My paper raises three issues. One is that Parsons’s translation had a role to play in his understanding of Weber’s theory of capitalism. His Dr. phil. dissertation delivered at Heidelberg University in 1927, an endeavour that dealt with Max Weber and Werner Sombart (another German who analysed the origin of capitalism through economic history), was written in German and in English. The clue is that the Dr. phil. thesis accepted by the Philosophische Fakultät in 19272 and published, according to Heidelberg rules, in The Journal of Political Economy in two parts in 1928 and 1929, differed from the second — indeed earlier — endeavour to write a thesis based on his reading Weber in the original. A copy of the German-language manuscript, preserved in the Harvard University Archives, allows for comparison between the two texts. I propose that when he went back to Weber’s original as he began translating it into English, Parsons discovered errors in the thesis already submitted, correcting

2. The Heidelberg Philosophische Fakultät granted Parsons permission to resubmit his Ph.D. dissertation in English. A faculty meeting was held to lay down these special conditions. The Rigorosum based on the revised — English-language — version took place in June 1927. Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 43 them subsequently when he received permission to rewrite the dissertation in English. My second point is that Parsons was an ardent critic of biologism. In Anglo- Saxon social thought, I argue, biologism had been established through the works of Herbert Spencer, among others, during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Parsons, in his first major opus published in 1937, took as his point of departure Crane Brinton’s indictment of Spencer’s political philosophy as proof that Spencer had long been “dead” scientifically (Parsons 1937:3).3 His main argument — that the Weberian analysis of capitalism, among other theories, had overcome positivism and biologism, culminating in the 1940s in his essay “Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis,”4 where he cited Weber as he endorsed the democratic type of social system, against dictatorial regimes such as National Socialism in Germany — owed much to his understanding of Weber through his translation of 1930. He contradicted contemporary American interpretations of Weber, combating some blatant misunderstandings. Methodology is the third topic addressed in this paper, if only briefly. In Weber’s work, which Parsons emulated, irrespective of the fact that Parsons did not fully endorse Weber’s ideal-type methodology, concept formation played a vital part. To discuss this point with an eye on Parsons’s translation means also looking at the recent retranslation in comparison. Part IV of this paper deals with this issue, if only in a bare sketch of the relevant problem. These three issues are the central themes of this paper. I wish to show that from an intellectual history point of view, and also in regard to the comprehen- sion of Weber, much can be said about the merits of the Parsons translation.

Parsons’s Interpretation of Weber’s Dualist Conception of Capitalism in His Two Dissertations and Beyond Prior to translating Weber’s masterpiece, Parsons had written twice on Weber’s distinction between capitalism and the spirit of capitalism. One occasion was the German-language dissertation, which he had completed during his sojourn at Heidelberg University in 1925 –1926, and the other was the publication in two parts in the Journal of Political Economy in 1928 and 1929 of the essay, which was allegedly the English-language version of his Dr. phil. dissertation. The dissertation written in German had the title Der Kapitalismus bei Sombart und Max Weber (Parsons 1926). It had an introductory chapter dealing

3. The quote from Crane Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century, ran thus: “‘Who now reads Spencer? It is difficult to realize how great a stir he made in the world. ... We have evolved beyond Spencer.” See, for comment, Gerhardt (2002): 6–20. 4. The article appeared in 1942 in the Review of Politics and has been reprinted in Gerhardt (ed., 1993): 159 –187. 44 Canadian Journal of Sociology with three contemporary German theories of capitalism.5 The next chapter reconstructed Sombart’s views, which Parsons related partly to those of Karl Marx. Then came the chapter on Weber. It started out with the observation that Weber maintained not one, but two meanings of capitalism, “which bear very little relationship with each other” (1926: 66).6 One was “capitalism as such” (“Kapitalismus ueberhaupt”) and the other modern capitalism. Regarding “capitalism as such,” Parsons understood this to denote an ideal type, which he explained to be a concept based on generalization (“Gattungsbe- griff”). It comprised, he clarified, “a wide range of subsidiary forms such as “founder, colonial, finance, war oriented, political capitalism and some other forms” (1926: 66).7 In contradistinction, he continued, Weber had analysed modern capitalism. The main elements of occidental modern capitalism, as Weber had identified them, were science, the legal system, and the rational organization of labour, which in its pure form amounted to bureaucratization. Furthermore, separation between private households and economic production, as well as rational bookkeeping, had also been important. He then reconstructed Weber’s study of the Protestant ethic, especially as an illustration of Weber’s notion of rationalization as it characterized Weber’s idea of the capitalist spirit. Before he started explicating Weber’s essay, however, he warned that rationality in Weber’s view conveyed relativity. From the standpoint of “value neutrality,” he thought, rationality was in the eye of the beholder,

Weber ... strongly and repeatedly stresses the relativity of all rationality. ... At least for ‘value free science,’ there is complete relativity of all rationalisms, the only important thing is the basic perspective from where rationalisation takes place. (1926: 85 –86)8

It was to document such presumed relativity of rationality for Weber that Parsons undertook to reconstruct the argument in Weber’s essay. He described the notion of the “historical individual” that epitomized the spirit of capitalism for Weber in the quotations from Benjamin Franklin. However, in his recon- struction, he misrepresented Weber. He mistook Weber for an advocate of utilitarianism, if only in the long run and with regard to modern capitalism, not to its spirit in the seventeenth century:

5. They were Richard Passow, Georg von Below, and Lujo Brentano respectively. 6. My translation. In German: “die verhaeltnismaessig wenig miteinander zu tun haben.” 7. My translation. In German; “ein Gattungsbegriff, der viele Arten unter sich ordnet, wie Gruender-, Kolonial-, Finanz-, kriegsorientierter, politischer Kapitalismus und mehrere andere Formen.” 8. My translation. In German: “Weber ... betont sehr stark und wiederholt die Relativitaet aller Rationalisierung. ... [W]enigstens fuer die ‘wertfreie Wissenschaft’ gibt es eine vollkommene Relativitaet der Rationalismen, es kommt immer nur auf die Grundanschauung an, von wo aus rationalisiert wird.” The German style of Parsons’s original dissertation is preserved in my quotes from that text. All spelling and construction of sentences are from the original German manuscript. Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 45

Here, says Weber, the ideal of the credit worthy man is preached. ... It is not merely a keen sense of business, but a special ethic, an ethos is uttered here. He calls this ethos spirit of capitalism. It leads into utilitarianism. (1926: 89)9

After a lengthy reconstruction of Weber’s argument, Parsons arrived at the conclusion that the spirit of capitalism, for Weber, was a “historical individual.” But the reality of modern capitalism for Weber, Parsons felt, was sure petrification of the spirit, which he characterized thus:

The end of the process must be general petrification, the death of the spirit, and it was this tragic and apparently unavoidable death that troubled Weber so much. This for him is the ultimate sense of capitalism. (1926: 103)10

On that note, he proceeded to criticize Weber for unnecessary conceptual distinctions. “Capitalism as such” and capitalism as characterized by the spirit that Franklin had depicted, Parsons stressed, were not necessarily irreconcilable. He concluded, referring to Karl Mannheim as a source for remedying Weber’s apparent confusion (“Verwirrung”):

Max Weber’s comparative method seems to set him very narrow limitations. He selects societal atoms and uses them to construct historical epochs and cultures. But the fact is that these atoms have a different meaning in different times and cultures. Here a ‘change of meaning’ takes place, in the sense of Karl Mannheim. That he neglects this, makes it impossible for him to elaborate a capitalist culture as an entity. (1926: 104)11

In all, Parsons found, Weber had made an artificial distinction between “capitalism as such” and “modern capitalism.” He charged Weber with failure:

Max Weber ... tried unsuccessfully to reach an outcome which is impossible to reach with the method that he chose, and the attempt failed. (1926: 105–106)12 Despite such harsh criticism, he also praised Weber for his greatness, writing:

9. My translation. In German: “Hier, sagt Weber, wird das Ideal eines kreditwuerdigen Mannes gepredigt. ... Es ist keine blosse Geschaeftsklugheit, sondern eine eigentuemliche Ethik, ein Ethos das hier geaeussert wird. Dieses Ethos nennt er Geist des Kapitalismus. Es muendet in einem Utilitarismus.” 10. My translation. In German: “Das Ende des Prozesses muss eine allgemeine Versteinerung, der Tod des Geistes sein, und es war gerade dieser tragische, scheinbar unentrinnbare Tod, der Weber so gequaelt hat. Das ist fuer ihn der letzte Sinn des Kapitalismus.” 11. My translation. In German: “Max Webers vergleichende Methode scheint uns ihm sehr enge Schranken zu setzen. Er greift gesellschaftliche Atome heraus und daraus konstruiert er Epochen und Kulturen. Aber die Tatsache ist, dass diese Kulturen einen verschiedenen Sinn haben. Hier findet ein ‘Bedeutungswandel’ im Sinne Karl Mannheims statt. Dass er dies vernachlaessigt, macht es ihm unmoeglich, eine kapitalistische Kultur als eine Einheit herauszuarbeiten.” 12. My translation. In German: “Max Weber ... hat vergebens versucht ein nach seiner gewaehlten Methode unmoegliches Resultat trotzdem zu erlangen, und der Versuch ist gescheitert.” 46 Canadian Journal of Sociology

Nonetheless, the overwhelming stature of his personality makes his works always exceedingly interesting and important. No other has grasped the problems of his times in greater depth. (1926: 106)13

Needless to say, the criticism against Weber would not be repeated in the dissertation submitted in English. One conspicuous difference between the two versions of his Dr. phil. dissertation is the manner in which Parsons treated Weber’s The Protestant Ethic. Part II of the manuscript published in the Journal of Political Economy focused on Weber, whom Parsons introduced through discussing the “historical individual” and “ideal type.” He saw the former as comprising extended historical contexts that Weber aimed to “understand,” and the latter as more specific. He clarified:

[T]he single ideal type is directed toward understanding, not the whole of the “historical individual,” but only one side or aspect of it. A whole would thus be analyzed in terms of several ideal types. (1929: 32)

In a footnote, he clarified something that in the previous (German-language) manuscript had been a main point: namely, that Alexander von Schelting had been right when he called the “ideal type” two separate things in Weber’s view (von Schelting, 1922).14,15 They were, for one thing, “one particular historical individual,” and also, at the same time, the “whole ‘essence’” of a phenomenon (Parsons 1929:33). On that note, he now understood that Weber’s notion of modern capitalism targeted a “historical individual” (1929: 36). The main elements of the latter, he explained, were rationality (as in bureaucratization) and spirit. The latter meant:

[T]he spirit of capitalism takes its departure from the dominant fact of rational bureaucratic organization. In terms of it [Weber] wishes to explain its peculiar type of rationality. Whether it is so or not is for Weber’s sociological treatment strictly irrelevant. What he means by the rationality of capitalism, then, is its nice adaptation of the whole way of life of the modern man to a particular set of values. The next task is concerned with the analysis of the nature and origin of that particular set of values, in order to show how economic life is to be understood in terms of them. These values, which for Weber are in the last analysis of religious origin, having done their work have disappeared and have left only the rationalized way of life, which Weber calls capitalism, behind them. (1929: 39–40)

13. My translation. In German: “Dabei macht die ungeheure Wucht seiner Persoenlichkeit seine Werke immer ausserordentlich anregend und bedeutsam. Kein anderer hat die Probleme einer Zeit mit groesserer Tiefe erfasst.” 14. In 1936, Parsons would write a book review for the American Sociological Review of von Schelting’s book-length (critical) treatment of Weber’s idea of ideal types, published in German in 1933. 15. For the various references that he made to von Schelting, whose interpretation he endorsed fully, see Parsons (1929): 48 –50. Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 47

In other words, Parsons now realized how important spirit had been for modern capitalism in Weber’s understanding. This helped him see Weber’s point more clearly than in the original (German-language) version of his dissertation. His overall judgement at the end of his manuscript highlighted Weber’s (and also Sombart’s) reference to the spirit of capitalism. Thus emerged to Parsons a viable alternative to those (American?) theories that favoured a “viewpoint of unilinear evolution” (1929: 50). He concluded:

[T]he positive results which are common to both authors, the objectivity of the capitalistic system, its connection with ethical values, and the peculiar predominance of economic influences under capitalism, have received a wide acceptance in Germany and merit much more discussion than they have had in this country. (1929: 50–51)

As it happened, Parsons appears to have started on his translation of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic as he was preparing the teaching materials for his students at Amherst College who did not read German. One of his duties at Amherst was teaching a course in sociology, particularly focusing on recent European writers, beginning in the fall of 1926.16 It is not unlikely that it was after he had begun his teaching at Amherst, using his own translated materials from Weber, that he requested that Professor Arnold Bergstraesser at Heidelberg return his dis- sertation manuscript to him by mail — and the story is that the letter never arrived in Cambridge. He may have wished to amend the interpretation of Weber that he had written into his dissertation, which was still awaiting final approval by his supervisor in Heidelberg, Edgar Salin. As he began translating Weber’s Protestant Ethic into English, he may have realized that he had not fully grasped Weber’s thought in his German-language dissertation. In any case, he approached Marianne Weber for permission to translate Weber’s essay, which she apparently granted him in the summer of 1927 on the occasion of his return to Heidelberg for his orals, the Rigorosum.17 Subsequent to his interpretation in the dissertation written in English, in the course of translating Weber’s essay Parsons realized how important Weber’s dualist conception of capitalism was. As had Weber, from now on Parsons would distinguish between the “voluntaristic” and utilitarian attitudes in the capitalist mentality.

16. See a letter by President Olds of Amherst College to Parsons, dated 25 January 1926. The letter has been preserved in the Harvard University Archives, call number HUG(FP) Talcott Parsons — 42.8.2, box 2. 17. Documentary material to this effect has been preserved among the Harvard University Archives. See also the account of Parsons’s communication with Marianne Weber, based on the material collected by the Max-Weber-Arbeitsstelle in the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften by Lawrence Scaff (2004). 48 Canadian Journal of Sociology

Weber had used the term “voluntaristisch” when he summed up the results of his analysis of the relationship between beliefs and innerworldly asceticism in the four Protestant congregations of Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the Baptist sects. The litmus test for virtue through innerworldly asceticism was evidently whether the faithful delivered themselves unconditionally to the vicissitudes of divine grace that knew no merits. Weber wrote:

Daß die Täuferbewegung in allen ihren Denominationen grundsätzlich “Sekten,” nicht “Kirchen” schuf, kam jedenfalls der Intensität ihrer Askese ebenso zustatten, wie dies — in verschieden starkem Maße — auch bei jenen calvinistischen, pietistischen, methodistischen Gemeinschaften der Fall war, die faktisch auf die Bahn der voluntaristischen Gemeinschaftsbildung gedrängt wurden. (Weber 1920: 162)

Parsons translated the passage using the term “voluntary” for the groups of true believers who in their quest for security of salvation entrusted themselves to God’s unfathomable grace, venturing upon the status of “born again” as did the Baptist movement (in Weber’s interpretation). Parsons translated:

That the Baptist movement everywhere and in principle founded sects and not Churches was certainly as favourable to the intensity of their asceticism as was the case, to differing degrees, with those Calvinistic, Methodist, and Pietist communities which were driven by their situations into the formation of voluntary groups. (Weber 1930: 152–153)

The crux in the distinction was between voluntarism and utilitarianism, as related to capitalism. Voluntarism involved freely chosen sacrifice of hedonism through strict internalized self-control, irrespective of whether or not God would eventually honour the effort by granting eternal salvation. Utilitarianism, for that matter, allowed for the “good works” that could ameliorate — in view of sin as well as eternal sin — the wrath of God. But utilitarianism could also mean selfishness, the pursuance of one’s own interests against those of all others — even worse, as Parsons would explain in The Structure of Social Action, force and fraud, which unquestionably belonged to the realm of utilitarianism.18 The point was evidently that rationality was not enough. Capitalism meant not only rational economic action but also, in the early modern age, that the “spirit” of capitalism would prevail to varying degrees. That “spirit” would entail principles such as “time is money,” but also “honesty is the best policy.” The latter principle had been invoked by Weber when he “called attention to that most important principle of the capitalistic ethic which is generally formulated ‘honesty is the best policy’” (Weber 1930: 151). On this note, rationality did not equal capitalism, nor capitalism “spirit.” That the “spirit” of capitalism went beyond abandoning laxness or luxury, embracing

18. For a more detailed analysis of these implications of utilitarianism, see Parsons (1968 [1937]), esp. Chapter III, 87 –125, with a note on utility that is exceedingly relevant, 122 –123. Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 49 the rigours of rational conduct instead, both Weber and Parsons realized. Even the monks in the Middle Ages, as Weber had argued and Parsons rendered into English, had had to accept that a supreme purposeful will brought them under the spell of “a systematic method of rational conduct.” In Parsonian translation, Weber had observed:

In the rules of St. Benedict, ... [Christian asceticism] had developed a systematic method of rational conduct with the purpose of overcoming the status naturae, to free man from the power of irrational impulses and his dependence on the world and on nature. It attempted to subject man to the supremacy of a purposeful will, to bring his actions under constant self-control with a careful consideration for ethical consequences. ... This active self-control, which formed the end of the exercitia of St. Ignatius and of the rational monastic virtues everywhere, was also the most important practical ideal of Puritanism. (1930: 119)

Thus Parsons learned through translating Weber’s essay into English that Weber’s argument was more complex than he had originally thought, or than others were making out in the 1920s and 1930s. From this knowledge resulted much of Parsons’s theory of the 1930s, which he chose to label voluntarism. In 1933, he demonstrated his expertise on Weber in a book review. Hector Menteith Robertson, an economist teaching at the University of Cape Town, published Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, a book with the subtitle A Criticism of Max Weber and His School (Robertson 1933). The book would be all but forgotten today had not young Parsons written a book review criticizing Robertson’s simplistic understanding of Weber’s argument from The Protestant Ethic. Robertson, who in his introductory chapter established The Puritan Doctrine of the “Calling,” analysed the development of capitalism through the ages, from Pre-Reformation Capitalism through the Renaissance State and on to the seventeenth century, with Adam Smith as the culmination. He concluded that Weber had been wrong when he apparently assumed that Calvinism had spurred capitalism in pre-nineteenth-century Europe. Parsons, in his book review, had this to say in defense of Weber:

As [Weber] put it, ascetic Protestantism placed peculiarly powerful “psychological sanctions” on certain types of conduct and the source of these sanctions lies in the way in which Protestant dogma, above all the doctrine of predestination, canalized the individual’s attitudes and conduct in a certain peculiar direction— that of systematic, rational mastery over the external environment, and lent these attitudes a very special ethical intensity. (cit., Camic 1991: 59)

Ironically, at the end of his erudite book, Robertson would describe his own standpoint as if taken straight from the concluding pages of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic:

[T]here is no reason to decry too violently the new bourgeois individualism with its profane, not Puritan, origins. ... Self-interest played a part in promoting the rise of economic individualism, but not the only part — even when it is recognized that much apparently disinterested reasoning may be merely the rationalisation of selfish motives. (Robertson 1933: 212 – 213) 50 Canadian Journal of Sociology

Overcoming Misunderstandings of Weber in American Sociology In many American universities in the late 1920s, sociology did not exist as an academic discipline. The main schools of thought then prevalent were, for one, the so-called “Chicago School,” which specialized in case studies analysing social problems; and, as its counterpart, social theory, mostly based on the works of William Graham Sumner and Spencer. The latter theory included Social Darwinism and was taught at Columbia University, for instance, by such eminent figures as Edward A. Ross and Franklin H. Giddings.19 The situation at the time when The Protestant Ethic appeared in English may be characterized through illustration, using two monographs published at the end of the 1920s. Pitirim A. Sorokin’s Contemporary Sociological Theories, a book of nearly 800 pages, appeared in 1928 (Sorokin 1928). Sorokin distinguished between the following seven schools of thought in then contemporary sociological theory: The Mechanistic School; Geographical School; Bio-Organismic School; Anthropo-Racial, Selectionist, and Hereditarist School; Demographic School; Sociologistic School; Psychological School; and a separate realm which he labelled “Psycho-Sociologistic Theories of Religion, Mores, Law, Public Opinion, Arts, and Other Cultural Phenomena as Factors” — to which Max Weber’s sociology of religion belonged in Sorokin’s view, together with William Graham Sumner’s doctrine featuring the social role of folkways, mores, and customs. Sorokin devoted an entire chapter to the “Sociological Interpretation of the ‘Struggle for Existence’ and the Sociology of War,” a topic that focused on Social Darwinist sociology. In the chapter, Sorokin dwelt extensively on the “Struggle for Existence,” whose meaning he found imprecise, and he moved on to “Social Functions and the Effects of War and Struggle,” which he wished to emphasize (Sorokin 1928: 309 –356).20 As he quoted from the works of various authors who had discussed this particular problem, Sorokin had this to say on the survival of the fittest as that principle related to the phenomenon of war, citing Edward A. Ross’s Principles of Sociology as he did:

19. Hinkle (1994) sees a strong impact of behaviourism but less Social Darwinism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He agrees that both were connected with positivism, however, and that they opposed historical analysis. On p. 65, he states “that social evolutionary theory continued only until the early 1930s.” This suggests that a change of orientation in sociological theory took place around the year 1930. 20. Sorokin’s biologism surfaced, for instance, in how he outlined the contents of the chapters in the table of contents on pp. xii –xiii, “2. Uncertainty of the meaning of ‘struggle for existence’ in biological and sociological literature. 3. Forms of the struggle for existence, and their modification in the course of human history. ... 4. Social functions and the effects of war and struggle: war’s selections; ... 6. General conclusion about biological sociology.” Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 51

In wars of past history ...[,] [i]t is likely that the strong, skilled, dexterous, and clever fighter had ... a greater chance than a weak soldier to go out of battle alive. ... [B]ecause of starvation, lack of necessities, and other sufferings common in such wars, only those who could endure all this could survive, while the weak had to perish. ... These considerations show how complex is the problem, and how difficult to find the real effects of war selection. (1928: 332)21

In his chapter “The Psycho-Sociologistic Theories, etc.,” Sorokin dealt with Weber’s sociology of religion. He ventured that Weber was concerned with “the relationship between economic and religious phenomena.” He phrased Weber’s epistemological aim in his own terms, cautioning the reader that he, Sorokin, would “simplify his [Weber’s] too complicated ‘technique’ of analysis, without, however, disfiguring his principles”:

The fundamental problem of his study is probably to ascertain just what the relationship between economic and religious phenomena is. Is it a one-sided conditioning of religious phenomena by economic ones, as is contended by the economic interpretation of history; or it is a conditioning of economic phenomena by the religious ones; or are both of these phenomena mutually interdependent? (1928: 674)

Weber’s answer, as Sorokin saw it, was one of Wirtschaftsethik in different religions (that is, in Calvinism, but also in Taoism, Hinduism, etc.). Such Wirtschaftsethik, he stated, influenced economic action, and Weber’s special interest had been modern capitalism as it presumably benefited from the fact that, as he quoted from Weber, “a rational frame of mind (Gesinnung), a rationalized manner of living, and a rational economic enthusiasm (Wirtschafts- ethos)” did develop in Protestantism, namely “in Germany, England, Holland, and America” (1928: 680). In his criticism, Sorokin took Weber’s argument not as one of sociological analysis, but as unsatisfactory historical explanation. After having run through a number of studies whose results apparently contradicted Weber’s thesis (as perceived by Sorokin), he concluded that other factors were at least as responsible for Wirtschaftsethik as the religious factor. This meant, he charged, that Weber’s work was useless:

Thus, after M. Weber’s work we are as ignorant about the degree of efficiency in the religious factor as we were before. ... Weber’s theory is highly vulnerable in its fundamental and secondary points. It is far from being unquestionable and perfect as we are told by some of Weber’s followers. (1928: 691, 696)

Another monograph that focused on Weber at the end of the 1920s was Theodore Abel’s Systematic Sociology in Germany (Abel 1929). Abel felt that sociology deserved to be incorporated into the curriculum of American

21. Sorokin cited E. A. Ross, Principles of Sociology (1923), 386 –387, and also W. G. Sumner, War and Other Essays (1911) [no further details of references given for both books]. 52 Canadian Journal of Sociology universities, and he explained the achievements of four German sociologists that would warrant the introduction of sociology into the mainstream of American social science. The four thinkers on whom Abel concentrated were Georg Simmel, Alfred Vierkandt, Leopold von Wiese, and, as culmination, Max Weber. Whereas he criticized Simmel for remaining abstract and frequently inconsistent, Vierkandt as philosophically unintentionally positivist, and von Wiese as behaviourist, he hailed Weber for having established the right kind of connection between systematic concept formation and historical subject matter:

Weber represents that rare type of social scientist who tested his method before he generalized upon it. Furthermore, his systematizations of sociological rules and types of behavior preceded and were derived from a life work of monographical studies of a vast number of social phenomena. It is unfortunate only that he was prevented from completing his system of sociology and from giving the final formulation of his methods. (1929: 156)

Admittedly, Abel made a brave effort to understand and explain Weber’s ideal-type methodology as a method of empirical Verstehen. He thought that “Understanding” entailed “a. The means by which understanding is accom- plished,” and “b. The kinds of understanding,” namely “Causal Explanation,” as well as “Sociological Rules and Types of Behavior.”22 He elaborated, “The ideal construct furnishes a point of reference with regard to which social reality is analyzed and interpreted” (1929: 153); and moreover understood that “in his historical and sociological writings, Weber employs two kinds of ideal constructs: One is applied to individual historical occurrences which are called by Weber ... historische Individuen” (1929: 155). Abel failed to notice, however, that in Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, Weber had gone beyond merely establishing method- ological principles. He failed to see that Weber had practised what he, Abel, thought Weber had only preached — that is, going beyond “giving examples” in his “attempts to systematize the conceptual formulations employed ... by the sociology of economic life” (1929: 156). The two monographs from the late 1920s took notice of Weber’s work, but failed to represent it adequately. The two books were still influential in the 1930s, at the time when Parsons’s translation of Weber would not even be given a book review in the American Journal of Sociology. Sorokin’s and Abel’s work marked the scenario that Parsons’s translation of Weber helped overcome.

22. Interestingly, in his endeavour to explicate Weber on the intellectual level of a college textbook, Abel made Weber a Kantian as well as a relativist. As a Kantian, he thought, Weber had used “means for the purpose of organizing the chaos of the empirically given.” As a relativist, he thought, Weber had proposed conceptual “tools that can be shaped and reshaped according to the exigencies of the situation.” See Abel (1929): 147. Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 53

Sorokin made “biological sociology” a resource for explaining “The Struggle for Existence,” refuting Weber through the sociology of Spencer, among other doctrines.23 Sorokin welcomed biological interpretations of social phenomena, stating:

The greater and more accurate are the findings of biology, the more accurate are going to be the biological interpretations of social phenomena, and the more powerful influence they are likely to exert on sociological thought in the future. It is useless and hopeless to try to shut the gates of sociology to an intrusion of biological interpretations, as is urged by some “formal sociologists” at the present time. (1928: 355)

One “formal sociologist” whose theories Sorokin rejected may have been Simmel, whose epistemological aim had been to understand the dynamics of the forms of sociation. Simmel’s sociology, Sorokin charged, suffered from “logical inconsistencies, and ... a vagueness of theoretical constructions” (1928: 502). As Sorokin opposed “formal sociology,” he also failed to comprehend Weber’s analytical approach, which was in turn based on the thought of Simmel.24 Sorokin ignored the fact that methodology was the key to Weberian sociology. He discussed Weber’s essay on the Protestant ethic as if it were a study meant to explicate a historical law — if only highly unsatisfactorily, as he complained. He dismissed Weber’s methodology as too complicated. He turned to what he perceived to be the substance of Weber’s essay on the Protestant ethic, not even recognizing that the essay had a definite methodological epistemological aim. Weber, as Sorokin chose to overlook, had defined the “spirit” of capitalism through the “historical individual” (historisches Indivi- duum) as epitomized in Franklin’s texts envisaging morally acceptable business behaviour, the “pure form” of the spirit of capitalism — which seminal point Sorokin missed completely. Although Abel was better able than Sorokin to understand some of the methodological requirements for social science, Abel’s plea for sociology as an independent science was no help for Parsons’s translation of Weber. To a cer- tain extent, Abel endorsed Weber’s conceptually argued approach, because he saw Weber as fulfilling the four criteria which he, Abel, had formulated, namely: “1. An adequately delimited subject-matter, 2. Justifiable tasks of investigation, 3. A basis for the systematization of the subject-matter, 4. Ade- quate methods of investigation” (1929: 156). Nonetheless, Abel could not relate these criteria to Weber’s substantive works.

23. Refuting biologism, Weber had given a vigorous speech from the floor on the occasion of the First German Sociology Conference in 1910, where he had denounced Alfred Ploetz’s “racial hygiene,” and praised W. E. B. DuBois as an ordinary American. 24. For more detailed discussion of the relationship between Simmel’s and Weber’s methodology, see Gerhardt (2001), especially Chapters IV –VIII. 54 Canadian Journal of Sociology

As it happened, Abel failed to distinguish between method and methodology. He took Weber as innovative in his use of method but failed to see that Weber had introduced not merely a method, but a methodology. It was Parsons’s accomplishment, in the 1930s, to point out the serendipitous role of methodology for sociology as a social science. As he emphasized in the first chapter of The Structure of Social Action, Parsons aimed at a scientific sociology that established a theory to account for modernity. This was to be done in terms of “‘capitalism,’ ‘free enterprise,’ ‘economic individualism,’” as he clarified in his Preface to that book (1968 [1937]: xxii). In this vein, a frame of reference had to be introduced. This suggested a context in which the central analytical concepts of a particular study were clearly and visibly placed. The analytical frame of reference was indispensable, he felt, in order to establish the intersubjective validity of the theory. Only then could it be reconciled with empirical analysis. From this vantage point, Parsons castigated empiricism because it exempli- fied the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” of which Whitehead had warned in Science and the Modern World.25 Parsons made it clear that a sociology that was scientific required that its frame of reference be laid open. Also citing Lawrence Henderson, another eminent advocate of epistemological clarification of analytical concepts in the 1930s (Barber 1970), Parsons demanded that socio- logy explain its methodology. Since methodology was the foundation for the concepts used in analytical works, explaining the frame of reference as it constituted the methodology of a particular approach was indispensable. He clarified in The Structure of Social Action:

[T]his study ... is an attempt to achieve a rational cognitive understanding of human experience by methods other than those of empirical science. ... [I]t is ... true that every system of scientific theory involves philosophical assumptions. These may lie in a number of different directions. But the ones to which special attention should be called ... are the “methodological.” (1968 [1937]: 21, 22–23)

No doubt, these requirements defining scientifically satisfactory theory for analysing the structure of social action in modern society owed much to Weber’s methodological program. The methodological guidelines that Weber had explained in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, and also in his — then as yet also untranslated — Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, were indispensable for scientific sociology. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber had clarified this methodological program in Chapter II of

25. Opposing empiricism, Parsons insisted that “economic fact” was what was “relevant to the descriptive and analytical schemata of economics.” He continued, “When this is pointed out with reference to a concrete example it seems obvious. But failure to see and take account of it is what lies at the basis of so many deep-rooted errors, especially in social science. It is the fallacy which Professor Whitehead has so beautifully exposed under the name of ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’” (1968 [1937]: 29). Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 55

Part I, entitled “The Spirit of Capitalism.” There, Weber had explained that a methodological principle had to structure the analysis of historical data that governed his account of the spirit of capitalism. Weber had introduced the “historical individual” through the excerpts from Franklin’s treatises. Through such heuristic construction, he had proposed, the phenomenon of spirit of capitalism could be approached, and it could serve to analyse Lutheranism, Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the Baptist sects on a comparative basis, focusing on their understanding of “calling” and other matters. The conceptual form of “historical individual,” then, was important for Weber. Through adopting Whitehead’s philosophy of science, Parsons made Weber’s methodological program the baseline for a scientific theory in socio- logy in the 1930s.

A Note on Some Double-Entendre in the Reference to Methodology Considering the anti-positivist spirit that spurred Parsons’s sociology in the 1930s, and granting that Parsons introduced Weber’s The Protestant Ethic into American (and British) social science, two supplementary questions may be discussed briefly. Did Parsons appreciate Weber’s methodology in his translation? Has the recent retranslation emulated Parsons, despite the fact that it was meant to replace that of Parsons? Weber wrote the first part of Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus — which was the original title — before he travelled to the United States, when he visited the St. Louis World Fair in 1904; he wrote the second part after he had returned from that visit.26 Earlier that same year, he had authored Die “Objektivität” der sozialwissenschaftlichen und sozialpolitischen Erkenntnis. This lengthy essay outlined methodological principles as they were to govern the editorial policy of the New Series of Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, a journal of which Weber had just become one of three newly established editors. The essay had two main parts. One dealt with the “value neutrality” that guaranteed “objectivity” in analytical work discussing social policy, and the other elucidated “ideal types” as they ensured “objectivity” in the realm of the social sciences. It is noteworthy that Weber, in writing Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus, did not use ideal types. Instead, he applied philosopher Heinrich Rickert’s idea that “historical individuals” constituted an adequate anchor for the historical sciences.27 As it happened, Weber used the idea of “historical individual” only once in his socio-historical oeuvre, namely

26. See Winckelmann (1981: 5). 27. For Heinrich Rickert’s idea that “historical individuals” constituted an adequate anchor for the historical sciences, see Rickert (1902). For comment, see Gerhardt (2001: esp. 84 –94). 56 Canadian Journal of Sociology in Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus. In all his other works, he would use ideal types — and would never again in his lifetime encounter so fierce a rejection of his ideas as he did when the various critiques targeted his essay on The Protestant Ethic. Weber’s use of the “historical individual” emulating the “‘spirit’ of capitalism” in his The Protestant Ethic, then, was far from accidental. Instead, for the first (and last) time in his oeuvre, he would try out the idea of Rickert, who had outlined philosophically what a historical approach should accomplish. Weber sought a historical (“genetic”) explanation of the social phenomenon that the modern business mentality was more prevalent among Protestants than Catholics in Baden, and apparently made use of the methodological idea of the “historical individual” that Rickert had suggested. Constructing a “historical individual,” emulating Rickert’s Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, Weber in methodologically adequate fashion hoped to analyse causal relations in historical perspective. Weber used Rickert’s suggestion tentatively, rendering the term “historis- ches Individuum” into inverted commas as well as italics (Weber 1920: 30). He cautioned his reader that definitions of the classificatory kind (couched in the Latin formula, “genus proximum, differentia specifica”) were useless. The “historisches Individuum,” he explained, represented a perspectivist view that could focus on any subject matter. He clarified that from the standpoint of a particular knowledge aim, a specimen historical process or text could take on “near-classical purity.” For the purpose of an explanation that was the aim of a study, a particular process or document could be taken as nearing “classical purity” in the way it pictured the phenomenon in question. Accordingly, he saw the excerpts from Franklin’s treatises, to quote from the German original, “als provisorische Veranschaulichung dessen, was hier mit ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus gemeint ist,” and he added: “Eine solche ist in der Tat zum Zwecke der Verständigung über den Gegenstand der Untersuchung unentbehrlich.” He remarked on his choice of Franklin’s writings as “Dokument jenes ‘Geistes’” that they contained nothing related to religion, but rather epitomized the spirit of capitalism “in nahezu klassischer Reinheit” (Weber 1920: 31). In Parsons’s translation, this passage of Weber was rendered into English that sounded quite different from Kalberg’s translation. To compare the two, the Parsons translation may be quoted first:

[I]f we try to determine the object, the analysis and historical explanation of which we are attempting, it cannot be in the form of a conceptual definition, but at least in the beginning only a provisional description of what is here meant by the spirit of capitalism. Such a description is, however, indispensable in order clearly to understand the object of the investigation. For this purpose we turn to a document of that spirit which contains what we are looking for in almost classical purity, and at the same time has the advantage of being free from all direct relationship to religion, being thus, for our purposes, free of preconceptions. (Weber 1930: 48) Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 57

In contradistinction, the Kalberg translation, which aims to reach today’s readership by allegedly rendering Weber’s text more accessible to young audiences, runs as follows:

[E]ven if we succeed in demarcating the case we are attempting here to analyze and explain historically, our concern now cannot be to offer a conceptual definition. Instead, our focus at the beginning should be only to provide a provisional illustration of the activity implied here by the term spirit of capitalism. Indeed, such an illustration is indispensable in order to attain our aim now of simply understanding the object of our investigation. On behalf of this purpose we turn to a document that contains the spirit of concern to us in near classical purity, and simultaneously offers the advantage of being detached from all direct connection to religious belief — hence, for our theme, of being “free of presuppositions.” (Weber 2002: 14) Kalberg, it appears, finds it somewhat more difficult to translate Weber’s methodological clarification. Parsons apparently finds it easier, at least in terms of the number of words he uses compared with Kalberg.28 How could this be? One possible reason that Kalberg has to use more words than Parsons to translate this passage into English might be the fact that Kalberg translates Weber’s term “historisches Inividuum” differently from Parsons. Parsons, in his translation, uses the expression “historical individual” as the English equivalent for Weber’s German. He reads the text:

If any object can be found to which this term can be applied with understandable meaning, it can only be an historical individual, i.e. a complex of elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their cultural significance. (Weber 1930: 47) In contradistinction, in his translation Kalberg uses “historical case” instead of “historical individual.” He reads the text:

If one can discover at all an object for which the phrase spirit of capitalism is meaningful, then it can only be a specific historical case. Such a singular entity is nothing more than a complex of relationships in historical reality. We join them together, from the vantage point of their cultural significance, into a conceptual unity. (Weber 2002: 13) In other words, where Parsons adheres more closely to the text as written by Weber, Kalberg feels that he has to use the term “historical case,” which is different from the literal translation of the term “historisches Individuum” that Weber had used.

28. I would translate the passage translated by Parsons and Kalberg, Weber (1920: 30 –31), as follows: “To identify the object whose analysis and historical explanation is our concern, no conceptual definition can help, but only a provisional clarification of what we mean when we say ‘spirit’ of capitalism. Such clarification is indispensable for the investigation, and we envisage the object of our study through a document that contains that ‘spirit’ in near-classical purity; in addition, this document epitomizes that ‘spirit’ without referring to religion directly, which makes it — for the purpose of our investigation — ‘free from presuppositions.’” 58 Canadian Journal of Sociology

Behind such differences in translation, apparently, were differences in inter- pretation of Weberian methodology. Both Parsons and Kalberg added “Trans- lator’s Notes” to their translations. Both apparently felt that they should mention briefly that Weber had written on the methodology of sociology elsewhere, and that his remarks in The Protestant Ethic were but a short abstract thereof. Parsons, in his “Translator’s Note,” refers to the other work collected in Weber’s Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, and also to the opening chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, where further sources for the methodology applied in The Protestant Ethic could be found. Parsons does not undertake to explain Weber’s methodology of ideal types further. He apparently does not feel the need to delve into this topic too deeply, since The Protestant Ethic used only the construction of a heuristic “historical individual”; he merely says about Weber and The Protestant Ethic:

At about the time that he wrote this essay he was engaged in a thorough criticism and revaluation of the methods of the Social Sciences, the result of which was a point of view in many ways different from the prevailing one, especially outside of Germany.29

However, Kalberg came to think that The Protestant Ethic was a study using ideal types. In his “Translator’s Note,” he makes an effort to explain to his reader the essence of Weber’s methodology of ideal types. He mentions what supposedly were the “central aspects of his [Weber’s] sociological methodol- ogy,” namely:

(a) historical concepts must refer to “historical individuals” (unique cases); (b) classificatory schemes (genus proxima, differentia specifica) are too abstract to capture uniqueness ...; (c) concepts do not “replicate reality,” for “reality” varies depending on the investigator’s particular research question ...; and (d) ... concepts can be formulated only after an assessment by researchers of the “cultural significance” of potential constituent elements and a selection accordingly. (Weber 2002: 169)

To substantiate this clarification of Weber’s methodology, interestingly, Kalberg does not refer to Weber himself. Instead, he references the translation of Weber’s “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy” by Edward Shils, a translation that truncates and frequently even misconstructs Weber’s original; apart from Shils, Kalberg refers only to secondary literature. One of the two titles mentioned is Fritz Ringer’s Max Weber’s Methodology, a book based on the view that Weber emulated Neo-Kantian philosophy — a view which cannot be upheld in the light of recent work on Weber’s concept formation.30

29. The quote is from a footnote inserted by Parsons; see Weber (1930): 192. 30. For discussion of Ringer’s and other problematic accounts of Weber’s methodology, see Gerhardt (2001): 84 –88. Ringer, for one, wrongly assumes that Weber’s use of ideal types was identical with his construction of the “historical individual” — a misunderstanding which even triggers criticism of Weber. Much More than a Mere Translation: An Essay in Intellectual History 59

To sum up, Kalberg’s retranslation of Weber may not be as final as he might have wished. His new translation into English of Weber’s classic may not keep its promise that it succeeds in offering an uncontroversial text for the average undergraduate, while Parsons’s translation allegedly appealed more to the edu- cated of yesteryear. To be sure, Parsons’s translation may have its shortcomings; however, it appears that Kalberg’s recent retranslation may have its own, albeit different, problems.

Conclusion: The Merits of the Parsons Translation of Weber’s Essay Parsons’s translation of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic was a stepping stone in the emergence of scientific sociology in the twentieth century. Whereas Weber had made serendipitous contributions to a non-positivist sociology in his lifetime until 1920, his achievement might have been lost to posterity during the 1930s had not Parsons’s immensely valuable recognition of Weber’s accom- plishment saved Weber from otherwise near unavoidable dismissal. When Parsons visited Germany in September of 1930, he realized that a drastic social change was underway in that nation that, though troubled, had struggled to establish a modern democracy. As he would recall some forty years later, in the introduction to the republication of some of his essays analysing National Socialism, he encountered in 1930 a Germany dominated by violence and disorder unforeseeable only a few years previously:

At Heidelberg I came into contact with what most would regard as the very best of German culture. ... By the time of my last visit to Germany prior to World War II, in the summer of 1930, much had changed. The Nazi movement was in full swing. ... For all observers of social and political processes in the Western world of the time, the Nazi movement presented not only intellectual, but also profoundly moral, problems. ... The critical question was, Why and how could this happen in what from so many points of view should be evaluated as a “good society.” (1969: 59 –60)

When the National Socialists came into power, Weber’s achievement in formulating a methodologically based, “value-neutral” sociological analysis was all but lost on the intellectual life of the day. Even in the early 1920s, however, Leopold von Wiese — reporting on the Fourth Conference of the German Sociological Association held in 1924 — had found that some German sociologists were relieved when Weber’s influence had gone; Weber in his lifetime, von Wiese complained, had embodied some veritable “value judgment police” in that he, Weber, had demanded from his colleagues an awareness of whether or not their conceptual approaches contained unacknowledged value judgements (1924: 313). As it happened, after 1933, nearly three quarters of the sociology professors of German universities were forced into exile, and most were deprived of their positions by the Nazis (Hartshorne 1937). German sociology eventually came under the influence of racism, foreshadowed as it 60 Canadian Journal of Sociology was in the analysis of contemporary social thought by German sociologist- philosopher Hans Freyer in 1930. Freyer, in his Soziologie als Wirklich- keitswissenschaft (1930), equated Weber’s thought with some positivist “Wirk- lichkeitswissenschaft,” proposing that it could be reconciled even with Nazism. Against this scenario, and also against Social Darwinism in the wake of Spencer’s biologism in the United States, Parsons positioned his interpretation of Weber. Through his translation of Weber’s The Protestant Ethic, he may have hoped to establish an antidote against the “fallacy of misplaced concrete- ness” in American sociology. He also wished to oppose misplaced criticism of Weber. In the “Translator’s Preface” to The Protestant Ethic he says of sociology in Germany what he might also have felt about the United States with respect to Weber’s essay, that a great deal of misplaced criticism has been due to the failure properly to appreciate the scope and limitations of the study. (Parsons 1930: x)

It appears that this “misplaced criticism” may have come to an end today, but the “failure properly to appreciate the scope and limitations of the study” may still be widespread in our time. This situation makes the intellectual history of the reception of Weber’s work a worthwhile topic. Weber’s essay The Protestant Ethic has been reinterpreted many times in the course of the twentieth century, and has undergone two retranslations in the first decade of the new millenium alone. But Parsons’s translation of 1930 apparently still holds its own as a major accomplishment. To be sure, the history of the reception of Weber’s work is a much wider topic than I have been able to address in the present paper. I hope, however, that Parsons’s translation of Weber’s essay has proved interesting as a special problem. My aim was to demonstrate how that study, a milestone of Weberian scholarship in the twentieth century, could justifiably be given a prominent place in the intellectual history of American sociology.

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