Politique de la théorie et conceptualisation économique dans la méthodologie de Max Weber
This enquiry draws on Sheldon Wolin’s 1981 classic article to analyze Max Weber’s methodological writings as expressing a politics by means of which he legitimizes his intellectual activity. It examines the Weberian politics of theory in light of its context: the debates in which the German Historical School of Political Economy was engaged at the turn of the 20th century.  This study first outlines Weber’s criticisms of two of the founders of the Historical School, Wilhelm Roscher and Karl Knies, on the basis of his three methodological articles on the subject (1903–1906). I show that Weber legitimizes his practice of a “science of reality” by criticizing the incompatibility of Roscher and Knies’ “emanationist” concept formation with the empiricism they advocated.  It then discusses Weber’s methodological essays in the wake of the Methodenstreit, which opposed economists Gustav von Schmoller of the German Historical School and Carl Menger of the Austri-an Marginalist School. I argue that the neo-Kantian epistemological critique of naturalism that Weber develops in his 1904 authoritative essay on “The ‘objectivity’ of knowledge in social science and social policy” should be understood as addressing both German historism and Austrian marginalism. It thus aims to legitimize a nowadays little-known Weberian understanding of economics  (Sozialökonomik), of which the 1914 Grundriss der Sozialökonomik was the most accomplished  expression.
Max Weber Methodenstreit Wilhelm Roscher Karl Knies Gustav  von  Schmoller Carl  Menger methodology epistemology German Historical School Austrian School of Economics