Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994 Dissertation University of Amsterdam. Chapter 1. Max Weber's universalist
sociology of bureaucracy: the contradiction between public rationalism and private masculinism
17
(Verhalten)'
40
. By this 'methodological individualism' Weber wanted to exclude collectivities -
'the state', 'the German people', 'the working class' - from being viewed as historical actors;
we will see later that this starting point caused serious problems when it came to connecting
types of 'social relations' to the individually motivated actions they are supposed to be based
on.
41
As Weber views historical reality as irrational, but nevertheless wants to understand it in a
rational way, he can only do this by making rational constructions; he himself has to select,
to choose and to order. This is only possible on the basis of choice; this choice, in its turn, is
defined by his private values. He considers himself free to choose his object of study, be it in
the realm of facts or in that of values; in this choice his own value orientations can be
expressed. But once he has chosen his object, he has to repress his private values; since
concepts cannot be derived from social reality, he has to construct them according to the
rules of logic and experience.
The most important choice Weber made in order to solve the problems inherent to the neo-
Kantian dichotomy between the natural and the cultural sciences, is actually his decision to
strive for 'objectivity' itself. In order to be able to construct an 'objective' method he had to
anchor it to a specific, historical meaning of 'rationality': to the beliefs of modern science in
the validity of rules of logic and method
42
and to 'the objective validity of empirical
knowledge', which according to him are 'subjective' in so far as they are a product of
particular cultures.
43
Weber therefore incurred the risk of reifying modern 'rationality' as an a-historical category
which cannot be analyzed as the 'value' it is; but curiously enough he did not analyze
'scientific rationality' in the same way he analyzed the 'reasons of state', the 'bureaucratic
rationality', which according to him constituted a fusion of the power instincts of the
bureaucrats and the formal rationality by means of which they legitimate their decisions.
Nowhere does he analyze the power interests in 'our capacity and need for analytically
ordering empirical reality in a manner which lays claim to validity as empirical truth';
44
he
does not criticize the conventional separation of 'thought' from 'will'.
45
Weber's only attempt to counter the risk he runs in his attempt to objectify a subjective
phenomenon is his investigation of 'rationality' itself. This investigation is at the center of his
work; but although he does conceptualize 'rationalization' as a historical process, or a series
of rationalization processes, the only instrument with which he is able to do this remains the
'rational' scientific procedure. It is no surprise that this analysis of 'rationalization processes'
remained so fragmentary.
46
40
in a broad sense, which includes also covert or passive behavior, ibid.
41
Van Vucht Tijssen (1985) p. 10 ff. avoids the issue by stating that the meaning of Weber's subjectivist
individualism is only that of a 'dam against the reifications of idealism and spiritualism'; the question remains,
however, if 'the individual' is a sufficient realistic category to build such a dam with.
42
FMW p. 143, GAzW p. 598/9.
43
MSS p. 110, GAzW p. 213; see also MSS p. 55, GAzW p. 152 and MSS p. 58, GAzW p. 155.
44
MSS p. 58, GAzW p. 155. He seems to see the need to 'order the cosmos into a meaningful whole' as a
'natural rationalistic need of intellectualism' (ES p. 505/6, WG p. 307/8) an innate one - one of the motors of
rationalization processes; see Van Vucht Tijssen (1985) p. 93 and below, Ch. 9,2.
45
Cf. MSS p. 53, GAzW p. 150.
46
See Van Vucht Tijssen (1985) p. 157.
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