Max Weber and the problems of value-free social science

the long version

This book examines the Werturteilsstreit ("value-judgment dispute"), from its initial stages in the debates between the eminent German social historian Max Weber and his contemporaries, to more recent contributions from scholars such as Karl Popper, Talcott Parsons, and Jurgen Habermas. Weber insisted that empirical social research must remain value-free, so as to preserve its scientific character and avoid giving false impressions about its ability to validate moral and political claims. Opposing Weber was a large contingent of scholars who argued for the development of normative social sciences such as "ethical economics," in the hopes of providing a scientific basis for institutions and policies in the public domain. Jay A. Ciaffa argues that the Werturteilsstreit should be understood as two logically distinct disputes: a methodological dispute about the influence of shifting sociocultural values on the social sciences, and a practical dispute about whether the social sciences can validate judgments concerning the desirability of social institutions and policies.