Nietzsche, Weber, and the affirmative sociology of culture

Abstract

The issue of Nietzsche's influence on Weber's cultural criticism remains controversial. While it is generally accepted that Nietzsche's criticism of Western culture provided Weber with an underlying problematic of cultural crisis and meaninglessness, I wish to argue that Nietzsche had a more extensive and important impact on Weber than is usually acknowledged. Weber's practical and theoretical treatment of the ‘empirical sciences of action’, namely, sociology and history, involves a profound reaction to Nietzsche. This becomes evident in his general conceptualizations of knowledge and science, but more specifically in his ideal-type methodology, his approach to action through tensions between life in this world and received interpretative structures, as well as in the substance of his ideal-types of rational action.