Abstract

Neither a Weberian methodology of social science, nor the rationale provided by Anglo-American logical positivism, can give an adequate account of the objectivity of the human sciences with the sole exception of history. The Kantian theory of objectivity presupposed by Weber's sociology left it with no object, but rather an indefinite range of phenomena defined from an indefinite number of points of view. Here cultural phenomena can only be perceived under the category of meaning or value which accentuates selected aspects of reality. The root of the dilemma is Weber's conception of the subject matter of the social sciences as a contingent flow of actions and events. Nothing can be objectified from the synthesis of this manifold except limited historical sequences. However, the subject matter of the social sciences presents itself as already synthesized by the activities of conscious social subjects, and this organized reality can be theoretically articulated. Society is not conceivable at all without the idea of a system which lies behind it