Understanding and Social Structure

Abstract

For Weber a science of social reality was concerned with the analysis of actual events and real structures. The living individual had to be seen as the source of social action, as an agent. By explaining actions by reference to the motives of individuals and not to abstract or ideal entities Weber held to a particular notion of reality. The human being was real and it was in human beings that the scientist should search for explanations. ‘Hinter der Handlung steht der Mensch’: ‘behind the action there stands the human being’ (WL: 492), was Weber’s most succinct expression of this dominating idea.