Abstract:
The foundation for Max Weber's verstehende Soziologie provided by himself was sufficient for him to deal with his concrete sociological problems. It appeared, however, to be insufficient for Alfred Schutz as well as for Talcott Parsons, in spite of their appreciating Weber's ideas of this sociology as such. Schutz criticized that Weber made little clarification of the fundamental layers of his primary concepts, whereas Parsons criticized Weber's tendency “to obscure the role of the essentially nonfictional generalized system of theory.” What does this difference among them means? This essay tries to make an answer to this question through comparing Weber and Parsons, Weber and Schutz, and Schutz and Parsons by focusing mainly on the concepts of “Verstehen” (understanding), “action” and “subjective meaning.” Such a comparative investigation is expected to shed light on contributions of phenomenology to sociology.
Keywords:
Action; Verstehen; Understanding; Subjective meaning; Project