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(this abstract goes a bit beyond what is actually demonstated in this very text, which is more of a condensed version of parts of my Weber-research).The interpretation of Weber is a good test case for varying doctrines in intellectual history. He has been utilized for varied purposes, often referred to as a pioneer by antagonistic paradigms. In the retrospective view we turn to the classics in order to find something that might throw light upon our present day predicament, guidance in theory building or hypotheses formation. In the contextualist approach by the Cambridge school we rather try to take into account the role of intellectual endeavours in historical terms. In order to refer to a classic it is good to know what he actually meant, which is virtually impossible without an immense knowledge of his whole situation in a context; his ideas depending on the intellectula currents and linguistic conventions of his own days. The retrospectivist approach might promote erroneous interpretations, insofar the spirit of the inspiring authority is taken too far, extrapolated beyond what he would have recognized himself as his genuine offspring. There is a problem of evidence in telling Weber what he really ought to have meant. On the other hand, the strict contextualism of Q. Skinner, albeit most instrumental in helping us to avoid some fallacies in our interpretative efforts, has an anti-innovative bias: it makes it hard to see what might indeed be genuinely innovative in Weber. It might after all happen that a thinker creates a new doctrine the full consequences of which he is not fully aware of himself.The paradigmatic flaws in some prominent Weber-conceptions are discussed, as well as some contributions to the modern Weberian Gesamtdeutungs-debate, in the light of the tension between the utility and the interpretation of the classics. I adhere to a "retrospective contextualism", from the retrospectively defined aspect of secularization of social thought interpreting Weber in his own context.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-322-97304-7_3

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