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In Visions of the Sociological Tradition Donald N. Levine presents a view of the German sociological tradition that emphasizes its origins in philosophical idealism. This paper discusses the implications of this view for understanding the formation of sociology in Germany. The author suggests that Levine's account can be supplemented and strengthened by reconstructing the German tradition both as an effort to proceed without foundational philosophical systems and as an outgrowth of social economics and the historical school of political economy. Most importantly, Levine shares the call for sociology as the site of dialogue with that reconstructed German tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates Levine's analysis of the German tradition in his book Visions of the Sociological Tradition in the light of Max Weber's concept of verstehen. According to Levine, the understanding of subjective meaning is the most important theme of thinkers whose ideas resulted in the founding of sociology in Germany. Visions is more than a history of sociological theory, its broadest purpose being to stimulate a dialogue among competing "narratives" that will reduce the fragmentation in contemporary sociology and also address the moral dilemmas in contemporary society. This dialogical purpose provides a criterion for selecting ideas that best represent the various sociological traditions. Considering Weber in the context of Levine's book will not only clarify the German tradition but will also lead to both support and criticism of his dialogical thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his study of history, Weber availed himself naturally of the typological concepts of the social sciences and humanities. Possibly he deferred too much to the nco-Kantian philosophy of Rickert when he described historiography and sociology as disciplines distinguished by their primary intellectual concern, respectively, with the singular and individual and with the regularly recurrent. One need but read Jacob Burckhardt or Arnold Toynbee's Study of History to see that Rickert's dichotomy reflects a limited phase of historiography in Germany. It was the time of Meinecke, the dean of modern German historiography. Like Dilthey, whose life-long concern was Schleiermacher, Meinecke placed the eminent individual into the center of Iris social and intellectual world: out of the rich matrix of a thousand and one influences emerged the central figure. A peculiar congruence between the individual and his world was maintained through the tact with which the writer could keep the proper balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sum, it is appropriate for contemporary sociologists and other social scientists to pause and reflect not only on their debt to Max Weber but on the uses and misuses to which they have put his thought. Weber may well have brought the last universal mind to social science. Because he contributed so much, we—every one of us—"celebrate him every working day in every scholarly way." He gives us both stability and novelty in concept and purpose. He is always contemporary because he is always relevant. This symposium points up some of the many ways in which Weber today is relevant. The dialogue, more by chance than by design, indicates that perhaps the historical and the existential pragmatic sociologies are not as far apart as they might, on the face of it, seem to be. After all, as George H. Mead has most recently shown again, the present is very much the emergent of a past. Presents and their pasts were the intellectual problems with which Weber was ultimately concerned. It may be that here we will finally find the meeting of East and Midwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]