Regis A. Factor – författare

In 1904 a new journal, Archiv Fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, was introduced in Germany. The journal, which included the writings of some of the foremost scholars of the day, as well as those who gained recognition and influence in later years, appeared regularly until its suspension in 1933. Writing during a period of extreme political difficulty, widespread intellectual uncertainty, and continuing crisis, these scholars, some of whom are still widely studied today, challenged social philosophy and social science to respond adequately to the increasing complexity of industrial society. This book offers the first history of the Archiv and its contributors, as well as extensive indexes to its articles and an assessment of their social and political significance.

Max Weber: The Lawyer as Social thinker aims to relate the categories of Weber's social thinking to the intellectual context of legal thinking and theory in which he was educated. Its interpretive aim is to show how knowledge of these relations illuminates our understanding of Weber's own intentions. By comparing Weber's social theory of the teleological kind favoured by his contemporaries, which sought to identify social purposes and their effects and realization in history, but rather to radically undermine the project of teleological social theory by replacing categories of description that are amenable to or dependent upon teleological interpretations with categories that are specifically constructed to strip away teleology. The book identifies some of the key sources of Weber's thought in the legal tradition, notably the jurisprudential theorist Rudolph von Ihering, who was a classic teleological thinker, influenced by Bentham as well as by neo-Kantianism. Weber's famous definition of social action should be adequate on the level of meaning and adequate on the level cause is shown to be a variant of Ihering's purposive definition of social action. The same is done for the concept of interest, which Ihering connects to common social purposes: Weber disconnects it. The book is the only account of the sources of Weber's sociology of law. The book leads to a new interpretation of Weber. It should be of interest to scholars in social theory, jurisprudence and the history of ideas.

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.This book was first published in 1984.

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised and adapted in new contexts.The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues.This book was first published in 1984.