![]() Even if the method and the strategy of creating ideal-typical concepts are common, these are two opposing scientific programs eventually. However, the conceptualizing routine of neoclassical economics differs from the genuine approach of Max Weber in that Neoclassicals focused exactly on finding and deducing economic laws (in accordance with the efforts of natural sciences), while the ideal-types of the Weberian sociology only supported the interpretative understanding of past events with no references to causal laws. ![]() abstracting from everything subjective, constrained themselves to phrase only objective truths. After all, human (and social) sciences, similarly to natural sciences, i.e. So, his behaviour only reflects the objective and consistently prevailing economic laws established by formal rationality. For homo economicus, there is no time or social and natural environment, he is ageless, he has no whims, and his decisions are not biased by occasional effects from the (social) environment. Homo economicus as presupposed by Neoclassicals is an idealized, abstract creature that can be characterized by an intention to exchange and whose only task is to take economic decisions. The same law emerges in the law of diminishing marginal returns. One of the fundamental axioms of neoclassical economics, the law of diminishing marginal utility, followed from the highlighting of Weber-Fechner's law in psychophysics, which highlights that the growth of subjectively perceived intensity of recurrent stimuli with the same physical intensity is always decreasing. For example, homo economicus is the result of a consistent abstraction-idealization process. ![]() It is commonly argued that idealization plays a key role in the methodology of other social sciences, especially of economics. Such a practice, which Weber calls "syncretism", is not only impossible but also unethical, for it avoids "the practical duty to stand up for our own ideals" ]. This does not mean, however, that objectivity, limited as it is, can be gained by "weighing the various evaluations against one another and making a 'statesman-like' compromise among them", which is often proposed as a solution by those sharing Weber's kind of methodological perspectivism. Its validity can be ascertained only in terms of adequacy, which is too conveniently ignored by the proponents of positivism. Weber, who is keenly aware of the fictional nature of the "ideal type", therefore states that it never seeks to claim its validity in terms of a reproduction of or correspondence with social reality. ![]() Weber described four categories of "Ideal Types" of behavior: zweckrational (goal-rationality), wertrational (value-rationality), affektual (emotional-rationality) and traditional (custom, unconscious habit). But interpretation poses a problem for the investigator who has to attempt to classify behavior as belonging to some prior "ideal type". To try to understand a particular phenomenon, one must not only describe the actions of its participants but "interpret" them as well. It can be used to analyze both a general, suprahistorical phenomenon such as capitalism or historically unique occurrences such as in Weber's Protestant Ethics analysis. Weber himself wrote: "An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those onesidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct." It is a useful tool for comparative sociology in analyzing social or economic phenomena, having advantages over a very general, abstract idea and a specific historical example. It is also important to pay attention that in using the word "ideal" Max Weber refers to the world of ideas ( German: Gedankenbilder, "mental images") and not to perfection these "ideal types" are idea-constructs that help put the seeming chaos of social reality in order. It is not meant to refer to perfect things, moral ideals nor to statistical averages but rather to stress certain elements common to most cases of the given phenomenon. The "ideal type" is therefore a subjective element in social theory and research, and one of the subjective elements distinguishing sociology from natural science.Īn ideal type is formed from characteristics and elements of the given phenomena, but it is not meant to correspond to all of the characteristics of any one particular case. For Weber, the conduct of social science depends upon the construction of abstract, hypothetical concepts. Ideal type ( German: Idealtypus), also known as pure type, is a typological term most closely associated with the sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920).
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