ABSTRACT
Max Weber, a leading theorist of modernity, may be constructively viewed as a culminating figure in a lineage of nineteenth-century German social analysts. This school of thinkers, including such eminent figures as Ranke, Dilthey and Rickert – the latter being a contemporary of Weber – have come to be referred to as the Heidelberg ‘Cultural Philosophers’ and were all, in their various ways, contributing to the debate concerning the constitution and epistemological status of cultural phenomena. To this end their legacy has made a considerable contribution to our contemporary thinking about the cultural realm, a contribution which has some continuities with the English literary tradition, already discussed, but one which is also completely opposed to the once predominant anthropological sense of social structure, previously considered in Chapter 2. This body of ideas proceeds in line with all idealist philosophy, from a strong sense of the a priori, that which is intrinsic to and universal within the human condition.
