ABSTRACT
This section offers an analysis of the logic of intentional explanations by way of a partial rational reconstruction of Max Weber’s views on the methodological foundations of economic theory. My aims are, first, to demonstrate that Lachmann, in at least one important respect, misconstrued Weber’s methodological legacy; and second, to shed new methodological light on the notion of ideal types. The discussion will largely be based on Weber’s writings in the philosophy of science, including a neglected early article that was first published in 1908 in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik.
