ABSTRACT
Peter Berger (1976c: 399) once lamented that the sociological world seemed to be divided into those who are ‘intimately related to computers’ and those who study ‘the theories of dead Germans.’ While he is neither dead nor German, this essay will fall into the latter category by relating Berger’s works to those of Max Weber as they share the focal concern of the German humanistic tradition with the nature of reason and human freedom. The purpose is neither to praise nor to prematurely bury Berger. Rather, I share his concern that, if sociology is to overcome its current situation in which substantive significance is subordinate to statistical significance, it must renew the discussion of the ‘big questions,’ among which none is bigger than the nature of human freedom. In Berger’s work, we find a rare example of a contemporary social theorist whose work addresses these vital questions.
