ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the problem of understanding meaning in Max Weber's and Jürgen Habermas' methodological enterprises. In Weber's methodological framework, interpretation is constituted by the synthesis of direct understanding and explanatory understanding. However, Habermas shows that rational interpretation constitutes a methodological instance in which Weber abandons the 'third person' position and assumes a 'performative attitude'. In the context of his debate with Gadamer, Habermas also offers a rationalist justification for the validity of the hermeneutic claim to universality. Interpretative sociology can claim objectivity only if hermeneutic procedures can be based on general structures of rationality. Weber describes a methodological procedure related to the interpretation of texts, which he calls 'value analysis' or 'philological interpretation'. Weber's 'philological interpretation' is similar to Habermas' conception of Verstehen in earlier works such as The Logic of the Social Sciences, where Habermas conceives it as 'hermeneutic understanding of meaning that appropriates the significance objectivated in works or events'.
