For Weber, cultural science is concerned with how we have become what we are, that is to say, with articulating a history of the present. It will be recalled, however, that to engage in this activity requires an 'evaluative' interest which constitutes the perspective from which the cultural significance of phenomena are determined and ranked. To address Weber's substantive writings requires that we identify the 'central question' which animates his investigations. l This interest has already - at least implicitly - emerged through our discussion of Weber's methodological writings, being nothing other than his concern with, firstly, modern culture as one in which the highest values have withdrawn from the public sphere and the will to truth has become conscious of itself as a problem, and secondly, the capacity of this culture to facilitate the emergence of autonomous individuals. Expressed conventionally, Weber's central question is, thus, with the character of Western rationalism and the potential consequences of this form of rationalism for the development of Menschentum. In other words, the purpose of Weber's accounts is the same as Nietzsche's, namely, to provide a 'context of meaning' within which the development of Menschentum may be understood and evaluated in terms of the fate of man in modernity.2