ABSTRACT
Parsons’s contribution to sociological theory arises primarily from two sources. First, a ‘critical estimate of Weber’s total significance to the social sciences’ necessary for his own ideas on sociological analysis. Second, his own development of some of the limits of Weber’s methodological ‘self-interpretation’ to their full logical possibilities—which are neglected in von Schelting’s commentary. On a substantive level, both Mannheim’s and Parsons’s versions of a systematic sociology form a series of concentric circles of biology, psychology and culture around the social context or the social system. The aim of Parsons’s theory of voluntaristic action, which is presented in the ‘ultimate value’ essay, is to distinguish between the subjective and the objective points of view. Therefore, Parsons’s distinction based on a deliberate use of the ambiguity in the term ‘direction of the scientist’s interest’ is entirely fallacious. In reality, Parsons’s exegesis of Weber is based on a very simple traditional relationship of the theoretical and the descriptive.
