Abstract

Rational science has played a major role in the disenchantment process that constitutes the overriding religio-cultural problematic of modernity. But science is at the same time itself a product of disenchantment. Thus science cannot provide a criterion for ethical action independent of the times, places, persons, and circumstances involved with its employ. Science neither obviates the judgment input nor supplies meaning from which ethical norms may be derived. The question of responsible decision-making in the modern world-deciding upon matters of value and living through those decisions-was of signal importance to Max Weber. His much-derided "wertfrei" (value neutral) posture was intended not only as a prescription for adhering to the canons of scientific objectivity in the human sciences, but also as a proscription against the misuse of science as a solution to questions of ultimate concern. This latter point must especially be insisted upon over against all deterministic models of human history. At the same time, methodological agnosticism cannot excuse abstention from involvement with the condition of the world around us. A healthy disenchanted pluralism, rather than a pseudoscientific synthesis, forces people to make choices. Science can provide the information upon which such decisions may be formed but not justify them. Ultimately the individual is forced to make decisions in a radically existential way, conscious that in both process and execution such choices are themselves subject to scientific scrutiny. Science thus provides a liberating background and critical foreground that demand ethical responsibility-which cannot be displaced onto any source or force outside of the free decision-making personality. This posture is the key to understanding both the method and content of Weber's historical sociology and his own complex life.