What Did Max Weber Mean By Embracing “Verstehen” in the Analysis of Social Behaviours and Actions?

Max Weber was a German classical sociologist who lived in the 20th Century. Max is one of the founding fathers of Sociology. He founded interpretive sociology as an alternative worldview to Positive Sociology. The interpretive sociology also developed to bridge the ideological difference between the consensus theory led by Emile Durkheim, August Comte etc and the Conflict theory led by Karl Marx and Fridrich Engel, etc.

Unlike its predecessor, Positive Sociology, where the social world is seen as a fact that is observable through scientific methods, Interpretive Sociology sees the social world as constantly being constructed and reconstructed through meanings that develop from the day-to-day actions and interactions of humans in society. Therefore, according to Interpretive Sociology, social phenomenon is to be understood based on three principles which include meaning, context and subjective reality.

It is believed that we experience Society subjectively because we give it meaning by the way we behave. In other words, we create and recreate our sense of the world on a daily basis. For instance, every time that we go to school, this behaviour helps to recreate the structure of education.

On the contrary, when we think of society as real or as something forcing us to act in certain ways, we are simply creating a convenient (fictional) explanation for our behaviours. Basically, society does not make anyone do anything. People do.

The sociological paradigm also presents knowledge as a social construction and is therefore relative based on context. For instance, one’s account of behaviour is just as reliable and as valid as anyone else’s account. Even though facts about behaviour can be established, they are always context-bound. That is why a particular construction or belief may not apply to all people at all times; they may not even apply to different people in the same situation.

Essentially, since the social world is interpreted differently by different people in different contexts, everything in the social world therefore is relative. Nothing can ever be held as wholly true or outright false. The best we can do is to describe reality from the perspective of those who define it or those whose behaviour we seek to understand. Therefore, according to Max Weber’s interpretive Sociology, Sociological understanding or analysis should be about understanding and appreciating how people as a group or culture define and interpret their social realities.

Max Weber used the German concept, Verstehen, which literally interprets in English as ‘’empathetic understanding’’ to describe how Interpretive Sociologists must seek to unearth the hidden meanings of human action or behaviours. In doing Verstehen two things are quite germane to uncover the hidden meaning of people’s behaviours. These include the non-verbal expressions and the motivations of people when they act or interact. Therefore, Max identified two types of Verstehen which are discussed as follows:

Observational Verstehen: Observational Verstehen entails analyzing body language or non-verbal communications such as facial expressions to uncover the motive of people’s behaviours.

Explanatory Verstehen: This is when behaviours or actions are analyzed in terms of the motivations of the people. This according to Max Weber is a more thorough and empathetic Verstehen.

Support and Criticism

Empathy which in the context of Interpretive Sociology is “Verstehen” has generally been accepted as an ideal type of knowledge and a more humane way of reaching an understanding even beyond the realm of Sociology. Some define empathy as the height of emotional intelligence.

However, the flip side of adopting verstehen or empathy in interpreting and understanding behaviours is that such endeavour is indeterminate. For example, people could lie about their true feelings or motivations, and many actions could follow from a given motive.