Verstehen

Verstehen is an interpretive method that explains social action by understanding the meanings people attach to it. It combines attention to subjective motives with analysis of social context.

Social action: Action that takes account of other people and is oriented by meaning. Verstehen explains action by reconstructing the meanings that orient it toward others.
Wilhelm Dilthey: A German philosopher who distinguished understanding in the human sciences from explanation in the natural sciences. Dilthey made understanding lived experience central to the human sciences.
Positivist sociology: A sociological approach that seeks observable regularities and lawlike explanations of social phenomena. It prioritizes external patterns where Verstehen also reconstructs actors’ perspectives.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Max Weber’s study of links between ascetic Protestant ideas and the development of modern capitalism. The book interprets religious meanings as influences on economic conduct.
Interpretive sociology: A sociological approach that explains social life by interpreting the meanings and understandings involved in action. Verstehen is a foundational method within this broader sociological approach.
Ideal type: An analytical model that emphasizes selected features of a social phenomenon for comparison. Ideal types make actors’ motives and patterns of action easier to interpret systematically.
Max Weber: A German sociologist who developed an influential account of interpretive sociology and social action. Weber gave Verstehen a systematic role in sociology and causal analysis.
Behaviorism: An approach to psychology that explains behavior through observable relations between stimuli and responses. Behaviorism brackets subjective meaning, the very evidence Verstehen seeks to interpret.
Weber’s sociology of religion: Max Weber’s comparative study of religious ideas, institutions, and their consequences for social life. Its comparisons use actors’ religious orientations to explain divergent historical developments.
Symbolic interactionism: A sociological perspective that studies how people create and modify meanings through interaction. Its focus on shared meaning echoes Verstehen’s attention to actors’ interpretations.

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