This brilliant study succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today.
Translator's Note. Preface.
Part I. The Dualism of the Natural and Cultural Sciences:.
1. A Historical Reconstruction.
2. Sociology and History: The Contemporary Discussion.
Part II. On the Methodology of General Theories of Social Action:.
3. Normative-Analytic and Empirical-Analytic Approaches to Social Science.
4. Intentional Action and Stimulus-Response Behaviour.
5. Three Forms of Functionalism.
Part III. On the Problem of Understanding Meaning in the Empirical-Analytic Sciences of Action:.
6. The Phenomenological Approach.
7. The Linguistic Approach.
8. The Hermeneutic Approach.
Part IV. Sociology as Theory of the Present:.
9. The Limits of Linguistically Oriented Interpretive Sociology.
10. Open Questions.
Notes.
Index.