Abstract:

Weber was sensitive to the era of radical changes in which he lived and believed that there was rationalization in major cultures. Meanwhile, rationalization is not a cure for the world. Specifically, regarding Weber’s concern for reality, he has always paid attention to the status of Germany, the “self” in the cultural sense in the intellectualized world. This paper starts from the image used in Weber’s theory, that is, the influence of Germany’s own social science tradition at the end of the 19^th century on Weber, and analyzes the entanglement of nationalism and liberalism in Weber from a methodological perspective. Weber’s theory is not based on the concepts corresponding to classical nationalism and liberalism. His theory is an original entity, while it is also influenced by the cultural thought and scientific tradition at that time. Rather than judging Weber’s position from contemporary popular concepts, it is more fruitful to take conceptual entanglement as a clue for understanding his theoretical framework and its significance from a more comprehensive perspective.

Key words: Weber’s nationalism, Weber’s liberalism, methodology, established practice