Max Weber and the Problems of Value-free Social Science

This book examines the Werturteilsstreit (value-judgment dispute), an ongoing controversy stimulated by Weber's demand for value-freedom in the social sciences. Ciaffa argues that the Werturteilsstreit should be understood as two logically distinct disputes -- a methodological dispute about the influence of shifting sociocultural values on the social sciences and a practical dispute about whether the social sciences can validate judgments concerning the desirability of social institutions and policies.