Kaufmann’s Methodenlehre seeks to end the Methodenstreit by disarming its philosophical slogans. It is not a defense of naturalism, antinaturalism, phenomenology, historicism, economics, or legal positivism, but a formal critique of the principles by which each claims methodological supremacy. Methods are judged by problem-type, procedure-type, and research aim, not by metaphysical prestige.
Demgemäß ist alle Kritik in diesem Buche Prinzipienkritik.
English translation: Accordingly, all criticism in this book is criticism of principles.
The first part, “Elemente der allgemeinen Wissenschaftstheorie,” supplies the epistemological ground. Knowledge is never produced from pure evidence or “naked facts”; science clarifies inherited cognition. Empirical judgment contains anticipations, conceptual decisions, and verification horizons. Reality is constituted in thought, yet tied to intersubjective control rather than private impression or unknowable thing-in-itself.
Vermehrung, Umgestaltung und Klärung vorgegebenen Wissens.
English translation: Augmentation, transformation, and clarification of pre-given knowledge.
This general theory deflates inherited dualisms. Logic and mathematics explicate formal conditions of ordering; induction is reconstructed from practice; laws are hypothetical regularities among classes of facts; causality is lawful linkage within a reference system. Values likewise state the correctness of choosing or preferring relative to a goal-order. The decisive contrast is not theory versus fact, but explicit versus implicit presupposition.
The second part applies this apparatus to social science. Kaufmann rejects the choice between physics as sole model and Verstehen as privileged intuition. Physical objectivity itself rests on schemas, measurement, and unification; social science differs because its objects include alter egos, projects, signs, institutions, and socially available meanings. Understanding is indispensable, but not sovereign.
Die „spezifische Evidenz“ des Verstehens kann nicht als Wahrheitskriterium gelten.
English translation: The "specific evidence" of understanding cannot serve as a criterion of truth.
His analysis of Sinn and Zeichen is constructive rather than romantic. To understand action is to reconstruct a project, communicative intention, motive, or objective interpretation-schema. Social inquiry often interprets interpretations: it must specify what is interpreted, which auxiliary facts count, which Deutungsschema is used, and how success is checked. Weber and Schütz become resources for controlled meaning-interpretation.
Norms, obligation, and value-freedom receive the same reconstruction. There is no autonomous normative science beside cognition of being. An ought-sentence becomes meaningful only relative to a presupposed goal-system; once that is fixed, means-end correctness is a factual and conceptual problem. Wertfreiheit means refusing to smuggle absolute values into science.
Alles Grundsätzliche, was wir über „Werte“ gesagt haben, findet nun seine Anwendung auf „Normen“; denn eine Norm ist nichts anderes als die Aussage, daß ein (zukünftiges) Verhalten bestimmter Art wertvoll (richtig) sei.
English translation: Everything of principle that we have said about "values" now finds its application to "norms"; for a norm is nothing other than the assertion that a (future) behavior of a specific kind is valuable (right).
Zurechnung, responsibility, and freedom are similarly demystified. Attribution is a selected causal relation, often requiring counterfactual comparison with what would normally have occurred. Historical inquiry is value-related in Rickert’s sense because it selects significant individual facts under relevance-aspects; objectivity is not lost if those aspects are reconstructed rather than hidden.
Der Kern des Zurechnungsbegriffes ist derjenige der kausalen Verknüpfung; wir wollen zunächst die sich hieraus ergebenden Folgerungen prüfen, ehe wir den axiologischen Besetzungen des Begriffes unsere Aufmerksamkeit widmen.
English translation: The core of the concept of imputation is that of causal connection; we shall first examine the consequences that follow from this before turning our attention to the axiological connotations of the concept.
Kaufmann’s social ontology avoids both atomistic individualism and supra-individual realism. Society, state, corporation, and legal person are not collective substances; they are domains in which conduct and relations are interpreted through relatively unified schemas. Since social science lacks the deductive unity of physics, it works through partial dominants—plans, organizations, leading motives—and Weberian ideal types that enable causal control of interpretation.
Wenn wir uns jetzt die Überlegungen ins Gedächtnis rufen, die wir über empirische Gesetze und ihren Anwendungsbereich aufgestellt haben, so können wir sagen, daß die Gesellschaft ein Anwendungsbereich bestimmter Deutungsschemata für soziale Beziehungen ist.
English translation: If we now recall the considerations we have set forth concerning empirical laws and their domain of application, we can say that society is a domain of application for certain interpretive schemes concerning social relations.
The applications to economics and law show the program’s reach. Marginal utility theory explicates purpose-rational valuation within a stock and ranked goal-system; it becomes empirical only when used to explain conduct as if actors calculated that way. Kelsen is praised for purifying legal dogmatics from natural-law metaphysics and sociology, but Kaufmann rejects the Sein/Sollen dualism and the Grundnorm as ultimate necessities.
The book’s relevance lies in disciplined pluralism. Kaufmann does not abolish methodological differences; he lowers them from metaphysical identities to controlled research choices. Formal, causal, teleological, historical, axiological, mathematical, economic, and juridical procedures may all be legitimate if their assumptions, limits, and aims are stated. What must be overcome is not plurality but its inflation into pseudo-conflict.
Übersteigerung methodologischer Gegensätze durch pseudowissenschaftliche Argumentationen.
English translation: Exaggeration of methodological oppositions by means of pseudo-scientific argumentation.
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