Subjectivism and Economic Analysis: Essays in memory of Ludwig ...

SUBJECTIVISM AND IDEAL TYPESanswer unsatisfactory. He not only repudiates the use of empiricalgeneralisations in the social sciences as tenuous at best andirrelevant at worst, 9 but also rejects the very notion of ideal types.His argument is worth quoting in full:there is one (to us overwhelming) reason why we are unable toaccept the ideal type as our fundamental concept. The reasonlies in the simple fact that Weber’s ideal type lacks any specificreference to human action and seems to be as readilyapplicable to the animal kingdom or the plant world as to thehuman sphere. It seems better to start our journey on morepromising ground and adopt as our fundamental concept anotion germane to human action, a notion, that is, in whichthe meaning of action is preconceived even before the verymoment at which the course of action begins to unfold.(Lachman 1971:29)Lachmann then proceeds to make a case for substituting his notionof a ‘plan’ for that of the ideal type. Weber, argues Lachmann:points out that causal explanation is just as necessary inculture as in nature. But in the former case ‘its specificsignificance rests only in that we are able, and want, notmerely to state but to understand human action’. Thepossibility of such understanding is warranted by thepurposive character of human action. But ‘purpose’, he says,‘is for us an imagined end which becomes the cause of anaction; we take account of it in the same way as we have totake account of any other cause which does, or may,contribute to a significant effect.(Lachmann 1971:32–4)Then Lachmann adds:It is readily seen (with the benefit of hindsight) that thisconception of the nature of causal explanation of humanaction in terms of purpose would have provided a firmer andmore convenient starting point for the methodology of thesocial sciences than the controversial notion of the Ideal Type.It is also easy to see how it is naturally linked to our concept ofPlan. In fact, ‘plan’ is but a generalization of purpose.(ibid.: 32–4)95