Addressing the Specificity of Social Concepts: Rickert, Weber, and the Dual contrast Theory

In this chapter, it is argued that Weber's particular combination of Von Kries' naturalistic paradigm and Rickert's antinaturalistic paradigm might become less puzzling if we return to the interpretation that emerged in the middle of the nineteen-twenties within the South-Western School of neo-Kantianism. The basic intuition which underlies this interpretation is that the social sciences are best understood as generalizing cultural sciences. On this understanding, they differ both from the natural sciences and the historical sciences.