Freedom from Value Judgments
Subtitle: Value-Free Social Science and Objectivity in Germany, 1880-1914
Contributors: Gordon, Peter E.; Blackbourn, David G.; Rothschild, Emma
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Description: This dissertation addresses a central issue in the methodological debates that raged in the German academy around the turn of the twentieth century. The idea of "value-free" social science, or "value-freedom," was passed down to subsequent decades as a way of thinking about the objectivity of knowledge, but because of its name it has been widely misunderstood. Moreover, it has been seen either as a clever invention of the polymath scholar Max Weber, or as some form of ideology masquerading as neutrality (or both). Instead, a contextually sensitive historical analysis of the work of five German and Austrian scholars--Carl Menger, Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Jellinek, Hermann Kantorowicz, and Gustav Radbruch--demonstrates that value-freedom was a complex doctrine with widely ramified sources in the intellectual history of economics, sociology, and law. It was accepted on a variety of grounds and by individuals of differing personalities, politics, philosophical training, and academic disciplines.
Notes: Keywords: Objectivity, Value-Freedom.

Thesis Ph.D. Harvard University 2013