ABSTRACT
I have argued earlier, on Elias’s side, that Weber’s analytic approach (with regard to his viewpoint that ideal types are intended, according to their relevance for certain value concerns, to provide artificial models for extracting features of social and historical reality for sociological explanation) is a central source of his mistakes in grasping the dynamics of social reality and of his inability to go beyond his pessimistic view about value irreconcilability. From the methodological aspect, Weber’s dichotomizing and decontextualizing mode of theorizing is unable to account for the dynamics emerging from the interactions in and between different dimensions of social and historical reality. From the aspect of social diagnosis, Weber does not pay enough attention to the development of resources for more complex and higher levels of social integration in modern western culture. Therefore he is unable to perceive the potentials which are still available for conflict resolution.
