Ideal Type

Max Weber (1864–1920) coined the concept “ideal type” as a methodological device within his brand of “interpretive (verstehende) sociology.” Both concepts—ideal type and interpretive sociology—have given rise to grave misunderstandings. The word ideal, to begin with, has nothing to do with the colloquial adjective ideal, as in “He is an ideal husband, she is an ideal teacher.” Colloquially ideal is a normative value judgment. Weber, however, meant by ideal type what he also called “pure type,” a concept that is strictly analytical—an artificial construct that does not contain any value judgment about reality. On the contrary, ideal types are predominantly ruled by the rationality of logic. They are indifferent as to positive or negative value judgments. “There are ideal types of brothels as well as of religions.” Moreover, in a typically neo-Kantian vein, he emphasized the fact that an ideal type should not be viewed as a “picture” (Abbild) of reality but rather as a willful distortion of it. From a specific point of view, which is always necessarily guided by values, certain dimensions of reality are overemphasized, while other dimensions are on purpose kept in the background.

Weber was philosophically driven by the neo-Kantian question of how one could possibly arrive at a rational, scientifically satisfactory knowledge of a reality which is, as is the case with human behavior, predominantly irrational. His answer is not really satisfactory, as he acknowledges himself, but the best he could think of. An ideal type is in a sense an artificial model. For instance, one constructs types of human behavior that indicate how people would act if they would act in a purely functional-rational manner. Nobody acts in such a way, not even in the world of science or in modern bureaucracy. But that is precisely the point: By comparing reality as we experience it in everyday life predominantly in an irrational manner with the ideal type of a radically rationally behaving human being, we begin to understand rationally this predominantly irrational behavior because of the difference between the constructed ideal type and the experienced reality. Ideal types are, in Weber's own words, “conceptual means for the comparison and measurement of reality,” which, due to their general character, are able to highlight the particular features of the object under investigation. This throws a specific, typically neo-Kantian light on the notion of an interpretive (verstehende) sociology: Understanding (Verstehen) is not a method but it is the aim of Weber's brand of sociology. Its method is the comparison of the constructed ideal types with the experienced reality. There is thus not “a method called Verstehen.”

Usually Weber placed concepts that he viewed and used as ideal types between quotation marks. Quite often he also constructed matrices of ideal types. For example, he distinguished four ideal types of human social action based upon four ideal typically distinguishable expectations: (1) “goalrational behavior” oriented towards an explicit aim; (2) “value-rational behavior” carried by a rational belief in ethical, esthetic, religious, or other values; (3) “affectual behavior” driven by emotional expectations; (4) “traditional behavior” founded upon deeply rooted habits. Equally well known is the ideal typical matrix of (1) traditional; (2) charismatic; (3) legal-rational legitimacy. If one focuses on actual human behavior or the actual exercise of legitimacy in historical reality, one will never find a precise duplication of these ideal types in reality. Yet, by placing the ideal typical and generalized matrix upon reality, which is a historical and experienced reality, one will begin to understand its typical developments and its typical constitution and thus its historical particularity.

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