Abstract

Social scientists usually presuppose that individual behaviour is meaningful and understandable. At the same time they aim at nomological explanations. This is criticized by some economists who recommend a hermeneutical turn to overcome the crisis in economic and sociological thinking. The author tries to show that it is counterproductive to turn to hermeneutics to solve social science problems, and that it is misleading to use Max Weber in support of this claim, because Weber's ideas are incompatible with hermeneutics a la Heidegger.