REPLY TO BRUUN SUSAN BUCK-MORSS In this fine paper, Hans Henrik Bruun lays out clearly the differences between Kant and Weber, demonstrating the need for a reassessment of Weber’s neo- Kantian credentials. With scholarly thoroughness, he shows how Weber diverges from the Kantian legacy in three realms: methodology, ethics, and politics. Underlying this argument is the claim of a difference in theoretical disposition. Whereas Weber was willing to live with a radical distinction between the project of social science and the realm of moral values, Kant was fundamentally troubled by the undeniable gap, across which he desired to build a bridge. The fact that all human beings bestow values, as opposed to the nature of the value itself, is the universal posited by Weber. The ethical imperative is to choose, not what choice one takes, and to remain bound by the particular values one has chosen. Professor Bruun insists that this position is profoundly anti-Kantian in spirit, and I would agree. For Weber, there is no harmony between psychology and society, values and social good, (this tension itself can be a source of strength of character), whereas for Kant, the lack of harmony is of the utmost concern for moral theory. Of course, one could respond that this difference is simply a consequence of their different projects: Kant is doing metaphysics; Weber is doing social science. Kant’s philo- sophical goal requires a theory of transcendental subjectivity. Weber’s social scientific concern asks only that we accurately describe how empirical subjects live their lives. But this difference in disciplinary orientation is not merely a matter of personal temperament. My criticism is not about what Professor Brunn has presented, but rather, what has been left out in his method of comparison. And that is, in a word, history. Kantian philosophy and neo-Kantianism emerged at two very different histori- cal moments. Whereas Kant’s hopefulness regarding human progress can be linked to the optimism of the beginning of the bourgeois era, Weber stands at that © 2010 The Philosophical Forum, Inc. 69