This book examines the heuristic fruitfulness of Weber's approach for today's social sciences, at a time when the latter are once again questioning their foundation and their object. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of Max Weber's work at a time when references to it have become more numerous but more often than not conventional, when they are not merely incantations or reduced to hackneyed stereotypes.

While Weber's work constantly articulates empirical analysis, theoretical construction and methodological reflection, its French reception has been and remains more confined to the theoretical and exegetical approach.

Focusing on four themes - law, bureaucracy, the demagification of the world, and art and technology - this book seeks to break with the sterile and inappropriate opposition between a Weberian empiricist and a Weberian theorist, This book seeks to break with the sterile and inappropriate opposition between an empiricist Weber and a theorist Weber, and opens up the field to multiple uses of Weber's work, thus moving beyond the sole domain of 'Weberian studies', without abandoning the theoretical rigour and critical vigilance of which Weber remains a model.