ng analysis unavoidably laden with biases, presuppositions, values, and so forth. Weber builds on Nietzsche's perspectivism by maintaining that objectivity is still possible -- but only after a particular perspective, value, or end has been established. For the politician, the question of value is a choice of a faith; but once it is made, it should be pursued by objective means. For the social scientist, value necessarily determines perspective and influences the facts chosen for analysis, but once those decisions are made, the social scientist is bound by the principle of objectivity. The work of Weber scholars supports this conclusion. Brubaker, for instance, affirms the two-tier interpretation of Weber's view regarding objectivity: "The selection of means to a given end can be assessed in terms of its objective rationality, since it is possible to discriminate objectively -- for Weber, scientifically -- between adequate and inadequate means. But the notion of objective rationality does not apply to wertrational action -- to action conceived as intrinsically rather than as instrumentally valuable, as an end in itself rather than as means to some further end." 27Portis agrees, writing that Weber came to believe that empirical methods, in social science, could distinguish between true and false beliefs only when researchers took a distinct orientation toward their own ultimate values. 28On another level, however, Portis also argues that Weber nevertheless maintained that political activity and social science are incompatible pursuits, and this is where Portis' interpretation of Weber's thought on objectivity goes afoul. Weber, he says, "denied that objectivity would be equated with impersonality or that it was possible for thought to be compartmentalized into normative and objective categories." 29As a result, Portis maintains, Weber argued that a social scientist who engaged in political activity rendered inauthentic the test of his pr...
