Max-Weber's methodological essays, published-posthumously as Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, continue to attract scholarly attention. They also continue to pose formidable problems to a modern reader. Part of the reason for this is that Max Weber both responds to and draws upon scholarly work that has long ceased to be familiar to social scientists. In order to grasp Weber's methodological project, we therefore need to uncover the historical co-ordinates within which it was framed. A framework of this order is to be found in the discourses over method that took place in the human sciences in Germany during the 19^th century - particularly in jurisprudence, economics and history. Max Weber's methodological views, however, did not square with any of the positions taken in these debates. He had other methodological convictions. They were partly taken over from Heinrich Rickert, partly from Johannes von Kries. Heinrich Rickert's philosophy of science furnished Weber both with a general theory of science and with a theory of concept formation in the historical sciences, whereas Johannes von Kries provided him with a theory of causality. It can be shown that these theories combine in Max Weber's methodological thought to provide the basis for theoretical notions such as the ideal type - but also that this has implications both for Weber's empirical work and for the characteristic way in which he criticises the different standpoints in the prevailing methodological discourse.