 In the end, the kind of objective knowledge that historical and cultural sciences may achieve is precariously limited. An action can be interpreted with objective validity only at the level of means, not ends. An end, however, even a “self-evident” one, is irreducibly subjective, thus defying an objective understanding; it can only be reconstructed conceptually based on a researcher’s no less subjective values. Objectivity in historical and social sciences is, then, not a goal that can be reached with the aid of a correct method, but an ideal that must be striven for without a promise of ultimate fulfillment. In this sense, one might say that the so-called “value-freedom” (Wertfreiheit) is as much a methodological principle for Weber as an ethical virtue that a personality fit for modern science must possess.