Max Weber

Name	Max Weber
Caption	German sociologist and political economist
Birth date	April 21, 1864
Birth place	Erfurt, Prussian Saxony
Death date	June 14, 1920 (pneumonia)
Death place	Munich, Bavaria
Nationality	German
Fields	Economics, sociology, history, law, politics, philosophy
Workplaces	University of Berlin, Freiburg University, University of Heidelberg, University of Vienna, University of Munich
Alma mater	University of Berlin, University of Heidelberg
Doctoral advisor	Levin Goldschmidt
Known for	Bureaucracy, Disenchantment, Ideal type, Iron cage, Life chances, Methodological individualism, Monopoly on violence, Protestant work ethic, Rationalisation, Social action, Three-component theory of stratification, Tripartite classification of authority, Verstehen
Influences	Immanuel Kant, Heinrich Rickert, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Simmel, Werner Sombart
Influenced	Karl Jaspers, Talcott Parsons, Ludwig von Mises, György Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Joseph Schumpeter

Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber (; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research and the discipline of sociology itself. Weber's major works dealt with the rationalisation and "disenchantment" he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber was, along with his associate Georg Simmel, a central figure in the establishment of methodological antipositivism, which presents sociology as a non-empiricist field which must study social action through interpretive means based upon understanding the meaning and purpose that individuals attach to their own actions. He is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.

Weber is most famous for the thesis in economic sociology which he elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this text, Weber argued that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state in the Western world. Against Marx's "historical materialism," Weber emphasised the importance, for understanding the development of capitalism, of cultural influences embedded in religion. The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest work in Weber's broader project in the sociology of religion: he would go on to examine the , the and ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of capitalism in the corresponding societies and to their differing forms of social stratification.

In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which successfully claims a "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence", a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. His analysis of bureaucracy in his Economy and Society is still central to the modern study of organisations. Weber was the first to recognise several diverse aspects of social authority, which he respectively categorised according to their charismatic, traditional and legal forms. His analysis of bureaucracy emphasised that modern state institutions are based on a form of rational-legal authority. Weber's thought regarding the rationalising and secularising tendencies of modern Western society (sometimes described as the "Weber Thesis") led to the development of critical theory, particularly in the work of later thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas.

After the First World War, Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting the Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, at the age of 56.

Biography

Early life and family background

Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt, Thuringia. He was the eldest of the seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent civil servant and member of the National Liberal Party, and his wife Helene Fallenstein, who descended from French Huguenot immigrants and held strong moral absolutist ideas. Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed many prominent scholars and public figures. In class, bored and unimpressed with the teachers – who in turn resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitude – he secretly read all forty volumes of Goethe. Before entering the university, he would read many other classical works.

and Karl, in 1879]]

Education

In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. After a year of military service he transferred to University of Berlin. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior barrister. Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law, working with August Meitzen. Having thus become a Privatdozent, Weber joined University of Berlin's faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government.

Early work

In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888 he joined the Verein für Socialpolitik, a new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic issues. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress. In 1890 the Verein established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht: the influx of Polish farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrialising cities.

Also in 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death and her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life. They would have no children.

In 1897 Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved. After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depression, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. where he worked with his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart. His new interests would lie in more fundamental issues of social sciences; his works from this latter period are of primary interest to modern scholars. and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. This essay was the only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during his lifetime. Some other of his works written in the first one and a half decades of the 20th century – published posthumously and dedicated primarily from the fields of sociology of religion, economic and legal sociology – are also recognised as among his most important intellectual contributions.

Political involvements

At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer and put in charge of organising the army hospitals in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915. Weber's views on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict. Early on he supported the nationalist rhetoric and the war effort, believing that the fight against the backward and despotic Russian Empire was justified and that a "liberal imperialism" along the lines of the British model would help Germany to develop a more mature political class. In time, however, Weber became one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war policies.

Weber also ran, unsuccessfully, for a parliamentary seat, as a member of the liberal German Democratic Party, which he had co-founded. He opposed both the leftist German Revolution and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, a principled position that defied the political alignments in Germany at that time

Weber was also influenced by Kantian ethics, which he nonetheless came to think of as obsolete in a modern age lacking in religious certainties. In this last respect, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is evident.

As a political economist and economic historian, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics, represented by academics such as Gustav von Schmoller and his student Werner Sombart. But, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with that school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the traditional rivals of the historical school. Whereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individuals and their actions (see structure and action discussion) and whereas Marx argued for the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas, Weber valued ideas as motivating actions of individuals, at least in the big picture.

Sociology, for Max Weber, is:

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Weber was concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity. Study of social action through interpretive means (Verstehen) must be based upon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that the individual attaches to their actions. The analytical constructs of an ideal type never exist in reality, but provide objective benchmarks against which real-life constructs can be measured.

Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodology of social sciences, the Methodenstreit. Therefore, Weber was more interested in explaining how a certain outcome was the result of various historical processes rather than predicting an outcome of those processes in the future. This theme was situated in the larger context of the relationship between psychological motivations, cultural values and beliefs (primarily, religion) and the structure of the society (usually determined by the economy).}}

Weber began his studies of the subject in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain.

Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of authority into three types – legitimate, traditional and charismatic – of which the legitimate (or rational) is the dominant one in the modern world. Related to rationalisation is the process of disenchantment, in which the world is becoming more explained and less mystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones and finally to the Godless science of modernity.

In a dystopian critique of rationalisation, Weber notes that modern society is a product of an individualistic drive of the Reformation, yet at the same time, the society created in this process is less and less welcoming of individualism. His three main themes in the essays were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, the relation between social stratification and religious ideas and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilisation.

Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in the society. According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood. As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

]] Weber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is his most famous work. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber put forward the thesis that Calvinist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business leaders were Protestant.}}

Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism – notably Calvinism – were supportive of rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities dedicated to it, seeing them as endowed with moral and spiritual significance. In particular, the Protestant ethic (or more specifically, Calvinist ethic) motivated the believers to work hard, be successful in business and reinvest their profits in further development rather than frivolous pleasures.

The phrase "work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "Protestant ethic" discussed by Weber. It was adopted when the idea of the Protestant ethic was generalised to apply to the Japanese people, Jews and other non-Christians and thus lost its religious connotations.

The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism

The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Weber focused on those aspects of Chinese society that were different from those of Western Europe and especially contrasted with Puritanism and posed a question why capitalism did not develop in China. He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese patrimonialism and officialdom and Chinese religion and philosophy (primarily, Confucianism and Taoism), as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route. Therefore, Weber states that it was this difference in social attitudes and mentality, shaped by the respective, dominant religions, that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China.

The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism

The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society. Like Confucianism in China, for Weber, Hinduism in India was a barrier for capitalism. It was those differences that prevented the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chinese and Indian civilisations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to prove this theory.

Ancient Judaism

In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the factors which resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. He contrasted the innerworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India.

Weber noted that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of the modern Occidental state; Judaism's influence was as important as Hellenistic and Roman cultures.

Weber's premature death in 1920 prevented him from following his planned analysis of Psalms, the Book of Jacob, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.

Politics and government

In political sociology, one of Weber's most significant contributions is his Politics as a Vocation essay. Therein, Weber unveils the definition of the state that has become so pivotal to Western social thought: that the state is that entity which possesses a delegatable monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Weber wrote that politics is the sharing of state's power between various groups, and political leaders are those who wield this power. An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood to be a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it. In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements and they can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction. He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" into a more structured form of authority. Thus this theory can be sometimes viewed as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.

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Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his masterpiece Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him and a classic, hierarchically organised civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service". As the most efficient and rational way of organising, bureaucratisation for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalisation of the Western society. The growth in space and population being administered, the growth in complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out and the existence of a monetary economy – these resulted in a need for a more efficient administrative system. In order to counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.

Social class is based on economically determined relationship to the market (owner, renter, employee etc.).

Status class is based on non-economical qualities like honour, prestige and religion.

Party class refers to affiliations in the political domain.

All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances" (opportunities to improve one's life). The great differences between that school's interests and methods on the one hand and those of the neoclassical school (from which modern mainstream economics largely derives) on the other, explain why Weber's influence on economics today is hard to discern.

Though his research interests were always in line with those of the German historicists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, Weber's defence of "methodological individualism" in the social sciences represented an important break with that school and an embracing of many of the arguments that had been made against the historicists by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, in the context of the academic Methodenstreit ("debate over methods") of the late 19th century.

The phrase "methodological individualism," which has come into common usage in modern debates about the connection between microeconomics and macroeconomics, was coined by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1908 as a way of referring to the views of Weber. Other contributions include his early work on the economic history of Roman agrarian society (1891) and on the labour relations in Eastern Germany (1892), his analysis of the history of commercial partnerships in the Middle Ages (1889), his critique of Marxism, the discussion of the roles of idealism and materialism in the history of capitalism in his Economy and Society (1922) and his General Economic History (1923), a notable example of the kind of empirical work associated with the German Historical School. Knight also wrote in 1956 that Max Weber was the only economist who dealt with the problem of understanding the emergence of modern capitalism "from the angle which alone can yield an answer to such questions, that is, the angle of comparative history in the broad sense." Weber's preoccupation with the importance of economic calculation led him to develop a critique of socialism as a system that lacked a mechanism for allocating resources efficiently in order to satisfy human needs. In his introduction to his Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920), Weber argues that

In his capital work on sociological theory, Economy and Society Weber elaborates on this point. Socialist intellectuals like Otto Neurath had realised that in a completely socialised economy, prices would not exist and central planners would have to resort to in-kind (rather than monetary) economic calculation. According to Weber, this type of coordination would be inefficient, especially because it would be incapable of solving the problem of imputation (i.e. of accurately determining the relative values of capital goods). Weber himself had a significant influence on Mises, whom he had befriended when they were both at the University of Vienna in the spring of 1918, and, through Mises, on several other economists associated with the Austrian School in the 20th century. Friedrich Hayek in particular elaborated the arguments of Weber and Mises about economic calculation into a central part of free market economics's intellectual assault on socialism, as well as into a model for the spontaneous coordination of "dispersed knowledge" in markets.

Legacy

Whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber created and worked – like Werner Sombart, his friend and later the most famous representative of German sociology – in the antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition. These works pioneered the antipositivistic revolution in social sciences, stressing (as in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey) the difference between the social sciences and natural sciences. he is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology.

Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action which he separated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental.

In his time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the depth of his social theory:

Many of Weber's works famous today were collected, revised and published posthumously. Significant interpretations of his writings were produced by such sociological luminaries as Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills. Parsons in particular imparted to Weber's works a functionalist, teleological perspective; this personal interpretation has been criticised for a latent conservatism.

Weber has influenced many later thinkers, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, György Lukács and Jürgen Habermas.

Critical responses to Weber

Weber's explanations are highly specific to the historical periods he analysed. This makes it more difficult to generalise from his analysis and modify his theories for other circumstances. In Milan, Venice and Florence the small city-state governments led to the development of the earliest forms of capitalism. In the 16th century Antwerp was a commercial centre of Europe. Also, the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland did not enjoy the same economic growth as the Netherlands, England and New England. It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinist majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland. Emil Kauder expanded Schumpeter's argument by arguing the hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labour theory of value.

See also

Interpretations of Weber's liberalism

Max Weber bibliography

Sociology of law

Speeches of Max Weber

Notes

a Weber wrote his books in German. Original titles printed after his death (1920) are most likely compilations of his unfinished works (of the 'Collected Essays...' form). Many translations are made of parts or sections of various German originals and the names of the translations often do not reveal what part of German work they contain. Weber's work is generally quoted according to the critical Gesamtausgabe (collected works edition), which is published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen. For an extensive list of Max Weber's works see list of Max Weber works.

References

Further reading

Quensel, Bernhard K. (2007), Max Webers Konstruktionslogik. Sozialökonomik zwischen Geschichte und Theorie, Nomos, ISBN 9783832925178 [Revisiting Weber's concept of sociology against the background of his juristic and economic provenance within the framework of "social economics"]

Radkau, Joachim (2005), Max Weber [The most important Weber biography on Max Weber's life and torments since Marianne Weber.]

Radkau, Joachim (2005/2009). Max Weber: A Biography. Translated into English by Patrick Camiller. Polity Press. ISBN 139780745641478

Roth, Guenther (2001), Max Webers deutsch-englische Familiengeschichte, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), ISBN 3-16-147557-7.

Shils, Edward and Rheinstein, Max. (1964) Max Weber Law in Economy and Society, ,Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-55651-8; ISBN 0674556518; ISBN 9780674556515.

External links

Texts of his works:

Large collection of the German original texts

Large collection of the German original texts

Large collection of English translations

Another collection of English translations

A comprehensive collection of English translations and secondary literature

Notes on several of Weber's works, merged into one text file

Max Weber Reference Archive

Analysis of his works:

Protestant Ethic Thesis by the Swatos' Encyclopedia of Religion and Society

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