Max Weber

For other people named Max Weber, see Max Weber (disambiguation).

Max Weber
Weber in 1918
Born	Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864-04-21)21 April 1864 Erfurt, Saxony, Prussia
Died	14 June 1920(1920-06-14) (aged 56) Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Alma mater	Friedrich Wilhelm University University of Göttingen Heidelberg University
Notable work	The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) The Religion of China (1915) The Religion of India (1916) "Science as a Vocation" (1917) "Politics as a Vocation" (1919) Sociology of Religion (1920) Ancient Judaism (1921) Economy and Society (1922) General Economic History (1923)
Spouse	Marianne Schnitger ​ (m. 1893)​
School	Continental philosophy Antipositivism Liberalism
Institutions	Friedrich Wilhelm University University of Freiburg Heidelberg University University of Vienna Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Theses	On the History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages, Based on Southern European Documents (1889) Roman Agrarian History and Its Significance for Public and Private Law (1891)
Doctoral advisors	Levin Goldschmidt August Meitzen
Main interests	History economics sociology law religion
Notable ideas	List ideal type Verstehen methodological individualism social action (traditional, affectional, instrumental, and value-rational action) tripartite classification of authority (charismatic, traditional, rational-legal) Weberian bureaucracy iron cage rationalisation secularisation disenchantment Protestant work ethic life chances three-component stratification (class, status, and party) monopoly on violence Inner-worldly asceticism
Influences Kant Goethe Marx Dilthey Nietzsche Sombart Baumgarten Rickert Troeltsch
Influenced Simmel Mises Schumpeter Jaspers Lukács Schmitt Strauss Parsons Mills Adorno Lachmann Mills Habermas Michels Schütz Bruun Mommsen Schluchter
Signature

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (/ˈveɪbər/; German: [ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profoundly influence social theory and research. While Weber did not see himself as a sociologist, he is recognized as one of the fathers of sociology, along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim.

Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law and habilitation from the latter in 1889 and 1891, he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger and became a professor at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg. In 1897, he had a psychological breakdown after he had an argument with his father, who died shortly thereafter. He ceased teaching and travelled during the late 1890s and early 1990s. Shortly before his trip to the United States, he recovered and slowly resumed his scholarship. At this point, he wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He co-founded the German Sociological Association, an early association of sociologists, in 1910. After the beginning of the First World War, he supported the German war effort and served as a reserve office who was in charge of the army hospitals in Heidelberg. Increasingly critical of the German government actions during the war, he supported the democratisation of Germany. He participated in the Lauenstein Conferences in 1917 and gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation" during the next few years. After the end of the war, Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party, ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament, and served as an advisor to the committee that drafted the Weimar Constitution in 1919. He became frustrated with politics and resumed teaching, this time at the universities of Vienna and Munich. After possibly contracting the Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 56. His Economy and Society, which he had been writing at the time, was left unfinished.

Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and the ensuing sense of "disenchantment". He formulated a thesis arguing that such processes were associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber is also known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, emphasising the cultural influences embedded in religion as driving factors of capitalism. Weber first elaborated this theory in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where he included ascetic Protestantism among the major "elective affinities" that led to the rise of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal systems in the Western world. Weber's The Protestant Ethic was the earliest part in his broader consideration of world religions, as he later examined the religions of China and India, as well as ancient Judaism. In another major work, "Politics as a Vocation", Weber defined the state as an entity that successfully claimed a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force". He was the first to categorise social authority into distinct forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. Weber was also a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive rather than purely empiricist methods. Weber made a variety of other contributions in economic history, theory, and methodology.

After his death, the rise of Weberian scholarship was slowed by the political instability of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany. After the Second World War, organised scholarship began to appear, led by Talcott Parsons, who used Weber's works to support his idea of structural functionalism. Over the course of the later twentieth century, Weber's reputation began to rise due to the publication of translations of his works and scholarly interpretations of his life and works. He began to be regarded as a founding father of sociology, alongside Marx and Durkheim. As a result of these works, Weber is commonly regarded as one of the central figures in the development of the social sciences.

Personal life

Early life

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was born on 21 April 1864 in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Prussia, but his family moved to Berlin in 1869. He was the oldest of eight children to Max Weber Sr. and his wife Helene Fallenstein. Over the course of his life, Weber Sr. held posts as a lawyer, a civil servant, and a parliamentarian for the National Liberal Party in the Prussian Landtag and German Reichstag. Fallenstein partly descended from French Huguenot immigrants and came from a wealthy background. Over time, Weber Jr. would be affected by the marital and personality tensions between his father, "a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures" while overlooking religious and philanthropic causes, and his mother, a devout Calvinist "who sought to lead an ascetic life" and held moral absolutist ideas.

Max Weber (left) and his brothers, Alfred (center) and Karl, in 1879

Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed scholars and public figures like philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey and jurist Levin Goldschmidt. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, passed their formative years in this intellectual atmosphere. For Christmas in 1877, a thirteen-year-old Max Weber gifted his parents two historical essays, entitled "About the Course of German history, with Special Reference to the Positions of the Emperor and the Pope", and "About the Roman Imperial Period from Constantine to the Migration Period".

In class, bored and unimpressed with teachers – who, in turn, resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitude – Weber secretly read all forty volumes by writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and it has been argued that this was an important influence on his thought and methodology. Before entering university, he would read many other classical works, including those by the philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Entering Academia

In 1882, Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student, later transferring to Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and then the University of Göttingen. Simultaneously with his studies, he practiced law and worked as a lecturer. In 1886, Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and U.S. legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law and history. Under the tutelage of Levin Goldschmidt, a family acquaintance, Weber earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertation on legal history titled Development of the Principle of Joint Liability and a Separate Fund of the General Partnership out of the Household Communities and Commercial Associations in Italian Cities. This work would be used as part of a longer work, On the History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages, Based on Southern European Documents, published in the same year. Two years later, working with statistician August Meitzen, Weber completed his habilitation, a post-doctoral thesis titled Roman Agrarian History and Its Significance for Public and Private Law. Having thus become a privatdozent, Weber joined the faculty of Friedrich Wilhelm University, lecturing, doing research, and consulting for the government.

Weber's years as a university student was dotted with several periods of military service, the longest of which lasted between October 1883 to September 1884. During this time, he was in Strasbourg and attended classes taught by his uncle, the historian Hermann Baumgarten. Weber befriended Baumgarten and he influenced Weber's growing liberalism and criticism of Otto von Bismarck's domination of German politics. After his first few years in university, during which he spent much time "drinking beer and fencing", Weber would increasingly take his mother's side in family arguments and grew estranged from his father.

Marriage

Max Weber and his wife Marianne in 1894

Max Weber had a relationship and semi-engagement with Emmy Baumgarten, the daughter of Hermann Baumgarten, from 1887 until her declining mental health caused him to break off their relationship five years later. Afterwards, he entered a relationship with his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger in 1892 and married her a year later. Marianne was a feminist activist and author in her own right. She was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death, while her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life. They had no children. The marriage granted long-awaited financial independence to Weber, allowing him to finally leave his parents' household. In 1909, they befriended a former student of his, Else von Richthofen, and the pianist Mina Tobler. After a failed attempt to court Richthofen, Weber began an affair with Tobler in 1911. Eight years later, he began a sadomasochistic affair with Richthofen, who was also conducting an affair with his brother, Alfred. These affairs lasted until his death in 1920.

Career and later life

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. Weber was put in charge of the study and wrote a large part of the final report, which generated considerable attention and controversy, marking the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scientist.

From 1893 to 1899, Weber was a member of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), an organisation that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars. In some of his work, in particular his provocative lecture on "The Nation State and Economic Policy" delivered in 1895, Weber criticised the immigration of Poles and blames the Junker class for perpetuating Slavic immigration to serve their selfish interests.

Weber and his wife, Marianne, moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at the Albert-Ludwigs University, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896. There, Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Weber Circle", composed of other intellectuals, including his wife Marianne, as well as Georg Jellinek, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart and Robert Michels. Weber also remained active in the Verein and the Evangelical Social Congress. His research in that period was focused on economics and legal history.

Mental health concerns

In 1897, 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. His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and eventually leave his course unfinished in the autumn of 1899. After spending the summer and autumn of 1900 in a sanatorium, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy at the end of the year, not returning to Heidelberg until April 1902. He would again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and would not return until 1919. Weber's ordeal with mental illness was carefully described in a personal chronology that was destroyed by his wife. This chronicle was supposedly destroyed because Marianne feared that Weber's work would be discredited by the Nazis if his experience with mental illness were widely known.

Later work

Max Weber in 1907

After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish any papers between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in late 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare, 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.

In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which became his most famous work and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. This work was the only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during his lifetime. In it, Weber argued that the source for the "spirit of capitalism" was in the Protestant Reformation More specifically, he traced it to the Puritan religions. They placed great importance on work, to a degree where other actions mattered less. They had a religious calling to work that caused them to systematically obtain wealth. The Puritans wished to prove that they were members of the elect who were destined to go to Heaven. Benjamin Franklin's personal ethic, as described in his "Advice to a Young Tradesman", was used as an example of the economic ethic that the Protestant sects had. The thesis also contained themes that Weber would later prove central to his scholarship: rationalisation and the ideal type. Rationalisation pertained to the increasing systemisation of life that ultimately caused religious influence to decline. Rationalisation also caused Western society to be caught in the "iron cage", or steel-hard casing, that was the economic order that modern capitalism created. The ideal types were representative figures, or case studies, that represented concepts. 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.

Also in 1904, Weber visited the United States with his wife, participating in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) in St. Louis. Their trip began and ended in New York City and lasted for almost three months. They travelled throughout the country, from New England to the Deep South. Different communities were visited, including German immigrant towns and African American communities. Among the places visited was North Carolina, where some of his relatives in the Fallenstein family had settled. Weber used the trip to learn more about America and this experience played a role in the development of the Protestant work ethic. He used the trip to find social and theological conditions that could contribute to his thesis. Weber also used the trip to further his knowledge of the United States' social and economic conditions more generally.

Despite his partial recovery evident in America, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907. In 1909, disappointed with the Verein, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, or DGS) and served as its first treasurer, though resigning in 1912.

Political involvements

Later in 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, in part because many liberals feared social democratic revolutionary ideals.

World War I

At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer 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 nationalist rhetoric and the war effort, though with some hesitation, viewing the war as a necessity to fulfill German duty as a leading state power. In time, however, Weber became one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war policies. Weber publicly attacked the Belgian annexation policy and unrestricted submarine warfare, later supporting calls for constitutional reform, democratisation, and universal suffrage.

Max Weber (facing right) in 1917 with Ernst Toller (facing camera)

He also participated in the 1917 Lauenstein Conferences that were held at Lauenstein Castle in Thuringia. These conferences were planned by the publisher Eugen Diederichs for the purpose of bringing together intellectuals who would create a new age for Germany. Theodor Heuss, Ernst Toller, and Werner Sombart were among the other intellectuals who were invited. Weber's presence elevated his profile in Germany and served to dispel some of the romantic atmosphere of the event. After he spoke at the first one, he became involved in the planning for the second one, as Diederichs thought that the conferences needed someone who could serve as an oppositional figure. In this capacity, he argued against the political romanticism that was being espoused by Max Maurenbrecher, a former theologian. Weber also opposed what he saw as the excessive rhetoric of the youth groups and nationalists at Lauenstein, instead supporting the democratisation of Germany. For Weber and the younger participants, the romantic intent of the conferences was irrelevant to the determination of Germany's future.

In November, shortly after the second conference, Weber gave a lecture titled "Science as a Vocation" in Munich in response to an invitation by the Free Student Youth, a student organisation. He described an inner calling as being necessary for one to enter scholarship. The potential for a lack of success and career advancement was also an aspect of the career path. Weber thought that only a particular type of person would be able to make a career in academia. He used his own career as an example of a person whose career was in academia. Recalling his arguments made regarding the Protestant ethic, he stated that the path forward in scholarship required the scholar to be self-denying and methodical in their research. The modern scholar was to be a specialist who would be able to avoid amateurism. A major aspect of his commentary on the role of the scholar in modernity related to disenchantment and intellectual rationalisation. These processes resulted in the nature of life itself being question, causing there to be a question of the role of scholarship in life. Weber argued that scholarship could provide certainty through the use of its starting presumptions, in spite of its inability to give absolute answers.

Post-World War I

Weber joined the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. He then served in the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and as advisor to the Confidential Committee for Constitutional Reform, which drafted the Weimar Constitution. Motivated by his understanding of the American model, he advocated a strong, popularly elected presidency as a constitutional counterbalance to the power of the professional bureaucracy. More controversially, he also defended the provisions for emergency presidential powers that became Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.

Max Weber in 1918

Weber would also run, though 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 of 1918–1919 and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, principled positions that defied the political alignments in Germany at that time, and which may have prevented Friedrich Ebert, the new social democratic President of Germany, from appointing Weber as minister or ambassador. Weber commanded widespread respect but relatively little influence.

In Weber's critique of the left, he complained of the leaders of the leftist Spartacus League, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, that controlled the city government of Berlin while Weber was campaigning for his party. He regarded the German Revolution as having been responsible for the inability of Germany to fight against Poland's claims on former German territory. Weber was, at the same time, critical of the Versailles Treaty, which he believed unjustly assigned "war guilt" to Germany when it came to the war, as Weber believed that many countries were guilty of starting it, not just Germany. In making this case, Weber argued that Russia was the only great power that actually desired the war. He regarded Germany as not having been culpable for the invasion of Belgium.

Later that same month, in January 1919, after he and his party were electorally defeated, Weber delivered one of his greatest academic lectures, "Politics as a Vocation", which reflected on the inherent violence and dishonesty he saw among politicians – a profession in which only recently Weber was so personally active. About the nature of politicians, he concluded that, "in nine out of ten cases they are windbags puffed up with hot air about themselves. They are not in touch with reality, and they do not feel the burden they need to shoulder; they just intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations." His lecture was prompted by the political turmoil of the early Weimar Republic and was requested by the Free Student Youth. He defined politics as being divided into thee aspects: passion, judgment, and responsibility. There was also a division between conviction and responsibility. These two concepts were sharply divided, but could be present in a single individual, particularly the ideal politician. The types of authority were themselves divided into traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal. Ultimately, Weber thought that the resolution to the political issues of his day required consistent effort, rather than the quick solutions that the students preferred.

Shortly before he left to join the delegation in Versailles on 13 May 1919, Max Weber used his connections with the deputies of the German National People's Party to meet with Erich Ludendorff. He spent several hours unsuccessfully trying to convince Ludendorff to surrender himself to the Allies. This debate also shifted to other subjects, such as who was guilty for the failure of the war effort. Weber thought that the high command had failed while Ludendorff regarded Weber as a supporter of democracy and responsible for the revolution. Weber tried to disabuse him of that notion by arguing in favour of a democracy that would have a strong executive power. Since Weber held Ludendorff responsible for the failure of the German war effort and had sent many young Germans to die on the battlefield, he thought that he should surrender himself and assume the status of political martyr. However, Ludendorff was not willing to do so and wished to simply live off of his pension.

Last years

Weber's grave in Heidelberg

Frustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then, after 1919, at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Some of his lectures from that period were collected into the General Economic History, which was published in 1923. In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but never held a professorial position in the discipline. Many colleagues and students in Munich attacked his response to the German Revolution, while some right-wing students held protests in front of his home.

In early 1920, Max Weber gave a seminar that contained a discussion of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. Weber respected him and privately described him as having been "a very brilliant and scholarly dilettante". That seminar provoked some of his students, who knew Spengler personally, to suggest that he debate Spengler alongside other scholars. They met in the Munich town hall and debated for two days. The audience was primarily young Germans of different political perspectives, including communists. While neither Weber nor Spengler were able to convince the other of their points, Weber was more cautious and careful in his arguments against Spengler than the other debaters were. After the debate, the students did not feel that they had an answer to the question of what should be done to resolve the issues that Germany faced after the end of the First World War.

Lili, one of Max Weber's sisters, committed suicide as a result of the end of her affair with Paul Geheeb in April 1920. Weber and his wife took in their four children and planned to raise them. He was uncomfortable with his newfound role as a father figure, but thought that Marianne had been fulfilled as a woman by this event. She later formally adopted them in 1928. Weber wished for her to stay with the children in Heidelberg or move closer to the Odenwaldschule, so that he could be alone in Munich with his mistress, Else von Richthofen. He left the decision to Marianne, who refused it.

On 4 June 1920, Weber's students were informed that he needed to cancel classes due to a cold. By 14 June 1920, the cold had turned into influenza and he died of pneumonia in Munich. He had likely contracted the Spanish flu and been subjected to insufficient medical care. Else von Richthofen, who was present for his death alongside his wife, thought that he could have survived his illness if he had been given better treatment. His body was cremated and the ashes were buried in Heidelberg. At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his magnum opus on sociological theory: Economy and Society. His widow, Marianne, helped prepare it for its publication in 1922.

Methodology

Sociology, for Max Weber, was "a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects". Made clear in his methodology, Weber distinguished himself from Durkheim, Marx, and other classical figures, in that (a) his primary focus would be on individuals and culture; and (b) unlike theorists such as Comte and Durkheim, he did not (consciously) attempt to create any specific set of rules governing sociology or the social sciences in general. Whereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individual and their actions (i.e. structure and action). Compared to Marx, who 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.

Verstehen

Weber would primarily be concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity, going on to distinguish social action from social behavior, noting that social action must be understood through how individuals subjectively relate to one another. Study of social action through interpretive means or verstehen ("to understand") must be based upon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that individuals attach to their actions. Social actions may have easily identifiable and objective means, but much more subjective ends and the understanding of those ends by a scientist is subject to yet another layer of subjective understanding (that of the scientist). Weber noted that the importance of subjectivity in the social sciences makes the creation of fool-proof, universal laws much more difficult than in the natural sciences and that the amount of objective knowledge that social sciences may achieve is precariously limited. Overall, Weber supported the goal of objective science as one worth striving for, though he noted that it is ultimately an unreachable goal.

There is no absolutely "objective" scientific analysis of culture. ... All knowledge of cultural reality ... is always knowledge from particular points of view. ... An "objective" analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to "laws", is meaningless [because] the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end.

—Max Weber in Sociological Writings, 1904.

The principle of methodological individualism, which holds that social scientists should seek to understand collectivities (e.g. nations, cultures, governments, churches, corporations, etc.) solely as the result and the context of the actions of individual persons, can be traced to Weber, particularly to the first chapter of Economy and Society, in which he argues that only individuals "can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action". In other words, Weber contended that social phenomena can be understood scientifically only to the extent that they are captured by models of the behaviour of purposeful individuals – models that Weber called "ideal types" – from which actual historical events necessarily deviate due to accidental and irrational factors. 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 ("method dispute"). Weber's position was close to historicism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective motivations of individuals (social actors). Thus Weber's methodology emphasises the use of comparative historical analysis. As such, 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.

Theories

Bureaucratic model (rational-legal model)

Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy, also known as the "rational-legal" model, attempts to explain bureaucracy from a rational point of view. Firstly, Weber argued that bureaucracy is "based on the general principle of precisely defined and organised across-the-board competencies of the various offices" which are "underpinned by rules, laws, or administrative regulations."

In particular, Weber notes three aspects that "constitute the essence of bureaucratic administration" in the public sector, and "the essence of a bureaucratic management of a private company" in the private sector:

1. A rigid division of labor is established that clearly identifies regular tasks and duties of the particular bureaucratic system.
2. Regulations describe firmly established chains of command and the duties and capacity to coerce others to comply.
3. Hiring people with particular, certified qualifications supports regular and continuous execution of the assigned duties.

Benefits of bureaucracy

As Weber noted, real bureaucracy is less optimal and effective than his ideal-type model. Each of Weber's principles can degenerate, especially when used to analyze individual levels in an organisation. However, when implemented in a group setting in an organisation, some form of efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved, especially with regard to better output. This is especially true when the Bureaucratic Model emphasizes qualification (merits), specialization of job-scope (labour), hierarchy of power, rules, and discipline.

Weaknesses of bureaucracy

Competencies, efficiency and effectiveness can be unclear and contradictory, especially when dealing with oversimplified matters. In a dehumanized bureaucracy – inflexible in distributing the job-scope, with every worker having to specialize from day one without rotating tasks for fear of decreasing output – tasks are often routine and can contribute to boredom. Thus, employees can sometimes feel that they are not part of the organisation's work vision and mission. Consequently, they do not have any sense of belonging in the long term. Furthermore, this type of organisation tends to invite exploitation and underestimate the potential of the employees, as creativity of the workers is brushed aside in favour of strict adherence to rules, regulations and procedures.

A page from the typescript of the sociology of law within Economy and Society

Rationalisation

Many scholars have described rationalisation and the question of individual freedom in an increasingly rational society, as the main theme of Weber's work. 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 understood rationalisation, first, as the individual cost-benefit calculation; second, as the wider bureaucratic organisation of the organisations; and finally, in the more general sense, as the opposite of understanding the reality through mystery and magic (i.e. disenchantment).

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. In the Protestant religion, piety towards God was expressed through one's secular vocation (secularisation of calling). The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious and so the latter were eventually discarded.

Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of legitimate authority into three types – rational-legal, traditional and charismatic – of which the rational-legal (through bureaucracy) is the dominant one in the modern world. In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalisation. Similarly, rationalisation could be seen in the economy, with the development of highly rational and calculating capitalism. Weber also saw rationalisation as one of the main factors setting the European West apart from the rest of the world. Rationalisation relied on deep changes in ethics, religion, psychology and culture; changes that first took place in the Western civilisation.

What Weber depicted was not only the secularisation of Western culture, but also and especially the development of modern societies from the viewpoint of rationalisation. The new structures of society were marked by the differentiation of the two functionally intermeshing systems that had taken shape around the organisational cores of the capitalist enterprise and the bureaucratic state apparatus. Weber understood this process as the institutionalisation of purposive-rational economic and administrative action. To the degree that everyday life was affected by this cultural and societal rationalisation, traditional forms of life – which in the early modern period were differentiated primarily according to one's trade – were dissolved.

—Jürgen Habermas in Modernity's Consciousness of Time, 1990.

Features of rationalisation include increasing knowledge, growing impersonality and enhanced control of social and material life. Weber was ambivalent towards rationalisation; while admitting it was responsible for many advances, in particular, freeing humans from traditional, restrictive and illogical social guidelines, he also criticised it for dehumanising individuals as "cogs in the machine" and curtailing their freedom, trapping them in the bureaucratic iron cage of rationality and bureaucracy. 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. However, another interpretation of Weber's theory of disenchantment, advanced by historian of religion Jason Josephson Storm, claims that Weber does not envision a binary between rationalisation and magical thinking, and that Weber actually referred to the sequestering and professionalisation of magic when he described disenchantment, not to the disappearances of magic. Regardless, for Weber the processes of rationalisation affect all of society, removing "sublime values ... from public life" and making art less creative.

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: "How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend?"

Sociology of religion

Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion began with the essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and continued with his analyses in The Religion of China, The Religion of India, and Ancient Judaism. His work on other religions, however, would be interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following Ancient Judaism with studies of early Christianity and Islam. The three main themes within 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 society. His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilisation. He maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Protestant) religious ideas had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of the West, but noted that they were not the only factors in this development. Other notable factors mentioned by Weber included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation and bureaucratisation of government administration and economic enterprise. In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, focused on one distinguishing part of the Western culture, the decline of beliefs in magic, or what he referred to as "disenchantment of the world".

Weber was a critic of Islam and hedonism. He argued that hedonism plays a role in Islamic ethics and teachings, in which worldly pleasures such as military interests and the "acquisition of booty" are emphasised. According to Weber, Islam is the polar opposite of ascetic puritanism.

Weber also proposed a socio-evolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, monotheism and finally, ethical monotheism. 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

Main article: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The development of the concept of the calling quickly gave to the modern entrepreneur a fabulously clear conscience – and also industrious workers; he gave to his employees as the wages of their ascetic devotion to the calling and of co-operation in his ruthless exploitation of them through capitalism the prospect of eternal salvation.

—Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is Weber's most famous work. It has been argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber's later works, especially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic behaviour as part of the rationalisation of the economic sphere. In the essay, Weber puts forward the thesis that Calvinist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. He notes the post-Reformation shift of Europe's economic centre away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Germany. Weber also notes that societies having more Protestants were those with a more highly developed capitalist economy. Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business leaders were Protestant. Weber thus argued that Roman Catholicism impeded the development of the capitalist economy in the West, as did other religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism elsewhere in the world.

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. Weber argued that there were many reasons to look for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformation.

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 notion of calling meant that each individual had to take action as an indication of their salvation; just being a member of the Church was not enough. Predestination also reduced agonising over economic inequality and further, it meant that a material wealth could be taken as a sign of salvation in the afterlife. The believers therefore justified pursuit of profit with religion, as instead of being fuelled by morally suspect greed or ambition, their actions were motivated by a highly moral and respected philosophy. Weber would call this the "spirit of capitalism": it was the Protestant religious ideology that was behind – and inevitably led to – the capitalist economic system. This theory is often viewed as a reversal of Karl Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other aspects of it.

Weber abandoned research into Protestantism as his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on the book Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area: laying the groundwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.

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 expanded to apply to the Japanese, Jews and other non-Christians.

The Religion of China

Main article: The Religion of China

The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Hans H. Gerth edited and translated this text into English. Weber focused on those aspects of Chinese society that were different from those of Western Europe, especially those aspects that contrasted with Puritanism. His work also questioned 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.

According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive types of rational thought, each attempting to prescribe a way of life based on religious dogma. Notably, they both valued self-control and restraint and did not oppose accumulation of wealth. However, to both those qualities were just means to the final goal and here they were divided by a key difference. Confucianism's goal was "a cultured status position", while Puritanism's goal was to create individuals who are "tools of God". The intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were rare in Confucianism, but common in Protestantism. Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian. 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

Main article: The Religion of India

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. In Weber's view, Hinduism in India, like Confucianism in China, was a barrier for capitalism. The Indian caste system made it very difficult for individuals to advance in the society beyond their caste. Activity, including economic activity, was seen as unimportant in the context of the advancement of the soul. He noted, "Perhaps the most important gap in the ancient Veda is its lack of any reference to caste…. nowhere does it refer to the substantive content of the caste order in the meaning which it later assumed and which is characteristic only of Hinduism".

Weber ended his research of society and religion in India by bringing in insights from his previous work on China to discuss similarities of the Asian belief systems. He notes that the beliefs saw the meaning of life as otherworldly mystical experience. The social world is fundamentally divided between the educated elite, following the guidance of a prophet or wise man and the uneducated masses whose beliefs are centered on magic. In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to give plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike. Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies (also known as ethical prophecies), notably from the Near East region to the exemplary prophecies found on the Asiatic mainland, focused more on reaching to the educated elites and enlightening them on the proper ways to live one's life, usually with little emphasis on hard work and the material world. 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

Main article: Ancient Judaism (book)

In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the factors that 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 some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.

Theodicy of fortune and misfortune

See also: Just-world hypothesis

The 'theodicy of fortune and misfortune' within sociology is the theory, as Weber suggested, of how "members of different social classes adopt different belief systems, or theodices, to explain their social situation."

The concept of theodicy was expanded mainly with the thought of Weber and his addition of ethical considerations to the subject of religion. There is an ethical part of religion, that includes:

1. Soteriology: how people understand themselves to be capable of a correct relationship with supernatural powers; and
2. Theodicy: how to explain evil – or why bad things seem to happen to those who seem to be good people.

There is a separation of different theodicies with regard to class: "theodicies of misfortune tend to the belief that wealth and other manifestations of privilege are indications or signs of evil. ... In contrast, theodicies of fortune emphasise the notion that privileges are a blessing and are deserved."

Weber also distinguishes that, "the affluent embrace good fortune theodicies, which emphasise that prosperity is a blessing of God [while] theodices of misfortune emphasise that affluence is a sign of evil and that suffering in this world will be rewarded in the next." Therefore, these two distinctions can be applied not only to class structure within society but denomination and racial segregation within religion.

Weber defines the importance of societal class within religion by examining the difference between the two theodicies and to what class structures they apply. The concept of "work ethic" is attached to the theodicy of fortune; thus, because of the Protestant "work ethic", there was a contribution of higher class outcomes and more education among Protestants. Those without the work ethic clung to the theodicy of misfortune, believing wealth and happiness were granted in the afterlife. Another example of how this belief of religious theodicy influences class, is that those of lower status, the poor, cling to deep religiousness and faith as a way to comfort themselves and provide hope for a more prosperous future, while those of higher status cling to the sacraments or actions that prove their right of possessing greater wealth.

These two theodicies manifest in socioeconomic stratification within religiously similar groups. For example, U.S. American "mainline" Protestant churches with upper class congregations generally "promote order, stability, and conservatism, and in so doing proved to be a powerful source of legitimation of the status quo and of existing disparities in the distribution of wealth and power," because much of the wealth of the church comes from the congregation. In contrast, Pentecostal churches find their roots in among working class persons with a theodicy of misfortune. Instead of supporting status quo, these churches may advocate "change intended to advance the cause of justice and fairness".

The state, politics, and government

See also: Max Weber and German politics

In political sociology, one of Weber's most influential contributions is his essay "Politik als Beruf" ("Politics as a Vocation"), in which he defines "the state" as an entity that possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.

Accordingly, Weber proposed that politics is the sharing of state power between various groups, whereas political leaders are those who wield this power. As such, a politician, in Weber's view, must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic" (i.e. the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount), in that one cannot have the injunction to 'turn the other cheek'. An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood as a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it. The political realm is no realm for saints; a politician ought to marry the verantwortungsethik and the gesinnungsethik ("ethic of responsibility" and the "ethic of attitude") and must possess both a passion for his vocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).

Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (also known as three types of domination, legitimisation or authority):

1. Charismatic authority (familial and religious);
2. Traditional authority (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism); and
3. Legal authority (modern law and state, bureaucracy).

In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements, which can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction. Weber notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" into a more structured form of authority. In a pure type of traditional rule, sufficient resistance to a ruler can lead to a "traditional revolution". The move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, using a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end. 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.

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. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularisation of this term. 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.

Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucracy, which resulted in a need for a more efficient administrative system, including:

1. The growth in space and population being administered
2. The growth in complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out and the existence of a monetary economy.

Development of communication and transportation technologies made more efficient administration possible (and popularly requested) and democratisation and rationalisation of culture resulted in demands that the new system treat everybody equally.

Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and recorded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.

While recognising bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organisation and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms and the ongoing bureaucratisation as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalisation of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. To counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.

Social stratification

Weber also formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with social class, social status and political party as conceptually distinct elements. The three-component theory of stratification is in contrast to Karl Marx simpler theory of social class that ties all social stratification to what people own. In Weber's theory, issues of honour and prestige are important. This distinction is most clearly described in Weber's essay Classes, Staende, Parties, which was first published in his book Economy and Society.

The three components of Weber's theory are:

1. Social class – Based on economically determined relationship to the market (owner, renter, employee, etc.)
2. Status (German: Stand) – Based on non-economic qualities like honour, prestige, and religion
3. Party – Affiliations in the political domain

All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances" (opportunities to improve one's life). Weber scholars maintain a sharp distinction between the terms status and class, even though, in casual use, people tend to use them interchangeably.

Study of the city

The origin of a rational and inner-worldly ethic is associated in the Occident with the appearance of thinkers and prophets ... who developed in a social context that was alien to the Asiatic cultures. This context consisted of the political problems engendered by the bourgeois status-group of the city, without which neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor the development of Hellenistic thinking are conceivable.

—Max Weber in The City, 1921.

As part of his overarching effort to understand the unique development of the Western world, Weber produced a detailed general study of the city as the characteristic locus of the social and economic relations, political arrangements, and ideas that eventually came to define the West. This resulted in a monograph, The City. According to Weber, the city as a politically autonomous organisation of people living in close proximity, employed in a variety of specialised trades, and physically separated from the surrounding countryside, only fully developed in the West and to a great extent shaped its cultural evolution.

Weber argued that Judaism, early Christianity, theology, and later the political party and modern science, were only possible in the urban context that reached a full development in the West alone. He also saw in the history of medieval European cities the rise of a unique form of "non-legitimate domination" that successfully challenged the existing forms of legitimate domination (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal) that had prevailed until then in the Medieval world.

Economics

Weber regarded himself primarily as a "political economist", and all his professorial appointments were in economics, though today his contributions in that field are largely overshadowed by his role as a founder of modern sociology. As an economist, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics. 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.

Economy and Society

Main article: Economy and Society

Weber's magnum opus Economy and Society is a collection of his essays that he was working on at the time of his death in 1920. After his death, the final organisation and editing of the book fell to his widow Marianne. The final German form published in 1921 reflected very much Marianne's work and intellectual commitment. The composition includes a wide range of essays dealing with Weber's views regarding sociology, social philosophy, politics, social stratification, world religion, diplomacy, and other subjects.

Beginning in 1956, the German jurist Johannes Winckelmann began editing and organising the German edition of Economy and Society based on his study of the papers that Weber left at his death. English versions of the work were published as a collected volume in 1968, as edited by Gunther Roth and Claus Wittich. As a result of the various editions in German and English, there are differences between the organisation of the different volumes.

Methodological individualism

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 came into common usage in modern debates regarding 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. According to Weber's theses, social research cannot be fully inductive or descriptive, because understanding some phenomenon implies that the researcher must go beyond mere description and interpret it; interpretation requires classification according to abstract "ideal (pure) types". This, together with his antipositivistic argumentation (see Verstehen), can be taken as a methodological justification for the model of the "rational economic man" (homo economicus), which is at the heart of modern mainstream economics.

Marginalism and psychophysics

Unlike other historicists, Weber also accepted the marginal theory of value (also known as "marginalism") and taught it to his students. In 1908, Weber published an article in which he drew a sharp methodological distinction between psychology and economics and attacked the claims that the marginal theory of value in economics reflected the form of the psychological response to stimuli as described by the Weber–Fechner law. Max Weber's article has been cited as a definitive refutation of the dependence of the economic theory of value on the laws of psychophysics by Lionel Robbins, George Stigler, and Friedrich Hayek, though the broader issue of the relation between economics and psychology has come back into the academic debate with the development of "behavioral economics".

Economic history

Weber's best known work in economics concerned the preconditions for capitalist development, particularly the relations between religion and capitalism, which he explored in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as well as in his other works on the sociology of religion. He argued that bureaucratic political and economic systems emerging in the Middle Ages were essential in the rise of modern capitalism (including rational book-keeping and organisation of formally free labour), while they were a hindrance in the case of ancient capitalism, which had a different social and political structure based on conquest, slavery, and the coastal city-state. 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.

Although today Weber is primarily read by sociologists and social philosophers, Weber's work did have a significant influence on Frank Knight, one of the founders of the neoclassical Chicago school of economics, who translated Weber's General Economic History into English in 1927. 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."

Economic calculation

In order to make possible a rational use of the means of production, a system of in-kind accounting would have to determine "value" – indicators of some kind for the individual capital goods which could take over the role of the "prices" used in book valuation in modern business accounting. But it is not at all clear how such indicators could be established and in particular, verified; whether, for instance, they should vary from one production unit to the next (on the basis of economic location), or whether they should be uniform for the entire economy, on the basis of "social utility", that is, of (present and future) consumption requirements ... Nothing is gained by assuming that, if only the problem of a non-monetary economy were seriously enough attacked, a suitable accounting method would be discovered or invented. The problem is fundamental to any kind of complete socialisation. We cannot speak of a rational "planned economy" so long as in this decisive respect we have no instrument for elaborating a rational "plan".

—Max Weber in Economy and Society, 1922.

Weber, like his colleague Werner Sombart, regarded economic calculation and especially the double-entry bookkeeping method of business accounting, as one of the most important forms of rationalisation associated with the development of modern capitalism. Weber's preoccupation with the importance of economic calculation led him to critique socialism as a system that lacked a mechanism for allocating resources efficiently to satisfy human needs. 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 wrote that, under full socialism, the value of goods would have to be determined. However, there would be no clear method for doing so in that economic system. Planned economies were, therefore, irrational. This argument against socialism was made independently, at about the same time, by Ludwig von Mises. 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 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.

Inspirations

Kantianism

Weber's thinking was strongly influenced by German idealism, particularly by neo-Kantianism, which he had been exposed to through Heinrich Rickert, his professorial colleague at the University of Freiburg. Especially important to Weber's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incomprehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way the human mind focuses attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulting perceptions. Weber's opinions regarding the methodology of the social sciences show parallels with the work of contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher and pioneering sociologist Georg Simmel.

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. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the "deep tension between the Kantian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world is apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethical worldview."

Marxism

Another major influence in Weber's life was the writings of Karl Marx and the workings of socialist thought in academia and active politics. While Weber shares some of Marx's consternation with bureaucratic systems and maligns them as being capable of advancing their own logic to the detriment of human freedom and autonomy, Weber views conflict as perpetual and inevitable and does not host the spirit of a materially available utopia.

Writing in 1932, Karl Löwith contrasted the work of Marx and Weber, arguing that both were interested in the causes and effects of Western capitalism but that Marx viewed capitalism through the lens of alienation while Weber used the concept of rationalisation.

Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work as he maintained a deep, lifelong interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.

Economics and historicism

See: section on Weber and economics

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. However, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with this 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.

Occultism

New research suggests that some of Weber's theories, including his interest in the sociology of Far Eastern religion and elements of his theory of disenchantment, were actually shaped by Weber's interaction with contemporary German occult figures. He is known to have visited the Ordo Templi Orientis at Monte Verità shortly before articulating his idea of disenchantment. He is known to have met the German poet and occultist Stefan George and developed some elements of his theory of charisma after observing George. However, Weber disagreed with many of George's views and never formally joined George's occult circle. Weber may have also had his first exposure to Taoism, albeit in a Westernized form, through Gustav Gräser at Monte Verità.

Legacy

Weber's most influential work was on economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. But whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber was instrumental in developing an antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition in the social sciences. In this regard he belongs to a similar tradition as his German colleagues Werner Sombart, Georg Simmel, and Wilhelm Dilthey, who stressed the differences between the methodologies appropriate to the social and the natural sciences.

Weber influenced many later social theorists, such as Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, György Lukács and Jürgen Habermas. His analysis of modernity and rationalisation significantly influenced the critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. Different elements of his thought were emphasised by Ludwig Lachmann, Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, and Raymond Aron. The scholars who have examined his works philosophically, including Strauss, Hans Henrik Bruun, and Alfred Schütz, have traditionally looked at them through the lens of Continental philosophy. According to the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who had met Weber during his time at the University of Vienna, "The early death of this genius was a great disaster for Germany. Had Weber lived longer, the German people of today would be able to look to this example of an 'Aryan' who would not be broken by National Socialism." Weber's friend, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, described him as "the greatest German of our era". Weber's untimely death felt to Jaspers "as if the German world had lost its heart". Harvard professor Paul Tillich stated that Weber was "perhaps the greatest scholar in Germany of the nineteenth century".

Weberian scholarship's beginnings were delayed by the ongoing disruption of academic life in the Weimar Republic. Hyper-inflation caused Weber's support for parliamentary democracy to be countered by the decline the respect that professors had for it. The alienation that they experienced from politics caused many of them to become pessimistic and closer to the historical viewpoints espoused by Oswald Spengler in his The Decline of the West. Furthermore, universities were coming under increased state control and influence. After the Nazi Party took power, that process accelerated. The previously dominant style of sociology, that of Alfred Vierkandt and Leopold von Wiese, was largely replaced by a sociology that was dominated by support for the Nazis. Hans Freyer and Othmar Spann were representative of that movement, while Werner Sombart moved towards support for collectivism. The rise of the Nazi Party had relegated Weber's scholarship to a marginal position in the Germany academy. However, some Weberian scholars had left Germany while this process was going on, with most of them settling in the United States and the United Kingdom.

These scholars began to involve themselves in American and British scholarship at a time when Weber's writings, such as the General Economic History, were beginning to be translated into English. Talcott Parsons, an American scholar, was influenced by his readings of Weber and Sombart as a student in Germany during the 1920s. He obtained permission from Marianne Weber to publish a translation of The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in his 1930 essay collection, the Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion. This translated version, which was heavily edited by the publisher, was not initially successful. Parsons had been using this translation as part of his effort to create an academic sociology, which resulted in his 1937 book the Structure of Social Action. In it, Parson's argued that Weber and Durkheim were foundational figures in sociology. His book was not successful until after the Second World War. He then published a translation of Economy and Society as The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. His increasing prominence as a scholar led to this volume's own elevated influence. Other translations began to appear, including C. Wright Mills and Hans Gerth's From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology in 1946. Their volume was a collection of excerpts from Weber's writings. In the last year of the decade, Edward Shils edited a translation of Weber's Collected Essays on Methodology, which was published as The Methodology of the Social Sciences.

As the 1940s ended, Max Weber's reputation as a scholar had been rising through its interpretation through the lenses of Parsons's structural functionalism and Mills's conflict theory. Over the course of the next few decades, continued publications of translated versions of Weber's works began to appear, including ones on law, religion, music, and the city. Despite the flawed nature of many of the translations, it became possible to obtain a largely complete view of Weber's scholarship. That was still impeded by the unorganised way in which the translations were published, which prevented scholars from knowing the connections between the different texts. In 1968, a complete translation of Economy and Society in the way that it was prepared by Marianne Weber was published. While an interpretation of Weber that was separate from Parson's structural functionalism had begun with From Max Weber, a more political and historical interpretation was forwarded by Reinhard Bendix's 1948 Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, Ralf Dahrendorf's 1957 Class and Conflict in an Industrial Society, and John Rex's 1962 Key Problems in Sociological Theory. Raymond Aron's interpretation of Weber in his 1965 text, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, gave an alternative to Parson's perspective on the history of sociology. Weber, while still integral to it, was being framed as one of the three foundational figures, the other two were Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim. Anthony Giddens solidified that interpretation of the three scholars with the publication of his Capitalism and Modern Social Theory in 1971. After the end of the 1970s, more of Weber's less prominent publications began to be published. That effort coincided with the continued writings of critical commentaries on his works and idea, including the creation of a scholarly journal in 2000, Max Weber Studies, that is devoted to such scholarship.

The idea of publishing a collected edition of Max Weber's complete works was pushed forward by Horst Baier in 1972. A year later, the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe, a multi-volume set of all of Max Weber's writings, began to take shape. Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Wolfgang Schluchter, and Johannes Wincklemann were the initial editors. After Mommsen's death in 2004, Gangolf Hübinger succeeded him. The writings were organised in a combination of chronological order and by subject, with the material that was not intended to be published by Weber in purely chronological order. The final editions of each text were used, with the exception of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which was published in both its first and final forms. Mohr Siebeck was selected to publish the volumes. The project was presented to the academic community in 1981 with the publication of a prospectus that was colloquially referred to as the "green brochure". It outlined the three sections of the series: "Writings and Speeches", "Letters", and "Lecture Manuscripts and Lecture Notes". Four years later, the project entered publication. It concluded in June 2020 and contains forty-five volumes.

Bibliography

Main article: Max Weber bibliography

See also

• Interpretations of Max Weber's liberalism
• Robert Michels
• Sociology of law
• Speeches of Max Weber
• Werturteilsstreit

General and cited sources

• "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974". NobelPrize.org. 9 October 1974. Archived from the original on 17 May 2013.
• "Max Weber, 1864–1920". The New School. Archived from the original on 11 April 2011.
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Further reading

• Anker, Guy (1972). Sociologues allemands : Avec le dictionnaire de "l'Ethique protestante et l'esprit du capitalisme" de Max Weber (in French). Neuchâtel: Éditions de la Baconnière. OCLC 891927049.
• Bruun, Hans Henrik (2016). Science, Values, and Politics in Max Weber's Methodology: New Expanded Edition. Rethinking Classical Sociology (First ed.). New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315607832. ISBN 9780754645290. OCLC 70839734.
• Collins, Randall (1986). Weberian Sociological Theory (First ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511557682. ISBN 978-0-521-30698-0. OCLC 11969995.
• Green, Robert, ed. (1959). Protestantism and Capitalism: The Weber Thesis and Its Critics. Problems in European Civilization. Vol. 10. Boston: Heath. OCLC 305748.
• Kon, Igor, ed. (1989). "The Sociology of Max Weber". A History of Classical Sociology. Translated by Creighton, H. Campbell. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 255–311. ISBN 978-5-01-001102-4. OCLC 21208496. S2CID 142246536.
• Kemple, Thomas (2014). Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber's Calling. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781137377142. ISBN 978-1-137-37713-5. OCLC 865063421. S2CID 157353426.
• Kolko, Gabriel (1959). "A Critique of Max Weber's Philosophy of History". Ethics. 70 (1): 21–36. doi:10.1086/291239. ISSN 0014-1704. JSTOR 2379612. S2CID 144916098.
• Mitzman, Arthur (2017). Ross, Catherine (ed.). The Iron Cage: Historical Interpretation of Max Weber (First ed.). New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315132761. ISBN 978-1-315-13276-1. OCLC 1004370078.
• Ritzer, George; Stepnisky, Jeffrey (2022). "Max Weber". Sociological Theory (Eleventh ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE Publishing. pp. 110–153. ISBN 9781544354804. OCLC 1200834444.
• Roth, Guenther (2001). Max Webers deutsch-englische Familiengeschichte 1800–1950: mit Briefen und Dokumenten (in German). Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-147557-3. OCLC 47731615. S2CID 160694497.
• Stapelfeldt, Gerhard (2004). Kritik der ökonomischen Rationalität (in German). Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač. ISBN 978-3830077350.
• Swatos, William H. Jr., ed. (1990). Time, Place, and Circumstance: Neo-Weberian Studies in Comparative Religious History. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-26892-2. OCLC 988259994.
• Swedberg, Richard (1998). Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv346nqx. ISBN 978-0-691-07013-1. JSTOR j.ctv346nqx. OCLC 38249866. S2CID 143554466.
• Weber, Marianne (2017). Max Weber: A Biography (Second ed.). Abingdon-on-Thames, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203786109. ISBN 978-0-203-78610-9. OCLC 1100679706.
• Weber, Max (1969). Rheinstein, Max; Shils, Edward (eds.). Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society (Third ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-55651-5. OCLC 468399379.

External links

• Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe
• Max Weber Studies
• Sung Ho Kim. "Max Weber". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Weber's The Protestant Ethic on In Our Time at the BBC
• Charisma on In Our Time at the BBC
• Newspaper clippings about Max Weber in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Online editions

• Works by or about Max Weber at Internet Archive
• Max Weber at Zeno.org
• Max Weber at SocioSite
• Works by Max Weber at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)