Weber, Max

Max Weber
German sociologist and political economist
Born	21 April 1864(1864-04-21) Erfurt, Prussian Saxony
Died	14 June 1920(1920-06-14) (aged 56) Munich, Bavaria

Maximilian Carl Emil "Max" Weber (German pronunciation: [ˈmaks ˈveːbɐ]; 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.^[1] Weber's major works dealt with the rationalization and "disenchantment" he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity.^[2] Weber was, along with his associate Georg Simmel, a central figure in the establishment of methodological antipositivism; presenting sociology as a non-empiricist field which must study social action through resolutely subjective means.^[3] He is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science,^[4] and has variously been described as the most important classic thinker in the social sciences.^[5][6]

Weber is most famous for his thesis in economic sociology, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this text, Weber argued that ascetic Protestantism particular to the Occident was one of the major "elective affinities" in determining the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state. Arguing against what he felt was Marx's overly-materialistic interpretation of the development of capitalism, he instead emphasised cultural influences embedded in religion.^[7] The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest work in Weber's broader project in the sociology of religion: he would go on to examine the religion of China, the religion of India, and Ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of Capitalism, and to differing forms of social stratification.

In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which 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 organizations. Weber was the first to recognize several diverse aspects of social authority, which he respectively categorized according to their charismatic, traditional, and legal forms. His analysis of bureaucracy thus noted that modern state institutions are based on a form of rational-legal authority. Weber's thought regarding the rationalizing and secularizing tendencies of modern Western society (sometimes described as the "Weber Thesis") would come to facilitate critical theory, particularly in the work of thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas.

After the First World War, Weber was among the founders of the German Democratic Party. He was one of the key drafters of the ill-fated, post-World War I Weimar Constitution of Germany, and specifically of the Article 48 which would have far-reaching consequences over the destinies of the country.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Achievements 3 Sociology of religion 3.1 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 3.2 The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism 3.3 The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism 3.4 Ancient Judaism 4 Sociology of politics and government 5 Economics 5.1 As a critic of socialism 6 Critical responses to Weber 6.1 Historical critiques 6.2 Critiques on Weber's historicism 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Biography

Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt in Thuringia, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent politician in the National Liberal Party (Germany) and a civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein, a Protestant and a Calvinist, with strong moral absolutist ideas.^[8] Weber Sr.'s engagement with public life immersed the family home in politics, as his salon received many prominent scholars and public figures.

The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were 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 of nations".^[9]

In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student.^[10]

In 1886 Weber passed the examination for "Referendar", comparable to the bar association examination in the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of history. He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a doctoral dissertation on legal history entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations.^[10] Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law.^[11] Having thus become a "Privatdozent", Weber was now qualified to hold a German professorship.^{[citation needed]}

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",^[12] the new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as the solving of the wide-ranging social problems of the age, and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic problems. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left leaning Evangelical Social Congress.^[13] In 1890 the "Verein" established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht, meaning the influx of foreign 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 its results.^[12] The final report was widely acclaimed as an excellent piece of empirical research,^{[weasel words]} and cemented Weber's reputation as an expert in agrarian economics.^{[citation needed]}

In 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist and author in her own right,^[14] who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death. The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at Freiburg University,^[11] before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896.^[11] Next year, Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved.^[15] After this, Weber became increasingly prone to nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor.^[11] His condition forced him to reduce his teaching, and leave his last course in the fall of 1899 unfinished. After spending months in a sanatorium during the summer and fall of 1900, Weber and his wife traveled to Italy at the end of the year, and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902.^{[citation needed]}

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^[16] next to his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart.^[17] In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It became his most famous work,^[18] and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems.^[19] This essay was the only one of his works that was published as a book during his lifetime. Also that year, he visited the United States and participated in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) at St. Louis. Despite his successes, 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.^[16] In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, presumably because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals at the time.^[20]

During the First World War, Weber served for a time as director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg.^[16][21] In 1915 and 1916 he sat on commissions that tried to retain German supremacy in Belgium and Poland after the war. Weber's views on war, as well as on expansion of the German empire, changed throughout the war.^[20][21][22] He became a member of the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. In the same year, Weber became a consultant to the German Armistice Commission at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution.^[16] He argued in favor of inserting Article 48 into the Weimar Constitution.^[23] This article was later used by Adolf Hitler to institute rule by decree, thereby allowing his government to suppress opposition and obtain dictatorial powers. Weber's contributions to German politics remain a controversial subject to this day.

Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then in 1919 at the University of Munich.^[16] In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but ultimately never held a personal sociology appointment. Many colleagues and students in Munich argued against him for his speeches and left-wing attitude during the German Revolution of 1918 and 1919, with some right-wing students holding protests in front of his home.^[20] Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on 14 June 1920.

[edit] Achievements

Weber's most famous work relates to economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim,^[24] he is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. In his time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist.^[24][25] The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the depth of his social theory:

The affinity between capitalism and Protestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, the force of charisma in religion as well as in politics, the all-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic price of progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offsprings of leadership, the 'disenchantment' of the modern world together with the never-ending power of religion, the antagonistic relation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these are key concepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber's thinking.

– Radkau, Joachim Max Weber: A Biography 2005^[26]

Whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber created and worked – like Werner Sombart, his friend and then the most famous representative of German sociology – in the antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition.^[27] 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.^[27]

We know of no scientifically ascertainable ideals. To be sure, that makes our efforts more arduous than in the past, since we are expected to create our ideals from within our breast in the very age of subjectivist culture.

– Max Weber Economy and society 1909^[28]

Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action which he differentiated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental.^[29]

[Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, and any kind of priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.

– Max Weber The Nature of Social Action 1922, ^[30]

Weber began his studies of rationalisation 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,^[31] shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. In Calvinism in particular, but also in Lutheranism, Christian piety towards God was expressed through or in one's secular vocation. Calvin, in particular, viewed the expression of the work ethic as a sign of "election". The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious, and so the latter were eventually discarded.^[32] Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classifications of authority into three types—legitimate, traditional, and charismatic. In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalization.

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

– Jürgen Habermas Modernity's Consciousness of Time, ^[2]

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.^[33]

[edit] Sociology of religion

Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion started with the essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which grew out of heavy "field work" among Protestant sects in America, and continued with the analysis of The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism. His work on other religions was interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following Ancient Judaism with studies of Psalms, Book of Jacob, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.^[34] His three main themes were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, the relation between social stratification and religious ideas, and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilization.^[35]

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 civilization.^[35] In the analysis of his findings, Weber maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Protestant) religious ideas had had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of Europe and the United States, 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 systematization of government administration, and economic enterprise.^[35] 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".^[35]

[edit] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Weber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus) is his most famous work.^[18] It is 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. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber put forward the thesis that Calvinist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. He noted the shift of Europe's economic center after the Reformation away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland and Germany.Weber also noted that societies having more Protestants were those that have a more developed capitalist economy.^[36]

Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit.^[37] 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.^[31] Weber argued that there were many reasons to look for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformation.^[38]

This theory is often viewed as a reversal of Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other aspects of it.^[31]

Weber abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on the book The 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, which is laying groundwork for comparative analysis of religion and society.^[39] 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.

[edit] 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.^[40] He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese patrimonialism and officialdom, and Chinese religion, as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route.^[40]

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 where just means to the final goal, and here they were divided by a key difference. The Confucianism 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. 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.^[41]

[edit] 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.^[42]

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 otherwoldy 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 believes are centered on magic. In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike. Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies, notably from the Near East region to those found on the Asiatic mainland, focusing more on exemplary ways to live one's life. It was those differences that prevented the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chinese and Indian civilizations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to prove this theory.^[43]

[edit] 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.^[44] It is especially visible when the innerworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity is contrasted with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India.^[44] Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections.^[44] This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.^[45]

Weber notes that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of modern Occident state, as its influence were as important to those of Hellenistic and Roman cultures.

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

[edit] Sociology of 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.^[46] Weber wrote that politics derives from power, as is to be understood as any activity in which the state might engage itself in order to influence the relative distribution of force. A politician must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic", understood by Weber as being the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, that is to say, the injunction to turn the other cheek. 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. The political realm is no realm for saints. A politician ought to marry the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility, and must possess both a passion for his vocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).^[47]

Weber distinguished three pure types of political leadership, domination and authority:

1. charismatic domination (familial and religious),
2. traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism), and
3. legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).^[48]

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.^[49] He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinize" 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, utilising a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end.^[50] 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 is also well-known for his critical study of the bureaucratisation of society, the rational ways in which formal social organizations apply the ideal type characteristics of a bureaucracy. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularization of this term.^[51] Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him, and a classic, hierarchically organized civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service", although this is only one ideal type of public administration and government described in his magnum opus Economy and Society (1922), and one that he did not particularly like himself – he only thought it particularly efficient and successful. In this work, Weber outlines a description, which has become famous, of rationalization (of which bureaucratization is a part) as a shift from a value-oriented organization and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organization and action (legal-rational authority). The result, according to Weber, is a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control.^[52] Weber's bureaucracy studies also led him to his analysis that socialism in Russia would lead to over-bureaucratization rather than to the "withering away of the state" (as Karl Marx had predicted would happen in communist society).^[53]

[edit] Economics

Weber's contributions to economics are many. While Weber is best known and recognized today as one of the leading scholars and founders of modern sociology, he also accomplished much in other fields, notably economics, although this is largely forgotten today among orthodox economists, who pay very little attention to his works. Weber was an important influence on Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian school of economics[3]. During his life distinctions between the social sciences were less clear than they are now, and Weber considered himself a historian and an economist first, sociologist distant second.^[24][25]

From the point of view of the economists, he is a representative of the "Youngest" German historical school of economics.^[54] Perhaps his most valued contributions to the field of economics is his famous work on the differences between religions and their attitude toward capitalism, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the idea he later explored in his other works from the sociology of religion.^[54]

Weber's work on methodology is often applied to economics. Here, most notable are theories of "Verstehen" (known as understanding or interpretative sociology) and of antipositivism (known as humanistic sociology).^[54] The doctrine of Interpretative Sociolog