Max Weber

Max Weber, along with Karl Marx Emil Durkheim, is regarded as one of the primary architects of contemporary social science and is arguably the most influential social theorist of the 20th century. Weber's extensive contributions significantly reoriented the fields of law, economics, political science, plus religious studies, and they also provided a key stimulus for the emergence of new academic disciplines like sociology. His methodological writings played a key role in modern social science's self-identification as a separate field of study; both hermeneutic critics and empirical positivists continue to cite him as an inspiration.

More significantly, the "rationalization thesis," a comprehensive meta-historical study of the West's domination in contemporary times, and the "Protestant Ethic thesis," a non-Marxist ancestor of modern capitalism, are Weber's two most well-known contributions. These two theses, taken together, contributed to his rise to prominence as one of modernity's foundational philosophers. Furthermore, his intense involvement in politics and interest in the subject matter produced a distinct kind of political realism akin to that of Hobbes and Machiavelli. Therefore, Max Weber had a significant impact on a wide range of disciplinary, methodological, ideological, and philosophical views that are still relevant today and are becoming more so.

Early Life and Education and Training

Due to Weber's father's extensive involvement in public life, politics, and academia were a constant presence in their family. It was in this intellectual atmosphere that Weber and his brother flourished.

In the biography written by his wife, Max not only graduated from high school in 1882 but also "helped his fellow students to cheat their way through." She said that although he was a bright student, his teachers found him problematic and had some concerns about his moral development.

He followed in his father's footsteps and registered at the University of Heidelberg at the age of 18. He was studying law there. At the fraternity house owned by his father, he also started fencing. According to all accounts, he had a very social existence in college, going out to other bourgeoisie families, consuming alcohol, fencing, and even participating in a dueling match that left him with a permanent scar on his face. Marianne informs us that he needed to improve at preserving money and would frequently request raises to his Allowance.

He took a break in his second academic year to enlist in the armed forces, but he struggled with the demands of the service. Even though he rose to the rank of squad leader, he wrote a letter home lamenting "the military the existence has begun to become too stupid as well as loathsome, particularly since in the past few weeks it has created no room any kind for anything else." After completing officer's training, he developed a much stronger appreciation for the military and left the year that followed feeling more patriotic and appreciative of the "machine."

After going back to school, he eventually graduated in 1889 with a law degree and a dissertation on the development of commercial businesses in the Middle Ages. He studied more and taught lessons when he could while residing in his family's home for seven years. It was when he married his cousin Marianne Schnitger in 1893 that he left his family home. Marianne informs us that he was oppressed by his father at this time, who exercised strong authority over his household and demanded obedience from his kids as well as his wife, who endured a tremendous deal of suffering. She claims that Max "was reserved never asked for relief" from the issues by having an open dialogue about them. He suppressed everything. He really wanted to get out.

They rapidly grew close when his cousin, who had moved from the farm to the city, came to visit.

Marianne describes their engagement as follows:

Their dazzling humor and mischievous banter softened the serious nature of their relationship.

Although Weber said, "Every jackass here throws me an important look asks me if something happened to me," the marriage proposal was still meant to remain a secret. I never would have imagined that I was so happy.

Career and Later Life

Born into a distinguished family, Maximilian Carl Emil "Max" Weber (1864-1920) was born in the Prussian city of Erfurt. Max Sr., his father, was born into a Westphalian family of textile merchants and entrepreneurs and later became a lawyer National Liberal MP during the Wilhelmine era. Helene, his mother, was descended from the distinguished Huguenot houses of Fallenstein and Souchay, who had for many centuries produced academics and public servants. Alfred, his younger brother, was also a well-known sociologist and political economist.

Max Weber was reportedly raised in a wealthy, sophisticated, and international family environment that was closely involved in the political, social, cultural institutions of the German Bürgertum [Roth 2000]. Additionally, his parents stood for the two, frequently at odds, polarities of identity—worldly statesmanship and austere scholarship—against which their oldest son would battle throughout his life.

After receiving his legal education primarily at the universities of Heidelberg along with Berlin, Weber went on to write his Habilitationsschrift under August Meitzen on Roman law and agricultural history and his dissertation under Levin Goldschmidt as well as Rudolf von Gneist on medieval trading companies, which Theodor Mommsen later reviewed. He was thinking about going into law or public service when he got a big research assignment from the Verein für Sozialpolitik, which Gustav Schmoller led. He wrote the so-called East Elbian Report, which was about Polish migrant laborers replacing German agricultural laborers in East Prussia.

This early triumph, which was greeted with great praise and political debate upon publication, brought him his first academic position at Freiburg in 1894, which was followed by a prominent professorship in the field of political economy at Heidelberg two years later. Soon after they were married, Weber his wife Marianne—a self-described intellectual and pioneer of women's rights—found themselves at the heart of Heidelberg's thriving intellectual and cultural scene.

Intellectual giants like Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart, and Georg Jellinek were drawn to the so-called "Weber Circle," which eventually drew in a number of younger researchers like Marc Bloch, Robert Michels, György Lukács. In addition, Weber was involved in public life. He remained a Young Turk in the Verein and kept a close relationship with the liberal Evangelische-soziale Kongress, particularly with Friedrich Naumann, the group's head of the younger generation. He cemented his status as a renowned political economist and vocal public intellectual during this period.

After his father's unexpected death in 1897—which was sparked by a fight with Weber—all these productive years arrived to an abrupt end when Weber suffered a psychological breakdown [Radkau 2011, 53-69]. The disruption to his routine as a scholar and teacher was so severe that he eventually stopped doing his normal teaching duties in 1903 and did not return until 1919. He was gravely crippled and could not write as much as he once could, but he was still able to devote himself to studying a wide range of religious and philosophical subjects. His scholarly work took a new turn during this time, as seen by the publication of The Protestant Ethic the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905) and other methodological writings. His lengthy travel to America in 1904, which had a profound impact on his conception of modernity in general, is another significant aspect of this era [Scaff 2011].

Following this time spent primarily as a personal scholar, he gradually returned to taking part in a variety of public and scholarly endeavors. He assumed editorial leadership of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik with Edgar Jaffé and Sombart, transforming it into a preeminent social science publication of the time and his new institutional platform. Partially due to his mounting dissatisfaction with Verein's conservative policies and lack of scientific rigor, he co-founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie in 1909. He served as its first treasurer before leaving in 1912. He worked extremely hard in two areas during this time of his life, which was interrupted by the start of World War I in 1914: the comparative sociology of global religions and his contribution to the Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, which will be released posthumously as Economy as well as Society. These writings, together with the significant methodological essays he wrote during the period, would go a long way toward cementing Weber's status as one of the pioneers of contemporary social science.

Weber's role in public life took an unforeseen turn with the outbreak of World War I. Like almost all German intellectuals at the time, he began the war as a passionate defender of his country. Still, as he became disillusioned with German war policy, he changed his image and became one of the most outspoken opponents of the Kaiser government. As a public intellectual, he wrote articles for the press and sent confidential reports to government officials to warn against the policy of Belgian annexation and unrestricted submarine warfare. As the war dragged on, these warnings turned into a call for the general democratization of the authoritarian nation (Obrigkeitsstaat) that was Wilhelmine Germany. By 1917, Weber was actively pushing for a comprehensive constitutional overhaul for Germany following the war, one that would grant all citizens the right to vote and give the parliament more authority.

When defeat finally arrived in 1918, Germany discovered in Weber a prominent public intellectual, potentially even an aspiring statesman, with untarnished liberal credentials and a prime position to shape the post-war reconstruction process. He was invited to serve on the German delegation to Versaille and the draught board of the Weimar Constitution; he even unsuccessfully sought a parliamentary seat on the liberal Democratic Party ticket. In those roles, however, he opposed both the Versailles Treaty and the German Revolution (all too quixotically) and, with all too much reason, placed himself in an untenable stance that went against the political consensus of the day. All versions point to his campaign for a strong plebiscitary presidency in the Weimar Constitution as the only result of his political actions.

Feeling dissatisfied with the politics of the day, he recommitted himself to his academic interests. While gathering his disparate writings on religion into the massive three-volume Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie [GARS hereafter], he taught briefly in turn at the universities of Munich (where he gave the much-lauded lectures, Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation) and Vienna in 1919. His tragic death from pneumonia in Munich in 1920 brought an end to all of his rekindled academic endeavors (perhaps brought on by the Spanish flu). Max Weber is 56 years of age.

Weber and German politics

According to Weber, the establishment of an empire was the only means by which German culture could endure. He had an impact on German strategy towards Eastern Germany. He suggested banning Polish laborers from Russia as well as Austria-Hungary in 1894. But in 1895, he changed his mind after being moved by the views of the Russian liberal party, which sought to transform Russian nationalism by recognizing ethnic minorities as legitimate Russian citizens.

Weber promoted democracy as a system for choosing capable leaders. Democracy, in his opinion, is a charismatic system in which the "demagogue imposes his agenda on the masses." Because of this, Weber has come under heavy fire from the European left for inadvertently helping to lay the theoretical foundation for Adolf Hitler's leadership.

Weber harbored strong anti-socialist sentiments and detested the Marxist parties' anti-nationalist posture. He was taken aback by the Russian communists' ability to endure for more than six months after dismantling the country's bureaucracy and old elite.

Weber was adamantly against conservatives who attempted to impede the working classes' democratic liberation. Weber's professional and personal correspondence demonstrates a deep distaste for the anti-Semitism prevalent at his age. If Weber had lived to witness the actions of the Nazis, it is unlikely that he would have been in favor of them.

His Work

Weber's early writings were mostly focused on economics and legal history. During this period, he produced a number of books and dissertations. His dissertation on middle-age trading companies was published in 1889. He also wrote books on Roman agrarian history, farm labor in Eastern Germany, the stock exchange, and state and economic policy. It took him a few years to be able to return to work after the death of his father. The Protestant Ethic, as well as the Spirit of Capitalism, an essay he penned, was originally published in 1904. With this piece, he begins writing more sociologically. Almost everything remained incomplete when he passed away, despite the fact that he kept writing and giving lectures in these latter years.

Contributions from Marianne Weber, particularly his well-known works on society and the economy (1922) General Economic History (1924),helped to collect and publish this later work. The majority of the translations that the English-speaking world is familiar with were done in the 1940s and 1950s, with many of them being authored by Harvard University's renowned mid-century American sociologist Talcott Parsons.

Major Publications

• The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic (1904)
• The City (1912)
• Religion and Sociology (1922)
• History of General Economics (1923)
• Published in 1925, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization

Achievements

Max Weber was one of the pioneers of contemporary sociology, in addition to Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Vilfredo Pareto. Weber, like Werner Sombart, founded and worked in the ant positivist, idealist, and hermeneutic traditions, whereas Pareto & Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist school. These writings sparked the ant positivistic revolution in the social sciences, emphasizing how human social acts, in particular, distinguish the social sciences from the natural sciences. Although Weber's early research was in the field of industrial sociology, his subsequent contributions to the sociology of religion and the sociology of government have made him most famous.

In The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber introduced the reader to his research on rationalization. He described how the goals of some Protestant denominations—especially Calvinism—shifted towards the logical pursuit of financial gain as a manner of claiming their blessings. He contended that this doctrine's intellectual foundations quickly outgrew its religious foundations and became incompatible with them, leading to its final abandonment. In his later writings, Weber carried out more research on this topic, particularly in his investigations on bureaucracy and authority classifications.

Conclusion

Max Weber, one of the pioneers of modern social science, was born in Germany in 1864. He was well-known in the country for his academic and political works when he passed away 56 years later. Still, his reputation has grown internationally during the following 40 years as a result of how his work has been received. Among the greatest contributions to the social science of the 20th century are "The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism," "The Economic Ethics of the World Religions," and his masterpiece, "Economy and Society," which examines the interactions between politics, economics, law, and religion.

Weber's widow Marianne, a well-known feminist writer, set the stage for the posthumous Weber reception by following up her publication of his complete works with one of the best biographies in a generation that produced a number of significant accounts of itself. Even though Marianne Weber's 1926 book was not published in English until ten years ago, its significance was well-known at the time. Robert A. Nisbet, a sociologist, described it as "a moving and strongly felt biographical memoir." The work is "the starting point of all additional research into Max Weber's life influence," according to historian Gerhard Masur.