Max Weber

1) His Biography:

Max Weber was an early bloomer. He attended college and earned a PhD before having a mental collapse in 1897 that prevented him from working for five years. His most wellknown book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was released in 1905. In 1918, he started teaching again; he passed away in 1920. He is regarded as the founder of contemporary sociology.

On April 21, 1864, Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was born. His mother, Helene Fallenstein Weber, favored a more austere way of life, while his father, Max Weber Sr., was an engaged politician with a taste for “earthly pleasures.” This severely impacted Max because of the tensions it caused in their marriage. Nevertheless, Weber flourished in their intellectually stimulating home, which was full with famous thinkers and vigorous conversation. He hated his teachers and hated school as a child, but he devoured great literature on his own.

After high school, Weber attended Heidelberg University for three semesters to study law, history, philosophy, and economics before serving a year in the military. He proceeded to the University of Berlin and spent one semester in Göttingen when he began his studies in 1884. He passed the bar exam in 1886, received his Ph.D. in 1889, finished his habitation thesis, and was able to get employment in academia.

In 1893, Weber wed Marianne Schnitger, a distant cousin. The following year, he was hired to teach economics at Freiburg University before coming back to Heidelberg in 1896 as a professor. Max and his father had a fight in 1897 that went unresolved. In 1897, after his father passed away, Weber experienced a mental collapse. He struggled with melancholy, anxiety, and insomnia, which prevented him from being able to teach. He cycled in and out of sanatoriums for the following five years.

When Weber was finally able to return to the workforce in 1903, he was hired as the journal’s editor. He was given the opportunity to speak at the Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904, and later rose to prominence with the publication of his renowned essays, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. His theory that Protestantism, especially Calvinism, was responsible for the development of contemporary capitalism was covered in these writings, which were published in 1904 and 1905.

Weber authored three more books on religion in a sociological context after serving as a volunteer in the medical service during World War I. These publications, The Religion of China (1916), The Religion of India (1916), and Ancient Judaism (1917–1918), compared the faiths and cultures of these three countries with those of the West by analyzing the influence of many elements, including economic and religious ones, on historical outcomes. In 1918, Weber started teaching again. He had planned to write more books on Christianity and Islam, but the Spanish flu caused him to pass away in Munich on June 14, 1920. Economy and Society, his unfinished book, was edited by his wife and released in 1922.

Modern sociology has its roots in Weber’s writings. His impact can be felt in sociology, politics, theology, and economics, among other fields.

2) Main Works:

The History of Medieval Business Organizations:

Max Weber, a German economist and sociologist, completed his doctoral dissertation on The History of Medieval Business Organizations in 1889. In it, Weber studied numerous legal precepts in light of the fact that in the Middle Ages, many people shared in the profit, risk, and cost of a business.

Economy and Society:

It is regarded as one of Weber’s most significant pieces of writing. The book’s extremely broad focus includes a wide range of topics like sociology, public administration, economics, politics, and religion.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism:

According to Weber’s theory in the book, capitalism in Northern Europe developed because the Protestant (especially Calvinist) ethic encouraged numerous individuals to labor in the secular sector, create their own businesses, engage in trade, and amass wealth for investments. In other words, the unplanned and uncoordinated birth of modern capitalism was significantly influenced by the Protestant work ethic.

Aside from Calvinists, Weber also discusses other religious groups in his book, including Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, and Moravians (in particular, the Herrnhut-based community under Count von Zinzendorf’s spiritual direction), as well as Lutherans (particularly Pietists, but also notes distinctions between traditional Lutherans and Calvinists).

The Stock Exchange:

In his investigation into the stock market, Weber focused on two issues. First, he demonstrated how commercialization could both assist establish and destroy cultural norms, and in certain cases, it could do both simultaneously. For example, it had eroded patriarchal traditions while creating opportunities for farm laborers.

The stock exchange has helped trade grow, but it has also opened up new opportunities for crime and abuse. Second, Weber demonstrated that, while beliefs about pursuing economic interests must be examined separately, economic behaviour is a crucial component of those concepts.

General Economic History in English:

The book of economic theory known as Wirtschaftsgeschichte was written by Max Weber’s students using lecture notes from the economist. It is noteworthy for recreating and addressing the theoretical holes in Weber’s work using both his published and unpublished works.

3) Main Themes in his Writings:

Sociology of Religion:

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was the starting point for Weber’s work on the sociology of religion, which continued with analyses of Confucianism and Taoism in China, Confucianism and Buddhism in India, and Ancient Judaism. The impact of religious beliefs on economic activity, the link between social stratification and religious beliefs, and the distinctive features of Western civilisation were his three main themes.

His objective was to determine the causes of the divergent growth routes taken by Western and Eastern cultures. While noting that other variables also had a role in the creation of the economic systems in Europe and the United States, Weber continued to hold that Puritan (and more broadly, Protestant) theological ideals had had a significant influence on these developments. Weber highlighted “disenchantment of the world” as a key characteristic of Western society.

Sociology of Politics and Government:

The most important essay by Weber is regarded as Politics as a Vocation in the sociology of politics and governance. Therein, Weber revealed the concept of the state that has grown to be so essential to Western social theory: the state is that organization that has the exclusive right to use physical force in the course of official business, which it may choose to delegate as it sees proper. Any action in which the state may participate in order to affect the relative allocation of force is referred to as politics.

A politician must not adhere to the “true Christian ethic,” which Weber defined as the Sermon on the Mount’s moral code, or the command to turn the other cheek. A person who follows such an ethic should be viewed as a saint instead since, in Weber’s view, only saints are able to do so properly. Politics is not a place for saints. A politician needs to balance the ethics of responsibility and ultimate aims. They also need to be passionate about what they do and be able to separate themselves from the people they are trying to help (the governed).

Political leadership dominance and authority were divided into three categories by Weber: charismatic dominance (familial and religious), traditional dominance (patriarchs, patrimonialism, and feudalism), and legal dominance (modern law and state, bureaucracy). He believed that every historical relationship between rulers and ruled included components that could be examined in light of this tripartite division. He also pointed out that charismatic leadership eventually “routinizes” into a more organized form of authority due to its inherent volatility.

Weber is credited with a number of contemporary public administration’s features. The term “Weberian civil service” refers to a traditional, hierarchically structured civil service of the continental kind, however this is merely one ideal form of public administration and government articulated in his magnum opus, Economy and Society (1922). Weber described rationalization in this work as a transition from a value-oriented organization and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organization and action (of which bureaucratization is a part). Weber claims that this leads to a “polar night of icy darkness,” in which people are imprisoned by rule-based, rational control due to an increase in human life’s rationality.

Due to the elimination of the free market and its mechanisms, socialism in Russia would, as Weber correctly anticipated, result in overbureaucratization (visible, for instance, in the scarcity economy), rather than the “withering away of the state” (as Karl Marx had predicted would happen in a communist society).

Economics:

Max Weber made significant contributions to economics as well, though he is best known today as one of the foremost researchers and architects of modern sociology. However, economics was not nearly as advanced during his lifetime as it is now. Weber is regarded among economists as a member of the “Youngest” German Historical School. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, one of his most well-known works, is his most significant contribution to the topic. The contrasts between religions and the relative affluence of their adherents were covered in this key essay. Werner Sombart’s study of the same phenomenon, which matched Weber’s work, placed the emergence of capitalism in Judaism. Weber acknowledged the pre-Calvinist existence of capitalist society. He asserted that in those circumstances, religious beliefs did not encourage capitalism but rather placed restrictions on it. Only the Calvinist-based Protestant ethic aggressively promoted wealth gain as a manifestation of God’s grace.

Weber’s work on methodology, including his theories of Verstehen (also known as “understanding” or “interpretative sociology”) and antipositivism (known as “humanistic sociology”), is one of his other primary contributions to economics (as well as to social science in general).

In his three-part theory of stratification, Max Weber distinguished “social class,” “status class,” and “party class” (or political class) as conceptually separate components. Firstly, an economically defined relationship to the market is the foundation of social class (owner, renter, employee, etc.). Secondly, the status class system is founded on values other than money, such as honor, prestige, and religion. Finally, the term “party class” relates to political ties. What Weber referred to as “life chances” are impacted by all three aspects.

According to Weber (1949: 64–66), economics should be a broad field of study that includes both economic and non-economic phenomena that may have an impact on the economy. These latter phenomena are known as “economically relevant phenomena” and “economically conditioned phenomena,” respectively. Weber used the term “social economics” to describe this large branch of economics. The ideas of Weber in this area created a forum for fruitful cross-disciplinary discussion between sociologists and economists. One cannot disregard the importance Weber gave to economic history and economic sociology in the study of economic theory in order to comprehend his viewpoint.

4) His Influence Today:

The iron cage theory developed by Max Weber in 1905 is even more relevant today than it was then. In other words, Weber argues that the economic and technological relationships that sprang from and organized capitalism production ended up becoming basic forces in society. Therefore, if you are born into a society that is structured in this way, with the hierarchical social structure and division of labor that go along with it, you are forced to live in this system. As a result, it profoundly influences one’s life and perspective to the point where one is likely unable to even envision what life may be like under different circumstances. As a result, individuals who are born into the cage follow its rules, perpetuating the cage. Weber believed that the iron cage was a significant obstacle to freedom because of this.

Sociology in the 20th century was significantly influenced by Weber’s sociological theories. He created the idea of “ideal types,” which were instances of historical events that could be used as benchmarks to contrast and evaluate various societies. This method studies the relationships between the fundamental components of social institutions. His research into the sociology of religion opened up new avenues for examination and understanding of other cultures.

Max Weber was one of the first academics to emphasize the moral and spiritual aspects of economic activity in his renowned work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For contemporary social scientists and other philosophers, his understanding of the ethical and spiritual prerequisites for effective economic output continues to be an inspiration. His comprehension of and insights into the flaws of capitalism have also had a lasting effect. He came to the conclusion that rather than being the consequence of purely religious fervor, the capitalist spirit was more likely to have its roots in the psychological tensions that Calvinist theological commitments tended to implant in the minds of the believers. According to Weber, the predestination-related uneasiness and inner loneliness that resulted in the Calvinist school of thought drove believers to essentially enslave themselves in materialistic pursuits while simultaneously causing an unprecedented rise in economic progress. He also noted that after capitalism lost its religious overtones, it transformed into a secular ethic with “inexorable power,” which led him to disparage capitalists as “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.”

Weber was adamantly independent and would not toe any certain line. Despite his numerous forays into politics, Weber himself defined a true politician as one who can make concessions in order to forward his objectives. For Weber, the gods had abandoned the world of modernity because man had driven them out—rationalization had taken the place of mysticism. He saw a world without emotion, passion, or dedication—one that is unmoved by personal appeal and fealty, by elegance, or by the morals of charismatic heroes. The twentieth century in many respects confirmed his worst worries, but it also gave rise to remarkable advancements in every facet of human existence.

The dying words of Weber were reportedly, “The Truth is the Truth”. The amount of truth that this intellectual giant could find was ultimately constrained by his circumstances. He was suffering from intense tensions brought on by his ties with his family and the restrictive political climate.