Painter and sculptor, born in Bia?ystok, NE Poland. Emigrating with his family to Brooklyn (1891), he studied at the Pratt Institute (18981900), in Paris with Matisse (1908), then settled in New York (1909). His paintings and sculptures were influenced by Expressionism, as seen in The Geranium (1911), and by Cubism, as in Chinese Restaurant (1915). He moved to Garden City, Long Island (1920) and began his representational period. By the late 1930s he focused on religious subjects, as in Adoration of the Moon (1944).
| Maximilian Weber | |
|---|---|
| German political economist and sociologist | |
| Born |
April 21, 1864 Erfurt, Germany |
| Died |
June 14, 1920 Munich, Germany |
Maximilian Weber (IPA: [maks ˈveːbɐ]) (April 21, 1864 – June 14, 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who is considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration.
His major works deal with rationalisation in sociology of religion and government, but he also contributed much in the field of economics. His most famous work is his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which began his work in the sociology of religion. In this work, Weber argued that religion was one of the non-exclusive reasons for the different ways the cultures of the Occident and the Orient have developed, and stressed importance of particular characteristics of ascetic Protestantism which led to the development of capitalism, bureaucracy and rational-legal state in the West. In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. His most known contributions are often referred to as the 'Weber Thesis'.
Life and career
Weber was born in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a prominent politician and civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein. 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. It seemed clear that Weber would pursue advanced studies in the social sciences.
In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. Weber joined his father's duelling fraternity, and chose as his major study Weber Sr.'s field of law. Along with his law coursework, young Weber attended lectures in economics and studied medieval history and theology.
In the fall of 1884, Weber returned to his parents' home to study at the University of Berlin. For the next eight years of his life, interrupted only by a term at the University of Goettingen and short periods of further military training, Weber stayed at his parents' house; 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. Two years later, Weber completed his "Habilitationsschrift", The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law. Having thus become a "Privatdozent", Weber was now qualified to hold a German professorship.
In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. Weber was put in charge of the study, and wrote a large part of its results. The final report was widely acclaimed as an excellent piece of empirical research, and cemented Weber's reputation as an expert in agrarian economics.
In 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist and author in her own right, 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, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896. Next year, Max Weber Sr. After this, Weber become increasingly prone to nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. 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.
After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish a single paper between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in fall 1903. 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. 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. In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals.
During the First World War, Weber served for a time as director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg. Weber's views on war, as well as on expansion of the German empire, changed throughout the war. In 1918 Weber became a consultant to the German Armistice Commission at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution. Weber 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. Weber left politics due to right-wing agitation in 1919 and 1920. Max Weber died of pneumonia in Munich on June 14, 1920.
Achievements
Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, Weber is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology, although in his times he was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. 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 tradition. Those works started the antipositivistic revolution in social sciences, which stressed the difference between the social sciences and natural sciences, especially due to human social actions (which Weber differentiated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental). Weber's early work was related to industrial sociology, but he is most famous for his later work on the sociology of religion and sociology of government.
Max Weber began his studies of rationalisation in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he shows how the aims of certain ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted towards the rational means of economic gain as a way of expressing that they had been blessed. Weber continues his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classifications of authority.
It should be noted that many of his works famous today were collected, revised, and published posthumously. Significant interpretations of Weber's writings were produced by such sociological luminaries as Talcott Parsons and C.
Sociology of religion
Weber's work on the sociology of religion started with the essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 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 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 contemporary thinkers who followed the social darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilization. In the analysis of his findings, Weber maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Christian) 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 systematisation of government administration, and economic enterprise. In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, merely explored one phase of the freedom from magic, that "disenchantment of the world" that he regarded as an important distinguishing aspect of Western culture.
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. 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 puts forward the thesis that the Puritan ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. Weber addresses that paradox in his essay.
He defines "the spirit of capitalism" as the ideas and habits that favour the rational pursuit of economic gain. Weber points out that such a spirit is not limited to Western culture, when considered as the attitude of individuals, but that such individuals – heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them – could not by themselves establish a new economic order (capitalism). Among the universal tendencies identified by Weber that those individuals had to fight were the desire to profit with minimum effort, the idea that work was a curse and a burden to be avoided, especially when it exceeded what was enough for modest life. "In order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism" wrote Weber "could come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of man."
After defining the spirit of capitalism, Weber argues that there are many reasons to look for its origins in the religious ideas of the Reformation.
Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism – notably Calvinism – favoured rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities which had been given positive spiritual and moral meaning.
Weber stated that he abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had initiated work on the book The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber's decision was that that essay has provided the perspective for a broad comparison of religion and society, which he continued in his later works. The phrase "work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "Protestant ethic" discussed by Weber.
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.
By 200 BC, the Chinese state had developed from a loose federation of feudal states into a unified empire with patrimonal rule, as described in the Warring States Period.As in Europe, Chinese cities had been founded as forts or leaders' residences, and were the centres of trade and crafts.
Weber emphasised that Confucianism tolerated a great number of popular cults without any effort to systematise them into a religious doctrine.
Chinese civilisation had no religious prophecy nor a powerful priestly class.
According to Confucianism, the worship of great deities is the affair of the state, while ancestral worship is required of all, and the multitude of popular cults is tolerated.
Weber argued that while several factors favoured the development of a capitalist economy (long periods of peace, improved control of rivers, population growth, freedom to acquire land and move outside of native community, free choice of occupation) they were outweighed by others (mostly stemming from religion):
technical inventions were opposed on the basis of religion, in the sense that the disturbance of ancestral spirits was argued to lead to bad luck, and adjusting oneself to the world was preferred to changing it.According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism represent two comprehensive but mutually exclusive types of rationalisation, each attempting to order human life according to certain ultimate religious beliefs. Therefore, Weber states that it was the difference in prevailing mentality that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China.
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion.
The Indian social system was shaped by the concept of caste. Weber describes the caste system, consisting of the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors), the Vaisyas (merchants) and the Shudras (labourers).
Weber pays special attention to Brahmins and analyses why they occupied the highest place in Indian society for many centuries.
Next, Weber analyses the Hindu religious beliefs, including asceticism and the Hindu world view, the Brahman orthodox doctrines, the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, the Hindu restoration, and the evolution of the guru. Weber asks the question whether religion had any influence upon the daily round of mundane activities, and if so, how it impacted economic conduct.
Weber concludes his study of society and religion in India by combining his findings with his previous work on China.
Ancient Judaism
In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the "combination of circumstances" which resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. Stating his reasons for investigating ancient Judaism, Weber wrote that "Anyone who is heir to the traditions of modern European civilisation will approach the problems of universal history with a set of questions, which to him appear both inevitable and legitimate.
"For the Jew (…) the social order of the world was conceived to have been turned into the opposite of that promised for the future, but in the future it was to be overturned so that Jewry could be once again dominant.
Weber analyses the interaction between the Bedouins, the cities, the herdsmen and the peasants, including the conflicts between them and the rise and fall of the United Monarchy.
Weber discusses the organisation of the early confederacy, the unique qualities of the Israelites' relations to Yahweh, the influence of foreign cults, types of religious ecstasy, and the struggle of the priests against ecstasy and idol worship. 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.
Sociology of politics and government
In the sociology of politics and government, one of Weber's most significant contribution 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 monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, which it may nonetheless elect to delegate as it sees fit. In this essay, Weber wrote that politics 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.
Weber distinguished three pure types of political leadership, domination and authority: charismatic domination (familial and religious), traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism), and legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).
Weber is also well-known for his critical study of the bureaucratisation of society, the rational ways in which formal social organisations apply the ideal type characteristics of a bureaucracy. It was Weber who begun the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularization 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", 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 rationalisation (of which bureaucratisation is a part) as a shift from a value-oriented organisation and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organisation and action (legal-rational authority). The result, according to Weber, is a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalisation of human life traps individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control. Weber's bureaucracy studies also led him to his analysis – correct, as it would turn out – that socialism in Russia would, due to the abolishing of the free market and its mechanisms, lead to over-bureaucratisation (evident, for example, in the shortage economy) rather than to the "withering away of the state" (as Karl Marx had predicted would happen in communist society).
Economics
While Max Weber is best known and recognised today as one of the leading scholars and founders of modern sociology, he also accomplished much in other fields, notably economics. During his life no such distinctions really existed, and Weber considered himself a historian and an economist first, sociologist distant second.
From the point of view of the economists, he is a representative of the "Youngest" German historical school of economics. Weber's work is parallel to Sombart's treatise of the same phenomenon, which however located the rise of Capitalism in Judaism. Weber's other main contribution to economics (as well as to social sciences in general) is his work on methodology: his theories of "Verstehen" (known as understanding or Interpretative Sociology) and of antipositivism (known as humanistic sociology).
The doctrine of Interpretative Sociology is one of the main sociological paradigms, with many supporters as well as critics. This thesis states that social, economic and historical research can never be fully inductive or descriptive as one must always approach it with a conceptual apparatus, which Weber termed "Ideal Type". Weber's Ideal Type became one of the most important concepts in social sciences, and led to the creation of such concepts as Ferdinand Tönnies' "Normal Type".
Weber conceded that employing "Ideal Types" was an abstraction but claimed that it was nonetheless essential if one were to understand any particular social phenomena because, unlike physical phenomena, they involve human behaviour which must be interpreted by ideal types.
Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with Social class, Social status and party (or politicals) as conceptually distinct elements.
All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances".
Weber's other contributions to economics were several: these include a (seriously researched) economic history of Roman agrarian society, his work on the dual roles of idealism and materialism in the history of capitalism in his Economy and Society (1914) which present Weber's criticisms (or according to some, revisions) of some aspects of Marxism. ISBN 5-484-00414-4 (Chapter 6: Reconsidering Weber: Literacy and "the Spirit of Capitalism"). ISBN 3-16-147557-7 Weber, Marianne (1926/1988). Max Weber: A Biography. ISBN 0-471-92333-8 Richard Swedberg "Max Weber as an Economist and as a Sociologist", American Journal of Economics and Sociology Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology. Max Weber The most important Weber-biography on Max Weber's life and torments since Marianne Weber. Talcott Parsons, Review of Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. Marshall, Review of Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait.
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