Max Weber

1864 - 1920

photo credits: Wikimedia Commons

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; 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. He was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences, and his ideas profoundly influence social theory and research. Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law in 1889 and habilitation in 1891 from the latter, he married his cousin Marianne Schnitger and taught in Freiburg and Heidelberg. In 1897, he had a breakdown after his father died following an argument. He ceased teaching and travelled until the early 1900s. Shortly before a trip to the United States, he recovered and slowly resumed his scholarship, writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. During the First World War, he supported Germany's war effort, but became critical of it and supported democratisation. He participated in the Lauenstein Conferences in 1917 and later gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation". After the war, Weber cofounded the German Democratic Party, unsuccessfully ran for a parliamentary seat, and advised the drafting of the Weimar Constitution. Becoming frustrated with politics, he resumed teaching in Vienna and Munich. He possibly contracted the Spanish flu, and died of pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 56. A book, Economy and Society, was left unfinished. Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and disenchantment. He formulated a thesis arguing that such processes were associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber also argued that the cultural influences embedded in religion were driving factors in the creation 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 the world religions, as he later examined the religions of China, India, and ancient Judaism. In terms of government, Weber argued that states were defined by their monopoly on violence and categorised social authority into three distinct forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. Weber was also a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive rather than purely empiricist methods. Weber made a variety of other contributions to economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. After his death, the rise of Weberian scholarship was slowed by the political instability of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany. In the post-war era, 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. Source: Wikipedia (en)

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