閱讀馬剋斯·韋伯 Max Weber在百家争鸣的作品!!! | |||
韋伯的主要著作圍繞於社會學的宗教和政治研究領域上，但他也對經濟學領域作出極大的貢獻。他的知名著作《新教倫理與資本主義精神》是他對宗教社會學最初的研究，韋伯在這本書中主張，宗教的影響是造成東西方文化發展差距的主要原因，並且強調新教倫理在資本主義、官僚制度、和法律權威的發展上所扮演的重要角色，然而近代著名社會學家安東尼·紀登斯指出韋伯並未提出足夠的證據實例證明新教倫理與資本主義發展有關，許多不以基督教為主要信仰的國傢經濟發展一樣很出色。韋伯並將國傢定義為一個“擁有合法使用暴力的壟斷地位”的實體，這個定義對於西方現代政治學的發展影響極大。他在各種學術上的重要貢獻通常被通稱為“韋伯命題”。
生涯韋伯生於德國圖林根的埃爾福特，他是傢中的長子，父親是一名知名的政治傢和公務員。父親的職業使傢裏充滿了政治的氣氛，許多突出的學者和公衆人物都經常造訪傢中。
受到家庭環境的耳濡目染，韋伯的弟弟阿爾弗雷德·韋伯（Alfred Weber）後來也成為了一名社會學家和經濟學家。在1876年的聖誕節，年僅十三歲的馬剋斯·韋伯撰寫了兩篇歷史論文送給父母，標題分別為“論德國歷史的發展以及皇帝和教宗的角色”以及“論羅馬帝國從君士坦丁至民族遷徙運動的歷史”。在十四歲時，韋伯寫的信件便開始引用荷馬、西塞羅、維吉爾、李維等人的著作，在他進入大學前也已經熟讀了歌德、斯賓諾莎、康德、叔本華等人的理論。年輕的韋伯表現出他對研究社會科學的強烈興趣。
馬剋斯·韋伯和他的弟弟阿弗雷德和卡爾，1879年。在1882年韋伯進入了海德堡大學的法律係就讀。如同他父親一樣，韋伯選擇以法律作為主要學習領域，並且也加入了他父親就讀大學時的同樣社團。除了法律的學習外，年輕的韋伯也學習了經濟學、中世紀歷史、神學。他也在斯特拉斯堡加入德意志帝國軍服役了一小段時間。
在1884年的秋天，韋伯回到老傢以就讀柏林洪堡大學，在接下來8年裏除了曾至哥廷根大學就讀一個學期並且又服了短期的兵役外，韋伯都一直待在柏林研究深造。韋伯與雙親住在一起，除了繼續學業外，韋伯也擔任實習律師，最後則在柏林大學擔任講師。韋伯在1886年通過了律師“實習階段”（Referendar）的測驗，成為實習法官。在1880年代的後期韋伯繼續他對歷史的研究。他在1889年完成了一篇標題為“中世紀商業組織的歷史”的博士論文，取得了他的法律博士學位。兩年後，韋伯寫下了一本名為“羅馬的農業歷史和其對公共法及私法的重要性”的書，完成了他的教授資格測驗（Habilitation），韋伯也因此成為正式的大學教授。
在韋伯即將完成博士論文的那一年裏，韋伯也開始對當時的社會政策産生興趣。在1888年他加入了一個名為“社會政治聯盟”（Verein für Socialpolitik）的團體，這個專業團體成員大多是當時隸屬經濟歷史學派的德國經濟學家，他們將經濟視為是解决當時廣泛社會問題的主要方法，並且對當時的德國經濟展開大規模的統計研究。在1890年聯盟成立了一個專門的研究計劃，以檢驗當時日趨嚴重的東部移民問題（Ostflucht）：由於當時德國勞工逐漸遷往快速工業化的德國城市，大量外國勞工遷徙至德國東部的農村地區。韋伯負責這次研究，並且寫下了許多調查結果。最後的報告得到良好評價，被廣泛認為是一篇傑出的觀察研究，這也因此鞏固了韋伯身為農業經濟專傢的名聲。
韋伯的妻子瑪麗安妮·施尼特格爾。在1893年韋伯與一名遠親的表妹瑪麗安娜·施尼特格爾（Marianne Schnitger）結婚，她後來也成為了一名女性主義者和作傢。新婚的兩人在1894年搬傢至弗萊堡，韋伯在那裏獲聘為弗萊堡大學的經濟學教授。1896年韋伯也被獲聘為其母校海德堡大學的教授。一年後韋伯的父親去世了，在他死前兩個月父子間剛巧經歷了一場激烈的爭吵，這場沒有和解的爭吵成為韋伯畢生的遺憾。在那之後韋伯患上了失眠癥，個性也變的越來越神經質，使他越來越難以胜任教授的工作。他的精神狀況使他不得不減少教學量，並且在1899年的學期中途休假離開。韋伯在1900年的夏季和秋季於精神療養院休息了數個月的時間，接着在年底和妻子前往意大利旅遊，一直到1902年的4月纔返回海德堡。
在1890年代初期著作頻繁的幾年後，韋伯在1898年直至1902年底都沒有再發表任何著作，最後終於在1903年秋季辭去了教授的職位。在擺脫了學校的束縛後，韋伯在那一年與他的同事維爾納·鬆巴特（Werner Sombart）創辦了一本名為“社會學和社會福利檔案”的社會學期刊，由韋伯擔任副編輯。在1904年，韋伯開始於這本期刊發表一些他最重要的文章，尤其是一係列名為《新教倫理與資本主義精神》的論文，這後來成為他畢生最知名的著作，並且也替他後來許多針對文化和宗教對經濟體係的影響的研究奠定根基。這篇論文是唯一一篇他在世時便已出版成書的著作。也是在那年，韋伯前往美國旅遊，並且參與了當時在聖路易斯所舉行的社會和科學大會—那也是世界博覽會相關的大會之一。儘管韋伯表現的越來越成功，他仍覺得自己無法再胜任固定的教學工作，因此繼續維持着私人學者的身分。1907年韋伯獲得一筆可觀的遺産，也使他得以繼續專心研究無須擔憂經濟問題。在1912年，韋伯試着組織一個左翼的政黨以結合社會民主主義者和自由主義者，最後並沒有成功，主要是因為當時的自由主義者仍擔憂社會民主主義的革命理念。
馬剋斯·韋伯，1917年。在第一次世界大戰裏，韋伯在海德堡的一間陸軍醫院擔任了一段時間的院長。在1915年和1916年他出任一個政府的委員會，試圖保持德國在戰後於比利時和波蘭的主權。韋伯個人對第一次世界大戰、以及當時德國帝國擴張的看法則隨着戰局的每況愈下而改變。韋伯在1918年成為海德堡的勞工和士兵委員會的成員之一。在1918年韋伯成為德國休戰委員會的一名成員，前往凡爾賽會議代表德國談判，並且也參與了魏瑪共和國憲法的起草委員會。當時韋伯支持在憲法中加入授權緊急戒嚴的第48號條款，這個條款後來由於被阿道夫·希特勒用於建立獨裁統治而惡名昭彰。韋伯對於德國政治的影響，至今仍有爭議。
韋伯在這時開始重掌教職，首先是在維也納大學，接着是在1919年於慕尼黑大學。在慕尼黑大學，他建立了第一所德國大學的社會學學係，但最後從沒有親自擔任社會學的教職。由於德國右派在1919年和1920年掀起的動蕩，韋伯離開了政治界。當時許多慕尼黑大學的同僚和學生批評他在1918年和1919年的德國革命中的親左派態度和演講，一些右派的學生還在他住傢前抗議。韋伯在1920年6月14日因肺炎死於慕尼黑。
學術成就馬剋斯·韋伯與卡爾·馬剋思和埃米爾·塗爾幹被並列為現代社會學的三大奠基人，儘管他在當時主要被視為是歷史學家和經濟學家。塗爾幹（杜爾凱姆）遵循着孔德的方式，以社會學的實證主義研究。而韋伯以及他的同僚維爾納·鬆巴特（也是德國社會學最知名的代表人物）采納的則是反實證主義的路綫，這些著作開始了反實證主義在社會科學界的革命，強調社會科學與自然科學在本質上的差異，因為他們認為人類的社會行為過於復雜（韋伯將其分類為傳統行為、感情行為、目的理性行為、和附帶行為），不可能用傳統自然科學的方式加以研究。韋伯的早期著作通常與工業社會學有關，但他最知名的貢獻是他後來在宗教社會學和政治社會學上的研究。
韋伯在《新教倫理與資本主義精神》中開始了他的研究，文中他顯示出某些禁欲的新教教派—尤其是喀爾文教派，教義逐漸轉變為爭取理性的經濟獲利，以此表達他們受到上帝的祝福。韋伯主張，受到這種理性教義基礎扶助的資本主義很快便會發展的越來越龐大，並且與原先的宗教産生矛盾，到最後宗教便會無可避免的被拋棄。韋伯在後來的作品裏繼續研究這樣的現象，尤其是在他對官僚製和對於政治權威的分類上。在這些著作中他暗示了這種社會的理性化是無可避免的趨勢。
值得註意的是，今天許多韋伯的著作都是在他死後纔被收集、修訂、並出版，這些工作主要是由他的妻子施尼特格爾進行的。塔爾科特·帕森斯等知名的社會學家都寫下了許多對於韋伯著作的解釋。
宗教社會學韋伯在宗教社會學上的研究開始於名為《新教倫理與資本主義精神》的論文，並且繼續在《中國的宗教:儒教與道教》以及《印度的宗教:印度教與佛教的社會學》、《古猶太教》裏探索。他對於其他宗教的研究則由於他在1920年的突然去世而中斷，使他無法繼續在《古猶太教》之後的一係列研究—包括了計劃中對於詩篇、塔木德猶太人、以及早期基督教和伊斯蘭教的研究。他所完成的那三個主要研究都關註於宗教對於經濟活動的影響、社會階層與宗教理想間的關係、以及西方文明的獨特特徵。
他的目標是為了找出東西方文化發展差距的主要原因。不過與當時許多遵循社會達爾文主義的思想傢不同的是，韋伯最初並沒有打算衡量和評斷東西方兩者的優劣；他希望專註於研究並解釋西方文化特殊之處。在他的研究分析裏，韋伯指出喀爾文主義（或者更廣泛的—基督教）宗教理想的影響成為歐洲和美國的社會變革以及經濟體係發展的主要原因，但他也指出這並非促成發展唯一的因素。其他重要的因素還包括了理性主義對於科學的追求、加上數學的科學統計、法律學、以及對於政府行政理性的係統化、和經濟上的企業。最後，依據韋伯的看法，宗教社會學的研究衹不過是探索一個階段的變革，亦即那些讓西方文明突出於其他文明之外的重要特徵。
《新教倫理與資本主義精神》
《新教倫理與資本主義精神》最初德文版本的封面。韋伯的論文《新教倫理與資本主義精神》（Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus）是他最知名的著作。一些人認為這本書不是對新教的詳細研究，而其實是韋伯後來的著作的介紹，尤其是他對於許多宗教思想和經濟行為之間的互動的研究。在《新教倫理與資本主義精神》中，韋伯提出了一個知名的論點：那就是清教徒的思想影響了資本主義的發展。一般宗教的傳統往往排斥世俗的事務，尤其是經濟成就上的追求，但為什麽這種觀念沒有發生在新教裏發生呢？韋伯在這篇論文裏解釋了這個悖論。
韋伯將“資本主義的精神”定義為一種擁護追求經濟利益的理想。韋伯指出，若是衹考慮到個人對於私利的追求時，這樣的精神並非衹限於西方文化，但是這樣的個人—英雄般的企業傢（韋伯如此稱呼他們）—並不能自行建立一個新的經濟秩序（資本主義）。韋伯發現這些個人必須擁有的共同傾嚮還包括了試圖以最小的努力賺取最大的利潤，而隱藏在這個傾嚮背後的觀念，便是認為工作是一種罪惡、也是一種應該避免的負擔，尤其是當工作超過正常的份量時。“為了達成這樣的生活方式而自然吸納了資本主義的特質，能夠以此支配他人”韋伯如此寫道：“這種精神必定是來自某種地方，不會是來自單獨的個人，而是來自整個團體的生活方式”。
在定義了資本主義的精神後，韋伯主張有很多原因使我們應該從宗教改革運動的宗教思想裏尋找這種精神的根源。許多觀察傢如孟德斯鳩和濟慈都記載下新教和商業精神發展之間的密切關係。韋伯指出某些形式的新教的教義—尤其是喀爾文（加爾文）教派—支持理性的追求經濟利益以及世俗的活動，將這些行為賦予了正面的精神以及道德的涵義。這並非是那些宗教思想的最初目標，反而像是其副産品—這些教義和指示所根基的內在邏輯，都直接或非直接的鼓勵了對於經濟利益的忘我追求和理性計劃。一個常見的例子便是新教對於製鞋匠的描繪：一個縮著身子專註於製鞋、將整個人努力貢獻給上帝的人。
韋伯稱他放棄了對於新教的進一步研究，因為他的同僚恩斯特·特勒爾奇 (Ernst Troeltsch)，一名專業的神學家已經展開了另一本書的專門研究。另一個原因是因為這篇論文已經提供了一個相當廣泛的觀察點，使他能夠在接下來的研究裏繼續比較其他的宗教和社會。現代所稱的“工作倫理”這一詞便是源自韋伯所討論到的“新教徒倫理”。不過這一詞不衹用於新教徒的倫理，也能套用至日本人、猶太人和其他非基督徒身上了。
《中國的宗教：儒教與道教》《中國的宗教：儒教與道教》是韋伯在宗教社會學上的第二本主要著作(翻譯作儒“教”，但實際上應稱作儒傢)。韋伯專註於探索中國社會裏那些和西歐不同的地方—尤其是與清教徒的對照，他並且提出了一個問題：為什麽資本主義沒有在中國發展呢？韋伯專註於早期的中國歷史，尤其是諸子百傢和戰國，在這個時期主要的中國思想學派（儒教與道教）開始突顯而出。
到了公元前200年，中國的國傢體製已經從一個鬆散的封建制度國傢的聯邦發展為一個統一的、以世襲制度相傳的帝國。如同在歐洲一樣，中國的城市成為了要塞或是領導者的居住地，並且也成為了貿易和工匠的聚集中心。然而，與歐洲不同的是，他們從來沒有取得政治上的自治權，其市民也沒有特別的政治權利或特權。這主要是因為親戚關係的緊密連結造成的，而這種連結則是出於宗教信仰裏的祖傳觀念。另外，工匠的同業公會彼此競爭以嚮皇帝爭寵，而從來沒有試着聯合起來爭取更多政治權利。也因此，中國城市的居民從來沒有組成一個如同歐洲城市一般的獨特社會階級。
較早的國傢統一以及中央官僚制度的建立，則意味着中國社會權力鬥爭的焦點從土地的分配轉移至官職的分配，官僚的貪污小費和稅收成為了他們最主要的收入來源，國傢有50%的稅入都流入了他們的口袋。帝國的政府則依賴於這些官僚的服務，而非如同歐洲一般依賴於騎士的軍事服務。
韋伯指出儒教對於許多民間教派的信仰展現相當寬容的態度，而從沒有試着將他們統一為單獨的宗教教義。與一般形而上學的宗教教義不同的是，儒教教導人們要順着這個世界調整和修正。“高等”的人們（知識分子）應該避免追求財富（雖然沒有貶低財富本身），也因此，中國變成了一個擔任公務員比商人擁有更高社會地位和更高利益的國傢.。
中國文明並沒有宗教的先知或是權力極大的僧侶階級。皇帝自身便是國教地位最高的僧侶以及至上的統治者，但民間的各種信仰也會被容忍（衹不過其僧侶的政治發展空間會被縮減）。這種情況與中世紀的歐洲産生強烈對比，在歐洲教會壓製了現世的統治者，而且統治者和人民所抱持的信仰都是一樣的。
依據儒教的學說，對於偉大神祇的敬仰衹是政府的事務，而對於祖先的敬仰則是所有人都必須遵從的，除此之外許許多多民間的信仰都被容忍。儒教也容忍巫術和神秘主義—衹要他們能夠作為幫助控製群衆的有用工具；但若是他們威脅到既有的秩序，儒教便會譴責其為異端並毫不猶豫的加以鎮壓（如同對於佛教的壓迫）。在這裏儒教指的是作為一種國教，而道教則是民間的信仰 。
韋伯主張，雖然有一些對資本主義經濟發展有利的因素存在（長期的和平、運河的改善、人口增長、取得土地的自由、遷徙至出生地以外的自由、以及選擇執業的自由），然而這些有利因素都無法抵銷其他因素的負面影響（大多數來自宗教）：
技術的改革在宗教的基礎上被反對，因為那可能會擾亂對於祖先的崇敬、進而招致壞運氣，而調整自身適應這個世界的現狀則被視為是更好的選擇。
對於土地的賣出經常被禁止、或者被限製的相當睏難
擴張的親戚關係（根基於對家庭關係和祖先崇敬的宗教信仰上）保護家庭成員免受經濟的睏境，也因此阻撓了藉債、工作紀律、以及工作過程的理性化。
那些親戚關係也妨礙了城市特殊階級的發展，並且阻撓了朝嚮完善法律制度、法規、和律師階級崛起的發展。
依據韋伯的說法，儒教和新教代表了兩種廣泛但彼此排斥的理性化，兩者都試着依據某種終極的宗教信仰設計人類生活。兩者都鼓勵節制和自我控製、也都能與財富的纍積相並存。然而，儒教的目標是取得並保存“一種文化的地位”並且以之作為手段來適應這個世界，強調教育、自我完善、禮貌、以及家庭倫理。相反的新教則以那些手段來創造一個“上帝的工具”，創造一個能夠服侍上帝和造世主的人。這樣強烈的信仰和熱情的行動則被儒教的美學價值觀念所排斥。因此，韋伯主張這種在精神上的差異便是導致資本主義在西方文明發展繁榮、卻遲遲沒有在中國出現的原因。
《印度的宗教:印度教與佛教的社會學》《印度的宗教:印度教與佛教的社會學》是韋伯在宗教社會學上的第三本主要著作。在這本書中他檢驗了印度社會的架構，對照了正統的印度教教義與非正統的佛教教義，以及其他民間信仰的影響，最後並研究這些宗教思想對於印度社會在現世上的道德觀的影響。
印度的社會體製是由種姓制度的概念所形塑，直接連結了宗教思想與社會上的階級分隔的關係。韋伯描述這種種姓制度是由婆羅門（僧侶）、剎帝利（戰士）、吠捨（商人）、首陀羅（勞工）所組成。接着他指出種姓制度在印度的散布是因為歷史上的徵服侵略所造成，某些部落遭到了邊緣化、種族制度也因此越來越根深蒂固。
韋伯特別專註於對婆羅門階級的研究，並分析他們為何能夠占據印度社會的最高階級位置長達數個世紀。在研究了佛法概念的影響後，韋伯總結認為印度社會的道德觀多元傾嚮，與儒教和基督教普世而統一的道德觀不相同。如同中國一樣，他註意到種姓制度也妨礙了印度都市獨特階級的發展。
緊接着，韋伯分析了印度的宗教思想，包括了禁欲主義和印度的世界觀、婆羅門的正統教義、佛教在印度的崛起和衰退、以及古魯（印度教祭司）的發展。韋伯提出的問題是：這些宗教思想對於印度社會日常的世俗活動有沒有任何影響呢？如果有的話，它又對經濟活動産生了什麽影響？韋伯註意到印度教裏所強調的永恆不變的世界秩序，是由永不停止的輪回概念和對現世世界的敵意所構成，他發現這種由宗教支持的傳統種姓制度最後阻礙了經濟的發展；換句話說，種姓制度的“精神”對於當地的資本主義發展起了極大的阻撓作用。
在研究的總結裏，韋伯將他對於印度社會學和宗教的研究與之前對中國的研究綜合起來。他註意到這些宗教都將人類生命的意義解釋為超脫世俗的或是神秘性的經驗，這些社會的知識分子通常傾嚮於厭惡政治，而社會架構往往被區分為受過教育與否的兩種階級，那些受過教育的知識份子作為先知或智者的榜樣，而未受教育的大衆則停留在日常生活的庸俗裏並且相信迷信的民間巫術。在亞洲社會，如同基督教彌賽亞一般、能夠不分受過教育與否皆給予救贖和指引的救世主並不存在。韋伯主張，正是因為彌賽亞救世主起源於近東國傢，使得他們與亞洲大陸的主要宗教産生差異，西方國傢也因此免於陷入中國和印度的道路。韋伯在他下一本著作《古猶太教》進一步證實了這個論點。
《古猶太教》《古猶太教》是韋伯對於宗教社會學的第四本著作，韋伯試着解釋“各種情況的結合”導致了早期東方和西方文明的差距。尤其是將西方基督教的世俗禁欲主義與印度發展出的神秘冥思信仰相對照時，這種差異顯得特別明顯。韋伯註意到一些基督教的觀點帶有徵服和改變世界的理想，而不加以逃避之。這種基督教的基本特徵（當與遠東的宗教相對照時）則是源於古代猶太人的先知。當韋伯述及他研究古猶太教的原因時，他寫道“任何在現代歐洲文明傳統下成長的人都會自然的以一連串的假設來解决遇到的歷史問題，這對他而言是不可避免而且也相當合理的。這些問題將可以找出在各種情況的結合下，西方文化的獨特之處、以及其普遍的獨特文化涵義。”
“對於猶太人而言…世界的社會秩序已經發展至與當初先知對於未來的諾言相反的情況了，但他們仍認為未來這種情況會被改變、猶太人也會再次崛起。在猶太人看來來，世界既不是永恆的也非一成不變的，而是被創造出來的。世界表現出的架構就如同一個人行為的結果，除了所有猶太人之外、加上上帝對他們的反應而形塑而成的。也因此世界本身是一個歷史的産物，是被設計用以實現上帝指定的秩序的…除此之外它是存在於一個具有高度理性的宗教倫理的社會上；它不受神秘巫術以及其他所有非理性尋求救贖的行為的影響；它與那些亞洲宗教提出的救贖途徑完全處於不同的世界。更廣泛的說這種道德觀在今天依然是中東和歐洲的基本道德觀。猶太人在世界歷史上的重要性便是出自這個原因。…也因此，在思考到猶太人當初發展的歷史時，我們便來到了西方和中東整個文化發展的分水嶺。”
韋伯分析了中東貝都因人、城邦、牧人和農夫、和他們之間的互動和衝突，以及以色列聯合王國的興起和衰落。聯合王國的時期就仿佛歷史中的一個插麯，將出埃及記以來的聯邦時期與以色列人在迦南的殖民時期一分為二。這種時期的區分和宗教的歷史有極大關係，由於猶太教的基本教義是在以色列聯邦時期形成的，它們在聯合王朝衰敗後成為了先知概念的基礎，並在後來對西方文明産生了極大的影響。
韋伯討論了早期以色列的聯邦架構、以色列人與耶和華的獨特關係、外國宗教的影響、宗教狂熱的形式、以及猶太教祭司們對抗宗教狂熱和偶像崇拜的鬥爭。他接着描述了王國的分裂、聖經的先知們在社會方面的態度、蠱惑人心的政客、宗教迷信和政治，以及先知們的道德觀。韋伯註意到猶太教不衹是基督教和伊斯蘭教的始祖，同時也是現代西方世界崛起的關鍵因素，因為它影響了古希臘和古羅馬的文化。社會學家賴因哈德·本迪剋斯 (Reinhard Bendix)概述《古猶太教》一書道：“在上帝的凝視下，努力免於巫術和神秘迷信、獻身於法律的研究、謹慎選擇作出正確的事情，以此期盼未來能夠更好，先知們設立了這樣一個將人的日常生活置於服從上帝指示的道德法則下的宗教。透過這樣的教義，古猶太教促成了道德理性主義的西方文明的誕生。”
政治和政府社會學
《政治作為一種職業》德文版第二版封面。在政治和政府的社會學上，韋伯最重要的貢獻之一便是一篇名為《政治作為一種職業》（Politik als Beruf）的論文。在這篇論文裏韋伯提出了對國傢的定義：亦即國傢是一個“擁有合法使用暴力的壟斷地位”的實體，這個定義成為西方社會科學的重要基礎。在這篇論文裏韋伯主張，政治應該被視為是任何會影響到控製暴力的權力分配的活動。政治也因此是純粹來自於權力。也因此一個政治傢不能被視為是一個“真正道德的基督徒”，也不可能如同山上寶訓裏所述的會將臉頰轉過來讓人摑耳光。遵從那樣的道德的人應該被歸屬於聖人，衹有聖人才會這樣做。而現實的政治界是沒有允許聖人參與的空間的，一個政治傢應該采納的倫理是道德與政治目標的權衡(Proportion)、以及負責任的倫理(Responsibility)，並且必須對他的職業擁有強烈的熱情(Passion)、同時還必須學會將自己的情緒好惡與實際目標區隔開來(Distance)。
韋伯並且提出了三種正式的政治支配和權威的形式：魅力型權威（傢族和宗教）、傳統型權威（宗主、父權、封建制度）、以及法理型權威（現代的法律和國傢、官僚）。韋伯主張歷史上的統治者與被統治者間的關係多少包含了這樣的成分。他認為魅力型權威的不穩定性必然導致其被迫轉變為“常規的”權威形式，也就是傳統或者官僚型支配。同樣的，他也註意到在純粹的傳統型支配裏，對於支配者的抵抗到達一定程度時便會産生“傳統的革命”。因此韋伯也暗示了社會會逐漸朝嚮一個理性合法的權威架構發展，並且利用官僚的架構制度。儘管韋伯龐雜的著作中暗示這種社會的理性化是不可避免的趨勢，他自己十分小心避免進化論與目的論的邏輯。然而由於韋伯最早的英譯來自結構功能派的Talcott Parsons，使得他的理論時常被視為社會進化論的一部分。
韋伯在社會的官僚化上的批判研究也相當為人所知，研究一個正式的社會體製如何以理性的方式套用某種形式的官僚制度。事實上也是因為韋伯展開了對於官僚制度的研究，使得官僚（Bureaucracy）這一詞成為常用的社會科學術語。許多現代公共行政學的研究都可以追溯回韋伯。當社會學研究述及一個傳統的、有着階級架構的大陸型文官體製時，也經常將之稱為“韋伯文官體製”。不過這衹是韋伯在他的《經濟和社會》（1922）裏所提及的其中一種公共行政和政府統治形式，而且韋伯個人並不欣賞這種制度—他衹是認為那特別成功和有效罷了。在這本書裏，韋伯勾畫出了社會學知名的“理性化”概念，亦即從一個價值為取嚮和行動的體製（傳統型權威和魅力型權威）轉變為一個以目的為取嚮和行動的體製（法律型權威）。而依據韋伯的說法，不斷理性化的結果將會是一個“冰冷的北極夜晚”—人類生活的理性化造成個人陷入了一個以權力統治和理性為根基“鐵籠子”裏。韋伯的官僚研究也使他正確預估了俄國的社會主義革命的結局，由於自由市場和其機製遭到廢止，國傢不但沒有消失（卡爾·馬剋思預言共産主義社會將會達成這個目標）、反而開始了規模驚人的過度官僚化（舉例而言，短缺經濟的爆發便是證據之一）。
值得一提的是，韋伯在三種正當支配之外，曾經提出意大利的城市共和政治是一種非正當的支配，可見他的支配類型學仍有模糊之處。他對民主政治魅力型領袖與官僚鐵籠之間互動的悲觀，也對後世的民主理論，特別是熊彼得的精英政治學說，産生了極大的影響。韋伯對魏瑪民主的看法似乎預見了納粹的興起。
經濟史學與社會分層雖然馬剋斯·韋伯在今天最為人所知的是他身為現代社會學的創始人和奠基學者之一，但他也在其他許多領域有不少成就，最值得註意的是經濟學。韋伯在世時這樣精確的學科分類相當少見，而韋伯也自視為主要是一個歷史學家和經濟學家，社會學家僅是第二領域罷了。
從經濟學家的觀點來看，馬剋斯·韋伯代表的是德國的經濟歷史學派“最年輕”的一代。他對於經濟學最重要的貢獻是他的知名著作《新教倫理與資本主義精神》，這本書經典的對照了宗教在經濟發展上産生的影響。韋伯的研究領域也與他的同僚維爾納·鬆巴特相同，鬆巴特則將資本主義的崛起歸功於猶太教的影響。韋伯對於經濟學的其他主要貢獻（整體上也是對於社會科學的貢獻）還包括了他在方法學上的研究：他對於解釋社會學（Verstehen；此詞來自德語，意為理解）的理論和反實證主義（又稱為人文主義社會學）)。
解釋社會學的原則是社會學主要的研究範例之一，支持者和批評者都相當多。這種研究方式主張社會學、經濟學、和歷史學等社會科學的研究永遠不能徹底的歸納和記載，因為研究者必須一直有着概念上的認知才能加以探索之，韋伯將這種條件稱為“理想形式”（Ideal Type）。這種理想可以這樣子歸納：一個理想的形式是由許多現象提供的某些特徵和成分所組成，但它卻不會與任何特定的現象有着完全一樣的特徵。韋伯的理想形式成為他對社會科學最重要的貢獻之一。
韋伯承認這種“理想形式”是一種抽象的産物，但他主張任何想要瞭解特定社會現象的人都必須有這種理想形式，因為與物理的現象不同的是，社會科學還牽涉到復雜萬分的人類行為，而這衹有可能以理想形式的方法來加以解釋。理想形式的概念，加上他的反實證主義的立論，可以被視為是他對“理性的經濟人”的方法論假設的辯護。
韋伯並且公式化了社會階層的三大要件理論，主張社會階級、社會地位、和團體（或政黨）在概念上是不同的要件。
社會階級是以在經濟上與市場的互動所决定的（物主、承租人、員工等等）。
社會地位是以非經濟的成分如榮譽、聲望和宗教構成。
政黨則指一個人與政治界的聯繫。
而這三種要件都會影響到韋伯稱為“生涯機會”的結果。
韋伯對經濟學還有其他一些貢獻：包括了經過認真研究的羅馬農業歷史，和他在《經濟和社會》一書裏述及的唯心主義及唯物主義兩者對於資本主義歷史的影響，韋伯也在書中呈現了對於馬剋思主義的一些批評。最後，他在《經濟與歷史》（Wirtschaftsgeschichte）中的仔細研究則可以被視為是經濟歷史學派最傑出的作品之一。
對馬剋斯·韋伯的批評馬剋斯·韋伯關於基督新教倫理决定經濟發展的觀點和歐洲的發展本身相矛盾。意大利北部地方、巴伐利亞、萊茵河地區、西班牙和法國等地資本主義經濟的發展，經常被看作資本主義發展單一因素决定論的反例，包括地理的、政治的或者其它單一因素的决定論，也包括新教倫理理論。一般認為歷史上歐洲資本主義發展的推動力在於財産權的加強、交易成本的降低、封建主義的衰落和瓦解等。
在現當代，中國大陸、香港、臺灣、新加坡、日本等地在經濟上取得了繁榮，而這些地區是具有儒傢價值觀的社會。東亞地區的成功，也和基督教沒有關係。因此，表面看來馬剋斯·韋伯關於基督新教倫理和經濟發展的理論似乎與事實相悖。但是，馬剋斯·韋伯在他的研究中僅僅試圖揭示新教倫理在資本主義精神形成初期的所扮演的‘火車扳道工’角色，此後的資本主義風尚（ethos) 在時空的推移中獲得了新的非宗教性能量和執着物欲的理由，人類歷史也就此走上了新的軌道。馬剋斯·韋伯曾憂心忡忡地在新教倫理與資本主義精神一書結尾處將這種成熟資本主義的內在邏輯和自身演化稱為‘人類的鐵籠’。
當代來自解構主義或無政府主義等對基督新教理論的批判則認為為增加世俗財富的工作是神聖的或高貴的追求的假設本身並不成立。一些作傢如亨利·大衛·梭羅（Henry David Thoreau）和塞繆爾·約翰遜（Samuel Johnson）等人為新潮人群、懶散者、批判基督新教等理論提供了基礎。
Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, presenting sociology as a non-empiricist field which must study social action through interpretive means based upon understanding the meanings and purposes that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.
Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularization, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber argued that the most important difference among societies is not how people produce things but how people think about the world. In Weber’s view, modern society was the product of a new way of thinking. Weber is perhaps best known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber proposed that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state in the Western world. Against Marx's "historical materialism," Weber emphasised the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism. The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest part in Weber's broader investigations into world religion: he would go on to examine the religions of China, the religions of India and ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of capitalism in the corresponding societies, as well as to their differing forms of social stratification.[a]
In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which successfully claims a "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence". He was also the first to categorize social authority into distinct forms, which he labelled as charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. His analysis of bureaucracy emphasised that modern state institutions are increasingly based on rational-legal authority. Weber also made a variety of other contributions in economic history, as well as economic theory and methodology. Weber's thought on modernity and rationalisation would come to facilitate critical theory of the Frankfurt school.
After the First World War, Max Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting the Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 56.
Biography
Early life and family backgroundWeber was born in 1864, in Erfurt, Thuringia. He was the eldest of the seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent civil servant and member of the National Liberal Party, and his wife Helene (Fallenstein), who partly descended from French Huguenot immigrants and held strong moral absolutist ideas. Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed 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." In class, bored and unimpressed with the teachers – who in turn resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitude – he secretly read all forty volumes of Goethe. Before entering the university, he would read many other classical works. Over time, Weber would also be significantly affected by the marital tension between his father, "a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures," and his mother, a devout Calvinist "who sought to lead an ascetic life."
Max Weber and his brothers, Alfred and Karl, in 1879
EducationIn 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. After a year of military service he transferred to University of Berlin. After his first few years as a student, during which he spent much time "drinking beer and fencing," Weber would increasingly take his mother's side in family arguments and grew estranged from his father. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior barrister. 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 law and history. He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertation on legal history entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations; his advisor was Levin Goldschmidt, a respected authority in commercial law. Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law, working with August Meitzen. Having thus become a Privatdozent, Weber joined the University of Berlin's faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government.
Early workIn 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, a new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic issues. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress. In 1890 the Verein established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht: the influx of Polish 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 the final report, which generated considerable attention and controversy and marked the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scientist. From 1893 to 1899 Weber was a member of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), an organisation that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars.
Max Weber and his wife Marianne in 1894Also in 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death and her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life. They would have no children. The marriage granted long-awaited financial independence to Weber, allowing him to finally leave his parents' household. The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at the university, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896. There Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Weber Circle," composed of other intellectuals such as his wife Marianne, Georg Jellinek, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart, Marc Bloch, Robert Michels and György Lukács. Weber also remained active in Verein and the Evangelical Social Congress. His research in that period was focused on economics and legal history.
In 1897 Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved. After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depression, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and leave unfinished his course in the fall of 1899. After spending months in a sanatorium during the summer and fall of 1900, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy at the end of the year and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902. He would again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and not return to it till 1919.
Later workAfter 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, where he worked with his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart. His new interests would lie in more fundamental issues of social sciences; his works from this latter period are of primary interest to modern scholars. 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, which became his most famous work and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. This essay was the only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during his lifetime. Some other of his works written in the first one and a half decades of the 20th century – published posthumously and dedicated primarily from the fields of sociology of religion, economic and legal sociology – are also recognised as among his most important intellectual contributions.
Also in 1904, 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) in St. Louis. Despite his partial recovery, 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 1909, disappointed with the Verein, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, or DGS) and served as its first treasurer. He would, however, resign from the DGS in 1912. In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, in part because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals.
Political involvements
Max Weber (foreground) in 1917 with Ernst Toller (facing)At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer and put in charge of organising the army hospitals in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915. Weber's views on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict. Early on he supported the nationalist rhetoric and the war effort, believing that the fight against the backward and despotic Russian Empire was justified and that a "liberal imperialism" along the lines of the British model would help Germany to develop a more mature political class. In time, however, Weber became one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war policies. He publicly attacked the Belgian annexation policy and unrestricted submarine warfare and later supported calls for constitutional reform, democratisation and universal suffrage.
Weber joined the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. He then served in the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and as advisor to the Confidential Committee for Constitutional Reform, which drafted the Weimar Constitution. Motivated by his understanding of the American model, he advocated a strong, popularly elected presidency as a constitutional counter-balance to the power of the professional bureaucracy. More controversially, he also defended the provisions for emergency presidential powers that became Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.
Weber also ran, unsuccessfully, for a parliamentary seat, as a member of the liberal German Democratic Party, which he had co-founded. He opposed both the leftist German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, a principled position that defied the political alignments in Germany at that time and which may have prevented Friedrich Ebert, the new social-democratic President of Germany, from appointing Weber as minister or ambassador. Weber commanded widespread respect but relatively little influence. Weber's role in German politics remains controversial to this day.
Last years
Weber's grave in HeidelbergFrustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then, after 1919, at the University of Munich. His lectures from that period were collected into major works, such as the General Economic History, Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation. In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but never held a professorial position in sociology. Many colleagues and students in Munich attacked his response to the German Revolution and some right-wing students held protests in front of his home. Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on 14 June 1920. At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his magnum opus on sociological theory: Economy and Society. His widow Marianne helped prepare it for its publication in 1921–22.
Weber's thought
InspirationsWeber's thinking was strongly influenced by German idealism and particularly by neo-Kantianism, to which he had been exposed through Heinrich Rickert, his professorial colleague at the University of Freiburg. Especially important to Weber's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incomprehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way in which the human mind focuses its attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulting perceptions. Weber's opinions regarding the methodology of the social sciences show parallels with the work of contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher and pioneering sociologist Georg Simmel.
Weber was also influenced by Kantian ethics, which he nonetheless came to think of as obsolete in a modern age lacking in religious certainties. In this last respect, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is evident. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the "deep tension between the Kantian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world is apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethical worldview." Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work, and though he maintained a deep, life-long interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.
As a political economist and economic historian, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics, represented by academics such as Gustav von Schmoller and his student Werner Sombart. But, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with that school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the traditional rivals of the historical school. (See section on Economics.)
MethodologyUnlike some other classical figures (Comte, Durkheim) Weber did not attempt, consciously, to create any specific set of rules governing social sciences in general, or sociology in particular. Compared to Durkheim and Marx, Weber was more focused on individuals and culture and this is clear in his methodology. Whereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individuals and their actions (see structure and action discussion) and whereas Marx argued for the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas, Weber valued ideas as motivating actions of individuals, at least in the big picture.
Sociology, for Max Weber, is:
...a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects.
—Max Weber
Weber was concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity. Weber distinguished social action from social behaviour, noting that social action must be understood through how individuals subjectively relate to one another. Study of social action through interpretive means (Verstehen) must be based upon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that the individual attaches to their actions. Social actions may have easily identifiable and objective means, but much more subjective ends and the understanding of those ends by a scientists is subject to yet another layer of subjective understanding (that of the scientist). Weber noted that the importance of subjectivity in social sciences makes creation of fool-proof, universal laws much more difficult than in natural sciences and that the amount of objective knowledge that social sciences may achieve is precariously limited. Overall, Weber supported the goal of objective science, but he noted that it is an unreachable goal – although one definitely worth striving for.
There is no absolutely "objective" scientific analysis of culture... All knowledge of cultural reality... is always knowledge from particular points of view.... an "objective" analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to "laws," is meaningless... [because]... the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end.
—Max Weber, "Objectivity" in Social Science, 1897
The principle of "methodological individualism," which holds that social scientists should seek to understand collectivities (such as nations, cultures, governments, churches, corporations, etc.) solely as the result and the context of the actions of individual persons, can be traced to Weber, particularly to the first chapter of Economy and Society, in which he argues that only individuals "can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action." In other words, Weber argued that social phenomena can be understood scientifically only to the extent that they are captured by models of the behaviour of purposeful individuals, models which Weber called "ideal types," from which actual historical events will necessarily deviate due to accidental and irrational factors. The analytical constructs of an ideal type never exist in reality, but provide objective benchmarks against which real-life constructs can be measured.
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, 1909
Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodology of social sciences, the Methodenstreit. Weber's position was close to historicism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective motivations of individuals (social actors). Thus Weber's methodology emphasises the use of comparative historical analysis. Therefore, Weber was more interested in explaining how a certain outcome was the result of various historical processes rather than predicting an outcome of those processes in the future.
RationalisationMany scholars have described rationalisation and the question of individual freedom in an increasingly rational society, as the main theme of Weber's work. This theme was situated in the larger context of the relationship between psychological motivations, cultural values and beliefs (primarily, religion) and the structure of the society (usually determined by the economy).
By rationalisation, Weber understood first, the individual cost-benefit calculation, second, the wider, bureaucratic organisation of the organisations and finally, in the more general sense as the opposite of understanding the reality through mystery and magic (disenchantment).
The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the world"
—Max Weber
Weber began his studies of the subject 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, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. In Protestant religion, Christian piety towards God was expressed through one's secular vocation (secularisation of calling). The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious and so the latter were eventually discarded.
Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of legitimate authority into three types – Rational-legal, traditional and charismatic – of which the legitimate (or rational) is the dominant one in the modern world. In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalisation. Similarly, rationalisation could be seen in the economy, with the development of highly rational and calculating capitalism. Weber also saw rationalisation as one of the main factors setting the European West apart from the rest of the world. Rationalisation relied on deep changes in ethics, religion, psychology and culture; changes that first took place in the Western civilisation.
What Weber depicted was not only the secularisation of Western culture, but also and especially the development of modern societies from the viewpoint of rationalisation. The new structures of society were marked by the differentiation of the two functionally intermeshing systems that had taken shape around the organisational cores of the capitalist enterprise and the bureaucratic state apparatus. Weber understood this process as the institutionalisation of purposive-rational economic and administrative action. To the degree that everyday life was affected by this cultural and societal rationalisation, traditional forms of life – which in the early modern period were differentiated primarily according to one's trade – were dissolved.
—Jürgen Habermas, Modernity's Consciousness of Time, 1985,
Features of rationalisation include increasing knowledge, growing impersonality and enhanced control of social and material life. Weber was ambivalent towards rationalisation; while admitting it was responsible for many advances, in particular, freeing humans from traditional, restrictive and illogical social guidelines, he also criticised it for dehumanising individuals as "cogs in the machine" and curtailing their freedom, trapping them in the bureaucratic iron cage of rationality and bureaucracy. Related to rationalisation is the process of disenchantment, in which the world is becoming more explained and less mystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones and finally to the Godless science of modernity. Those processes affect all of society, removing "sublime values... from public life" and making art less creative.
In a dystopian critique of rationalisation, Weber notes that modern society is a product of an individualistic drive of the Reformation, yet at the same time, the society created in this process is less and less welcoming of individualism.
How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend?
—Max Weber
Sociology of religionWeber's work in the field of 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 work on other religions was interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following Ancient Judaism with studies of early Christianity and Islam. His three main themes in the essays were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, the relation between social stratification and religious ideas and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilization.
Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in the society. 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 civilisation. 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 the West, 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 and bureaucratisation of government administration and economic enterprise. 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".
Weber also proposed a socioevolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, monotheism and finally, ethical monotheism. According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood. As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismMain article: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Cover of the original German edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismWeber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 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 as part of the rationalisation of the economic system. 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 post-Reformation shift of Europe's economic centre 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 with a more highly developed capitalist economy. Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business leaders were Protestant. Weber thus argued that Roman Catholicism impeded the development of the capitalist economy in the West, as did other religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism elsewhere in the world.
The development of the concept of the calling quickly gave to the modern entrepreneur a fabulously clear conscience – and also industrious workers; he gave to his employees as the wages of their ascetic devotion to the calling and of co-operation in his ruthless exploitation of them through capitalism the prospect of eternal salvation.
—Max Weber
Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. 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. Weber argued that there were many reasons to look for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformation. In particular, the Protestant ethic (or more specifically, Calvinist ethic) motivated the believers to work hard, be successful in business and reinvest their profits in further development rather than frivolous pleasures. The notion of calling meant that each individual had to take action in order to be saved; just being a member of the Church was not enough. Predestination also reduced antagonising over economic inequality and further, it meant that a material wealth could be taken as a sign of salvation in the afterlife. The believers thus justified pursuit of profit with religion, as instead of being fuelled by morally suspect greed or ambition, their actions were motivated by a highly moral and respected philosophy. This Weber called the "spirit of capitalism": it was the Protestant religious ideology that was behind – and inevitably lead to – the capitalist economic system. This theory is often viewed as a reversal of Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other aspects of it.
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: laying the groundwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.
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 and thus lost its religious connotations.
The Religion of China: Confucianism and TaoismMain article: 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, especially those aspects which contrasted with Puritanism. His work also questioned why capitalism did not develop in China. He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese patrimonialism and officialdom and Chinese religion and philosophy (primarily, Confucianism and Taoism), as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route.
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 were just means to the final goal and here they were divided by a key difference. Confucianism's 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. Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian. 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.
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and BuddhismMain article: 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. Like Confucianism in China, for Weber, Hinduism in India was a barrier for capitalism. The Indian caste system made it very difficult for individuals to advance in the society beyond their caste. Activity, including economic activity, was seen as unimportant in the context of the advancement of the soul.
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 otherworldly 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 beliefs are centered on magic. In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to give plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike. Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies (also called ethical prophecies), notably from the Near East region to the exemplary prophecies found on the Asiatic mainland, focused more on reaching to the educated elites and enlightening them on the proper ways to live one's life, usually with little emphasis on hard work and the material world. 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.
Ancient JudaismMain article: Ancient Judaism (book)
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. He contrasted the innerworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India. Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.
Weber noted that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of the modern Occidental state; Judaism's influence was as important as Hellenistic and Roman cultures.
Weber's premature death in 1920 prevented him from following his planned analysis of Psalms, the Book of Job, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.
Economy and SocietyMain article: Economy and Society
In his magnum opus, Economy and Society, Weber distinguished three ideal types of religious attitudes: world-flying mysticism, world-rejecting asceticism, and inner-worldly asceticism. He defined magic as a pre-religious activity.
Politics and governmentIn political sociology, one of Weber's most significant contributions is his Politics as a Vocation essay. Therein, Weber unveils the definition of the state as that entity which possesses a delegatable monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Weber wrote that politics is the sharing of state's power between various groups, and political leaders are those who wield this power. 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).
Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (alternatively referred to as three types of domination, legitimisation or authority):
1.charismatic domination (familial and religious),
2.traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism) and
3.legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).
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. He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" 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. 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.
Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge.
—Max Weber
Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his masterpiece Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularisation 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". As the most efficient and rational way of organising, bureaucratisation for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalisation of the Western society.
Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucracy: The growth in space and population being administered, the growth in complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out and the existence of a monetary economy – these resulted in a need for a more efficient administrative system. Development of communication and transportation technologies made more efficient administration possible (and popularly requested) and democratisation and rationalisation of culture resulted in demands that the new system treat everybody equally.
Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and recorded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.
The decisive reason for the advance of the bureaucratic organisation has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organisation.
—Max Weber
While recognising bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organisation and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms and the ongoing bureaucratisation as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalisation of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. In order to counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.
Social stratificationWeber also formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with Social class, Social status and Political party as conceptually distinct elements.
Social class is based on economically determined relationship to the market (owner, renter, employee etc.).
Status class is based on non-economical qualities like honour, prestige and religion.
Party class refers to affiliations in the political domain.
All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances" (opportunities to improve one's life).
The cityAs part of his overarching effort to understand the unique development of the Western world, Weber produced a detailed general study of the city as the characteristic locus of the social and economic relations, political arrangements, and ideas that eventually came to define the West. This resulted in a monograph titled The City, which was probably compiled from research conducted in 1911-1913, and which was published posthumously in 1921. In 1924 it was incorporated into the second part of his Economy and Society, as chapter XVI, "The City (Non-legitimate Domination)".
According to Weber, the city as a politically autonomous organization of people living in close proximity, employed in a variety of specialized trades, and physically separated from the surrounding countryside, only fully developed in the West and to a great extent shaped its cultural evolution:
The origin of a rational and inner-worldly ethic is associated in the Occident with the appearance of thinkers and prophets [...] who developed in a social context which was alien to the Asiatic cultures. This context consisted of the political problems engendered by the bourgeois status-group of the city, without which neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor the development of Hellenistic thinking are conceivable.
— Max Weber
Weber argued that Judaism, early Christianity, theology, and later the political party and modern science, were only possible in the urban context that reached a full development the West alone. He also saw in the history of medieval European cities the rise of a unique form of "non-legitimate domination" that successfully challenged the existing forms of legitimate domination (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal) that had prevailed until then in the Medieval world. This new domination was based on the great economic and military power wielded by the organized community of city-dwellers ("citizens").
EconomicsWeber regarded himself primarily as a "political economist," and all of his professorial appointments were in economics, though today his contributions in that field are largely overshadowed by his role as a founder of modern sociology. As an economist, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics. The great differences between that school's interests and methods on the one hand and those of the neoclassical school (from which modern mainstream economics largely derives) on the other, explain why Weber's influence on economics today is hard to discern.
Methodological individualismThough his research interests were always in line with those of the German historicists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, Weber's defence of "methodological individualism" in the social sciences represented an important break with that school and an embracing of many of the arguments that had been made against the historicists by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, in the context of the academic Methodenstreit ("debate over methods") of the late 19th century. The phrase "methodological individualism," which has come into common usage in modern debates about the connection between microeconomics and macroeconomics, was coined by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1908 as a way of referring to the views of Weber. According to Weber's theses, social research cannot be fully inductive or descriptive, because understanding some phenomenon implies that the researcher must go beyond mere description and interpret it; interpretation requires classification according to abstract "ideal (pure) types". This, together with his antipositivistic argumentation (see Verstehen), can be taken as a methodological justification for the model of the "rational economic man" (homo economicus), which is at the heart of modern mainstream economics.
Marginalism and psychophysicsUnlike other historicists, Weber also accepted the marginal theory of value (also called "marginalism") and taught it to his students. In 1908, Weber published an article in which he drew a sharp methodological distinction between psychology and economics and attacked the claims that the marginal theory of value in economics reflected the form of the psychological response to stimuli as described by the Weber-Fechner law. Max Weber's article has been cited as a definitive refutation of the dependence of the economic theory of value on the laws of psychophysics by Lionel Robbins, George Stigler, and Friedrich Hayek, though the broader issue of the relation between economics and psychology has come back into the academic debate with the development of "behavioral economics."
Economic historyWeber's best known work in economics concerned the preconditions for capitalist development, particularly the relations between religion and capitalism, which he explored in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as well as in his other works on the sociology of religion. He argued that bureaucratic political and economic systems emerging in the Middle Ages were essential in the rise of modern capitalism (including rational book-keeping and organization of formally free labour), while they were a hindrance in the case of ancient capitalism, which had a different social and political structure based on conquest, slavery, and the coastal city-state. Other contributions include his early work on the economic history of Roman agrarian society (1891) and on the labour relations in Eastern Germany (1892), his analysis of the history of commercial partnerships in the Middle Ages (1889), his critique of Marxism, the discussion of the roles of idealism and materialism in the history of capitalism in his Economy and Society (1922) and his General Economic History (1923), a notable example of the kind of empirical work associated with the German Historical School.
Though today read primarily by sociologists and social philosophers, Weber's work did have a significant influence on Frank Knight, one of the founders of the neoclassical Chicago school of economics, who translated Weber's General Economic History into English in 1927. Knight also wrote in 1956 that Max Weber was the only economist who dealt with the problem of understanding the emergence of modern capitalism "from the angle which alone can yield an answer to such questions, that is, the angle of comparative history in the broad sense."
Economic calculationWeber, like his colleague Werner Sombart, regarded economic calculation and especially the double-entry bookkeeping method of business accounting, as one of the most important forms of rationalisation associated the development of modern capitalism. Weber's preoccupation with the importance of economic calculation led him to develop a critique of socialism as a system that lacked a mechanism for allocating resources efficiently in order to satisfy human needs. Socialist intellectuals like Otto Neurath had realised that in a completely socialised economy, prices would not exist and central planners would have to resort to in-kind (rather than monetary) economic calculation. According to Weber, this type of coordination would be inefficient, especially because it would be incapable of solving the problem of imputation (i.e. of accurately determining the relative values of capital goods). Weber wrote that, under full socialism,
In order to make possible a rational utilisation of the means of production, a system of in-kind accounting would have to determine "value" – indicators of some kind for the individual capital goods which could take over the role of the "prices" used in book valuation in modern business accounting. But it is not at all clear how such indicators could be established and in particular, verified; whether, for instance, they should vary from one production unit to the next (on the basis of economic location), or whether they should be uniform for the entire economy, on the basis of "social utility," that is, of (present and future) consumption requirements [...] Nothing is gained by assuming that, if only the problem of a non-monetary economy were seriously enough attacked, a suitable accounting method would be discovered or invented. The problem is fundamental to any kind of complete socialisation. We cannot speak of a rational "planned economy" so long as in this decisive respect we have no instrument for elaborating a rational "plan."
—Max Weber
This argument against socialism was made independently, at about the same time, by Ludwig von Mises. Weber himself had a significant influence on Mises, whom he had befriended when they were both at the University of Vienna in the spring of 1918, and, through Mises, on several other economists associated with the Austrian School in the 20th century. Friedrich Hayek in particular elaborated the arguments of Weber and Mises about economic calculation into a central part of free market economics's intellectual assault on socialism, as well as into a model for the spontaneous coordination of "dispersed knowledge" in markets.
LegacyThe prestige of Max Weber among European social scientists would be difficult to over-estimate. He is widely considered the greatest of German sociologists and... has become a leading influence in European and American thought.
— Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 1991
Weber's most influential work was on economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. But whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber was instrumental in developing an antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition in the social sciences. In this regard he belongs to a similar tradition as his German colleagues Werner Sombart, Georg Simmel, and Wilhelm Dilthey, who stressed the differences between the methodologies appropriate to the social and the natural sciences.
Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action which he separated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental.
[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 a 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,
In his own time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. 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 rationalisation and the bureaucratic price of progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as the offspring 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.
— Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, 2005
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.
Weber has influenced many later social theorists, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, György Lukács and Jürgen Habermas. Different elements of his thought were emphasized by Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, and Raymond Aron. According to Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who had met Weber during his time at the University of Vienna,
The early death of this genius was a great disaster for Germany. Had Weber lived longer, the German people of today would be able to look to this example of an "Aryan" who would not be broken by National Socialism.
—Ludwig von Mises, 1940
Weber's friend, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, described him "the greatest German of our era" and his untimely death felt to Jaspers "as if the German world had lost its heart."
Critical responses to WeberWeber's explanations are highly specific to the historical periods he analysed. This makes it more difficult to generalise from his analysis and modify his theories for other circumstances.
Many scholars, however, have disagreed with specific claims Weber makes in his historical analysis. For example, the economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that capitalism did not begin with the Industrial Revolution but in 14th century Italy. In Milan, Venice and Florence the small city-state governments led to the development of the earliest forms of capitalism. In the 16th century Antwerp was a commercial centre of Europe. Also, the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland did not enjoy the same economic growth as the Netherlands, England and New England. It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinist majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland. Emil Kauder expanded Schumpeter's argument by arguing the hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labour theory of value.