阅读马克斯·韦伯 Max Weber在百家争鸣的作品!!! | |||
韦伯的主要著作围绕于社会学的宗教和政治研究领域上，但他也对经济学领域作出极大的贡献。他的知名著作《新教伦理与资本主义精神》是他对宗教社会学最初的研究，韦伯在这本书中主张，宗教的影响是造成东西方文化发展差距的主要原因，并且强调新教伦理在资本主义、官僚制度、和法律权威的发展上所扮演的重要角色，然而近代著名社会学家安东尼·纪登斯指出韦伯并未提出足够的证据实例证明新教伦理与资本主义发展有关，许多不以基督教为主要信仰的国家经济发展一样很出色。韦伯并将国家定义为一个“拥有合法使用暴力的垄断地位”的实体，这个定义对于西方现代政治学的发展影响极大。他在各种学术上的重要贡献通常被通称为“韦伯命题”。
生涯韦伯生于德国图林根的埃尔福特，他是家中的长子，父亲是一名知名的政治家和公务员。父亲的职业使家里充满了政治的气氛，许多突出的学者和公众人物都经常造访家中。
受到家庭环境的耳濡目染，韦伯的弟弟阿尔弗雷德·韦伯（Alfred Weber）后来也成为了一名社会学家和经济学家。在1876年的圣诞节，年仅十三岁的马克斯·韦伯撰写了两篇历史论文送给父母，标题分别为“论德国历史的发展以及皇帝和教宗的角色”以及“论罗马帝国从君士坦丁至民族迁徙运动的历史”。在十四岁时，韦伯写的信件便开始引用荷马、西塞罗、维吉尔、李维等人的著作，在他进入大学前也已经熟读了歌德、斯宾诺莎、康德、叔本华等人的理论。年轻的韦伯表现出他对研究社会科学的强烈兴趣。
马克斯·韦伯和他的弟弟阿弗雷德和卡尔，1879年。在1882年韦伯进入了海德堡大学的法律系就读。如同他父亲一样，韦伯选择以法律作为主要学习领域，并且也加入了他父亲就读大学时的同样社团。除了法律的学习外，年轻的韦伯也学习了经济学、中世纪历史、神学。他也在斯特拉斯堡加入德意志帝国军服役了一小段时间。
在1884年的秋天，韦伯回到老家以就读柏林洪堡大学，在接下来8年里除了曾至哥廷根大学就读一个学期并且又服了短期的兵役外，韦伯都一直待在柏林研究深造。韦伯与双亲住在一起，除了继续学业外，韦伯也担任实习律师，最后则在柏林大学担任讲师。韦伯在1886年通过了律师“实习阶段”（Referendar）的测验，成为实习法官。在1880年代的后期韦伯继续他对历史的研究。他在1889年完成了一篇标题为“中世纪商业组织的历史”的博士论文，取得了他的法律博士学位。两年后，韦伯写下了一本名为“罗马的农业历史和其对公共法及私法的重要性”的书，完成了他的教授资格测验（Habilitation），韦伯也因此成为正式的大学教授。
在韦伯即将完成博士论文的那一年里，韦伯也开始对当时的社会政策产生兴趣。在1888年他加入了一个名为“社会政治联盟”（Verein für Socialpolitik）的团体，这个专业团体成员大多是当时隶属经济历史学派的德国经济学家，他们将经济视为是解决当时广泛社会问题的主要方法，并且对当时的德国经济展开大规模的统计研究。在1890年联盟成立了一个专门的研究计划，以检验当时日趋严重的东部移民问题（Ostflucht）：由于当时德国劳工逐渐迁往快速工业化的德国城市，大量外国劳工迁徙至德国东部的农村地区。韦伯负责这次研究，并且写下了许多调查结果。最后的报告得到良好评价，被广泛认为是一篇杰出的观察研究，这也因此巩固了韦伯身为农业经济专家的名声。
韦伯的妻子玛丽安妮·施尼特格尔。在1893年韦伯与一名远亲的表妹玛丽安娜·施尼特格尔（Marianne Schnitger）结婚，她后来也成为了一名女性主义者和作家。新婚的两人在1894年搬家至弗莱堡，韦伯在那里获聘为弗莱堡大学的经济学教授。1896年韦伯也被获聘为其母校海德堡大学的教授。一年后韦伯的父亲去世了，在他死前两个月父子间刚巧经历了一场激烈的争吵，这场没有和解的争吵成为韦伯毕生的遗憾。在那之后韦伯患上了失眠症，个性也变的越来越神经质，使他越来越难以胜任教授的工作。他的精神状况使他不得不减少教学量，并且在1899年的学期中途休假离开。韦伯在1900年的夏季和秋季于精神疗养院休息了数个月的时间，接着在年底和妻子前往意大利旅游，一直到1902年的4月才返回海德堡。
在1890年代初期著作频繁的几年后，韦伯在1898年直至1902年底都没有再发表任何著作，最后终于在1903年秋季辞去了教授的职位。在摆脱了学校的束缚后，韦伯在那一年与他的同事维尔纳·松巴特（Werner Sombart）创办了一本名为“社会学和社会福利档案”的社会学期刊，由韦伯担任副编辑。在1904年，韦伯开始于这本期刊发表一些他最重要的文章，尤其是一系列名为《新教伦理与资本主义精神》的论文，这后来成为他毕生最知名的著作，并且也替他后来许多针对文化和宗教对经济体系的影响的研究奠定根基。这篇论文是唯一一篇他在世时便已出版成书的著作。也是在那年，韦伯前往美国旅游，并且参与了当时在圣路易斯所举行的社会和科学大会—那也是世界博览会相关的大会之一。尽管韦伯表现的越来越成功，他仍觉得自己无法再胜任固定的教学工作，因此继续维持着私人学者的身分。1907年韦伯获得一笔可观的遗产，也使他得以继续专心研究无须担忧经济问题。在1912年，韦伯试着组织一个左翼的政党以结合社会民主主义者和自由主义者，最后并没有成功，主要是因为当时的自由主义者仍担忧社会民主主义的革命理念。
马克斯·韦伯，1917年。在第一次世界大战里，韦伯在海德堡的一间陆军医院担任了一段时间的院长。在1915年和1916年他出任一个政府的委员会，试图保持德国在战后于比利时和波兰的主权。韦伯个人对第一次世界大战、以及当时德国帝国扩张的看法则随着战局的每况愈下而改变。韦伯在1918年成为海德堡的劳工和士兵委员会的成员之一。在1918年韦伯成为德国休战委员会的一名成员，前往凡尔赛会议代表德国谈判，并且也参与了魏玛共和国宪法的起草委员会。当时韦伯支持在宪法中加入授权紧急戒严的第48号条款，这个条款后来由于被阿道夫·希特勒用于建立独裁统治而恶名昭彰。韦伯对于德国政治的影响，至今仍有争议。
韦伯在这时开始重掌教职，首先是在维也纳大学，接着是在1919年于慕尼黑大学。在慕尼黑大学，他建立了第一所德国大学的社会学学系，但最后从没有亲自担任社会学的教职。由于德国右派在1919年和1920年掀起的动荡，韦伯离开了政治界。当时许多慕尼黑大学的同僚和学生批评他在1918年和1919年的德国革命中的亲左派态度和演讲，一些右派的学生还在他住家前抗议。韦伯在1920年6月14日因肺炎死于慕尼黑。
学术成就马克斯·韦伯与卡尔·马克思和埃米尔·涂尔干被并列为现代社会学的三大奠基人，尽管他在当时主要被视为是历史学家和经济学家。涂尔干（杜尔凯姆）遵循着孔德的方式，以社会学的实证主义研究。而韦伯以及他的同僚维尔纳·松巴特（也是德国社会学最知名的代表人物）采纳的则是反实证主义的路线，这些著作开始了反实证主义在社会科学界的革命，强调社会科学与自然科学在本质上的差异，因为他们认为人类的社会行为过于复杂（韦伯将其分类为传统行为、感情行为、目的理性行为、和附带行为），不可能用传统自然科学的方式加以研究。韦伯的早期著作通常与工业社会学有关，但他最知名的贡献是他后来在宗教社会学和政治社会学上的研究。
韦伯在《新教伦理与资本主义精神》中开始了他的研究，文中他显示出某些禁欲的新教教派—尤其是喀尔文教派，教义逐渐转变为争取理性的经济获利，以此表达他们受到上帝的祝福。韦伯主张，受到这种理性教义基础扶助的资本主义很快便会发展的越来越庞大，并且与原先的宗教产生矛盾，到最后宗教便会无可避免的被抛弃。韦伯在后来的作品里继续研究这样的现象，尤其是在他对官僚制和对于政治权威的分类上。在这些著作中他暗示了这种社会的理性化是无可避免的趋势。
值得注意的是，今天许多韦伯的著作都是在他死后才被收集、修订、并出版，这些工作主要是由他的妻子施尼特格尔进行的。塔尔科特·帕森斯等知名的社会学家都写下了许多对于韦伯著作的解释。
宗教社会学韦伯在宗教社会学上的研究开始于名为《新教伦理与资本主义精神》的论文，并且继续在《中国的宗教:儒教与道教》以及《印度的宗教:印度教与佛教的社会学》、《古犹太教》里探索。他对于其他宗教的研究则由于他在1920年的突然去世而中断，使他无法继续在《古犹太教》之后的一系列研究—包括了计划中对于诗篇、塔木德犹太人、以及早期基督教和伊斯兰教的研究。他所完成的那三个主要研究都关注于宗教对于经济活动的影响、社会阶层与宗教理想间的关系、以及西方文明的独特特征。
他的目标是为了找出东西方文化发展差距的主要原因。不过与当时许多遵循社会达尔文主义的思想家不同的是，韦伯最初并没有打算衡量和评断东西方两者的优劣；他希望专注于研究并解释西方文化特殊之处。在他的研究分析里，韦伯指出喀尔文主义（或者更广泛的—基督教）宗教理想的影响成为欧洲和美国的社会变革以及经济体系发展的主要原因，但他也指出这并非促成发展唯一的因素。其他重要的因素还包括了理性主义对于科学的追求、加上数学的科学统计、法律学、以及对于政府行政理性的系统化、和经济上的企业。最后，依据韦伯的看法，宗教社会学的研究只不过是探索一个阶段的变革，亦即那些让西方文明突出于其他文明之外的重要特征。
《新教伦理与资本主义精神》
《新教伦理与资本主义精神》最初德文版本的封面。韦伯的论文《新教伦理与资本主义精神》（Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus）是他最知名的著作。一些人认为这本书不是对新教的详细研究，而其实是韦伯后来的著作的介绍，尤其是他对于许多宗教思想和经济行为之间的互动的研究。在《新教伦理与资本主义精神》中，韦伯提出了一个知名的论点：那就是清教徒的思想影响了资本主义的发展。一般宗教的传统往往排斥世俗的事务，尤其是经济成就上的追求，但为什么这种观念没有发生在新教里发生呢？韦伯在这篇论文里解释了这个悖论。
韦伯将“资本主义的精神”定义为一种拥护追求经济利益的理想。韦伯指出，若是只考虑到个人对于私利的追求时，这样的精神并非只限于西方文化，但是这样的个人—英雄般的企业家（韦伯如此称呼他们）—并不能自行建立一个新的经济秩序（资本主义）。韦伯发现这些个人必须拥有的共同倾向还包括了试图以最小的努力赚取最大的利润，而隐藏在这个倾向背后的观念，便是认为工作是一种罪恶、也是一种应该避免的负担，尤其是当工作超过正常的份量时。“为了达成这样的生活方式而自然吸纳了资本主义的特质，能够以此支配他人”韦伯如此写道：“这种精神必定是来自某种地方，不会是来自单独的个人，而是来自整个团体的生活方式”。
在定义了资本主义的精神后，韦伯主张有很多原因使我们应该从宗教改革运动的宗教思想里寻找这种精神的根源。许多观察家如孟德斯鸠和济慈都记载下新教和商业精神发展之间的密切关系。韦伯指出某些形式的新教的教义—尤其是喀尔文（加尔文）教派—支持理性的追求经济利益以及世俗的活动，将这些行为赋予了正面的精神以及道德的涵义。这并非是那些宗教思想的最初目标，反而像是其副产品—这些教义和指示所根基的内在逻辑，都直接或非直接的鼓励了对于经济利益的忘我追求和理性计划。一个常见的例子便是新教对于制鞋匠的描绘：一个缩著身子专注于制鞋、将整个人努力贡献给上帝的人。
韦伯称他放弃了对于新教的进一步研究，因为他的同僚恩斯特·特勒尔奇 (Ernst Troeltsch)，一名专业的神学家已经展开了另一本书的专门研究。另一个原因是因为这篇论文已经提供了一个相当广泛的观察点，使他能够在接下来的研究里继续比较其他的宗教和社会。现代所称的“工作伦理”这一词便是源自韦伯所讨论到的“新教徒伦理”。不过这一词不只用于新教徒的伦理，也能套用至日本人、犹太人和其他非基督徒身上了。
《中国的宗教：儒教与道教》《中国的宗教：儒教与道教》是韦伯在宗教社会学上的第二本主要著作(翻译作儒“教”，但实际上应称作儒家)。韦伯专注于探索中国社会里那些和西欧不同的地方—尤其是与清教徒的对照，他并且提出了一个问题：为什么资本主义没有在中国发展呢？韦伯专注于早期的中国历史，尤其是诸子百家和战国，在这个时期主要的中国思想学派（儒教与道教）开始突显而出。
到了公元前200年，中国的国家体制已经从一个松散的封建制度国家的联邦发展为一个统一的、以世袭制度相传的帝国。如同在欧洲一样，中国的城市成为了要塞或是领导者的居住地，并且也成为了贸易和工匠的聚集中心。然而，与欧洲不同的是，他们从来没有取得政治上的自治权，其市民也没有特别的政治权利或特权。这主要是因为亲戚关系的紧密连结造成的，而这种连结则是出于宗教信仰里的祖传观念。另外，工匠的同业公会彼此竞争以向皇帝争宠，而从来没有试着联合起来争取更多政治权利。也因此，中国城市的居民从来没有组成一个如同欧洲城市一般的独特社会阶级。
较早的国家统一以及中央官僚制度的建立，则意味着中国社会权力斗争的焦点从土地的分配转移至官职的分配，官僚的贪污小费和税收成为了他们最主要的收入来源，国家有50%的税入都流入了他们的口袋。帝国的政府则依赖于这些官僚的服务，而非如同欧洲一般依赖于骑士的军事服务。
韦伯指出儒教对于许多民间教派的信仰展现相当宽容的态度，而从没有试着将他们统一为单独的宗教教义。与一般形而上学的宗教教义不同的是，儒教教导人们要顺着这个世界调整和修正。“高等”的人们（知识分子）应该避免追求财富（虽然没有贬低财富本身），也因此，中国变成了一个担任公务员比商人拥有更高社会地位和更高利益的国家.。
中国文明并没有宗教的先知或是权力极大的僧侣阶级。皇帝自身便是国教地位最高的僧侣以及至上的统治者，但民间的各种信仰也会被容忍（只不过其僧侣的政治发展空间会被缩减）。这种情况与中世纪的欧洲产生强烈对比，在欧洲教会压制了现世的统治者，而且统治者和人民所抱持的信仰都是一样的。
依据儒教的学说，对于伟大神祇的敬仰只是政府的事务，而对于祖先的敬仰则是所有人都必须遵从的，除此之外许许多多民间的信仰都被容忍。儒教也容忍巫术和神秘主义—只要他们能够作为帮助控制群众的有用工具；但若是他们威胁到既有的秩序，儒教便会谴责其为异端并毫不犹豫的加以镇压（如同对于佛教的压迫）。在这里儒教指的是作为一种国教，而道教则是民间的信仰 。
韦伯主张，虽然有一些对资本主义经济发展有利的因素存在（长期的和平、运河的改善、人口增长、取得土地的自由、迁徙至出生地以外的自由、以及选择执业的自由），然而这些有利因素都无法抵销其他因素的负面影响（大多数来自宗教）：
技术的改革在宗教的基础上被反对，因为那可能会扰乱对于祖先的崇敬、进而招致坏运气，而调整自身适应这个世界的现状则被视为是更好的选择。
对于土地的卖出经常被禁止、或者被限制的相当困难
扩张的亲戚关系（根基于对家庭关系和祖先崇敬的宗教信仰上）保护家庭成员免受经济的困境，也因此阻挠了借债、工作纪律、以及工作过程的理性化。
那些亲戚关系也妨碍了城市特殊阶级的发展，并且阻挠了朝向完善法律制度、法规、和律师阶级崛起的发展。
依据韦伯的说法，儒教和新教代表了两种广泛但彼此排斥的理性化，两者都试着依据某种终极的宗教信仰设计人类生活。两者都鼓励节制和自我控制、也都能与财富的累积相并存。然而，儒教的目标是取得并保存“一种文化的地位”并且以之作为手段来适应这个世界，强调教育、自我完善、礼貌、以及家庭伦理。相反的新教则以那些手段来创造一个“上帝的工具”，创造一个能够服侍上帝和造世主的人。这样强烈的信仰和热情的行动则被儒教的美学价值观念所排斥。因此，韦伯主张这种在精神上的差异便是导致资本主义在西方文明发展繁荣、却迟迟没有在中国出现的原因。
《印度的宗教:印度教与佛教的社会学》《印度的宗教:印度教与佛教的社会学》是韦伯在宗教社会学上的第三本主要著作。在这本书中他检验了印度社会的架构，对照了正统的印度教教义与非正统的佛教教义，以及其他民间信仰的影响，最后并研究这些宗教思想对于印度社会在现世上的道德观的影响。
印度的社会体制是由种姓制度的概念所形塑，直接连结了宗教思想与社会上的阶级分隔的关系。韦伯描述这种种姓制度是由婆罗门（僧侣）、刹帝利（战士）、吠舍（商人）、首陀罗（劳工）所组成。接着他指出种姓制度在印度的散布是因为历史上的征服侵略所造成，某些部落遭到了边缘化、种族制度也因此越来越根深蒂固。
韦伯特别专注于对婆罗门阶级的研究，并分析他们为何能够占据印度社会的最高阶级位置长达数个世纪。在研究了佛法概念的影响后，韦伯总结认为印度社会的道德观多元倾向，与儒教和基督教普世而统一的道德观不相同。如同中国一样，他注意到种姓制度也妨碍了印度都市独特阶级的发展。
紧接着，韦伯分析了印度的宗教思想，包括了禁欲主义和印度的世界观、婆罗门的正统教义、佛教在印度的崛起和衰退、以及古鲁（印度教祭司）的发展。韦伯提出的问题是：这些宗教思想对于印度社会日常的世俗活动有没有任何影响呢？如果有的话，它又对经济活动产生了什么影响？韦伯注意到印度教里所强调的永恒不变的世界秩序，是由永不停止的轮回概念和对现世世界的敌意所构成，他发现这种由宗教支持的传统种姓制度最后阻碍了经济的发展；换句话说，种姓制度的“精神”对于当地的资本主义发展起了极大的阻挠作用。
在研究的总结里，韦伯将他对于印度社会学和宗教的研究与之前对中国的研究综合起来。他注意到这些宗教都将人类生命的意义解释为超脱世俗的或是神秘性的经验，这些社会的知识分子通常倾向于厌恶政治，而社会架构往往被区分为受过教育与否的两种阶级，那些受过教育的知识份子作为先知或智者的榜样，而未受教育的大众则停留在日常生活的庸俗里并且相信迷信的民间巫术。在亚洲社会，如同基督教弥赛亚一般、能够不分受过教育与否皆给予救赎和指引的救世主并不存在。韦伯主张，正是因为弥赛亚救世主起源于近东国家，使得他们与亚洲大陆的主要宗教产生差异，西方国家也因此免于陷入中国和印度的道路。韦伯在他下一本著作《古犹太教》进一步证实了这个论点。
《古犹太教》《古犹太教》是韦伯对于宗教社会学的第四本著作，韦伯试着解释“各种情况的结合”导致了早期东方和西方文明的差距。尤其是将西方基督教的世俗禁欲主义与印度发展出的神秘冥思信仰相对照时，这种差异显得特别明显。韦伯注意到一些基督教的观点带有征服和改变世界的理想，而不加以逃避之。这种基督教的基本特征（当与远东的宗教相对照时）则是源于古代犹太人的先知。当韦伯述及他研究古犹太教的原因时，他写道“任何在现代欧洲文明传统下成长的人都会自然的以一连串的假设来解决遇到的历史问题，这对他而言是不可避免而且也相当合理的。这些问题将可以找出在各种情况的结合下，西方文化的独特之处、以及其普遍的独特文化涵义。”
“对于犹太人而言…世界的社会秩序已经发展至与当初先知对于未来的诺言相反的情况了，但他们仍认为未来这种情况会被改变、犹太人也会再次崛起。在犹太人看来来，世界既不是永恒的也非一成不变的，而是被创造出来的。世界表现出的架构就如同一个人行为的结果，除了所有犹太人之外、加上上帝对他们的反应而形塑而成的。也因此世界本身是一个历史的产物，是被设计用以实现上帝指定的秩序的…除此之外它是存在于一个具有高度理性的宗教伦理的社会上；它不受神秘巫术以及其他所有非理性寻求救赎的行为的影响；它与那些亚洲宗教提出的救赎途径完全处于不同的世界。更广泛的说这种道德观在今天依然是中东和欧洲的基本道德观。犹太人在世界历史上的重要性便是出自这个原因。…也因此，在思考到犹太人当初发展的历史时，我们便来到了西方和中东整个文化发展的分水岭。”
韦伯分析了中东贝都因人、城邦、牧人和农夫、和他们之间的互动和冲突，以及以色列联合王国的兴起和衰落。联合王国的时期就仿佛历史中的一个插曲，将出埃及记以来的联邦时期与以色列人在迦南的殖民时期一分为二。这种时期的区分和宗教的历史有极大关系，由于犹太教的基本教义是在以色列联邦时期形成的，它们在联合王朝衰败后成为了先知概念的基础，并在后来对西方文明产生了极大的影响。
韦伯讨论了早期以色列的联邦架构、以色列人与耶和华的独特关系、外国宗教的影响、宗教狂热的形式、以及犹太教祭司们对抗宗教狂热和偶像崇拜的斗争。他接着描述了王国的分裂、圣经的先知们在社会方面的态度、蛊惑人心的政客、宗教迷信和政治，以及先知们的道德观。韦伯注意到犹太教不只是基督教和伊斯兰教的始祖，同时也是现代西方世界崛起的关键因素，因为它影响了古希腊和古罗马的文化。社会学家赖因哈德·本迪克斯 (Reinhard Bendix)概述《古犹太教》一书道：“在上帝的凝视下，努力免于巫术和神秘迷信、献身于法律的研究、谨慎选择作出正确的事情，以此期盼未来能够更好，先知们设立了这样一个将人的日常生活置于服从上帝指示的道德法则下的宗教。透过这样的教义，古犹太教促成了道德理性主义的西方文明的诞生。”
政治和政府社会学
《政治作为一种职业》德文版第二版封面。在政治和政府的社会学上，韦伯最重要的贡献之一便是一篇名为《政治作为一种职业》（Politik als Beruf）的论文。在这篇论文里韦伯提出了对国家的定义：亦即国家是一个“拥有合法使用暴力的垄断地位”的实体，这个定义成为西方社会科学的重要基础。在这篇论文里韦伯主张，政治应该被视为是任何会影响到控制暴力的权力分配的活动。政治也因此是纯粹来自于权力。也因此一个政治家不能被视为是一个“真正道德的基督徒”，也不可能如同山上宝训里所述的会将脸颊转过来让人掴耳光。遵从那样的道德的人应该被归属于圣人，只有圣人才会这样做。而现实的政治界是没有允许圣人参与的空间的，一个政治家应该采纳的伦理是道德与政治目标的权衡(Proportion)、以及负责任的伦理(Responsibility)，并且必须对他的职业拥有强烈的热情(Passion)、同时还必须学会将自己的情绪好恶与实际目标区隔开来(Distance)。
韦伯并且提出了三种正式的政治支配和权威的形式：魅力型权威（家族和宗教）、传统型权威（宗主、父权、封建制度）、以及法理型权威（现代的法律和国家、官僚）。韦伯主张历史上的统治者与被统治者间的关系多少包含了这样的成分。他认为魅力型权威的不稳定性必然导致其被迫转变为“常规的”权威形式，也就是传统或者官僚型支配。同样的，他也注意到在纯粹的传统型支配里，对于支配者的抵抗到达一定程度时便会产生“传统的革命”。因此韦伯也暗示了社会会逐渐朝向一个理性合法的权威架构发展，并且利用官僚的架构制度。尽管韦伯庞杂的著作中暗示这种社会的理性化是不可避免的趋势，他自己十分小心避免进化论与目的论的逻辑。然而由于韦伯最早的英译来自结构功能派的Talcott Parsons，使得他的理论时常被视为社会进化论的一部分。
韦伯在社会的官僚化上的批判研究也相当为人所知，研究一个正式的社会体制如何以理性的方式套用某种形式的官僚制度。事实上也是因为韦伯展开了对于官僚制度的研究，使得官僚（Bureaucracy）这一词成为常用的社会科学术语。许多现代公共行政学的研究都可以追溯回韦伯。当社会学研究述及一个传统的、有着阶级架构的大陆型文官体制时，也经常将之称为“韦伯文官体制”。不过这只是韦伯在他的《经济和社会》（1922）里所提及的其中一种公共行政和政府统治形式，而且韦伯个人并不欣赏这种制度—他只是认为那特别成功和有效罢了。在这本书里，韦伯勾画出了社会学知名的“理性化”概念，亦即从一个价值为取向和行动的体制（传统型权威和魅力型权威）转变为一个以目的为取向和行动的体制（法律型权威）。而依据韦伯的说法，不断理性化的结果将会是一个“冰冷的北极夜晚”—人类生活的理性化造成个人陷入了一个以权力统治和理性为根基“铁笼子”里。韦伯的官僚研究也使他正确预估了俄国的社会主义革命的结局，由于自由市场和其机制遭到废止，国家不但没有消失（卡尔·马克思预言共产主义社会将会达成这个目标）、反而开始了规模惊人的过度官僚化（举例而言，短缺经济的爆发便是证据之一）。
值得一提的是，韦伯在三种正当支配之外，曾经提出意大利的城市共和政治是一种非正当的支配，可见他的支配类型学仍有模糊之处。他对民主政治魅力型领袖与官僚铁笼之间互动的悲观，也对后世的民主理论，特别是熊彼得的精英政治学说，产生了极大的影响。韦伯对魏玛民主的看法似乎预见了纳粹的兴起。
经济史学与社会分层虽然马克斯·韦伯在今天最为人所知的是他身为现代社会学的创始人和奠基学者之一，但他也在其他许多领域有不少成就，最值得注意的是经济学。韦伯在世时这样精确的学科分类相当少见，而韦伯也自视为主要是一个历史学家和经济学家，社会学家仅是第二领域罢了。
从经济学家的观点来看，马克斯·韦伯代表的是德国的经济历史学派“最年轻”的一代。他对于经济学最重要的贡献是他的知名著作《新教伦理与资本主义精神》，这本书经典的对照了宗教在经济发展上产生的影响。韦伯的研究领域也与他的同僚维尔纳·松巴特相同，松巴特则将资本主义的崛起归功于犹太教的影响。韦伯对于经济学的其他主要贡献（整体上也是对于社会科学的贡献）还包括了他在方法学上的研究：他对于解释社会学（Verstehen；此词来自德语，意为理解）的理论和反实证主义（又称为人文主义社会学）)。
解释社会学的原则是社会学主要的研究范例之一，支持者和批评者都相当多。这种研究方式主张社会学、经济学、和历史学等社会科学的研究永远不能彻底的归纳和记载，因为研究者必须一直有着概念上的认知才能加以探索之，韦伯将这种条件称为“理想形式”（Ideal Type）。这种理想可以这样子归纳：一个理想的形式是由许多现象提供的某些特征和成分所组成，但它却不会与任何特定的现象有着完全一样的特征。韦伯的理想形式成为他对社会科学最重要的贡献之一。
韦伯承认这种“理想形式”是一种抽象的产物，但他主张任何想要了解特定社会现象的人都必须有这种理想形式，因为与物理的现象不同的是，社会科学还牵涉到复杂万分的人类行为，而这只有可能以理想形式的方法来加以解释。理想形式的概念，加上他的反实证主义的立论，可以被视为是他对“理性的经济人”的方法论假设的辩护。
韦伯并且公式化了社会阶层的三大要件理论，主张社会阶级、社会地位、和团体（或政党）在概念上是不同的要件。
社会阶级是以在经济上与市场的互动所决定的（物主、承租人、员工等等）。
社会地位是以非经济的成分如荣誉、声望和宗教构成。
政党则指一个人与政治界的联系。
而这三种要件都会影响到韦伯称为“生涯机会”的结果。
韦伯对经济学还有其他一些贡献：包括了经过认真研究的罗马农业历史，和他在《经济和社会》一书里述及的唯心主义及唯物主义两者对于资本主义历史的影响，韦伯也在书中呈现了对于马克思主义的一些批评。最后，他在《经济与历史》（Wirtschaftsgeschichte）中的仔细研究则可以被视为是经济历史学派最杰出的作品之一。
对马克斯·韦伯的批评马克斯·韦伯关于基督新教伦理决定经济发展的观点和欧洲的发展本身相矛盾。意大利北部地方、巴伐利亚、莱茵河地区、西班牙和法国等地资本主义经济的发展，经常被看作资本主义发展单一因素决定论的反例，包括地理的、政治的或者其它单一因素的决定论，也包括新教伦理理论。一般认为历史上欧洲资本主义发展的推动力在于财产权的加强、交易成本的降低、封建主义的衰落和瓦解等。
在现当代，中国大陆、香港、台湾、新加坡、日本等地在经济上取得了繁荣，而这些地区是具有儒家价值观的社会。东亚地区的成功，也和基督教没有关系。因此，表面看来马克斯·韦伯关于基督新教伦理和经济发展的理论似乎与事实相悖。但是，马克斯·韦伯在他的研究中仅仅试图揭示新教伦理在资本主义精神形成初期的所扮演的‘火车扳道工’角色，此后的资本主义风尚（ethos) 在时空的推移中获得了新的非宗教性能量和执着物欲的理由，人类历史也就此走上了新的轨道。马克斯·韦伯曾忧心忡忡地在新教伦理与资本主义精神一书结尾处将这种成熟资本主义的内在逻辑和自身演化称为‘人类的铁笼’。
当代来自解构主义或无政府主义等对基督新教理论的批判则认为为增加世俗财富的工作是神圣的或高贵的追求的假设本身并不成立。一些作家如亨利·大卫·梭罗（Henry David Thoreau）和塞缪尔·约翰逊（Samuel Johnson）等人为新潮人群、懒散者、批判基督新教等理论提供了基础。
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.