Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; German: [ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profoundly influence social theory and research. While Weber did not see himself as a sociologist, he is recognized as one of the fathers of sociology, along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim. Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law and habilitation from the latter in 1889 and 1891, he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger and became a professor at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg. In 1897, he had a psychological breakdown after he had an argument with his father, who died shortly thereafter. He ceased teaching and travelled during the late 1890s and early 1990s. Shortly before his trip to the United States, he recovered and slowly resumed his scholarship. At this point, he wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He co-founded the German Sociological Association, an early association of sociologists, in 1910. After the beginning of …
Max Weber
Author details
- Born:
- April 21, 1864
- Died:
- June 14, 1920
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Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; German: [ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profoundly influence social theory and research. While Weber did not see himself as a sociologist, he is recognized as one of the fathers of sociology, along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim. Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law and habilitation from the latter in 1889 and 1891, he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger and became a professor at the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg. In 1897, he had a psychological breakdown after he had an argument with his father, who died shortly thereafter. He ceased teaching and travelled during the late 1890s and early 1990s. Shortly before his trip to the United States, he recovered and slowly resumed his scholarship. At this point, he wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He co-founded the German Sociological Association, an early association of sociologists, in 1910. After the beginning of the First World War, he supported the German war effort and served as a reserve office who was in charge of the army hospitals in Heidelberg. Increasingly critical of the German government actions during the war, he supported the democratisation of Germany. He participated in the Lauenstein Conferences in 1917 and gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation" during the next few years. After the end of the war, Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party, ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament, and served as an advisor to the committee that drafted the Weimar Constitution in 1919. He became frustrated with politics and resumed teaching, this time at the universities of Vienna and Munich. After possibly contracting the Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 56. His Economy and Society, which he had been writing at the time, was left unfinished. Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and the ensuing sense of "disenchantment". He formulated a thesis arguing that such processes were associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber is also known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, emphasising the cultural influences embedded in religion as driving factors of capitalism. Weber first elaborated this theory in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where he included ascetic Protestantism among the major "elective affinities" that led to the rise of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal systems in the Western world. Weber's The Protestant Ethic was the earliest part in his broader consideration of world religions, as he later examined the religions of China and India, as well as ancient Judaism. In another major work, "Politics as a Vocation", Weber defined the state as an entity that successfully claimed a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force". He was the first to categorise social authority into distinct forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. Weber was also a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive rather than purely empiricist methods. Weber made a variety of other contributions in economic history, theory, and methodology. After his death, the rise of Weberian scholarship was slowed by the political instability of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi Germany. After the Second World War, organised scholarship began to appear, led by Talcott Parsons, who used Weber's works to support his idea of structural functionalism. Over the course of the later twentieth century, Weber's reputation began to rise due to the publication of translations of his works and scholarly interpretations of his life and works. He began to be regarded as a founding father of sociology, alongside Marx and Durkheim. As a result of these works, Weber is commonly regarded as one of the central figures in the development of the social sciences.
