Max Weber
Modern life is shaped by rationalisation – calculation and bureaucracy replace magic and tradition, and the world loses its enchantment.
Placement
Defined sociology as the science that seeks to understand social action interpretively and thereby to explain it causally; traced Western rationalisation from the Protestant ethic to modern bureaucracy – the “disenchantment of the world” and the “iron cage”.
Key ideas
- Interpretive sociology (Verstehen)
- Three types of legitimate rule
- The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism
- Disenchantment of the world
- Ideal type
- Ethics of responsibility vs. ethics of conviction
Teachers: Kuno Fischer
Influence
Influenced by 13
Immanuel Kant
influenced by disputed
Through Rickert’s neo-Kantianism Weber took over Kant’s gulf between is and ought: science cannot ground value judgements, and concepts select from an infinite reality (‘Objectivity’ essay, 1904). M. Weber, “Die ‚Objektivität‘ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis” (1904); SEP “Max Weber”; SEP “Neo-Kantianism”
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Wilhelm Dilthey
influenced by disputed
In Roscher and Knies Weber cites several Dilthey essays with approval, but how far he followed Dilthey’s Verstehen is open, and the SEP entry sets Weber’s concept formation against Dilthey’s. R. Wanstrat, Das sozialwissenschaftliche Verstehen bei Dilthey und Max Weber (Duncker & Humblot; read via summary only); SEP “Max Weber” §2.1; the line is asserted in Randall Collins’s critique, no accessible source states it plainly
Evidence: AI draft
Wilhelm Dilthey › 1833–1911
Friedrich Nietzsche
influenced by
Weber tested Nietzsche’s theory of ressentiment in his sociology of religion, accepting it only for some ethics of the disprivileged (‘Einleitung’ to Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, 1915). M. Weber, “Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. Einleitung”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 41 (1915); W. Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung (1987); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900
Georg Simmel
influenced by
Weber drew on Simmel’s Problems of the Philosophy of History (1892) for interpretive understanding and on The Philosophy of Money (1900), but criticised his method (fragment, c. 1908). M. Weber, “Georg Simmel als Soziologe und Theoretiker der Geldwirtschaft” (fragment, c. 1908, printed 1972); “Roscher und Knies” (1903–06); Die protestantische Ethik (1904–05); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Simmel › 1858–1918
Ernst Troeltsch influenced
influenced by
Weber became acquainted through his Heidelberg colleague Troeltsch with the theological debate between Lutheran and Calvinist positions that lies behind the Protestant Ethic. SEP “Max Weber” (S. H. Kim), §2.2
Evidence: AI draft
influenced
Troeltsch developed his programme of theology as a historical-ethical cultural science chiefly in exchange with Weber at Heidelberg, out of which came the Social Teaching of 1912. Deutsche Biographie, “Troeltsch, Ernst” (F. W. Graf, NDB 26, 2016, p. 433 f.); NDB “Weber, Max” (F. W. Graf, NDB 27, 2020, pp. 474–479), on the Fachmenschenfreundschaft
Evidence: AI draft
Ernst Troeltsch › 1865–1923
W. E. B. Du Bois
influenced by disputed
Whether Du Bois shaped Weber’s stance on racial theory is disputed; Weber corresponded with him (1904–05), printed his essay (1906) and cited him against racial biology (1910). M. Weber to W. E. B. Du Bois, 8 Nov. 1904 and 30 Mar. 1905; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 22 (1906); Verhandlungen des Ersten Deutschen Soziologentages (1911); L. A. Scaff, Max Weber in America (2011)
Evidence: AI draft
W. E. B. Du Bois › 1868–1963
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Kuno Fischer studied with
studied with
Weber counts Fischer among his teachers at Heidelberg (1882–84), alongside Knies, Bekker and Erdmannsdörffer. NDB “Weber, Max” (F. W. Graf, NDB 27, 2020, pp. 474–479; deutsche-biographie.de/sfz6881.html); Weber’s own record of his courses not checked
Evidence: AI draft
Kuno Fischer › 1824–1907
Gustav von Schmoller
influenced by
In his early years Weber had Schmoller, head of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, as his mentor, and the Verein commissioned the East Elbian survey that was greeted with acclaim and controversy. SEP “Max Weber” (S. H. Kim), §1 and §2.1
Evidence: AI draft
Gustav von Schmoller › 1838–1917
Wilhelm Windelband
influenced by
Weber followed Windelband in holding that historical and cultural knowledge differs in kind from natural-scientific knowledge. SEP “Max Weber” (S. H. Kim), §2.1 and §5.1
Evidence: AI draft
Wilhelm Windelband › 1848–1915
Ferdinand Tönnies
influenced by
Weber’s concepts of communal and associative relationships (Vergemeinschaftung, Vergesellschaftung) explicitly refer to Tönnies’s ‘fundamental work’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society, 1921–22). M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1921–22), “Soziologische Grundbegriffe”; F. Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887)
Evidence: AI draft
Ferdinand Tönnies › 1855–1936
Heinrich Rickert
influenced by
Weber took over the neo-Kantian account of concept formation in the historical and cultural sciences as Rickert had elaborated it, but rejected Rickert’s recourse to ends that are valid across all cultures. SEP “Max Weber” (S. H. Kim, rev. 2022), §2.1 and §5.1; SEP “Heinrich Rickert” (A. Staiti, L. Oliva), introduction
Evidence: AI draft
Heinrich Rickert › 1863–1936
Werner Sombart
influenced by
Weber’s Protestant Ethic took up Sombart’s question about the mentality behind capitalism from Modern Capitalism (1902), and from 1904 Weber edited the Archiv together with Sombart and Jaffé. Deutsche Biographie, “Sombart, Werner” (F. Lenger, NDB 24, 2010, p. 562 f.); NDB “Weber, Max” (NDB 27, 2020)
Evidence: AI draft
Werner Sombart › 1863–1941
Emil Lask
influenced by
Weber met the neo-Kantian problem of bridging irrational reality and rational concept in the form Lask gave it, and his methodological writings turn largely on that problem. SEP “Max Weber” (S. H. Kim), §2.1 (Lask named with Windelband and Rickert as the Baden School through which Weber found his epistemological template)
Evidence: AI draft
Emil Lask › 1875–1915
Influenced 23
Karl Jaspers
influenced ✓
Jaspers used Weber’s ideal types in Psychology of Worldviews (1919) and honoured him as the model of philosophical existence (address, 1920; Max Weber, 1932). K. Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919); Max Weber. Rede bei der Trauerfeier (1920); Max Weber. Deutsches Wesen im politischen Denken, im Forschen und Philosophieren (1932); SEP “Karl Jaspers”
Karl Jaspers › 1883–1969
Georg Lukács
influenced
In his reification essay (1923) Lukács drew on Weber’s analysis of calculable, rational bureaucracy and law to show how commodity form shapes modern institutions. G. Lukács, “Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats”, in Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein (1923); M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1922)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Georg Lukács › 1885–1971
Alfred Schutz
influenced ✓
Schutz took up Weber’s demand that sociology understand the subjective meaning of action and asked what that meaning is, a question he found Weber had left unexamined (1932). A. Schütz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932); SEP “Alfred Schutz”; SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Alfred Schutz › 1899–1959
Jürgen Habermas
influenced ✓
Habermas built his theory of modernity on Weber’s account of rationalisation, but argued that Weber had narrowed reason to its purposive, instrumental form (Theory of Communicative Action, 1981). J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981), vol. I; SEP “Jürgen Habermas”
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Pierre Bourdieu
influenced ✓
Bourdieu recast Weber’s sociology of religion, with priest, prophet and sorcerer competing for legitimacy, as a religious field of struggles over symbolic power (1971). P. Bourdieu, “Genèse et structure du champ religieux”, Revue française de sociologie 12 (1971); “Une interprétation de la théorie de la religion selon Max Weber”, Archives européennes de sociologie 12 (1971)
Pierre Bourdieu › 1930–2002
Anthony Giddens
influenced ✓
Giddens interpreted Weber’s political sociology (1972) and drew on Weber’s state monopoly of violence for his theory of the nation-state (The Nation-State and Violence, 1985). A. Giddens, Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber (1972); The Nation-State and Violence (1985); Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Anthony Giddens › b. 1938
Show all (23)Show fewer
Marianne Weber
influenced
In Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (1907) Marianne Weber drew on Max Weber’s studies of medieval trading companies and the Protestant ethic; later she edited his works. Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (1907); Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild (1926); F. W. Graf, “Weber, Marianne”, NDB 27 (2020)
Evidence: AI draft
Marianne Weber › 1870–1954
Carl Schmitt
influenced
Schmitt, who heard Weber’s ‘Politik als Beruf’ in Munich (1919), made the plebiscitary Reich president, as Weber conceived him, guardian of the constitution (Der Hüter der Verfassung, 1931). C. Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung (1931); M. Weber, “Der Reichspräsident” (1919); W. J. Mommsen, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890–1920 (1959); SEP “Carl Schmitt”
Evidence: AI draft
Carl Schmitt › 1888–1985
Karl Mannheim
influenced
Mannheim developed Weber’s formal and substantive rationality into the contrast of functional and substantial rationality in planned mass society (Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus, 1935). K. Mannheim, Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus (1935); Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940); D. Kettler, V. Meja and N. Stehr, Karl Mannheim (1984)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Mannheim › 1893–1947
Norbert Elias
influenced ✓
Elias took Weber’s definition of the state by its monopoly of legitimate force and traced how monopolies of violence and taxation formed (Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939). N. Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939), vol. II; M. Weber, “Politik als Beruf” (1919)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Norbert Elias › 1897–1990
Talcott Parsons
influenced
Parsons translated The Protestant Ethic (1930) and made Weber, with Durkheim, Pareto and Marshall, a source of his voluntaristic theory of action (The Structure of Social Action, 1937). M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (1930); T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (1937); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Talcott Parsons › 1902–1979
Robert K. Merton
influenced
Merton extended Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis to science, arguing that Puritan values furthered experimental science in seventeenth-century England (Osiris, 1938). R. K. Merton, “Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England”, Osiris 4 (1938); “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality” (1940)
Evidence: AI draft
Robert K. Merton › 1910–2003
Maruyama Masao
influenced
Maruyama drew on Weber’s types of rule and his theory of rationalisation in his essays on Japanese politics (Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, 1956–57). Maruyama Masao, Gendai seiji no shisō to kōdō (1956–57), tr. I. Morris, Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (1963); R. Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan (1996)
Evidence: AI draft
Maruyama Masao › 1914–1996
C. Wright Mills
influenced
With Hans Gerth, Mills edited and translated From Max Weber (1946) and took up Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy and status in White Collar (1951). H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (eds. and trans.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946); C. W. Mills, White Collar (1951)
Evidence: AI draft
C. Wright Mills › 1916–1962
Zygmunt Bauman
influenced
Bauman drew on Weber’s bureaucracy and instrumental rationality: a modern division of labour that separated means from moral ends made the Holocaust possible (Modernity and the Holocaust, 1989). Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Zygmunt Bauman › 1925–2017
Clifford Geertz
influenced
Geertz founded his semiotic concept of culture on Weber: ‘man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun’, analysed by interpretation (‘Thick Description’, 1973). C. Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Clifford Geertz › 1926–2006
Thomas Luckmann
influenced ✓
With Berger, Luckmann joined Weber’s subjective meaning of action to Durkheim’s social facts: society is a human product and an objective reality (The Social Construction of Reality, 1966). P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966), introduction; SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Thomas Luckmann › 1927–2016
Syed Hussein Alatas
influenced
Alatas examined Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis for Southeast Asia, asking how religion relates to economic development there (‘The Weber Thesis and South East Asia’, 1963). S. H. Alatas, “The Weber Thesis and South East Asia”, Archives de sociologie des religions 15 (1963)
Evidence: AI draft
Syed Hussein Alatas › 1928–2007
Peter L. Berger
influenced
In The Sacred Canopy (1967) Berger took up Weber’s theodicy and disenchantment, arguing that Protestantism’s rationalisation of religion prepared its own secularisation. P. L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (1967); M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904–05); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Peter L. Berger › 1929–2017
Ulrich Beck
influenced
Beck turned Weber’s terms status group and class on current inequality, arguing that individualisation leaves it ‘beyond status and class’ (‘Jenseits von Stand und Klasse?’, 1983). U. Beck, “Jenseits von Stand und Klasse?”, in R. Kreckel (ed.), Soziale Ungleichheiten (1983); Risikogesellschaft (1986)
Evidence: AI draft
Ulrich Beck › 1944–2015
Eva Illouz
influenced
Illouz extended Weber’s analysis of rationalisation to emotions, describing how intimate life becomes an object of calculation and communication (Cold Intimacies, 2007; Why Love Hurts, 2011). E. Illouz, Cold Intimacies (2007); Warum Liebe weh tut (2011); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Eva Illouz › b. 1961
Hartmut Rosa
influenced
Rosa drew on Weber’s Protestant ethic, with its condemnation of wasted time, to trace how the modern compulsion to use time efficiently drives social acceleration (Beschleunigung, 2005). H. Rosa, Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne (2005); M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik (1904–05)
Evidence: AI draft
Hartmut Rosa › b. 1965
Andreas Reckwitz
influenced
Reckwitz described industrial modernity’s logic of generality in terms of Weber’s formal rationalisation, set against late modernity’s logic of the singular (Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 2017). A. Reckwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten (2017); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Andreas Reckwitz › b. 1970
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Tu Weiming
criticised by
Tu Weiming edited The Triadic Chord: Confucian Ethics, Industrial East Asia, and Max Weber (1991) and argued, against Weber’s verdict, that Confucian values could support rather than hinder modern economic development in East Asia. Tu Wei-ming (ed.), The Triadic Chord (1991); Tu, “A Confucian Perspective on the Rise of Industrial East Asia”, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 42 (1988)
Evidence: AI draft
Tu Weiming › b. 1940
Criticizes 2
Confucius
criticised
In Confucianism and Taoism (1915/1920) Weber described Confucian ethics as a rational adjustment to the world, lacking the tension with the world from which the Puritan mastery of the world arose. M. Weber, “Konfuzianismus und Taoismus” (1915; Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I, 1920), conclusion “Konfuzianismus und Puritanismus”
Evidence: AI draft
Confucius › traditionally 551–479 BCE
Karl Marx influenced by
influenced by
Weber generalised Marx’s separation of workers from the means of production to administration, the army and science, as a mark of bureaucratic modernity (‘Politik als Beruf’, 1919). M. Weber, “Politik als Beruf” (1919); “Wissenschaft als Beruf” (1919); Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1921–22); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
criticised
Weber’s Protestant Ethic (1904–05) countered a one-sided materialist reading of history without substituting a spiritualist one, and he warned that socialism would deepen bureaucracy (1918). M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904–05), conclusion; “Der Sozialismus” (lecture, Vienna 1918)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Works
How religious asceticism fostered modern capitalism.
The ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility; the slow boring of hard boards.
Published after his death by Marianne Weber: the basic concepts of interpretive sociology, the three types of legitimate rule – traditional, charismatic, legal-rational – and the sociology of bureaucracy, law and religion.
Position
Weber defined sociology as the science that seeks to understand social action interpretively and thereby to explain its course and effects causally. Its tools are “ideal types” – one-sided, sharpened concepts against which reality can be measured – and it distinguishes four kinds of action: instrumentally rational, value-rational, affectual and traditional. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05) he argued that the Calvinist idea of a calling and a disciplined, ascetic conduct of life helped create the spirit of modern capitalism, a thesis disputed ever since; his studies of the economic ethics of the world religions compared China, India and ancient Judaism. Economy and Society sets out a sociology of domination: legitimate rule rests on legal-rational, traditional or charismatic grounds, and the state is the community that claims the monopoly of legitimate physical force within a territory. Modernity, for Weber, is rationalisation: calculation, bureaucracy and science replace tradition and magic, producing the “disenchantment of the world” and a “shell as hard as steel”, known in English as the “iron cage”. Science should keep its own value judgements apart from its findings, and politics demands an ethic of responsibility as well as one of conviction.
Life & context
Max Weber was born in Erfurt in 1864 and grew up in Berlin, where his father was a National Liberal politician. He studied law, history and economics, and became professor of economics in Freiburg in 1894 and in Heidelberg in 1896. After a violent quarrel with his father, who died weeks later, he suffered a breakdown in 1898 and gave up teaching for years. As a private scholar in Heidelberg he co-edited the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik from 1904, travelled through the United States that year, and in 1909 co-founded the German Sociological Association. In 1918 he helped found the left-liberal German Democratic Party. He taught again in Vienna and from 1919 in Munich, where he died of pneumonia in 1920; his wife, the sociologist and women’s rights campaigner Marianne Weber, edited Economy and Society from his papers.
Further main works
- “Objectivity” in Social Science (1904)
- The Economic Ethics of the World Religions (1915–20)
- Science as a Vocation (1917/1919)
Appears in
- Journey ‘How Society Became Thinkable’ · Stop 6 of 12
- Debate ‘Free Speech and Its Limits’
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