Max Weber Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Max Weber (1864–1921) was a German historian, political economist, and sociologist. Educated at the University of Berlin, he taught at the universities of Freiburg (1894–1895), Heidelberg (1896–1899),Vienna (1918), and Munich (1919–1921). He also worked for many prolific years as an independent scholar, a mode of life that he chose after experiencing six years of mental difficulties and scholarly paralysis from 1897 to 1903. Weber also played an active role in German politics, including participating in the peace treaty negotiations at Versailles and in the drafting of the Weimar constitution.

Although Weber is justly remembered as one of the founders of twentieth-century positivistic social science, he himself was wary of using the method of natural science as a model for social science. He denied that the discovery of laws of social behavior is the chief purpose of social science, because such a focus turns attention away from understanding important and sometimes unique phenomena, such as the emergence of capitalism in the West. Similarly, his notion of interpretive (Verstehen) sociology was far from purely empiricist approaches. According to Weber, knowledge of the causes of social action requires the establishment of ideal-types that describe rational behavior under specific circumstances. Only by comparing actual actions with actions dictated by the ideal type can one know the true causes (which often include irrational factors) of actual actions.

Nonetheless, Weber is linked with social science positivism because of his treatment of the distinction between facts and values, which has become the foundational premise of positivistic social science. Believing that science cannot resolve the conflict between ultimate values (goals) and knowing that values determine the subjects of social scientific investigation, Weber sought to give an account of an objective social science that was both value-free and yet worthy of being chosen as a vocation. Despite his profound personal commitment to social science, however, this activity became problematic for him because he was aware that human reason cannot establish the superiority of the scientific outlook over the religious outlook. Accordingly his discussions of the methodology of social science have a tragic pathos that is missing in his positivistic followers.

Weber’s most influential empirical work is his 1905 essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in which he traces the origin of the spirit of capitalism (the moral view that gave rise to capitalism) to an interpretation of French theologian John Calvin’s teaching, which maintained that worldly success is a sign of salvation. After completing this work, Weber turned to the study of the religions of China, India, and ancient Judaism in order to understand why they did not foster the spirit of capitalism. His study of religion as a whole was somewhat at odds with the prevailing spirit of social science positivism as well as Marxism, because it ascribed causal efficacy to religious ideas and because he refused to understand the secular order that these ideas unintentionally created as a change for the better.

Bibliography:

Loewith, Karl. Max Weber and Karl Marx. Translated by Hans Fantel. London: Routledge, 1993.
Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
Weber, Marianne. Max Weber: A Biography. Translated and edited by Harry Zohn. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1988.
Weber, Max. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner, 1958.
Political Writings. Edited by Peter Lassmann and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Wrong, Dennis, ed. Max Weber. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970.

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