The German social scientist Max Weber initiated modern sociological thought and his historical and comparative studies are a landmark in the history of sociology. Weber was interested in charting the varying paths taken by universal cultural history as reflected in the development of the great world civilizations. In this sense, he wished to attempt a historical and analytical study of the themes sounded so strongly in Hegel's philosophy of history, especially the theme, which Weber took as his own, of the "specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture." Weber's detailed training as a legal and economic historian led him to reject simplistic formulas of economic base and corresponding cultural superstructure that were so often used to account for cultural development and were a strong part of the intellectual environment of Weber's early years as student and professor. He went beyond Hegel and Marx to create a comparative study of sociocultural processes in West and East.
Weber was born on April 21, 1864, in Erfaut, Thuringia, the son of a lawyer. After three terms at Heidelberg University, Weber served a year in the military. Resuming his studies at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen in 1884, he passed his bar examination in 1886 and later practiced law for a time.
In 1893 Weber married Marianne Schnitger. He taught briefly at Freiburg University and at Heidelberg. In 1903 he joined Werner Sombart in editing the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft and Sozialpolitik (Archives for Social Science and Social Policy), the most prominent German social science journal of the period. Here, Weber began to write perhaps his most renowned essays, published in the Archiv in 1904-1905 under the title The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He linked the rise of a new capitalism to the religious ethics of Protestantism, especially Calvinists.
Weber argued that the asceticism of the medieval Catholic monastery brought into the conduct of everyday affairs contributed greatly to the systematic rationalization and functional organization of every sphere of existence, especially economic life. He viewed the Reformation as causing a fundamental reorientation of basic cultural frameworks of spiritual direction and human outlook. Within the context of his larger questions, Weber tended to view Protestant rationalism as one step in the series of stages of increasing rationalization of every area of modern society.
In 1904 Weber went to the United States where he saw evidence for his thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He also recognized that contemporary American economic life had been stripped of its original ethical and religious impulse. Intense economic competition assumed the character almost of sport.
Weber attempted to weigh the relative importance of economic, religious, juridical, and other factors in contributing to the different historical outcomes seen in any comparative study of world societies. This larger theme formed one of his central intellectual interests throughout the remainder of his life, and it resulted in the publication of The Religion of China (1915), The Religion of India (1916-1917), and Ancient Judaism (1917-1919).
Weber's break with the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Union for Social Policy), a long-standing German political and social scientific organization, over the question of the relation of social scientific research to social policy led to the establishment in 1910, with the collaboration of other social scientists, of the new Deutsche Soziologische Gesellschaft (German Sociological Society).
Weber and his collaborators argued that social science could not be simply subordinated to political values and policies. Rather, there was a logical distinction between the realms of fact and value, one which required a firmly grounded distinction between the analyses of the social scientist and the policies of any political order. Social science must develop "objective" frames of reference, ones "neutral" to any particular political policies and ethical values. This ever-renewed tension between particular ethical stances and "objectivity" in the sciences remained a central part of Weber's concerns.
In 1909 Weber took over the editorship of a projected multivolume encyclopedic work on the social sciences entitled Outline of Social Economics, and when he did not get the contributions from other writers he took on much more than originally planned, the one volume Economy and Society. The work became a construction of a systematic sociology in world historical and comparative depth and it occupied a large portion of his time and energies during the remainder of his life.
Economy and Society differed in tone and emphasis from Weber's comparative studies of the cultural foundations of Chinese, Indian, and Western civilizations. This massive work was an attempt at a more systematic sociology, not directed toward any single comparative, historical problem but rather toward an organization of the major areas of sociological inquiry into a single whole.
Despite time spent in the medical service during World War I, Weber devoted from 1910 to 1919 to the completion of his studies on China, India, and ancient Judaism and to his work on Economy and Society. Many younger as well as more established scholars formed part of Weber's wide intellectual circle during these years.
In 1918 Weber resumed his teaching duties. One result was a series of lectures in 1919-1920, "Universal Economic History," which was published posthumously from students' notes as General Economic History . Along with this lecture series, Weber delivered two addresses in 1918, "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation," in which he voiced ethical themes that had occupied him in his scholarly work.
Weber sounded ethical themes that have become a central part of the "existentialist" philosophical orientation of our time. He gave no simple solutions and was willing neither to wait for new prophets nor to abdicate all ethical responsibility for the conduct of life because of its seeming ultimate "meaninglessness." Weber died in Munich on June 14, 1920. His work forms a major part of the historical foundation of sociology.
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