Max Weber

Introduction

Max Weber is regarded as the founder of understanding sociology, i.e. of a sociological approach which makes subjective direction conduits of the actors the base of the Social action.

Its work is dominated by a research over the Rationalité, and, more specifically, over the process of rationalization of the practical action in the world which seems to him to be the specificity of the modern Occident - marked process, in particular, by the birth and the development of the Capitalisme. He also worked on many objects, often related to his reflection on rationality, like the Domination, the State, the Bureaucratie, the Droit, the music etc

However, the most significant part of its work of sociologist is consisted a sociology of the Religion S: he considered, indeed, that the religions contributed a decisive share to the Rationalization of the world.

What thus imports, initially, it is to recognize and explain in its genesis the characteristic of Western rationalism. The appearance of economic rationalism depends on the capacity and the provision of the men to adopt given forms of a led life characterized by a practical rationalism. Where such a conduit of life met obstacles of a psychic nature, the development of a conduit of rational life in the economic field met, him also, of strong interior resistances. However, among the most important elements which worked the conduit of life, one always finds, in the past, the magic and religious powers as well as the ethical ideas of having which are anchored in the belief in these powers.

It is with Protestant ethics and the spirit of the capitalism , published in the form of two articles in 1904 and 1905, which is born its project from analysis of the religious determinations of the process of rationalization. This work, which analyzes the effects of the Protestant reform on the capitalist economic activity, became, by its model of analysis of social, centered on the individuals and their motivations to be acted, traditional of the sociology, on which he exerted a considerable influence. After 1905, Weber will be interested in the other religions of the world, emphasizing, in a series of comparative studies ( Confucianisme and Taoïsme , Hindouisme and Bouddhisme , ancient Judaism ), the specificity of the process of rationalization which the western world knew, and the influence of the Christian religious beliefs on this one.

Reception of its work

The reception of the work of max Weber was only progressive, particularly in France. Its stature is not essential, in Germany, that ten years after its death, just as with the the United States, in particular thanks to the sociologist Talcott Parsons who takes as a starting point Weber in his theorization of the social action and which translates Protestant Ethics and the spirit of capitalism into English.

In France, domination of the school durkheimienne before war, then the pregnancy of the Marxist thought after war makes it possible to explain the slowness of the reception of a work which was, to a large extent, in opposition with these two currents of thought. It is primarily with Raymond Aron that one owes (in particular thanks to his work Stages of the sociological thought appeared in 1967) the discovery, in France, of max Weber. Since, work weberienne did not cease exerting its influence on the whole of French sociology: thus, of the figures as opposite as that of Raymond Boudon and Pierre Bourdieu claim themselves some. The French, a long time lacunar translations and of bad quality, knew, since ten years, a strong development, in particular under the impulse of the translator Jean-Pierre Grossein who proposed, in 2003, a new translation of Protestant Ethics and the spirit of capitalism . One can see, in this leading activity, the always increasing importance and the topicality ever contradicted of a sociological thought of foreground.

Philosophical influences

Contemporary philosophy, in particular the School of Frankfurt, was marked by its characterization of modernity like rationalization of the life.

Its political sociology, in particular its definition of the modern State like political grouping holding the monopoly of legitimate physical violence, always exerts a considerable influence on the modern political thought.

Biography

Karl Emil Maximilian Weber, elder from eight children, was born the April 21st 1864 with Erfurt in a family from the Protestant middle-class. One of his/her younger brothers, Alfred, will become also an important sociologist. His/her father (also max ), initially senior official, will be elected appointed Party liberal-national with the Reichstag after the German unification. His/her mother (Helene, born Fallenstein), of origin huguenote by her maternal family (Souchay), was a cultivated woman and deeply believing. Max Weber grows thus in a rich and cultivated medium: his/her father was the heir to a family of industrialists, his mother came from the intellectual middle-class. As from 1869, the family settled with Berlin.

Being bored at the school and having few contacts with the children of its age, the young max Weber was on the other hand an insatiable reader, whose readings (Cicéron, Kant, Machiavel, etc) testified to a great intellectual precocity. Beside its studies, the young max Weber also profited from the formative influence of the medium of politicians and scientists of foreground which his/her father at the house invited. After obtaining sound Abitur (equivalent of the baccalaureat), it was registered in right to faculty of Heidelberg. In addition to the courses of right, it also followed there courses of economy political, of Philosophie, Histoire and Théologie. It is at this same period that Weber lost its timidity: member of a corporation of student, it devoted himself to duels, took part in drinking bouts, while being involved in debt.

In 1883, at 19 years, max Weber left for Strasbourg in order to begin its military service. It will find one second family there. Weber, lodged by his/her aunt (sister of its mother), returned indeed in a relation between intellectual exchange durable and the husband of the latter, the historian Hermann Baumgarten, in whom it could undoubtedly find another figure of identification that of his father. With the difference in this last, H. Baumgarten was a hostile liberal with the compromise with the policy of Bismark.

In 1884, it resumes its studies with Berlin, under the pressure of its family which wishes to separate it from Baumgarten. He will live in the family home the eight following years, except for the periods of military exercise and of a short stay at the university of Göttingen in 1886 when he obtains his license in right. Become a baited worker, Weber specializes in history of the right, while continuing a course leading towards a lawyer career. It obtained its doctorate in 1889, under the direction of professor Levin Goldschmitt, with a thesis relating to the development of the business firms in collective name in the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. As of 1891, it completes its thesis of enabling, the importance of the Roman agrarian history for the public law and private , which qualifies it to be a professor at the university.

These years were decisive in the formation of max Weber to another title: it started to be interested in the social problems of its time and joined, in 1888, the Verein für Socialpolitik (Association for the industrial relations policy), association formed by economists resulting from the historical School and for which the economic reflection was to play a decisive part in the treatment of the socio-economic problems of the young German nation. In 1892, the Verein carried out studies on the “Polish question”, i.e. about the surge of an important immigration of Polish agricultural workers in the East of Germany. Max Weber directed the investigation and wrote his final report. This last was greeted like an empirical study of the greattest importance and conferred on Weber a useful reputation of specialist in the agricultural problems.

29 years, in 1893, max Weber reaches the post of professor of the history of Roman law and commercial law to faculty of Berlin. It Marie this same year with a relationship of his/her mother, Marianne Schnittger. His wife, appears of the feminist cause, will be an actress of the intellectual and political life German, until her death in 1954. She will have a decisive role in the edition of the work of max Weber, in particular supervising the publication of the very great number of posthumous writings of her husband, in particular her opus magnum , Économie and company. She will also write an important biography of max Weber. If their marriage were built on a constant intellectual complicity, it is probable that it was never consumed. The couple remained, in any case, without child. It is, moreover, probable that max Weber did not have any erotic experience until the immediate one before war, within the framework of a relation extraconjugale.

In 1894, max Weber is named with a pulpit of political economy at the University of Freiburg. It pronounces there in May 1895 its lesson inaugural, “the national State and the economic policy”, which creates sensation. Max Weber expresses its nationalism there in an ignited way, supporting the German imperialism and affirming the primacy of the Germanic values for a German theorist of the political economy. Max Weber did not cease supporting the policy of power of reunified Germany. It will change however, with the wire of its public life, often of political position. At the end of its life, it will support a democratization of the mode, in the form of a mode parliamentary, only suited, for him, to select charismatic political leaders. Like writes it R. Aron, “Weber was a national-liberal, but it was not liberal with the American direction, it was not even strictly speaking a democrat with the direction that French, English or Americans gave or give in this term. It put the size of the nation and the power of the State above all. ”

In 1897, a few months after the death of his father, with whom it had broken little time before following a violent argument, it is reached of a serious nervous breakdown which it constrained to stop its activities of professor and researcher. This crisis will last nearly five years and will have important consequences on the life of max Weber: it will force it to stop its activities of professor durably, and will suspend for a time its research task. Weber then leaves to rest at the edge of the Lac Léman on the councils of its doctor. It takes again its courses one year later but made a relapse in 1899. It sets out again then second once on a journey: he visits the Corsica , the Italy and the Suisse. Max Weber overcomes its depression only in 1903. Taking again its mental activities then, it reorientates its research towards the Sociologie: it thus founds the German Company of sociology with Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel, of which it will resign about it in 1912. It takes also then, with Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart, the direction of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik , which become the first review of German sociology. It is in this review that it will publish the majority of its work of sociology, to begin with Protestant ethics and the spirit of the capitalism of which the first part appears as of 1904. Vis-a-vis its nervous brittleness, Weber, helped in that by a heritage, gives up however teaching. It will find teaching only more than 10 years later, after the war.

When the First World War bursts, Weber is 50 years old, it requires to be recalled as reserve officer. It will be occupied then, but only during one short period, of the management of eight hospital of the area of Heidelberg. It then starts a period of intense mental activity. It is, indeed, during the war that Weber begins the drafting from its vast project of sociology compared of the world religions. It publishes thus, in the form of articles, in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik , in 1916 Confucianisme and taoism, in 1916-1917 Hindouisme and Buddhism, and in 1917-1918 the ancient Judaism.

In 1918, after having refused the defeat and having called with resistance, Weber belonged to the German delegation which signed the Traité of Versailles. It also took part in the commission in responsibility of write the new Constitution of Reich. In the middle of the revolutionary agitation of 1918, max Weber will be one of the founding members of the German Democratic party and for this same period, the Frankfurter Zeitung will publish a series of articles of Weber on the German policy gathered under the title “the Parliament and the government in reorganized Germany”.

In 1918, it leaves for Vienna where a temporary station of teaching of economy awaits it. It returns to Munich in 1919 to occupy the pulpit of sociology that the university of Munich created especially for him. Weber, with the invitation of the free association of the students, pronounces there two conferences, which will have a durable influence: “The vocation of the scientist” in 1917 and “the vocation of the policy” in 1919.

Max Weber dies suddenly in 1920, at the 56 years age, of the continuations of a badly neat pneumonia. With him the first generation of sociologists dies out, since Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel died little of time before (respectively in 1917 and 1918). At the time of its death, Weber is about to conclude its great project from comparative sociology of the religions: it gathers, in 1920, the large texts of this project (in particular Protestant Ethics and the spirit of capitalism ), until there only published in review, in vast a Recueil of sociology of the religions , of which the half will appear after its death. However, Weber leaves a big part of its work to the state of manuscript (to be started with Économie and company ), or of articles only published in review (in particular its texts of epistemology).

Elements of epistemology

The epistemology (i.e. the reflection on science) of max Weber is of a very great sophistication and complexity. One will give an account here only of some of his elements.

“Sciences of the culture”

Weber is an important representative of the dualistic and anti-positiviste German tradition from which was built German sociology. Contrary to the tradition positivist, dominant then in France, for which there is unit of the scientific methods, the German tradition, dominated by the Herméneutique, built itself on the opposition between sciences of nature and sciences of the culture, while insisting on the specificity of the human action. Thus whereas for Durkheim, sociology must be established on method S clean, but founded on sciences of nature, Weber thinks that sociology, just like the Histoire or the political economy, belonged to the “Sciences of the culture”. For Weber, these sciences are too far away from sciences of nature so that they can take as a starting point their methods.

Like Raymond Aron notes it, the original characters of these sciences are max Weber three: they are understanding , they are historical and they relate to the culture .

sciences of culture are understanding because the human actions are consisted the processes by which the men give a subjective direction to the world, and direct their activity according to this one. To give an account of the human actions, it is thus necessary to include/understand the intentions and the subjective reasons which are at their origin (cf will infra , the comprehension as method )
sciences of the culture are, in addition, necessarily histories because the subjective direction which constitutes the human actions is always structured starting from a given historical situation.
the fact that sciences of the culture are interested in the culture seems to go from oneself. What Weber wants to say, they is that the human actions, being subjective actions, are constituted within the framework of a vaster universe of direction, i.e. of a culture. However, a culture is characterized first of all by the assertion of a whole of values.

“Value judgments” and “reports/ratios with the values”: the axiologic Neutrality

This last point poses a certain number of epistemological problems, on which max Weber brought a decisive reflection. If the Social sciences have as an aim the Culture, they are, in addition, made up themselves within the framework of a Culture, i.e. of Valeurs. Consequently, how can they escape the evaluations normative, founded on Valeurs, their objects and claim with the Objectivité?

To overcome this problem, Weber makes the distinction between “value judgments” and “reports/ratios with the values”. Whereas first are subjective and must not to have of place in work scientific (except for the moment when the researcher chooses his object, because of the value that it grants to him), the “report/ratio with the values” means that the analysis of a social reality must take account of the place occupied by the Valeurs in the company analyzed, without making normative assessment on those. The scientific activity itself is directed by no value, except for that of the Vérité: it is the concept of axiologic Neutralité (cf this article).

“The ideal-type”

Causality

Understanding sociology

Definition of sociology

We call sociology a science which proposes to include/understand by interpretation the social action and causalement explaining there its unfolding and its effects.

Such is the definition of sociology that Weber proposes in the first pages of Économie and company . By this definition, it makes Sociologie a science of the social action , in opposition to the approach holist of Durkheim, for which the Sociologie is Science made social.

Comprehension like method

For Weber, the social world is thus consisted the aggregation of the actions produced by the whole of the agents which composes it. The basic unit of the Sociologie is thus the social action of an agent. This individualistic approach is based on the conviction that the Social sciences (that Weber names “sciences of the culture”) differ from sciences of nature, in what the man is a being of Conscience, which acts according to its comprehension of the world, and of the intentions that it A. Analyzer the social one, it is thus to start from these actions and the intentions which constitute them. From where the definition that Weber proposes action:

We will understand by “action” a human behavior when and in so far as the agent communicates a subjective direction to him.

In the whole of the behaviors of the men, the Sociologie is not interested as in those which are the product of a direction Subjectif (and which is the only ones with being qualifiable of action).

Weber adds a new restriction: among these actions built by a direction, the Sociologie takes properly into account only the social actions , i.e. the actions whose direction is directed towards others (worms of other social actors, whatever they are). Thus, for Weber, the accidental collision of two cyclists is not a social action.

Sociology must thus be understanding , in what it must seek the direction, reasons, of the human behaviors, since those are constitutive of the actions in question to return account.

The second part of the definition of sociology per Weber is often put on side. It is however essential, and makes the specificity of understanding sociology weberienne. For Weber, sociology is not that a science of comprehension, it also aims at “explaining the course and the effects” of the action. What does that mean? Firstly, that wants to say that for Weber, it is necessary to check, by emphasizing objective regularities, that the interpretation of the direction of an action which one proposes is the good one. In addition, once the direction of the action explained, it is then necessary to carry out a causal analysis of the consequences which this action has. However these consequences are, for Weber, generally nondesired, nonin conformity for the actor. Thus, the religious belief calvinist, which refuses the pleasure of the tangible properties, led to the massive production of tangible properties within the capitalist system of production. (This last point inspired the theory of the perverse effects of Raymond Boudon).

Typology of the determinants of the action

Weber, in its analysis of the reasons for the actions, proposes its famous typology of the determinants of the action. For Weber, the social actions arose with four fundamental types: the action can be a) traditional b) affectuelle c) rational in rational value or, finally, d) in finality .

The traditional action corresponds to the types of actions quasi “reflexes”, “mechanics” which is the product of the practice, and where the direction and the reasons constitutive of the action have, so to speak, disappeared by repetition. Paradoxically, Weber, which makes direction, at least relatively conscious, the determinant of the action, indicates that this type of action, where the direction disappeared, is most current.

The affectuelle action is the type of act made under the blow of an emotion, like a slap given under the blow of anger.

The rational action in value corresponds to the actions by which an actor seeks to achieve a Valeur. This value is worth, for the actor, absolutely: he does not worry about the consequences which its action can have - only imports to him the achievement of the requirements born of the value which is, for him, fundamental. A man ready to face a duel to save its honor, at the possible price of its death; a captain of ship leaving it only in the last at the time of a shipwreck; a Christian ready to withdraw life in a Monastery; are as many examples of this type of actions built by the research of the achievement of a value. The specificity of the analysis of Weber is that he insists on the fact that if the goal of this type of action (the value) is Irrationnel, the means chosen by the actor are not it: it is in that the action is rational in value.

Lastly, the rational action in finality corresponds to the types of action where the actor determines rationally at the same time the means and the goals of his action. An effective head of undertaking acts according to this type of rationality, for example: he does not worry about the consequences morals of his acts (dismissals, for example), only imports the effectiveness, rationally given to him, of his actions. For Weber, this type of action is only the truly comprehensible one.

Rationalization

Weber attaches a great importance to the process of rationalization of the world. For him, the principal ages of the world knew a process of rationalization, by which the actions and the representations of the men became more systematic and methodical. However, it seems to him that this process knew a specific direction in Occident.

For Weber, the western world is characterized, indeed, by a rationalization directed towards the practical action in the world, i.e. by a will of control and systematic domination of nature and men. In the middle of this rationalism of the practical action, is modern capitalism, i.e. the economic system appeared in Occident at the end of the Middle Ages, which constitute, for Weber, the economic organization most powerful and most rational (within the meaning of rationality in finality) in the production of tangible properties.

However, if economic rationalism is the dominant power within this process of rationalization, this one affects the whole of the spheres of the action, to start with the elementary social actions. Indeed, for Weber, the rationalization has as a consequence the development of the actions of the type rational in finality , where goals and means are selected according to their only effectiveness - and not of their moral contents, for example. That tends to make the social relations at the same time impersonal, instrumental and utility: in their relations, the actors regard themselves only as impersonal means in the continuation of ends.

Strongly related to this process of rationalization, is the phenomenon of Désenchantement of the world : for Weber, the western world is characterized by the disappearance of the belief in the magic and, more largely, by the obliteration of the belief in the action of God in the world. The events of the world are regarded as the pure one produced physical forces, whose comprehension is, in theory, always accessible to the man. The world thus comes from there to be regarded as deprived of direction, being a pure physical mechanism without intention. The disenchantment of the world has like effect a vacancy direction: the fundamental significance of the world, from the existence, disappeared for the modern man.

In its analysis of the process of rationalization of the modern Occident, Weber insists on the fact that the transformation of the mental provisions, or ethos , of the actors played a crucial role. The rationalization of the action is born above all from the modification from the principles from action (in particular ethical) controlling the conduit from life from the men (as recalled by the quotation of the “Foreword” supra ). Thus, in its analysis of the birth of capitalism, Weber does little place to the modification of the means of production (what constitutes the analysis of Marx): for him, capitalism is mainly born appearance of a new economic ethics, finding its origin in the Protestant religion.

Capitalism

detailed Article: The emergence of capitalism according to max Weber

For max Weber, modern capitalism, i.e. the capitalism of companies based on the rational use of the free labor (of wage-earning), appeared in Occident thanks to a whole of structural pre-conditions: in particular, the presence of a rational class consisted the free Bourgeoisie of the medieval city occupied an essential place. However, for Weber (in that he is opposed to Marx), the leading causes of the emergence of capitalism are more ethical S and psychological that Technique S or economic. It estimates thus that what was decisive in the diffusion of capitalism was the appearance of a new economic morals, that Weber names “ spirit of capitalism ”. In this new ethos economic, the conduit of life of the actors is directed by the principle according to which the finality of the existence is work within the framework of a profession: work becomes an end in itself. It is once the actors had incorporated this Habitus, or “spirit”, new that capitalism found its force of fundamental expansion.

The main issue of the expansion of modern capitalism is not that of the origin of the capital, it is that of the development of the spirit of capitalism.

Weber thinks that the origin of this spirit is in the asceticism work in the world which was in the center of Protestantism calvinist, and more largely puritan. Indeed, in the Puritanism, work is the highest task which the man for the glory of God can achieve and, especially, the faithful one can find in its professional success the confirmation of its statute of elected official of God. Weber estimates that it is in the secularization of this asceticism, in elective affinities with the “spirit of capitalism”, that capitalism found the force to overcome the “world of hostile forces” which was opposed to him.

If the historians of the economy and the sociologists agree on the rupture occurred to XVIè century with the traditional principles of the economic action as defined by the reading thomist of Aristote, and recognize the contribution of the analyzes of Weber, its historical conclusions were quickly disputed. Thus Werner Sombart insisted much as of the Twenties on the Jewish influence, which could appear with the spirit of the Renaissance and the new tolerance in their connection.

The sociology of the religion

In Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism , the ancient Judaism , Confucianism and taoism , Hindouisme and Buddhism , max Weber develop a true sociology of the religion. A compilation of texts on this topic, Sociology of the religions , was published by Gallimard in 1996.

The three main themes in which it is interested are the range of the religious ideas on the economic activities, the relationship between social hierarchies and religious ideas, and the specific characteristics of Western civilization.

Its objective was to find an explanation to the evolutions different from the Occidental cultures and Eastern. After its research, Weber came from there to think that the religious ideas puritan (and more largely Christian) had had a considerable range on the development of the economic system in Europe and to the the United States, but pointed out that they had not been the only causes of the development. The other remarkable factors announced per Weber are the rationalism of the scientific research, joint progress of mathematics, the university education and the right, and the company spirit. He concludes by writing that the study of the sociology of the religion must lead to a better comprehension of one of the principal aspects of Western civilization, namely a certain emancipation of the magic explanation of the world, a " disenchantment of the monde" ; a way followed inter alia by Marcel Gauchet, in particular in disenchantment of the world (1986).

Works

According to the chronological order of their French edition:

the Scientist and the Policy (1919), foreword of R. Aron and translation by J. Freund, Plon, 1959.
Protestant Ethics and the spirit of capitalism (1904 - 1905), translation by J. Chavy, Plon, 1964; new translation by J. - P. Grossein, Gallimard 2003.
Tests on the theory of science (1904 - 1917), partial translation by Julien Freund, Plon, 1965; edition of pocket, Pocket, 1992.
ancient Judaism (1917 - 1918), translation by Freddy Raphaël, Plon, 1970.
Economy and company (posthumous 1921), translation of volume 1, Plon, 1971; edition of pocket, Pocket, 1995.
the city (extracted volume 2 from Economy and company), translation by pH. Fritsch, Sapwood, 1982.
general economic History (posthumous, 1923), CH translation. Bouchindhomme, Gallimard, 1991
Sociology of the religions (choice of texts and translation by J. - P. Grossein), Gallimard, 1996.
Sociology of the music. The rational and social bases of the music (posthumous 1921), translation J. Molino, has. - M. Métailié, 1997.
Économie and company in antiquity (1909), introduction of H. Bruhns, translation by C. Colliot-Thélène and F. Laroche, the Discovery, 1998.
Confucianisme and taoism (1916), translation by C. Colliot-Thélène and J. - P. Grossein, Gallimard, 2000.
Hindouisme and Buddhism (1916), translation by I. Kalinowski and R. Lardinois, Flammarion, 2003.

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