Max Weber: Life, Ideas and Works, a Summary

Who was Max Weber

Max Weber was born in Erfurt, a Prussian city, in 1864. He took his degree in Berlin under Goldschmidt and, influenced by Mommsen, turned to Roman agrarian history, as Treccani tells it. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy recalls his legal training and his first university post, at Freiburg in 1894, where, per Treccani, he taught political economy. He later won the chair of political economy at Heidelberg. In 1897 a nervous breakdown, which came shortly after his father’s sudden death, abruptly cut into the productive years of his career. According to Wikipedia he withdrew from teaching altogether in 1903 and returned only in 1918. That year, Treccani says, he accepted a chair of sociology at Vienna; the lost war brought him back to Germany, and in 1919 he got the chair of sociology at Munich.

He died there the following year, suddenly, of pneumonia.

Max Weber and sociology: interpretive sociology and Verstehen

Students of sociology meet Weber for one method in particular. Treccani calls him a sociologist and historian and says the individual action that carries meaning sits at the center of his analysis. Treccani adds that Weber argues for an interpretive sociology, in German verstehende Soziologie.

Verstehen means understanding, grasping nature and meaning. According to Frank Elwell of Rogers State University, Weber used the word for the effort to understand the intention behind an action and the context around it. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the same task for the social scientist: to understand the subjective side of human conduct as it is directed at others.

Esempio pratico: a person raises an arm in the middle of a crowd. Describing the movement is not enough, because it could be a wave to a friend, a signal to a taxi or a request to speak at a meeting. Interpretive sociology starts from what the gesture means to the person making it and to those who see it.

Wikipedia sums up the distance from Émile Durkheim this way: Durkheim focused on society, Weber on individuals and their actions.

Social action and its four types

Frank Elwell reports that Weber distinguishes four main types of social action.

Type of action	How it is oriented
Instrumentally rational	picks the means to an end by reasoning
Value-rational	pursues an aim that may not be rational in itself
Affectual	arises from the emotional state of the actor
Traditional	is steered by custom or habit

Esempio pratico: four people stand during an anthem. The first has read the ceremony rules and wants to avoid trouble, the second sees it as a duty to their country. The third is moved, and the fourth has always done it, like the rest of the family.

Ideal types and value-freedom

An ideal type, Treccani writes, is a limiting concept used to order empirical data. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that it is built by one-sidedly stressing one or more points of view. It never matches concrete reality; Elwell calls it a description that reality is compared with.

Esempio pratico: a buyer who chooses every product on price alone does not exist. Describing one is useful for measuring how far real buyers drift from that model, and for what reasons.

Value-freedom (Wertfreiheit, «freedom from values» in Treccani’s rendering) is, for the Stanford Encyclopedia, a principle of method. It asks the researcher to tell empirical knowledge from value judgments. Treccani specifies that it is legitimate to look for the links between means and ends while leaving the worth of the ends unjudged.

Max Weber’s theory of legitimate authority

Treccani says Weber distinguishes forms of authority and power. The Stanford Encyclopedia describes three ideal types of legitimate domination, resting on charisma, tradition and legal rationality. Elwell’s account gives each one its foundation.

Type of authority	What it rests on
Traditional	faith in the sacredness of tradition, «the eternal yesterday»
Charismatic	the appeal of leaders who demand loyalty
Rational-legal	impersonal rules laid down by law

Esempio pratico: a traffic officer stops a car parked where it is not allowed. Whoever stops is following an impersonal rule that applies to everyone: this is rational-legal authority.

The theme returns in «Politics as a Vocation», the lecture Weber gave in Munich on 28 January 1919 to a free student union of Bavaria. According to Wikipedia, three principles justify the legitimacy of the state’s political rule: tradition, charisma and legality. The Stanford Encyclopedia recalls his definition of the state as the body that successfully holds the exclusive claim to legitimate physical force over a territory.

In the same lecture, again per Wikipedia, the politician has to balance the ethic of conviction with the ethic of responsibility.

Bureaucracy and the iron cage

For Elwell, Weber treats bureaucratic coordination as the distinguishing mark of modern social structures. Offices are arranged in a hierarchy: information goes up and directives come down. Impersonal rules fix each person’s duties and responsibilities.

Esempio pratico: an application filed at an office goes through the desks laid out in the regulations. Whoever examines it applies the same rule to every applicant, whoever they are, and the answer travels back down the same ladder of offices.

Rationalization, in this picture, is the practical application of knowledge to reach a desired end. For the Stanford Encyclopedia, the Western version tends toward a formal and procedural rationality tied to instrumental rationality.

«Iron cage» is the English rendering of the German stahlhartes Gehäuse, and people risk getting trapped in it, writes the Stanford Encyclopedia. Wikipedia attributes the risk to rationalization and bureaucracy; Elwell describes a society that is technically ordered, rigid and dehumanized.

Max Weber’s writings, from the Protestant Ethic to Economy and Society

The Recap covers these writings, of different kinds: one work published in his lifetime, two lectures, and collections and essays published after his death.

Work	Year	What is known
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism	1904-1905	per the Stanford Encyclopedia, a non-Marxist genealogy of modern capitalism
Lectures on science and politics as vocations	1919 (politics)	given in Munich, the one on politics on 28 January; the Stanford Encyclopedia calls them highly praised
Political Writings	1921	collected and published posthumously, according to Treccani
Economy and Society	1922 (Treccani)	posthumous; 1921-1922 for Wikipedia

Economy and Society (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft) is a collection of essays Weber was working on when he died, in 1920. The Stanford Encyclopedia presents it as his presumed major work, published thanks to the editing of his widow Marianne.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia, the thesis of the 1904-1905 book is a genealogy of modern capitalism that is non-Marxist.