WEBER BIOGRAPHY
Maximilian Carl Emil "Max" Weber (German pronunciation: [maks ˈveːbɐ]) (21 April 1864–14 June 1920) was a German lawyer, politician, historian, political economist, and sociologist, who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the remit of sociology itself.[1] Weber's major works dealt with the rationalization and so-called "disenchantment" which he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity.[2] Weber was, along with his associate Georg Simmel, a central figure in the establishment of methodological antipositivism; presenting sociology as a non-empirical field which must study social action through resolutely subjective means.[3] He is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science,[4] and has variously been described as the most important classic thinker in the social sciences.[5][6]
Weber's most famous work is his essay in economic sociology, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which also began his work in the sociology of religion. In this text, Weber argued that religion was one of the non-exclusive reasons for the different ways the cultures of the Occident and the Orient have developed, and stressed that particular characteristics of ascetic Protestantism influenced the development of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal state in the West. The essay examines the effects Protestantism had upon the beginnings of capitalism, arguing that capitalism is not purely materialist in Karl Marx's sense, but rather originates in religious ideals and ideas which cannot be solely explained by ownership relations, technology and advances in learning alone.[7]
In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which claims a "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence", a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. His analysis of bureaucracy in his Economy and Society is still central to the modern study of organizations. Weber was the first to recognize several diverse aspects of social authority, which he respectively categorized according to their charismatic, traditional, and legal forms. His analysis of bureaucracy thus noted that modern state institutions are based on a form of rational-legal authority. Weber's thought regarding the rationalizing and secularizing tendencies of modern Western society (sometimes described as the "Weber Thesis") would come to facilitate critical theory, particularly in the work of thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas.
Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent politician in the National Liberal Party (Germany) and a civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein, a Protestant and a Calvinist, with strong moral absolutist ideas.[8] Weber Sr.'s engagement with public life immersed the family home in politics, as his salon received many prominent scholars and public figures. Weber was strongly influenced by his mother's views and approach to life, but he did not claim to be religious himself.
The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the emperor and the pope" and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations".[9] At the age of fourteen, he wrote letters studded with references to Homer, Virgil, Cicero, and Livy, and he had an extended knowledge of Goethe, Spinoza, Kant, and Schopenhauer before he began university studies. It seemed clear that Weber would pursue advanced studies in the social sciences.