Max Weber (redirected from Zweckrationalität)

Weber, Max 

Born Apr. 21, 1864, in Erfurt; died June 14, 1920, in Munich. German sociologist, historian, economist, and jurist. Professor in Berlin, Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Munich.

The range of Weber’s scientific activity is very broad: from the agrarian history of the ancient world to the study of the situation of the East Elbian peasants in Germany at the end of the 19th century to the sociology of religion and the methodology of the social sciences. Characteristic of the body of Weber’s work as a whole is the evolution from historical-economic problems to issues of general sociology. Weber was influenced considerably by positivism, neo-Kantianism, and “philosophy of life” (a theory of W. Dilthey’s). His philosophic positions represent an attempt to synthesize what he saw as the positive propositions of these theories—primarily Kantianism, along with certain elements borrowed from Marxism. As distinct from the psychologizing methodology of history of Dilthey and the ideographism of H. Rickert, the theory of sociological cognition of Weber ascribed great importance to the unity of the principle of causality and the theory of “understanding.” According to Weber, the task of sociology is to provide “understanding,” the interpretation of the subjective motives of individual action. This interpretation must be verified empirically, and it is itself part of the causal explanation of an individual event. Weber provided a typology of individual social actions in terms of their degree of rationality. For the methodology of the social sciences, Weber suggested the theory of ideal types as a means of explanation and of generalized study of individual historical phenomena. Ideal types are abstract constructs, intellectual constructions of the possible course of a process; they are created by the scientist as research tools. In his theory of ideal types, Weber poses the important questions of the correlation of empirical and theoretical levels of cognition, and he attempts to provide an analysis of the process of the formation of scientific abstractions. In the light of scientific logic, the process of constructing an ideal type is similar to the process of creating an idealized abstraction, and the ideal type as a whole is similar to the ideal model. However, in the gnoseological aspect the ideal type of Weber is an idealistic interpretation of the model and the process of its creation.

Weber applied his methodological principles to the theory of the origin of “modern Western European capitalism.” In a number of works (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1904, and others), Weber asserted, on the basis of a comparative analysis of the ’ ’economic ethic’ ’ of various religions (including Protestantism, Confucianism, and Buddhism), that capitalism was able to emerge at first only in the West as a result of the spread of Protestantism in this area—in particular, Calvinism, the “economic ethic” of which corresponded most closely in Weber’s view to the “spirit of capitalism.” In resolving the question of the interaction of the religious ideology and socioeconomic structure of society, Weber attempted to “supersede” the Marxist theory of the base and superstructure: he presented religion as an independent, active force that determines the emergence of capitalism. Along with classes, Weber’s theory of social structure distinguishes status groups, which are associated with a position of social prestige and a particular life-style, and power groups, the clearest expression of which in Weber’s view were political parties. According to Weber, status groups are totally autonomous with respect to the class division of society. Weber was also the author of theories of bureaucracy, authority, and power. He had considerable influence on the development of contemporary bourgeois sociology.

Weber viewed the future of capitalism pessimistically. He regarded Marxist ideas of the socialist transformation of society as a real threat to the existence of Western capitalism. Weber criticized the foreign and domestic policy of the kaisers from a national-liberal perspective. He considered it necessary that a number of reforms be introduced and that the kaiser’s regime be replaced by a bourgeois parliamentary republic.

WORKS

Gesemmelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vols. 1-3. Tübingen, 1920-21.
Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre . Tübingen, 1922.
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen, 1956.
Gesammelte politische Schriften. Tübingen, 1958.
In Russian translation:
Gorod. Petrograd, 1923.
Istoriia khoziaistva. Petrograd, 1923.
Agrarnaia istoriia drevnego mira. Moscow [1925].

REFERENCES

Danilov, A. I. Problemy agrarnoi istorii rannego srednevekov’ia v nemetskoi istoriografii kontsa 19-nachala 20 vv. Moscow, 1958. Pages 96-105.
Kon, I. S. Pozitivism v sotsiologii. Leningrad, 1964. Chapter 5.
Bendix, R. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. New York, 1960.

R. P. DEVIATKOVA