LIFE AND WORKS OF MAX WEBER
The German sociologist and political economist, Max Weber (1864-1920) was born in a well to do family and received excellent training in law and economics. Max Weber stands as one of the central figures of social sciences in general and sociological theory in particular. Max Weber was born in Erfart, Germany, on April 21,1864 in a middle class Protestant family.
His father was a well known politician who played a minor role in his upbringing. Weber’s mother had major contribution throughout his life. At the age of eighteen, he left home for a short time to attend the University of Heidelberg. He left Heidelberg for military service, and in 1884 he returned to Berlin and to his parent’s home to take courses at the University of Berlin. At the University of Berlin, he obtained a university degree in law and eventually a doctorate in political economy. In 1894, Weber joined Freiburg University as a Professor of Political economy in 1897 , He joined Heidelberg University as the Professor of Economics. Only at the age of 32, he was considered very young to obtain a professorship at a major German University. However, a severe personal crisis the following year forced Weber to suspend his teaching activities and eventually resign his position at Heidelberg. But in 1897 his father died. Shortly thereafter a serious nervous breakdown occurred in his life from which he never fully recovered. After his Honorary professor in Heidelberg recovery he became an Honorary professor in Heidelberg University in 1903, that Weber was able to begin to return to active academic life. Thereafter he began to return to regular intellectual work in 1904.
In 1904 and 1905, he published one of his best known works, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was based on the relationship between capitalism and religion. By 1909, Weber began writing Economy and Society, his most ambitious theoretical and historical work. From 1916-17, he carried out research on the history of world religions (China, India, and ancient Judaism) His last academic work was series of lectures that he gave at the University of Freiburg in 1919-20 entitled General Economic ,History that was based on the history of capitalist developinent.
In addition to the major writings produced in this period Weber undertook a numbe of other activities. He helped found the German Sociological Society in 1910. His home became a centre for a wide range of intellectuals, including sociologists such as George Simmel, Robert Michels, and gerog Lukacs. Weber was also active in politics and wrote essays on the issue of the day Weber died in June 1920.
Weber’s intellectual works are considered to be the best for their historical explanation of modern Western societies and their economic, political, legal and religious development. Weber’s major contribution in the field of social sciences are methodological orientation, analysis of social class, theory of legitimacy and religion and so on. In addition, he focused on the issues of the rise of modern society, the formation of bureaucracy, the development of the modern political state, and comparative world economics. In fact, Weber was a modernist and individualistic in his approach. He brought together various traditions of social thought and formed a unique theoretical perspective based on history, economics, philosophy, law, and comparative historical analysis. Weber, in reality, was influenced by Marxist school of economics and opposed on several fronts and this led him to formulate a completely different view of the role played by history and economy in social development.
METHODOLOGY
(Ideal Type and Verstehen)
One of the most important concept given by Weber to sociology is the concept of ideal type. This concept occupies a very important place in his methodology. In methodology it is known as ‘typological analysis’. Ideal types are concerned with categorising process enabling the scientist to contrast “actual types” with their common ideals. Whereas the former types were limited to historical circumstances, “the ideal type was,” explains Larson, “an attempt to deal with the problem of the historical relativity of conceptual types by means of the construction of a limited number of terms which could be used as constant generalizable abstractions.
According to Weber sociology is concerned with social action and social behaviour. Every social action has an ideal. The ‘ideal type’ of social action is in our mind. For example, we say that a particular man is a materialist. The term materialist is an idea and how can we call a man materialist? How can we apply an idea to a concrete man? It is only because we have conception about the meaning of the term materialist and this conception is an idea of the ideal type. It is because of these theoretical or rational concepts that we are able to judge a man as materialist, idealist or pragmatist. This proves that every man has in him certain ideas about perfect social action or behaviour and this ideal type is subjective, that is, it is in the mind of man.
By the ideal type, the sociologist “is able to measure the gap between the ideal-typical objectively possible action and the empirical action, and ascertain the part played by irrationality and chance or by the intrusion of accidental, emotional and other elements.”
The concept of ideal type explains organic approach to sociology. As Weber pointed out, “Organic sociology attempts to understand social interaction by using as a point of departure the ‘whole’ within which the individual acts. His action and behaviour are then interpreted somewhat in the way that a physiologist would treat the role of an organ of the body in the ‘economy of the organism, that is from the point of view of the survival of the latter…This functional frame of reference is convenient for purposes of practical illustration and for provisional orientation. In these respects it is not only useful but indispensable. But at the same time if its cognitive value is overestimated and its concepts illegitimately ‘reified’, it can be highly dangerous …in certain circumstances this is the only available way of determining just what process of social action it is important to understand in order to explain a given phenomenon. But this is only the beginning of sociological analysis as here understood.”
Characteristics of Ideal types
The above discussion of the concept of ideal types ponits out the following three characteristics :
- Ideal types are subjective . The ideal types are subjective in character .The subjective nature of these types marks them off from the physical laws . The physical events or processes are objective , whereas social laws cannot be objective .The is because this is social laws pertain to human actions and behaviour and human behaviour is characterized by subjective motive , in tention and goal . Man is a creature of free -will and his action are not quite predictable on the basis of cases laws . Weber wanted to make sociology fully objective but full objective is not possible in human affairs because man s action are not determined in the manner of physical events . However , with the help of the concept like ideal types it should be possible to achieve a great deal of objectivety .
- Ideal Types are Emotional .
The ideal types are emotive in content , they pertain to our affections and reside in our imagination .The ideal types are not concrete but abstract in nature .even the physical laws like Lawson gravitation and motion are also abstract very much like ideal types in this aspect ,as concepts like , economic religious man etc
.. are also abstract and no existing man fully answers to these concepts .
3.The Ideal Types are changeable .
According to max Weber the ideal types are purely human constructions and there fore . Subject to the consideration of time and place . These are , affected by the current thinking and social atmosphere . Naturally , therefore the ideal types are changeable .The cannot be eternal or permanent in this respect , they are altogether unlike plato ‘s ideal which are standard forms and extra -human that is they are conserved by human reason and not fabricated by it .On the other hand max Weber s conception of ideal types is that these are changeable and non -eternal .The ideal types are subject to modification in response to change in social realities .According to social action scientifically and this the hem reality in themselves.
Kinds of ideal types
According to leval of abstraction Weber developed the following there kinds of ideal types “ideal types of historical particulars which refer to specific historical realities such as western eity ,protcstnt ethic ,or modern capitalism such (b)ideal types which refer to historical and cultural contexts , reality that are observable in a varicty of historical and cultural contexts ,such bureaucracy or feudalism (c) ideal types that constitute rationalising reconstruction of a particular kind of behaviour “all propositions in economic may be said to fall in this calegory since they are merely ideal typical reconstruction of the ways men would behave if they were pure econemic subjects “’ .
Explaining the nature of weber ‘s concept of ideal type Francis .Abraham and jhon .Henry Morgan have written , the ideal types concept grew out of a creative convenience of two of weber s other key contrary to what German mettaphysiscian would have like it to be a purelty calssfiica tory concept rather than an ideal classification for the former concept is reached by “ abstraction “form a wide range of the phenomena with differing individual characteristics whereas the latter is intended “ illuminate what is peculiar to a given cultural phenomenon ,thus ideal types provide a milienu of precise language and procedure in the analysis of specific behave our . It helps in the formulation of theretical explanation of behaviour .in the end it is fundamentally a model of what an agent would do if he were to act completely rationally according to the criteria of rationllty involved in his behaviour ‘s sense
Martindale’s’ view
An ideal type is simply a mental construct of the theoretically conceivable and the empirically probable. Martindale assumes that a scientific theory is a logically inter-related body of empirical laws. It is the ideal type of theory? It is said that the ideal type has the character of a theoretical mode. But, according to Martindale’s requisites for a theory, namely one of a theoretical function on which can be drawn out to produce hypothesis, the ideal types are not theories because they are not logically inter-related bodies of empirical laws.
Mckinney, Walkins and Parsons conceive ideal types as theories. Martindale agrees with Weber, Maclver and Merton that ideal types are not theories but simply mental constructs. Scientific method consists in the systematic processes that institute an empirical proof. There are three general kinds of systematic procedures for instituting a proof
- experimental method,
- statistical method, and
- comparative method.
The “logic of method” is the same in all the three methods. These sub distinctions arise in terms of the degree of precision of the theory and the amount and kind of control possible over the data to which a theory is addressed. The oldest procedure of science is comparison.
Comparison is an act intended to establish an item of empirical knowledge about which one is uncertain. Some ideas guide the comparisons and there is some idea, however crude in the background,
Martindale’s fundamental position taken in his essay is that ideal types are neither experimental mathematical models, nor theories, but devices intended to institute comparisons as precise as the stage of one’s theory of precision of his instruments will allow. Comparative procedure occurs most frequently in new sciences. The evolution of the ideal type in sociology was determined by the attempts to transform comparative method into a more precise procedure. The place occupied by ideal types in current sociological analysis is the testimony to the amount of sociological data still remaining on comparative level.
Thinkers who have made basic use of the concept of ‘social action’ for the analysis of social life have been not only most sympathetic to the use of ideal types but have consciously attempted to improve them.
Ideal types are not stereo-typed averages, or abstract concepts. To quote Martindale, “An ideal type is formed by the one sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffused, discrete individual phenomena which are arranged according to these one sided emphasised view points into a unified analytical construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found anywhere in reality.