The Life of Max Weber

Max Weber 18 - 1920

Background

- His mother sacrificed her entire life for salvation

- Father did not

- The tension between their ideals

- He started off like his father but throughout his life he moved towards his mother’s ideals

- He had a breakdown for 7 years after his fallout with this father

What he believed in

- Everybody is destined for salvation or damnation

- He was a nationalist he believed the interest of the nation should come first/be secured

- Thought democracy created the most intense social dynamism and great individuals (who we were necessary)

- Possibly a right wing Marx or a bourgeoisie Marx but less optimistic than Marx

- Task of historical sign to look for reasons/causation in events

- Corpus luris civilis – Jlustivise

- Methodenstreit

o Positivists- try to explain things in natural/historical sciences. General rule of when this rule is an instance (nomothetic). Formulate laws and explain these individual events according to these laws

o Subjectivists- try to understand (ideographic). Their idea is that history is not about trying to abstract from the concrete. It is about immersing yourself deeper and deeper into the concrete

So for e.g. revolutions

Positivists- consequences of revolution

Subjectivists- what are the particular specifics that make one revolution different from the other

- Ideal types (does not mean good. Just signifies figments of imagination/not real. They help us understand sociology)

o Are composed of empirical events. Role of sociology and history have to do are to construct ideal types and try to understand/categorise better the complexity the social and historical reality through the ideal types.

o Says reality is not to be confused with ideal types

o He thinks they mediate both positivists and subjectivists

- Heuristic device- measuring devices/yardsticks

o He came up with an ideal type of bureaucracy

o Ideal type- trying to understand the phenomena. Not too general

 Chosen and...