Weber,... argues that... personal bias should not preclude the scientific ascertainment of objective historical facts.
— From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Max Weber was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, and one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences. His ideas continue to influence social theory and research.
Born in Erfurt in 1864, he studied law and history in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg, earned his doctorate in law in 1889, and taught in Berlin, Freiburg and Heidelberg. In 1897 he suffered a breakdown after his father's death and stopped teaching, travelling until the early 1900s. After recovering, he wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. During the First World War he at first supported Germany's war effort but became critical of it and backed democratisation. He also gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation." From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology is his most quoted work in our library.
Born in Erfurt in 1864, he studied law and history in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg, earned his doctorate in law in 1889, and taught in Berlin, Freiburg and Heidelberg. In 1897 he suffered a breakdown after his father's death and stopped teaching, travelling until the early 1900s. After recovering, he wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. During the First World War he at first supported Germany's war effort but became critical of it and backed democratisation. He also gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation." From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology is his most quoted work in our library.
Most quoted works
- From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology 4
The final result of political action often, no regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning.
— From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
... A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopolyof the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.
— The Vocation Lectures: Science as a Vocation/Politics as a Vocation
In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.
— From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, for those who will come after us.
— Essays in Economic Sociology
The intellect, like all cultural values, has created an aristocracy based on the possession of rational culture and independent of all personal ethical qualities of man. The aristocracy of intellect is hence an unbrotherly aristocracy.
As intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become disenchanted, lose the magical significance, and henceforth simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anything.
Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.
Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is 'dehumanized', the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.
...Material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.
Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.