It has been nearly a year since Teacher Su Guoxun left us. On February 1, 2021, Professor Su Guoxun, a well-known sociologist in mainland China, died of illness at the age of 79. He is the first generation of sociologists who grew up after the restoration and reconstruction of Chinese sociology in the new era, and his research areas are sociological theory, sociological methodology and history of social thought, and his research results have profoundly influenced the Chinese sociological community and cultivated many excellent researchers of sociological theory.
Professor Su Guoxun was born in Beijing in 1942. In 1965, he graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages of Beijing Normal University, majoring in Russian language, and in 1978, he was admitted to the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where he studied with Mr. Jia Zelin for a master's degree in Soviet sociology; in 1983, he studied with Mr. Chen Yuanhui for a doctorate to study Western sociological theory. After receiving his doctorate at the end of 1987, he became the director of the Social Theory Research Office of the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and was promoted to researcher in 1992. From 2011 to 2017, he was a professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Harbin Engineering University. In 1992, he received a special government allowance from the State Council.
Professor Su Guoxun is an expert in Weber's research field, and his book "Rationalization and Its Limitations - Introduction to Weber's Thought" is one of the earliest literatures in the domestic sociological community to introduce and comment on Weber's theory, and it is the pioneering work of weber's research Chinese mainland, which has had a major impact on the academic community. The book introduces in detail Weber's life and the reasons for the rise of contemporary "Weber fever", clearly expounds Weber's religious sociology and political sociological ideas, and comments on Weber's social science research methods. It is one of the earliest academic works in China to examine modernity from Weber's perspective. In 2016, the Commercial Press added several recent articles by Professor Su Guoxun on Weber's research, re-examining Weber's research in the Context of China and Chinese, showing the development process of domestic Weber's research, and is an important work in the field of Chinese sociological theory research.
Since 2006, Professor Su Guoxun has led young scholars to translate the "Translation Series of Sociological Masterpieces" at the Commercial Press to introduce the research results of foreign classical sociological theories, which have been sold for more than ten years and have been praised by sociology scholars and readers.
Partial book shadow
The general introduction of the series of books written by Professor Su Guoxun integrates his understanding of the discipline of sociology and the prospect of theoretical development, Professor Su pointed out: "For sociology, the so-called enhancement of discipline awareness, in addition to participating in and observing the practice of changing society, is to advocate reading classics and studying everyone, and there is no other way. Last year, the Commercial Press launched the "Sociological Masterpieces Translation Series" with a comprehensive upgrade of the cover design to better continue and develop this series of books, commemorate the contribution of the editor-in-chief Professor Su Guoxun, and continue to provide support for the research of Chinese sociologists.
A new edition of the book has been published
Among them, the preface to the Chinese translation of the book "Max Weber and Economic and Social Thought" was also written by Professor Su, which is not long but rich and wonderful, which is extremely valuable for understanding Weber's economic and social thought, and shows Professor Su's profound skills and education in this field. Hereby excerpted to entertain readers and to remember Professor Su Guoxun, Mr. Su through the ages!
Max Weber and Economic Sociological Thought
Preface to the Chinese translation
Those familiar with the history of sociological thought know that the famous German sociologist M. Weber graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Berlin and received a doctorate in law; but throughout his life he was employed as an economist as an economist at several famous universities such as Freiburg, Heidelberg and Munich; and the academic community recognized him as a famous sociologist, whose academic works, whether it was "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" from a cultural point of view, and entitled "The Economic Ethics of the World's Religions" A series of comparative cultural history studies (including Chinese religion, Indian religion, and ancient Judaism), or a huge multi-million-word "Economy and Society" from the perspective of institutionalism, have been evaluated as the theoretical foundations of the discipline of sociology. Weber received his doctorate at the age of 25 and taught at the university, died young at the age of 56, and after spending time recuperating from mental illness and military service in World War I, he only really engaged in academic activities for about 21 years. But in his short life, he wandered through several major areas of the social sciences, leaving a rich academic legacy and becoming a titan in the social sciences, which is an outlier in German academia. No wonder Jaspers said in a commemorative speech delivered in the year of Weber's death (1920) that it was inappropriate to position Weber as a particular profession or discipline, that Weber was "the spiritual great man of our time" and "Galileo of the humanities" [On Weber].
Reading the swedish scholar Swedenborg's book translated by He Rong, "Max Weber and Economic and Social Thought", I was deeply moved. The book comprehensively and systematically discusses Weber's definition, assumption, and main research content of the concept of "economic sociology", and makes a detailed analysis of its position and evolution in Weber's sociological thought, with the purpose of revealing the true meaning of Weber's "understanding sociology" is to combine the interest drive and structural constraints behind social action. This is the key to the "verstehen" approach to understanding the subjective meaning behind the social phenomena constituted by various social actions, and clarifies why Weber was the first in the history of sociology to integrate the analysis of interests-motivations-institutions with the analysis of social type-culture-structure. Not only that, but the book also provides the reader with a simple and clear introduction to Weber's new concept of economics, "social economics" (Weber uses Sozial konomik), and explains why social economics, as a broad science, should include three parts: economic theory, economic history, and economic sociology. Weber believes that the above three are indispensable for understanding any kind of economic phenomenon, of which the role of economic theory is particularly important, because it is precisely in economic theory that the type of profit-driven is accurately explained, which shows that Weber not only attaches great importance to economic theory, but also shows that he wants to bring a sociological approach into economic research and try to replace the "political economy" that was popular in German academia at that time with the concept of "social economy". Weidberg's work is informative, and although the interpretation of many concepts and categories is extensive, the differences in provenance, history, and subtle meaning are very clear; the problems discussed are discussed in the main text, and the views of others are listed in detail in the annotations, and the organization is clear at a glance; the analysis of the problem is simple and simple, and it is not easy to explain the obscure and difficult theoretical concepts in Weber's work. This work is of great benefit to our comprehensive understanding of Weber's sociological thought and to correct the "path dependence" that has been too much reliant on the cultural perspective of Understanding Weber for some time. Together with the swedish scholar's other book, Economics and Sociology (Commercial Press, 2003), this book also provides a rare reference and reference for us to further carry out economic and social research and correctly handle the relationship between sociology and economics.
Around the 1980s, when Weber's ideas were introduced in sociological circles, it was a time when international academic circles were paying attention to the interrelationship between East Asian economic boom and traditional Confucian culture. During this period, American sinologists held two international academic seminars in Japan and South Korea on the relationship between "Confucian tradition and modernization" in the 1960s, and in the early 1980s, hong Kong also held an international academic conference on "Chinese culture and modernization". Many people have tried to interpret the rise and modernization of East Asia's economy with Weber's religious concept of influencing economic behavior; some of them regard "religious ethics" as "cultural values"; some people regard "Confucian culture" as a substitute for "Protestant ethics", and when explaining the rise and modernization of East Asian economies, they compare the relationship between Confucianism and the "Four Little Tigers" to the relationship between Christianity and Europe and the United States and Buddhism to East Asia Others extend Weber's rationalist spirit, which originated in the Western European Enlightenment, beyond the West, such as Japan. All of this, both pro and construal, has led to a cultural discussion around east Asian economic take-off in regions traditionally influenced by Confucian culture, intimately related to Weber's discourse on the origins of modern capitalism and Chinese culture. In such a situation and atmosphere, coupled with the beginning of the implementation of the reform and opening up policy in China at that time, due to the long period of materialist traditional education, it avoided talking about the influence of spiritual and conceptual factors on social behavior, and once it was opened up, it began to contact external things, which led people to pay more attention to Weber's "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" and a series of comparative cultural history studies with the general title of "The Economic Ethics of the World's Religions", with special attention to the book "Chinese Religion: Confucianism and Taoism" related to Chinese culture. It is logical to interpret Weber as a culturalist. At that time, less attention was paid to the decisive role of the economic and institutional factors behind the constraints on people's social action, so there was insufficient understanding of the crucial integration role of the late (post-1910) works (including the General History of The Economy, and the Introduction to the Economic Ethics of the World's Religions, etc.) written by "Economy and Society", which discussed their economic and sociological claims, in the growth of Weber's sociological thought, and generally believed that the problems of economic systems related to material interests belonged to the category of economics. Not a sociological domain. It is only with the continuous growth of China's economic growth scale, the role of material interest factors in social life is becoming more and more significant, people's interest in Weber's economic and social thinking is also growing, and with the introduction of new institutional economics, people have begun to view its sociological propositions more from the perspective of interest analysis. It is not difficult to see from the current domestic academic discussions on "economic imperialism" that mainstream economists mostly interpret social life from the perspective of interest-driven, while sociologists pay more attention to the role of social structure, which is also in line with the general trend of international academic circles in the 20th century. Within sociology, specific to the understanding of Weber's thought, there is also a distinction between the cultural and institutional perspectives, and one of the differences between the cultural theorists is that the culturalists attach more importance to the position of Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism and a series of comparative religious studies in their thinking, while the institutionalists praise the importance of the two-volume huge works "Economy and Society" and "General History of Economics".
A study of Swedenborg's book will go a long way toward resolving these differences. Although this book uses "Economy and Society" and "General History of Economy" as the main clues to discuss Weber's economic and social thought, the main purpose is to clarify that Weber's approach is to integrate the analysis of interest motivation with the analysis of social structure-type, highlighting the joint complementarity of institutional theory and cultural theory, rather than the "economic imperialism" theorists in China, who are each able to do their own thing and wishful thinking. The author devotes three chapters to the interrelationship between "economy and politics", "economy and law", and "economy and religion", not only concretizing the basic principles of Marxism on the role and reaction between the foundation and the superstructure, but also having many thought-provoking interpretations of the dialectical relationship between the two. For example, in Swedenborg's view, the so-called system is not the composition of rules, but can be "transformed into benefits in different forms by the concept of social relations." And whenever "interests" are mentioned, not only do people first think of material-oriented concerns, i.e., "material interests," but they immediately fall into the category of economic bases. In Weber's case, however, interests were divided into material and spiritual interests, and both interests were considered to be motivators for social action; spiritual interests were interpreted as national feelings such as identity, prestige, patriotism, and the desire for salvation and a better position in the afterlife, the so-called "religious benefits," and so on. In the economic-oriented "rational man" hypothesis, material interests are undoubtedly the decision or the only factor that induces an individual's motivation to act. However, when two kinds of interests conflict with each other and spiritual interests are relatively strong and become factors that can inhibit material interests, how do those who pursue spiritual interests not disregard but take into account material interests and make their social actions? Weber explores this in depth from a historical perspective in his Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism and in a series of comparative cultural studies entitled "The Economic Ethics of the World's Religions." And more than that, Weber differs from modern economists in that he argues that it is not only material interests that motivate individuals to act, but also spiritual interests that belong to conceptual forms, such as tradition and emotion. In other words, the either-or, dueling, exclusive relationship between ideas in the general sense of the word,-matter, is, in Weber's methodology, purely "ideal type" of social science, and they exist in pure form only in the abstraction of theoretical thinking, and in real life they have always been a mutually inclusive, so-called "embeddedness" relationship of "you have me, I have you". Such a view of interest undoubtedly adds sociological meaning to the original economic sense, and its basis has gone beyond the presupposition of "economic man" and also includes the content of "Homo Sociologicus". In summarizing his work, Swedenborg wrote: "Weber differs in many respects from today's economic sociologists, not only in his erudition in economic history and jurisprudence, but also in the most important difference between Weber's insistence that human behavior consists of two factors: interests and social relations", "the two are often entangled and inseparable, for example, institutions cannot be regarded as the composition of rules, and they can be better conceptualized as interests locked in different forms by social relations" ("" Economics and Sociology Chinese Probular Edition). This concluding observation not only makes us see that both cultural and institutional theories have a certain rationality in understanding the parts of Weber's thought, but also have the disadvantage of partial generalization as a whole; it will also benefit a lot from correctly understanding the relationship between sociology and economics and eliminating the arrogance of various "XX imperialisms" in the knowledge system of social science.
Those who are familiar with the history of sociological thought also know that in the founding stage of sociology, Comte conceived this discipline as a social science that systematically expresses the universal regularity of social reorganization (order) and its historical development (progress), in which the "universality" and "totality" of sociology contain many unrealistic, all-encompassing, and even wishful thinking explanations, except for the economic content of sociological research. Adequately exhibits his intellectualism tendencies. Among the classical social thinkers, it was Marx who emphasized the importance of the economic dimension the most, followed by Weber, the former of whom was known for advocating the materialist view of history, while the latter was known for replacing the "political economy" of German academia with "social economy". In his later years, Weber organized the compilation of a voluminous "Outline of Social Economy" to replace the popular "Handbook of Political Economy" in Germany at that time, and for this reason he invited well-known economists from the German-speaking world to participate in the writing. Although publishing was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, from 1914 to 1930, the Outline of Social Economy had published more than ten books, involving more than 50 well-known economists, the more famous of which were Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis, von Wiesel's Theory of Social Economy, and Weber's Own Outline of Economy and Society. The first two books have long been masterpieces of economics, the latter is regarded as a classic of sociology, but they were published as part of the Outline of Social Economy, but they have disappeared.
In the history of German economic thought in the 19th century, social economy and economic sociology represent two different ways of studying economics. In principle, both socioeconomics and political economy are synonymous, indicating that the economy has a social character, and that socioeconomics may be more appropriate and appropriate in ideographic terms, while political economy is more close to the national economy in terms of meaning, and is related to the development of the German nation-state. It can be seen from weber's general preface to the Outline of Social Economy, published in 1914, that in Weber's mind, "social economy" is the most modern and "most suitable" name for economic science, and its content covers a wide range of fields, including the relationship between economy and society, as well as the relationship between economy and nature, technology, population, and race. According to this view, economic science includes not only the economy, but also the effect of the economy on society and society on the economy, which Weber had already expounded as early as when he wrote "The 'Objectivity' of Social Science and Social Policy" (1904). According to this, the study of economic phenomena involves different disciplines, and he mentions "economic theory", "economic history" and "economic sociology". All three of these disciplines fall under what Weber calls "cultural sciences," which means that the study of "economic social action" must have a meaningful understanding in addition to causal explanations related to interest-driven. In other words, economic sociology and economic theory and economic history work together under the framework of a broad economics, that is, "social economy", which is the economic science that Weber thinks is competent to study the "social action of the economy". In the main fields of social economy, although Weber did not write economic theory works during his lifetime, he made important achievements in economic history and economic sociology.
So, what is the structure and content of social economy? From Weber's "General Introduction" to the Outline of Social Economy, published in 1914, we can see that there are three aspects of social economic research: how to analyze economic phenomena; the nature of modern capitalism; and the different branches of modern capitalist economy. The first book on the first subject, published under the name of this outline, is entitled "The Foundations of The Economy" and is divided into three sections: "Economy and Economic Science"; The other two were written by several economists (including Schumpeter, von Wiesel, and others), and Weber left the third to himself and wrote the eponymous book Of Economy and Society. It is worth noting that the second chapter of the book is titled "The Sociological Category of Economic Action", and its main thrust is Weber's special sociological study of economic systems and economic action. It is different from the earlier research on economic history such as "Agricultural Sociology of Ancient Civilizations" and "General History of Economy", and it is also different from the general socioeconomic content of other chapters in "Economy and Society", but it expounds the narrow economic sociological propositions in Weber's mind. This part of the content has not been well studied by sociologists and economists in the past, but it is of great significance for digging deep into the economic dimension of Weber's thought and fully understanding his sociological claims.
Through his examination of Weber's later writings, Swedenborg summarized his economic and sociological achievements into two approaches that differed from those of the average economist: 1) Economic social action can be summarized as profit-driven action directed at the behavior of others. It contains the following meanings: through the individual to give subjective meaning to behavior, so that spontaneous behavior based on the stimulus-response model (behaviour) becomes intentional conscious action (act); through this meaning, action also points to the behavior of others, makes action a (social) interaction, and thus makes the methodologically individualistic starting from the individual Individualism) approach to social research (i.e., social action as the basic unit of analysis) becomes possible. However, this individualism is only methodological, and its essence is still social interaction, rather than the Robinsonian atomistic individual assumed by economics. Carl Pope made a philosophical and meticulous analysis of methodological individualism in The Poverty of Historicism, and Parsons's The Structure of Social Action continued this approach in social theory under the name "voluntary theory of action." 2) All actors are assumed to act in a "reason" manner. The so-called rational action can be roughly defined as a conscious action aimed at achieving a certain interest, in which the benefit can be both material and spiritual. Material interests usually refer to some kind of objective result achieved by action, which is an instrumental rationality; spiritual interests refer to some subjective preferences and tendencies, such as political, aesthetic, religious, and ethical interests or ideas, which is a kind of value rationality. Rational action, therefore, is both instrumental and value-justified. As Swedenborg sums it up: "(Social) economic phenomena must be understood in the sense held by the actor himself; all concepts used to analyze (social) economics must be accompanied by analytical abstractions, whatever kind of social science they derive from." In this way, the "rationality" that originally belonged to the metaphysical realm, the conceptual form, and the immutable "reason" is decomposed into two parts, instrumental rationality and value rationality, at the empirical level, that is, social action. Related to these two parts is the formal rationality at the core of computation and the substantive rationality associated with absolute value, and from this tension between the opposite concepts one can approach the question of the relationship between economics and ethics from a very different perspective than the current mainstream economists. In other words, in Weber's view, reason has long since lost the transcendental nature of the metaphysical hypothesis and has become an illuminating tool for sociological inquiry; it is not so much an unverifiable hypothesis as it is a variable describing the nature of the motivation for action, the content and extent of which depend on society and history, and by no means superhistoric. This is Weber's original intention in social science methodology to distinguish between facts and values, it is an "analytical abstraction", and it is not the same level of problems that the political philosopher Leo Strauss later criticized in his political philosophy (theology) from the absolutist position of revelation theology that Weber's dichotomy of fact/value caused the prevalence of relativism and nihilism in modern society. There is a distinction between the two distinct realms of transcendence and experience. Obviously, Strauss reveals the hidden truths as an absolute value in the form of an oracle in religious theology, and confuses it with the concepts of empirical science that characterize and drive people to action, the spiritual will, that is, the relative values of man, which are not the same thing at all, but can be said to be a concept of stealing.
Swedenborg's summarization of Weber's economic sociological thought as the introduction of social structures into economic analysis from the perspective of individual actions driven by interests (p. 217) is very accurate and insightful, highlighting Weber's consistent idea of combining causal analysis with meaning understanding when discussing economic social action. Weber's proposition was indeed unique in Germany at the time, different from both the economists of his time and the mainstream economists of our time. He opposed the attempt of the historical school of German economics led by Schmuller to confuse facts and values and to ethic economics, and advocated the use of analytical rational action concepts, namely instrumental rationality action and value rationality action, to analyze economic orientation behavior; he also distinguished interests into material interests and spiritual interests in order to distinguish them from Marx's historical materialism; but he was also different from some mainstream economics today, such as neoclassical economics, that economic actors are detached from social relations. The "atomization" hypothesis of making decisions in isolation emphasizes the need to introduce social structure and institutional analysis into economic analysis. Weber's economic sociological ideas were echoed in the "new institutional economics" and "new economic sociology" that emerged in the 1970s, economists represented by North and Williams started from the interest drive and tried to develop a set of methods that took into account social sexual behavior, while sociologists such as Granovet and White, in turn, wanted to understand how economic actions and interests were "embedded" in the social structure, and they continued the approach of integrating interest drive and institutional constraint. Contemporary social science practice has shown that economics alone is incapable of this task, which also refutes the following "myths" of "economic imperialism":
"Economic imperialism" is essentially a manifestation of "scientific imperialism". The present epoch is the epoch of "scientific imperialism", and economics is in this epoch.
In fact, after neoclassical economics, economics has diverged into theoretical economics and various applied economics. Theoretical economics is becoming a universal basic discipline of the humanities, while such as political science, sociology and jurisprudence will be applied disciplines. This division of disciplines is not yet a reality, but I believe it will always be realized.
One of the natures of science is generalization. The two most basic assumptions of economics (referring to the assumption of the scarcity of economic people and resources ) are themselves a generalization; under this premise, it is still a generalization to rely on logic to draw conclusions. If other disciplines oppose this approach, they have no generalizations and no scientific character; but if they accept this approach, they are tantamount to surrendering to economics.
What is outlined here for the social sciences other than economics is a bleak prospect of "advance and retreat"—unlike the economic method, which is antiscientific; agreeing to it means humiliation and lack of dignity. Only this kind of economist, "everyone is cloudy and I am alone", like the "last man" who "found happiness" as Nietzsche's "Zaratura says", has a sly look in his eyes and a shallow self-satisfaction on his face. At this moment, one cannot help but think of Weber's words: "Some people always believe in science with a naïve optimism, and think that the technology that dominates life on the basis of science is the way to happiness." In the wake of Nietzsche's devastating critique of the "last man" who 'found happiness', I can go without hesitation. Who else but the naïve old children who teach at the university chairs will believe this?" Weber's sarcasm at the time could be described as sharp and three points into the wood. However, those who are intoxicated with "economic imperialism" today often like to talk about science and reason, and do not know that the entire history of science has long shown that reason, as the foundation of science, is not only an ability of man to understand the world, but also an ability to correct man's cognitive ability and to criticize reason itself. From the perspective of this scientific open spirit, any discipline, including economics, needs to be clearly aware of the scope of its own role and the lack of power, which is the spirit of self-restraint of science. In Chinese parlance, "man is self-aware," as Weber put it, "inner-scientifically asceticism." In short, science means certainty, and certainty is limitation( limitation). The development of science is precisely the evolution of the whole science, which encompasses everything, to the concrete science of increasingly clarifying the object of its study and determining the scope of its role. A discipline, only if it is both an infinite scope of objects and no definite boundary, will it not be limited to any field. If so, the formulation of "economic imperialism" is not only not a progress of science, but also a manifestation of the regression of science. Like the barbarians of the primitive society, they are frantically expanding their territory in a circle, but under the banner of "science-reason".
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After receiving her Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology at Peking University, She Rong came to the Institute of Sociology to do postdoctoral research, and after completing the research program "Economic Rationality and Religious Concepts: Weber's Sociological Thought on Religion", she remained in the Institute's Social Theory Department, during which time I was a collaborator and research colleague in her postdoctoral research. He Rong has received relatively systematic training in history and economics, has a solid basic professional skill, studies classics, and does not write a pen, trying to dig out some social science novelties in the context of Chinese social and ideological history, which has always been known for its humanistic interpretation. For example, in her investigation of the monastic economy of the Tang Dynasty, some good insights do appear from time to time in some of her recent papers, some of which are still in the bud, but if they are brewed and fermented and deliberately demonstrated over time, they will form systematic and creative insights. In other words, how to consciously borrow Weber's methodology in the study of the history of Chinese social thought—that is, to make a two-way interpretation of the significance of interest-driven causality and the meaning of structural constraints—to understand China's historical events and facts is actually the topic that has haunted us and talked about the most in recent years. He Rong is humble, dedicated to learning, willing to learn from colleagues around her, and I look forward to her taking a step further on this academic climbing road. Swedish scholar Swedenborg's book is one of many Chinese and foreign reference books when He Rong studied this topic, and she benefited greatly from reading it and translated it into Chinese so that more readers can benefit from it. On the occasion of the completion of this translation, she invited me to write a preface to the translation of this book, I thought that translating academic works is a very meaningful thing to promote cultural exchanges and improve the cultural literacy of my own people, and at the same time, I also hope that more academic colleagues can publish more and better research translations, so I gladly ordered to write, only to write some of my own feelings after reading like in the past conversations, and I should exchange experiences with you and share my experience. is the preamble.
Su Guoxun
May 2007