Max Weber (max weber, 1864–1920) was a German sociologist, political scientist, economist, and thinker. He studied at the University of Heidelberg, began his teaching career at the University of Berlin, and successively taught at the University of Vienna and the University of Munich, went to the Versailles Conference to negotiate on behalf of Germany, and participated in the drafting of the Constitution of the Weimar Republic.
Weber as a teenager.
In 1917, Weber attended a conference at Lauenstein Castle in Turingen, Germany. In the center is the German playwright Ernst Toller.
Academics and Politics
Author: [de] Max Weber
Translator: Qian Yongxiang
Edition: Republic of Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, April 2019
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Translator: Kang Le Kan Huimei
"Scholarship as a Career" (also translated as "Science as a Vocation") Cover of the German edition of Politics as a Cause.
Max Weber and Economic Sociological Thought
Author: [Sweden] Richard Swedenborg
Translator: He Rong
Edition: The Commercial Press, July 2007
Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920
Author: [de] Wolfgang J. Monson
Translator: Yan Kewen
Edition: Sanhui CITIC Publishing Group, October 2016
Portrait of Max Weber's Thought
Author: [U.S.] Reinhardt Bendix
Translator: Liu Beicheng et al
Edition: Shanghai People's Publishing House, January 2020
At eight o'clock in the evening of November 7, 1917, the Steinecker Art Hall in Munich, Germany, was crowded. The audience was packed with young university students and an elite of notable scholars awaiting a long-awaited lecture by Max Weber, the most influential figure in German thought at the time.
At that time, the "First World War" was nearing its end, and Germany's diplomatic situation was becoming increasingly embarrassing. The endless disputes between various ideological trends in the country have made young people in Germany feel confused and helpless. They desperately want a mentor who will give clear answers to the current troubles and the future direction of life.
According to the recollections of those present, Weber appeared "pale and weary, hurrying through the full lecture hall to the lecturing table" and "his face and chin covered with a thick beard, reminiscent of the deep and fiery look of the prophet statue in Bamberg Cathedral". The speech did not read the manuscript from beginning to end, and there was no pause for words, which was precisely the speaker's "long-term contemplation of the swimmer, and the explosive force was written on the spot." ”
"The fate of our time, the ultimate and noblest value of all things, has disappeared from the public sphere," Weber poured cold water on the expectant audience in a shocking and thought-provoking tone, revealing the deepest dilemma of the modern world in a restrained but pessimistic tone.
A hundred years after Weber's death, his diagnosis of the times still retains its vitality. As one German scholar put it, as long as the history of modernity does not end, Weber's insights and ways of thinking will not become obsolete. In this sense, Max Weber will always be our contemporaries.
Two worlds
"Authority" and "Freedom" Inside and Outside the Home
Max Weber's life and academic insights are based on the contradictions of multiple conflicts and confrontations. Through his short, fulfilling, and bumpy life, we can gain a general understanding of Weber's inner tension and the contradictions of the external world.
In Weber's birth, the search for unification was the most consistent call within Germany. Weber was born on 21 April 1864 in Erfurt, Tuligan. Just two years before Weber was born, Otto von Bismarck, who had just been appointed Prime Minister of Prussia, delivered his famous "Iron Blood Speech" in Parliament. At the age of seven, Weber witnessed the coronation of William I in front of versailles, proclaiming the founding of the German Empire.
Weber's father was a trained lawyer who was still serving as a city senator. Thanks to a successful political figure in his family, Weber had already been in contact with and acquainted with prominent figures in German academia and politics at that time as a child. The exchange of family friends and travel made the precocious Weber not satisfied with the school's cookie-cutter education methods, but also developed a natural interest in politics.
Weber's first understanding of Protestantism came from his mother's teachings. His mother was a devout Christian. Although Weber was religious and, in his own words, "lacked religious resonance," he spent his life exploring and comparing the influences of world religions on human behavior and life. Weber's extraordinary sympathy and understanding in describing Protestantism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Chinese religion may have stemmed from religious experiences in early family life.
Suffering from meningitis in his early years, As a teenager, Weber did not like sports but loved books, and soon showed his intellectual talent. He mastered Latin at the age of nine, wrote two historical treatises at the age of thirteen, and at the age of fifteen was able to extract as widely as a university student. Weber earned his Juris Doctor degree at the age of twenty-five and soon pursued a teaching position at the university. At the age of thirty-three, Weber became one of the youngest professors in the history of Heidelberg University, unmatched by his contemporaries. Unfortunately, Weber, who had been on his way, soon suffered the biggest setback of his life.
In 1897, Weber's father died. Before that, the father and son had a fierce quarrel, and Weber was worried about the deteriorating relationship between his parents, he was not accustomed to the paternalistic discipline and control of his father's mother, and he was even more dissatisfied with his father's arrogant reaction to this. At the height of the conflict, Weber even threatened to sever paternity. However, the sudden death of his father obliterated the possibility of Weber's reconciliation with his father, leaving Weber with an indelible sense of guilt throughout his life. This caused a huge psychological shock to Weber, causing him to suffer from severe mental illness.
This spiritual crisis nearly destroyed an academic genius and intellectual giant. In Mrs. Weber's recollection, Weber's attitude toward work was ascetic fanaticism. But in the seven years after this change, Weber often fell into a mental breakdown, completely unable to carry out academic work, and was once admitted to a mental hospital. Despite the school's repeated use of paid leave, Weber was so angry that he could not afford to work and took the pay, and eventually resigned from the teaching position. Although Weber completed most of the surviving works in the 16 years after his recovery, he did not return to the familiar university pulpit until 1918, less than two years after his death from pneumonia.
Weber's mental illness has a family genetic background, but analyzing the root causes of this spiritual crisis at a deeper level helps us understand Weber's inner conflict of identity and values. Some Weber researchers have pointed out that this constant nervousness may stem from Weber's inability to reconcile the different value systems of father and mother. After entering college, Weber also wanted to have the masculinity of his father, to become the typical German man of that era: strong, alcoholic, cigar-smoking, and often with sword scratches on his face. In Weber's analysis of Karisma-type leaders, it seems that the image of the father's authority can be found.
However, in the face of prussia's martial spirit and the military's efforts to manipulate educational institutions to "tame" young people, Weber also spared no effort to attack. This profound humanitarianism, steeped in weber's theoretical analysis, sympathy and concern for the oppressed general public, draws both spiritual strength from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and his identification with devout religious mothers. The tension between authority and freedom soon extended to Weber's approach to the direction of German realpolitik.
Public Affairs
Place the burden of care on yourself
The German intellectual elite of Wilhelm's time, in addition to their contributions to scholarship, were mostly at the vanguard of middle-class ideas and eager to express their voices politically, especially in This point by Weber. The existentialist philosopher Jaspers called his spiritual teacher a "born politician."
After the victory in the Franco-Prussian War, a unified Germany made rapid economic progress and quickly completed the process of industrialization. From childhood, Weber experienced how Germany's economy overtook Britain and France, and finally became the second world economic power at the turn of two centuries.
Weber grew up in a generation shrouded in Bismarck's immense aura. Under Bismarck's powerful leadership, Germany pursued the principle of authority before parliamentary debate, and the efficient bureaucracy swelled rapidly. The German Empire adopted a nationalist policy of rejuvenating the national economy, while at the same time being at the forefront of the European countries, implementing a series of social security systems. On the other hand, under the call of the Prussian spirit, Germany never hid its ambition to expand outward.
Bismarck's political talent in his quest for German unification and the promotion of an emerging country to the world's great powers was also appreciated and admired by Weber. But in contrast to his peers, Weber still distanced himself from the prevailing Bismarck cult. On many occasions, he unreservedly criticized Bismarck's cultural wars, and could not tolerate the docile bureaucrats who surrounded Bismarck and lost their independent thinking.
Weber's identification with Germany has similar contradictions and tensions. Early in his academic career, Weber did a detailed study of the economy of the Junker landlords on the east bank of the Elbe in Germany. He found that the declining population of the otherwise densely populated agricultural areas of eastern Germany was linked to the interests of the Junker landlords. He believed that the interests of these Prussian ruling classes were fundamentally contrary to the interests of the German Empire. The Middle Class in Prussia was filled with vulgar people without spines. Whenever Weber traveled, he often complained that Germany was a hopeless country, angrily saying that he would never return. As a Prussian officer, Kaiser Wilhelm II was often the object of his ridicule and contempt.
The spirit of diligence, restraint and self-dedication manifested in the German workers and commoners evokes the strongest national pride in Weber's heart. He proudly watched the skills and craftsmanship of German crafts at the World Exposition, and he was proud of the exquisite craftsmanship of German tailors and shoemakers on the streets of Paris. "This ability to pursue efficiency, practicality, the 'beauty of everyday life,'" Weber wrote in his later years, "contrasts with the intoxication and drama of other peoples." ”
In 1904, shortly after Weber returned from a trip to the United States, Germany faced a serious political crisis. In contrast to the successive enclaves concluded by Britain, France, and Russia, the Kaiser's policy of unskilled foreign affairs deprived Germany of the opportunity to form many alliances. Empty trumpets, bluff slogans and the capriciousness of attitudes left Germany isolated in Europe. As a national symbol, Wilhelm II has become the object of ridicule of international public opinion.
Worried about state affairs, Weber pointed the finger at bloated and incompetent political structures. Germany's skewed political system is simply incapable of efficiently selecting responsible political leaders, and it is difficult to find checks and balances on the unrestricted expansion of power by a politically docile and technologically perfect bureaucratic apparatus. Weber's later academic analysis was rooted in the search for a responsible stratum for Germany that could take on the mission of leadership in the international situation of great power strife.
When World War I broke out, Weber was in the year of destiny. In Weber's view, the First World War was the result of the convergence of economic and political antagonisms between nations. If there is "sin" in Germany, it is unrealistic delusions and incompetence in action. He acknowledged that force was the ultimate demand of any policy, while at the same time denouncing the war frenzy of the main war faction, which would bring disaster to Germany. He wrote in 1915: "Every victory has moved us further away from peace. This is the uniqueness of the current situation. ”
Weber was keenly aware that the delay in war would make the United States the hegemon of world industry, and had a premonition that the United States would be involved in the war at some point. For this reason, he criticized Germany's naval strategy, and a large number of merchant ships moored in ports such as the United States and Britain would eventually be confiscated and become a force to counter Germany. He eagerly asked a deputy minister to let him read the official Polish archives so that he could communicate with the Polish entrepreneur as soon as possible, but was refused.
After his defeat in World War I, Weber, as an expert, represented Germany in Versailles for the Peace Conference, the closest he could come to politics in his lifetime. He advised the designated German war criminals to sacrifice their heads, bear the consequences of political mistakes, and even debate with Ludendorff in person. A year later, in the face of the college students listening to the lecture, Weber made a more elaborate analysis of this "ethics of responsibility" that he demanded.
As an intellectual elite, Weber inherited the German liberal tradition and was a staunch nationalist. His concern for public affairs is a burden that he voluntarily imposes on himself. Although he never gained power, he felt that politics was calling for his devotion. As he put it:
"Whoever has the self-confidence to face a world that, from its own point of view, is stupid and vulgar to the point where it is not worthy of his own sacrifice, and still stands firm, can say to this situation: 'If so, it doesn't matter', who has the 'mission and call' to take politics as its cause."
Academic career
Never willing to pretend to be a demagogic "false prophet"
Readers familiar with Weber must know that Weber shows an objective and prudent attitude towards learning everywhere in his works. In order to insist on the pursuit of precision and flat expression, his articles are full of words and conditional sentences for qualification and supplementation, making the already pedantic work even more difficult. This restraint and rationality in governance is in stark contrast to Weber's enthusiasm for participating in public affairs.
In Weber's time, the study of sociology was just beginning. As in other emerging disciplines, it is difficult for researchers in the field of sociology to suppress the self-tendency to continuously expand the scope of research until the internal academic foundation and definition are clear. As one of the founders of sociology, an important contribution of Weber is that he has drawn the boundaries of research in sociology and even in all fields of humanities and social sciences. Any scholarship inevitably has its limitations, and Weber spent his life exploring this idea, eventually developing what he called "value-neutral" methodological principles. A social scientist can only analyze and explain phenomena in the field of facts, and scholarship should remain silent about political, artistic, and religious value judgments.
Weber's famous speech in his later years clearly showed his interpretation and practice of this value. At the time of the defeat in World War I, the German intellectual circles were plunged into a chaotic dispute. Various ideological trends and viewpoints such as nationalism, nationalism, socialism, and cultural romanticism are gradually becoming opposed and differentiated. When Weber was invited to speak in public twice in 1917 and 1918, the confused college students in the audience longed for a spiritual mentor who could guide the way forward.
As a charismatic speaker, Weber could have adapted to the wishes of young people, but he categorically refused to play that role. Although Weber's descriptions of the Hebrew prophets in his writings often revealed his own shadow, he was never willing to pretend to be a demagogic false prophet in reality.
He was extraordinarily sober in his awareness that the inspiring and convincing rhetoric was merely weaving fascinating illusions, misleading people into extremes and fanaticism, and ultimately plunging these young people into the abyss of pessimism and despair. Weber warned his students that scholarship cannot tell you the meaning of life, nor can it even prove the meaning of engaging in scholarship itself. "Within the confines of the classroom, the only virtue is honesty."
In this speech on the theme of "Scholarship as a Cause," Weber further presented his basic judgments about the characteristics of the modern world. "The world has been removed from the charm" is Weber's condensed view of modern society.
In the ancient world, people connected the meaning of life to the transcendental existence of religion. Since the Enlightenment, rationalism and the spirit of experimentation, and the consequent specialization and rationalization, have divided the spiritual world into pieces. The fidelity of faith is divided among principles from different fields.
For centuries, the grandeur and tragedy of Christianity has masked the competing and contradictory values that are common in the world, and it has come to our time. Weber writes, "The gods of yesteryear have come out of their graves again," and the modern world has returned to polytheism, except that the names of those gods are no longer called Jupiter, Apollo, and Aphrodite, but are called liberalism, socialism, feminism, and sexual liberation by modern people.
Weber's early contradictions with his parents' identity and the conflict between nationalism and liberalism in political practice gave him a profound understanding of the pluralistic and conflicting essential characteristics of modern society. It is precisely because of the conflict between values that reason cannot do anything about it, and what kind of life man should believe in can only ultimately rely on the independent choice of the individual.
The fundamental characteristics of modern society, as Weber asserts, are at the same time the fundamental dilemmas of modern society. As individuals, we have more choices than ever before, but more choices also mean more burdens. Not only are we at a loss, we don't know how to choose, we can't complain about others, we must bear the full consequences of our choices. As a group, conflicts and antagonisms between different values tear apart society and trigger international conflicts every day. A hundred years after Weber's death, how to deal with the challenge of pluralism in modern society is still a proposition that needs to be answered in the hearts of the intellectual circles and even every modern person.
Weber's biography records an anecdote in which Weber was asked what knowledge meant to him, and Weber gave an intriguing answer: "I want to find out how long I can hold out." After making sober and pessimistic judgments about modern society, Weber did not directly give answers to the questions. But this insistence on "digging through the planks slowly" may be Weber's response to this imperfect world.
Within the confines of the classroom, the only virtue is honesty. —Max Weber
Written by Beijing News reporter Li Yongbo