Max Weber

Max Weber
Weber in 1894
Born	Karl Emil Maximilian Weber (1864-04-21)21 April 1864 Erfurt, Saxony, Prussia
Died	14 June 1920(1920-06-14) (aged 56) Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Nationality	Prussia (1864-1871) German Empire (1871-1918) Weimar Republic (1918-1920)
Fields	Economics Sociology History Law Politics Philosophy
Institutions	Universities of Berlin Freiburg Heidelberg Vienna Munich
Alma mater	University of Berlin University of Heidelberg
Doctoral advisor	Levin Goldschmidt
Known for	Weberian bureaucracy Disenchantment · Ideal type Iron cage · Life chances Methodological individualism Monopoly on violence Protestant work ethic Rationalisation · Social action Three-component stratification Tripartite classification of authority Verstehen
Influences	Hermann Baumgarten Immanuel Kant · Friedrich Nietzsche  · Wilhelm Dilthey Heinrich Rickert · Georg Simmel Werner Sombart
Influenced	Karl Jaspers · Georg Simmel Talcott Parsons · Ludwig von Mises György Lukács · Theodor W. Adorno Carl Schmitt · Jürgen Habermas Joseph Schumpeter · C. Wright Mills Cornelius Castoriadis · Ludwig Lachmann · Karl Polanyi

Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber (German: [ˈmaks ˈveːbɐ]; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a Prussian and German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist whose ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research. Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of sociology. Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) means, based on understanding the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their own actions. Unlike Durkheim, he did not believe in monocausality and rather proposed that for any outcome there can be multiple causes.

Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity, and which he saw as the result of a new way of thinking about the world. Weber is best known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he proposed that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise in the Western world of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state. He argued that it was in the basic tenets of Protestantism to boost capitalism. Thus, it can be said that the spirit of capitalism is inherent to Protestant religious values.