WEBER, MAX. - Sociologist, b. in Erfurt on 21 April 1864, d. in Munich on 14 July 1920.
A pupil of Goldschmidt, he taught at the Universities of Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau and Heidelberg. For reasons of health he gave up university teaching and only returned to it in 1918, holding the chair of sociology in Vienna, but for a short time, and passing in 1919 to the same chair in Munich. He wrote several essays: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (3 vols., Tübingen 1920-22); Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (ibid. 1922); Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (ibid. 1924); Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte (ibid. 1924), published under the care of his wife Marianne W., to whom is also due the edition of his youthful letters (Jugendbriefe, ibid. 1937), while S. Helmann and M. Palyi edited his Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Munich 1923), consisting of a course of lectures.
W. studied the relations between the economic and ethico-religious characters of life and affirmed that capitalistic ideals were linked to the Calvinist doctrine of work as dedication. It was in substance a revolution of historical materialism, whereby the economic factor became the outward manifestation of an essentially spiritual phenomenon and was not the result of external factors and contingencies of various kinds. He conceived historical knowledge as realized through the concept of the ideal type (Idealtypus), which elaborates the data of empirical knowledge, which represents for it an approximate reality. His sociology prescinds from politics and from naturalistic concepts, is founded on the rational and omits actions understood as subjective realities.
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Giuseppe Coniglio