Max Weber tied the rise of capitalism to a Protestant habit of work
A duel-scarred law student became one of sociology's founders. Max Weber argued that a Protestant ethic of disciplined work helped create modern capitalism, defined the state by its monopoly on legitimate force, and sorted authority into charismatic, traditional and rational-legal kinds. A breakdown kept him out of teaching for fifteen years.
Weber was born in Erfurt on 21 April 1864, eldest of eight children. His father, a National Liberal politician, hosted scholars such as Wilhelm Dilthey and Theodor Mommsen at home, while his mother was a devout Calvinist and philanthropist; the tension between them marked him. Bored at school, he secretly read all forty volumes of Goethe, and at thirteen gave his parents historical essays as a Christmas present. At Heidelberg he drank, fenced and collected scars on the left side of his face, to his mother's fury.
He qualified in law, wrote a doctorate on medieval trading partnerships in Italian cities in 1889 and a habilitation on Roman agrarian law two years later, which Mommsen debated with him and admired. In 1893 he married his second cousin Marianne Schnitger, a feminist writer, and took chairs in economics at Freiburg and then Heidelberg, where the Weber Circle drew figures like Ernst Troeltsch and Werner Sombart.
In June 1897 he quarrelled bitterly with his father over the treatment of his mother; two months later his father died on a trip to Riga, the argument unresolved. Weber sank into depression and insomnia, spent time in sanatoria, travelled in Italy and Corsica, and abandoned teaching from 1903 until 1918. Marianne later destroyed his own account of the illness, perhaps fearing the Nazis would use it against his reputation.
Recovery brought The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, followed by studies of religion in China, India and ancient Judaism, all part of his interest in rationalisation and the disenchantment of the world. He insisted social action be studied by interpretation, not purely empirical measurement. After the First World War he helped found the German Democratic Party and advised on the Weimar Constitution. He died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 56, leaving Economy and Society unfinished; Talcott Parsons led the post-war revival that placed him beside Marx and Durkheim.
Source: Max Weber
