ABSTRACT
Max Weber (1864-1920) is undoubtedly the greatest contemporary sociologist, even if he is not “the greatest philosopher” of the twentieth century as Jaspers (1958) claims. Weber’s almost monstrous erudition, the depth and extent of his socio-historical and comparative study of civilizations, his rigorous methods, and philosophical acuity offer an exemplary model of a sociology that is at once historical, systematic, and critical. Weber is more than a sociology classic: every sociologist today is Weberian one way or another. In any case, I say “one way or another” because Weber’s work has been subject to such diverse interpretations that every sociologist, whatever his ideological commitments, invariably finds something to build on in his work. For instance, Parsons referred to Weber, first to develop a voluntarist theory of action and then a functionalist synthesis; Merton presented an idealist Weber by developing his thesis about the connection between Puritanism and science; Schluchter and Habermas transformed Weber into a neo-evolutionist thinker of universal rationalization; Collins, Rex, Gerth, and Mills adopted Weber as a founder of conflict theory; Schütz turned Weber into the precursor of phenomenological sociology by focusing on the interpretive method; Boudon and Popper view Weber as the father of methodological individualism. Weber’s studies of religion and the birth of capitalism, his theory of social stratification and axiological neutrality, his analysis of bureaucracy and charisma, his typology of action and domination, his distinction between the ethics of conviction and responsibility, the concept of ideal type, and the interpretive method are now all part and parcel of every sociologist’s foundational tool kit.
