ABSTRACT
Commentators have discussed Max Weber’s view of history for over 100 years. Agreement has been rare and quite contrary conclusions have been drawn.
Many interpreters have insisted that he understood the course of history in dichotomous terms. Weber described, according to this position, the distant past as an era of charismatic figures standing occasionally in direct opposition to the sheer weight of enduring traditions. A different dichotomy reigned in the industrial epoch: here heroic leaders placed their powerful personalities against rigid bureaucracies (Mommsen 1987; Salomon 1935). Other commentators detected in Weber’s writings a further dichotomy: persons prominently influenced by their emotions and the grip of traditions inhabited earlier societies while a predominance of means-end rational (zweckrationales) action reigned in later societies (Alexander 1987).
