Introduction
The presented article views Max Webber as one of the key founders of sociological science. It is claimed to briefly narrate Max Webber’s biography and enlist the most famous works by this scientist.
Main body
The background of the author is the role of religion in sociology, thus, he was writing on these issues regarding various religious confessions. His major works concern the rationalization in the sociology of religion and government, but he also donated much in the sphere of finances. His most famous work is his essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1905), which started his work in the sphere of sociology in religion. In this work, he argued that religion was one of the non-limited causes for the diverse ways the cultures of the Occident and the Orient have enhanced, and underlined the importance of meticulous feature of ascetic Protestantism which led to the enhancement of capitalism, officialdom, and the cogent-lawful state in the West. In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science.
The emphasis in the article is made upon His Verstehen doctrine is as well-known as it is contentious and argued. His key notion is that societal, financial, and chronological study can never be fully inductive or descriptive as someone should always move toward it with theoretical tools. Clarification creates some reasonable troubles, thus, the readers cannot know it other than by annoying to categorize actions as belonging to some prior “Ideal Type”. Weber offers four groups of “Ideal Types” of performance: zweckrational (cogent means to cogent ends), wertrational (cogent means to unreasonable ends), effectual (ruled by feelings), and customary (ruled by tradition or tendency).
Another concept is that Weber distinguished three pure types of political leadership, power, and authority: charismatic domination, traditional domination, and lawful power. In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled included such elements and they can be analyzed on the basis of this tripartite difference.
These concepts are the key statements throughout all his works, and they help to clearly define the main direction of the scientific branch of sociology, enhanced by Webber.
The article’s strength is that it briefly describes the key concepts and biographical facts that influenced the following Webber’s life and researches. Bu the weak side is that it is too brief, and it would be rather difficult for the non-specialist to sort out the necessary information.
Conclusion
To analyze the article, it is necessary to note, that the material, presented in the article, as had been stated above, gives full and brief images of the life and works by Max Webber as the sociologist. Stating the key concepts of the findings and considerations, the article is of reasonable value, helping to gain the surface imagination on Webber’s sociology.
As for the title, it plays the only formal role of its existence – to show what or who the article is about, and it performs no attraction in order to get the reader interested.
References
Wilson, Bryan. Religion in Sociological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982
Webber, Irvingl. “Sociology: Parochial or Universal?” Social Forces 60.2 (1981): 416-431.
Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology. Princeton: Princeton University Press