Stephen Kalberg, Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations: A Reconstruction

Abstract

While as a founding father of ‘sociology’ Max Weber has deeply imprinted sociological research, his works are famous for being difficult to be deciphered. Educated in German universities, he was good at and to some extent obsessed with writing lengthy sentences. Although the constructiveness of German guarantees relatively accurate understanding of his writings, scholars nonetheless produce various interpretations. This difficulty is further complicated by two factors. First, Weber had very broad interest in social sciences, including law, economics, history, and politics, which enabled him to cite numerous works in different disciplines. For scholars nowadays, it is arduous to retrieve the information which Weber often only mentioned discursively in footnotes or margins. While these references have been presented well in the complete historical-critical edition (Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe), such hardship is not completely eliminated because reading and understanding the references that were written over 100 years ago under particular historical contexts entail much work as well. Second, almost exclusively, Weber wrote and gave speeches in German which is a complex language for foreigners. General readers in other Western countries except German-speaking countries can only get access to Weber’s writings through translations which are not always perfect. Similar difficulties existed for Karl Marx in the first place, too. Revolutionaries and disciples of Marx’s political views made Marxian theories much more accessible to international audiences, which instigated massive radical political movements all over the world in the twentieth century. Consequently, Marx confronts more various even polarized interpretations. By contrast, Weber could ‘escape’ from the duty of instructing activists who aimed to ‘change the world’, partly because it is mainly scholars who contribute to the image-building of Weber. More importantly, Weber had the conviction that social sciences have to abstain from value judgments, that is, ‘Wertfreiheit’. Nonetheless, 1158856 ISS0010.1177/02685809231158856International SociologyReviews: Sociologists and Their Works review-article2023