Sociological teachings of Max Weber. Sociological concept of Max Weber. Sociological concept of Max Weber

FEDERAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION

RUSSIAN STATE

COMMERCIAL AND ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY

Management department

Department of Sociology and Political Science

TEST

Discipline: "Sociology"

On the topic “The Sociology of Max Weber.”

Performed:

2nd year student

Part-time study

Group 21/2

Romanova E.V.

Checked:

Prof. Sedelnikov S.S.

MOSCOW 2008

Introduction 4

1. Creative periods 5

2 Works 6

3 Sociology of Max Weber 8

3.1. Understanding Sociology and Theory of Social Action 8

3.2. Sociology political power 14

3.3. Sociology of religion 17

Conclusion 20

References 22

Introduction

Max Weber (1864 – 1920) – German sociologist, social philosopher, cultural scientist and historian. He can easily be called the Leonardo da Vinci of sociology. His basic theories today form the foundation of sociology: the doctrine of social action and motivation, the social division of labor, alienation, and the profession as a vocation.

He developed: the foundations of the sociology of religion; economic sociology and sociology of labor; sociology of the city; theory of bureaucracy; the concept of social stratification and status groups; fundamentals of political science and the institution of power; doctrine of social history society and rationalization; the doctrine of the evolution of capitalism and the institution of property.

Max Weber's achievements are simply impossible to list, they are so enormous. In the field of methodology, one of his most important achievements is the introduction of ideal types. M. Weber believed that the main goal of sociology is to make as clear as possible what was not so in reality itself, to reveal the meaning of what was experienced, even if this meaning was not realized by the people themselves. Ideal types make it possible to make historical or social material more meaningful than it was in the experience itself real life.

Weber's ideas permeate the entire edifice of modern sociology, constituting its foundation. Weber's creative legacy is enormous. He contributed to theory and methodology, laid the foundations for the sectoral areas of sociology: bureaucracy, religion, city and labor.

M. Weber himself created many scientific works, including: “Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism” (1904-1905), “Economy and Society”, “Objectivity of socio-scientific and socio-political knowledge”, “Critical studies in the field of logic sciences of culture”, “On some categories of understanding sociology” (1913), “Basic sociological concepts”.

The development of sociological ideas about society has been increasing all the time - from Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli and Hobbes, and from them to Comte and Marx. With every step our knowledge deepened and enriched. The highest expression was the ideas of M. Weber. He not only created the most complex theory of society in the historical period under review, but also laid the methodological foundation of modern sociology, which was even more difficult to do.

Thanks to M. Weber, as well as his colleagues German school dominated world sociology until the First World War.

1. Creative periods

The first period (until 1898) - before the creative turning point associated with health problems. Weber very quickly made his professional career, starting to work as an economic and legal historian. There was a historically established school of both law and economics, and Weber adhered to this school. However, he was critical of the tendency to combine science, art and ethics, believing that science is not of a value nature. The first period of M. Weber’s work was characterized by an interest in science: modern and ancient capitalism, the opening of a trading society in the Middle Ages, the legal division between personal property and ownership of the means of production. M. Weber considers the latter important for the emergence of modern capitalism. The illness began in 1898 and for four years he was unable to begin creative work. It was during these years that Weber reconsidered the origins and motives of human activity.

Second period (1903-1910). After illness, in 1902, he began to become interested in methodological issues. Of course, his personal crisis influenced his creation of the theory of capitalism. M. Weber held the point of view that the ethics that he implemented in his life could not be interpreted materialistically. People in their lives follow not only their selfish interests. From the point of view of an egoist, it is pointless to accumulate capital for the sake of capital, to make a career for the sake of a career; there are forces that are inexplicable materialistically. On the other hand, it became necessary to defend the logic of the historical approach that he developed for a long time. At the beginning of the 20th century, philosophical movements such as positivism and materialism began to develop rapidly. At this time, Weber was characterized by attempts to form ideas on the other side of materialism and idealism. Understand a person who acts not only under the auspices of egoism, but also as a person capable of action for the sake of action. According to the testimony of the philosopher’s wife Maryana, Max Weber made an extraordinary discovery during these years: it turns out that a specific type of rationalism permeates economics and politics, determines man’s relationship with nature, relationships between people, and the dominance of rationalism grows with the development of technology and science. In 1910, M. Weber substantiated the rationalism of science and art, relying on the development of the values of Western society.

In the third period (1910-1920) of his work, M. Weber was engaged in developing the rational foundations of religion, trying to analyze all forms of religion and the modes of action of people that they give rise to. What are the features of professional ethics? How did it come about? How can it be explained? These and similar questions worried M. Weber during this period of his life.

2 Works

According to a number of researchers of Weber’s works, one of his main works is considered to be “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in the continuation of which Weber wrote a comparative analysis of the most significant religions and analyzed the interaction of economic conditions, social factors and religious beliefs. First this work was published in 1905 in Germany and since then has been one of best works on the analysis of the causes of the emergence of modern capitalism.

Others consider Weber's main work to be Economy and Society. This work represents one project, implemented in two versions. The first version was written in 1910-14, the other in 1919-20. Both parts were left unfinished by the author; they represent a draft of a future book. The first part is devoted to the features Western development capitalism, the second - historical issues. At the same time, socialism, understood as rational, is considered an integral part of Western development. Rational capitalism and rational socialism are two alternatives in which society has developed.

But the heart of M. Weber’s philosophical heritage is considered to be works related to economic ethics and the sociology of religion. According to the philosopher himself, sociology is concerned with understanding specific historical events and reality; it should establish general rules, but this is not a goal, but a means, because the ideal of the natural sciences is rejected as unacceptable.

3 Sociology of Max Weber

3.1. Understanding Sociology and Theory of Social Action

M. Weber founder of “understanding” sociology and theory social action, who applied its principles to economic history, to the study of political power, religion, and law. The main idea of Weber's sociology is to substantiate the possibility of maximum rational behavior, manifested in all spheres of human relationships. This idea of Weber found its further development in various sociological schools of the West, which resulted in a kind of “Weberian renaissance.”

The methodological principles of Weber's sociology are closely related to other theoretical systems characteristic of social science of the last century - the positivism of Comte and Durkheim, the sociology of Marxism.

Particular attention is paid to the influence of the Baden school of neo-Kantianism, primarily the views of one of its founders, G. Rickert, according to which the relationship between being and consciousness is built on the basis of a certain attitude of the subject to value. Like Rickert, Weber distinguishes between attitude to value and evaluation, from which it follows that science should be free from subjective value judgments. But this does not mean that a scientist should abandon his own biases; they just shouldn't interfere with scientific developments. Unlike Rickert, who views values and their hierarchy as something supra-historical, Weber believes that: “Value” is “determined by the character of the historical era, which determines the general line of progress of human civilization.” 1 In Weber’s concept, they are uniquely refracted in the categories of the ideal type, which constitute the quintessence of his methodology of the social sciences and are used as a tool for understanding the phenomena of human society and the behavior of its members.

So, according to Weber, the sociologist must correlate the analyzed material with economic, aesthetic, and moral values, based on what served as values for the people who are the object of the study. In order to understand the actual causal connections of phenomena in society and give a meaningful interpretation of human behavior, it is necessary to construct invalid - ideal - typical constructions extracted from empirical reality that express what is characteristic of many social phenomena. At the same time, Weber considers the ideal type not as the goal of knowledge, but as a means of revealing the “general rules of events.”

According to Weber, the ideal type as a methodological tool allows:

first, to construct a phenomenon or human action as if it took place under ideal conditions;

secondly, consider this phenomenon or action regardless of local conditions.

It is assumed that if ideal conditions are met, then in any country the action will be performed in this way. That is, the mental formation of the unreal, ideal - typical - a technique that allows you to understand how this or that historical event really took place. And one more thing: the ideal type, according to Weber, allows us to interpret history and sociology as two areas of scientific interest, and not as two different disciplines. This is an original point of view, based on which, according to the scientist, in order to identify historical causality, it is first necessary to build an ideal - typical construction historical event, and then compare the unreal, mental course of events with their real development. Through the construction of the ideal-typical, the researcher ceases to be a simple statistician of historical facts and gains the opportunity to understand how strong the influence of general circumstances was, what the role of the influence of chance or personality was at a given moment in history.

Sociology, according to Weber, is “understanding” because it studies the behavior of an individual who puts a certain meaning into his actions. A person’s action takes on the character of a social action if two aspects are present in it: the subjective motivation of the individual and orientation towards another (others). Understanding motivations, “subjectively implied meaning” and relating it to the behavior of other people are necessary aspects of sociological research itself, Weber notes, citing the example of a man chopping wood to illustrate his points. Thus, one can consider the cutting of wood only as a physical fact - the observer does not understand the woodcutter, but that the wood is being cut. One can view the hewer as a conscious living being by interpreting his movements. Another option is possible when the center of attention becomes the meaning of the action subjectively experienced by the individual, i.e. questions are asked: “Is this person acting according to the developed plan? What's the plan? What are his motives? In what context of meaning are these actions perceived by him?” It is this type of “understanding”, based on the postulate of the existence of an individual together with other individuals in a system of specific coordinates of values, that serves as the basis for real social interactions in the life world. Max Weber defines social action as follows: “Social action... correlates in its meaning with the behavior of other subjects and is oriented towards it” 2. Based on this, an action cannot be considered social if it is purely imitative, when the individual acts like an atom of the crowd, or when he is oriented towards some a natural phenomenon(for example, it is not a social action when many people open their umbrellas when it rains).

One of the most influential theorists of sociology, who left an outstanding mark on its history, is Max Weber (1864-1920). The formation of the concept of historical sociology, towards which the German sociologist moved throughout his entire career, was due to quite high level the development of contemporary historical science, its accumulation of a large amount of empirical data on social phenomena in many societies of the world. It was precisely his close interest in the analysis of these data that helped Weber define his main task - to combine the general and the specific, to develop a methodology and conceptual apparatus with the help of which it would be possible to organize the chaotic scattering of social facts. Weber's works represent an amazing fusion of historical research and sociological reflection in terms of breadth of scope and boldness of generalizations.

If Marx’s thought can be considered a liberation from esoteric-idealistic philosophy and petty-bourgeois provincialism of small German states, which, to a large extent, made him a worldwide herald of socialism, then the work of Max Weber is intellectually and emotionally very closely connected with the new one, no longer fragmented, but united by the Chancellor Bismarck Germany - a young and full of ambitions national state.

It can be stated with full responsibility that the development of social scientific thought in the twentieth century was influenced by the intellectual heritage of two titans of science: Karl Marx and Max Weber.

Weber became famous for his work “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904). Weber's main attention in this and other works on economic ethics was aimed at studying the cultural significance of modern capitalism, that is, he was interested in capitalism not as an economic system or the result of the class interests of the bourgeoisie, but as everyday practice, as methodically rational behavior.

Weber considered the rational organization of formally free labor in an enterprise to be the only sign of modern Western capitalism. The prerequisites for this were: rational law and rational management, as well as the internationalization of the principles of methodologically rational behavior within the framework of practical behavior of people. Therefore, he understood modern capitalism as a culture firmly rooted in the values and motives of action and in the entire life practice of the people of his era.

Weber's important contribution to sociology was the introduction of the concept of the ideal type. “Ideal type” is an artificially, logically constructed concept that allows us to highlight the main features of the social phenomenon under study (for example, an ideal typical military battle should include all the main components inherent in a real battle, etc.).

Modern American sociology has been shaped in large part by the development of Weber's concept of freedom from value judgments. However, Weber himself did not completely deny the importance of assessments. He only believed that the research procedure was divided into three stages. Values should appear at the beginning and end of the study. The process of data collection, accurate observation, systematic comparison of data must be impartial. Weber's concept of “attribution to value” means that the researcher selects material on the basis of his contemporary value system.

The basis of Weber's sociological theory is the concept of social action. He distinguished action from purely reactive behavior. He was interested in action, which includes mental processes and mediates between stimulus and response: action takes place when individuals subjectively comprehend their actions.

Weber's works brilliantly explored the phenomena of bureaucracy and the overwhelming progressive bureaucratization ("rationalization") of society. An important category introduced by Weber into scientific terminology is “rationality.” Rationalization, according to Weber, is the result of the influence of several phenomena that carried a rational principle, namely, ancient science, especially mathematics, supplemented in the Renaissance by experiment, experimental science, and then technology. Here Weber highlights rational Roman law, which received on European soil further development, as well as a rational way of farming that arose through the separation of labor from the means of production. The factor that made it possible to synthesize all these elements was Protestantism, which created the ideological prerequisites for the implementation of a rational way of running an economy, since economic success was elevated by the Protestant ethic to a religious calling.

This is how a modern industrial type of society has developed, which differs from traditional ones. And its main difference is that in traditional societies there was no dominance of the formal rational principle. Formal reality is something that is exhausted by quantitative characteristics. As Weber shows, the movement towards formal reality is the movement of the historical process itself.

The most famous work of M. Weber is “Economy and Society” (1919).

M. Weber is the founder of “understanding” sociology and the theory of social action, who applied its principles to economic history, the study of political power, religion, and law. The main idea of Weber's sociology is to substantiate the possibility of maximally rational behavior, manifested in all spheres of human relationships. This idea of Weber found its further development in various sociological schools of the West, which resulted in the 70s. into a kind of “Weberian renaissance.”

As a necessary prerequisite for sociology, Weber does not place the “whole” (society), but a separate, meaningfully acting individual. According to Weber, social institutions - law, state, religion, etc. - should be studied by sociology in the form in which they become significant for individuals, in which the latter are actually oriented towards them in their actions. He rejected the idea that society is more primary than the individuals composing it, and “demanded” that sociology should be based on the actions of individual people. In this regard, we can talk about Weber’s methodological individualism.

But Weber did not stop at extreme individualism. He considers “orientation” to be an integral moment of social action. actor on another individual or other individuals around him.” Without this introduction, i.e. orientation towards another actor or social institutions society, his theory would remain the classic “Robinsonade model”, where there is no “orientation towards another” in the actions of the individual. In this “orientation towards the other” the “socially general” receives its “recognition”, in particular “state”, “law”, “union”, etc. From here “recognition” - “orientation towards the other” - becomes one of central methodological principles of Weber's sociology.

Sociology, according to Weber, is "understanding", because it studies the behavior of an individual who puts a certain meaning into his actions. Human actions take on character social action, if there are two aspects in it: the subjective motivation of the individual and orientation towards another (others). Understanding motivation, “subjectively implied meaning” and attributing it to the behavior of other people are necessary aspects of sociological research itself, Weber noted.

The subject of sociology, according to Weber, should be not so much direct behavior as its semantic result. For the nature of a mass movement is largely determined by the semantic attitudes that guide the individuals who make up the mass.

Listing possible types of social action, Weber indicates four: goal-oriented; value-rational; affective; traditional.

1. Purposeful action is characterized by a clear understanding by the actor of what he wants to achieve, what ways and means are most suitable for this. The actor calculates the possible reactions of others, how and to what extent they can be used for his purpose, etc.

2. Value-rational the action is subordinated to a conscious belief in the ethical, aesthetic, religious or any other, otherwise understood, unconditionally intrinsic value (self-worth) of a certain behavior, taken simply as such, regardless of success.

3.Affective the action is determined by a purely emotional state and is carried out in a state of passion.

4. Traditional action is dictated by habits, customs, beliefs. It is carried out on the basis of deeply learned social patterns of behavior.

As Weber noted, the four ideal types described do not exhaust the entire variety of orientations of human behavior. However, they can be considered the most characteristic.

The core of Weber’s “understanding” sociology is the idea of rationality, which found its concrete and consistent expression in contemporary capitalist and, very importantly, German society with its rational management (rationalization of labor, money circulation, etc.), rational political power (rational type of domination and rational bureaucracy), rational religion (Protestantism).

(1864-1920) - German sociologist, discovered a huge influence on modern sociology - both in methodological terms and in terms of the accumulation of sociological knowledge. Among his main works are: “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904-1906), “On the Category of Understanding Sociology” (1913), “History of Economics” (1923), “The City” (1923).

Unlike Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, Max Weber believed that the laws of society were fundamentally different from the laws of nature. And therefore it is necessary to develop two types of scientific knowledge - the science of nature (natural science) and the science of culture (humanitarian knowledge). Sociology - in his opinion

is on the border between these two spheres and should borrow from the natural disciplines the cause-and-effect explanation of reality and adherence to accurate facts, and from the humanities - the method of understanding and relating to values. Understanding - use in inner world individuals, understanding their thoughts and experiences. It is as if the sociologist mentally puts himself in the place of other people and tries to understand their thoughts and feelings. The scientist considered personality to be the basis of sociological analysis. He was convinced that such complex concepts, like: state, religion, capitalism can be understood only on the basis of an analysis of the behavior of individuals. But how to highlight the main thing, the common thing in people’s individual experiences? This criterion, according to Weber, becomes “attribution to values.” Values can be theoretical - truth, political - justice; moral - good; aesthetic

beauty and the like. But, if they have significance for all subjects under study, then they are supra-subjective, that is, they have absolute significance within the epoch being studied.

Max Weber's main tool of cognition is “ideal types.” These are constructions, schemes of social reality that exist in the imagination of scientists. “Ideal” in this case means “pure”, “abstract”, that is, one that does not exist in real life.

That is, the ideal type should be understood not in moral and ethical terms, but in theoretical and methodological terms. By “ideal,” the sociologist does not mean the type to which society should strive, but the one that contains the most essential, typical features of social reality and can serve as a standard for comparison with social reality. Let's say, if we want to describe the ideal type of a modern Ukrainian urban transport passenger, then, after analyzing the surrounding reality, we will find that this is not at all a polite person, always pays the fare on time and gives way to elders, as we all would like. No, the ideal type in this case should include other characteristics that are inherent in modern Ukrainian urban transport passengers - this is also a person who sometimes tries to travel without a ticket, and is often impolite.

Max Weber operated with such ideal types as: “capitalism”, “bureaucracy”, “religion”, “market economy”, etc.

Ideal types should be studied by sociology in the form in which they become significant for individuals, in which they are guided by them in their actions. Social actions of individuals are actions that correlate (count) with the actions of other individuals and are oriented towards them (actions such as, for example, lonely prayer or panicked actions of a crowd will not be considered social actions in the sense proposed by Weber).

Max Weber identifies four types of social action: whole rational, value-rational, affective and traditional.

Whole rational action presupposes and takes into account the behavior of objects outside world and other people (the criterion of rationality is success). “The whole is rational,” writes Weber, “the one who acts is the one who orients his action towards ends, means and side consequences, and at the same time rationally weighs both the ratio of costs and goals, and goals against side consequences.”

A value-rational action is conditioned by a conscious belief in ethical, aesthetic, religious values, according to which this action occurs, regardless of whether this action brings success or not. “Purely value-rationally,” we read in the works of M. Weber, “acts the one who, without taking into account possible consequences, acts in accordance with his convictions and does what, as it seems to him, his duty, his understanding of dignity, requires of him.” , beauty, its religious precepts, reverence or the importance of some... "deed". A value-rational action... is always an action in accordance with the "commandments" or "demands" that the one who acts considers himself."

An example of value rational action may, for example, be considered a statement by the leader of the German Reformation of the 16th century. Martin Luther, who, in response to the demand of papal Rome to repent and renounce his views, replied: “I cannot and do not want to renounce, because it is dangerous and impossible to go against my conscience. I stand on this and cannot do otherwise. May God help me.” .

8. Affective action - action under the influence of affects and feelings. In the case of an affective action, just as in the case of a value-rational action, the goal of the action is the action itself, and not something else (result, success, etc.); side effects in both the first and second cases are not taken into account.

4. Traditional action is an action under the influence of habit, tradition.

The real behavior of an individual, according to Weber, is determined, as a rule, by two or more types of action; it contains a whole rational, and value-rational, and affective, and traditional aspects. In different types of societies, certain types of action may dominate: in traditional societies the traditional and affective types of social action predominate, in industrial societies the whole and value-rational types predominate.

What does the whole role of rational action mean for society and its growth structure? This means that the way of farming and management is rationalized. Moreover, this process concerns not only the economy, but also politics, science, culture - all spheres of public life. The way people think, their way of feeling and their way of life in general is also rationalized. This is accompanied by an increasing role of science, which, according to Weber, is the pure embodiment of the principle of rationality. The penetration of science into all spheres of life is evidence of the universal rationalization of modern society.

Compared to Karl Marx, Max Weber devoted much more less attention class conflict and influential economies on social life. In the book "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (i904-i906) he explored the relationship between social organization and religious values. Faith prompted Protestants to selfless work, frugality, and personal responsibility for their life path. These qualities contributed to the development of modern capitalism. Capitalism, according to the scientist, was formed and spread in the process of the development of science, modern technology, bureaucracy and rationalization of society.

Max Weber's teachings relate mainly to political economy and the history of sociology. However, the connection between Max Weber’s ideas and philosophy and their influence on the philosophy of the 20th century. so great that it seems necessary to at least briefly talk about the life and writings of M. Weber and his ideas.

Max Weber (1864 - 1920) taught in Berlin from 1892, from 1894 he was professor of national economics in Freiburg in Breisgau, from 1896 - in Heidelberg, from 1918 - in Vienna, from 1919 - in Munich. His works are devoted to problems of economic history and socio-economic eras, the interaction of religion and the history of society. M. Weber's most famous work is “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904-1905).

1. Scientific knowledge and knowledge of values, according to Weber, are significantly different from each other. Scientific knowledge must study what is; it addresses facts. From knowledge about facts comes knowledge about the means that should be used in order to achieve certain goals. Science should be, according to Weber, free of values. The area of values is the area of ought, where people's judgments about the same subject necessarily vary. Science is the sphere of truth, which is uniform and obligatory for all people. Weber, however, does not claim that science can completely free itself from value “perspectives.” But he insists that maximum freedom from values should become the unconditional norm of a scientist’s attitude towards his subject. It is especially difficult, but also fundamentally necessary, to comply with this requirement in the sciences of society and man.

2. Weber makes a careful distinction between two concepts - “explanation” (Erklaren) and “understanding” (Verstehen). Attention to them is due to the influence of G. Rickert and V. Dilthey. Natural Sciences Weber considers the sciences of culture to be primarily explanatory, and the sciences of culture to be primarily understanding. Weber's main sociological work, Economy and Society, is subtitled “Fundamentals of Understanding Sociology.” The subject of sociology is, first of all, the understanding of the universal rules of social action. But it is also an understanding of the subjective motives, attitudes, intentions, and goals of individuals acting in society. Methods and procedures of understanding in sociology are given decisive importance; methods of explanation are not excluded, but they are also made dependent on understanding. The concept of "action" (Handlung) of the individual is also fundamental in Weberian sociology. If natural science deals with “unmotivated events,” then sociology deals with motivated actions.

3. Great importance for sociology, philosophy, and in general for the sciences of society and man, Weber believed, there is also the concept of “ideal type.” It means that a whole series of generalizing scientific concepts does not correspond to any fragment of reality, and that they, being a kind of models, serve as formal tools of thinking in science. Such, for example, is the concept of homo oeconomicus, “economic man.” In reality, there is no “economic man” as a special reality, separated from other qualities of man. But economic disciplines or sociology - for the purpose of analysis - creates such an “ideal type”.

4. Max Weber constitutes his sociology with the help of four “pure” types of action (ideal types): a) action can have a rational orientation, guided by a given goal (goal-rational action); b) action can have a rational orientation, relating to absolute value (value-rational action); c) the action can be determined by certain affects or emotional states of the actor (affective, or emotional, action); d) action can be determined by traditions or strong customs (tradition-oriented action). In real human action, these moments, of course, are not separated from each other: action combines goal rationality with value rationality, with affects and orientations to tradition. But any of these points may prevail in certain actions. In addition, for the purpose of analysis, ideal types can be made from the above-mentioned aspects, subjecting first one or the other side of the matter to special research.

5. M. Weber assumed that there are areas of activity and historical eras where and when purposeful and rational human actions come to the fore. Such areas of activity are economics, management, law, science. "Rationalization" and "modernization" are very characteristic of European history last centuries. In particular, managing society increasingly requires calculation, a plan, and a holistic coverage of the activities of the state and society. Related to this is the carefully studied trend of bureaucratization by M. Weber, which he considers common to the civilizational development of the whole world. According to Weber, bureaucratization can and should be introduced into the framework of rules and subjected to control, but it is in principle impossible to eliminate this tendency. Weber distinguishes two types of state power - traditional, or charismatic, and legal domination. The authority of unlimited power in former societies is being replaced by legitimacy - in other words, reliance on laws, on the rational basis for the action of the bureaucracy, on calculation and control, on openness in the discussion of all actions of state power. At the same time, the procedures of a rational, legitimate bureaucracy can be used for different purposes - both in the name of the united work of all members of society, and in the name of oppression of the people.

6. M. Weber poses the following philosophical and historical question: how did it happen that certain phenomena of spirit and culture - rationality, modernization, legitimacy - first made their way in Western countries and it was here that they acquired universal significance? The answer to it is given in the famous work “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Weber is confident that since the Renaissance, rationality has become a general cultural phenomenon in the West: it penetrates not only science and philosophy, but also theology, literature, art and, of course, daily life society, state. Specialization and professionalism - identification marks this process.

The concept of “capitalism,” which he borrowed from previous literature, is explained by M. Weber as follows. The desire to obtain the greatest profit is known to all eras and existed in all countries of the earth. However, only in Western world a social system developed, based on formally free wage labor, allowing rational calculation, widespread use of technical knowledge and science, requiring rational and legal grounds for action and interaction. Following Marx, he called this system “capitalism.” But unlike Marx, Weber did not believe that a better, fairer system would come with socialism. He believed that the form of rational organization created by capitalism - with all its shortcomings and contradictions - belongs to the future. Essentially, Weber denoted by the word “capitalism” a set of types of civilized action, which, in fact, were brought to life at the dawn of the New Age and without which no one could and cannot do. social system. (Weber, by the way, often used the concept of “civilization”). Interest in types of action determined Special attention to those spiritual factors, to the processes of consciousness, thanks to which the goal-rational type of action, if not completely replaced, then supplanted the traditionalist action.

The focus of the study in Weber's previously mentioned work is the processes that coincided with the Reformation in Europe. Thanks to the new ethics, new system values - the ethics of Protestantism - was legitimized, a new lifestyle, type of behavior. The point was to orient the individual toward hard work, frugality, prudence, self-control, trust in one’s own personality, dignity, and strict observance of human rights and responsibilities. Of course, the conscious goal of Luther or Calvin was not at all to pave the way for the “spirit of capitalism.” They were concerned with reforming religion and the church. But Protestantism deeply invaded the sphere of extra-church life, consciousness and behavior of the laity, prescribing to him as divine commandments exactly what the advancing capitalist era demanded. The “inner-worldly asceticism” that Protestantism preached was an effective ideological means of cultivating a new personality and new values. This suggested the conclusion that countries that had not gone through the social and educational influence of something like the Reformation and the Protestant ethic would not be able to successfully develop along the path of rationality and modernization. True, Weber did not claim that it was all about the Protestant ethic. Other conditions were also involved in the emergence of capitalism.

One of the most influential theorists of sociology, who left an outstanding mark on its history, is Max Weber (1864-1920). The formation of the concept of historical sociology, towards which the German sociologist moved throughout his entire career, was due to the fairly high level of development of contemporary historical science, its accumulation of a large amount of empirical data on social phenomena in many societies of the world. It was precisely his close interest in the analysis of these data that helped Weber define his main task - to combine the general and the specific, to develop a methodology and conceptual apparatus with the help of which it would be possible to organize the chaotic scattering of social facts. Weber's works represent an amazing fusion of historical research and sociological reflection in terms of breadth of scope and boldness of generalizations.

Weber's works brilliantly explored the phenomena of bureaucracy and the overwhelming progressive bureaucratization ("rationalization") of society. An important category introduced by Weber into scientific terminology is “rationality.” Rationalization, according to Weber, is the result of the influence of several phenomena that carried a rational principle, namely, ancient science, especially mathematics, supplemented in the Renaissance by experiment, experimental science, and then technology. Here Weber highlights rational Roman law, which received further development on European soil, as well as a rational way of running an economy, which arose due to the separation of labor from the means of production. The factor that made it possible to synthesize all these elements was Protestantism, which created the ideological prerequisites for the implementation of a rational way of running an economy, since economic success was elevated by the Protestant ethic to a religious calling.

The most famous work of M. Weber is “Economy and Society” (1919).

But Weber did not stop at extreme individualism. He considers “the orientation of the actor towards another individual or other individuals surrounding him” to be an integral moment of social action. Without this introduction, i.e., orientation towards another actor or social institutions of society, his theory would have remained the classic “Robinsonade model”, where there is no “orientation towards another” in the actions of an individual. In this “orientation towards the other” the “socially general” receives its “recognition”, in particular “state”, “law”, “union”, etc. From here “recognition” - “orientation towards the other” - becomes one of central methodological principles of Weber's sociology.

Listing possible types of social action, Weber indicates four: goal-oriented; value-rational; affective; traditional.

3.Affective the action is determined by a purely emotional state and is carried out in a state of passion.

4. Traditional action is dictated by habits, customs, beliefs. It is carried out on the basis of deeply learned social patterns of behavior.

As Weber noted, the four ideal types described do not exhaust the entire variety of orientations of human behavior. However, they can be considered the most characteristic.