SOC 3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Thomas Robert Malthus, Industrial Revolution, Nationstates
22 Aug 2019
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Max Weber, the father of modern sociology
Considered by many to be a founding father of modern sociology together with Karl
Marx and Emile Durkheim, the German sociologist and historian Max Weber, whose
150th birthday was born, has been the object of criticism by post-modernist
historiography that arose as a result of decolonization.
His academic influence remains such that shortly after becoming public that Joseph
P rez had won the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, the �
French historian of Spanish origin sentenced in an interview in the supplement
Mas24: "No scientist worthy of this name, no historian, today can argue that the
Protestant religion is the religion of progress "an affirmation in the form of
bitter tribute to the German that is nothing but proof of the powerful legacy that
Max Weber's works continue to exert today in a world and a history in complete
fluctuation.
Weber's world
He was born on April 21, 1864 in Erfurt, the current Thuringia, at that time part
of the Kingdom of Prussia. The son of a wealthy and liberal official and a
Calvinist and religious mother, he was an early student. His life was between the
academic and political world at a time when Germany, Europe, and the world were
boiling: he witnessed the birth of the German Empire in 1871 and his disappearance
in 1918 after World War I, the likewise, he witnessed the zenith of European
territorial expansion in Africa and Asia, and the second industrial revolution.
He worked as a university professor at the University of Freiburg in 1894, and
later at the University of Heidelberg. Intellectual and tireless polemicist, Weber
entered the Union for German Social Policy in 1888, and throughout his life he
maintained ties with liberal and leftist parties. His prestige as a sociologist and
historian gave him the opportunity to work as an advisor to the German delegation
that negotiated the surrender of the country in the Treaty of Versailles, and as
one of the editors and supervisors of the Constitution of the Weimar Republic.
As a great observer of the innovations of his time, he focused his work on two
crucial changes: the birth of modern nation-states based on a professional
bureaucracy, and the expansion of Western capitalism across the globe.
Sociology and religion
David Hume (1711-1774) was the first intellectual to point out the duality of human
nature. On the one hand, Hume discovered a series of universal and unchanging
characteristics that could be applied to any human being: the need to feed,
reproduce, and interact, and on a more philosophical level, the epistemological
principles that govern human behavior. It was on these universal and unalterable
principles that Thomas Malthus relied on creating the first modern demographic
treaty, Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798. The unalterable
part of human nature would become the basis of economic thought and Darwinist of
the 19th century.
However, Hume also recognized that human behavior is conditioned by culture,
history, and the ideological discourse of the society in which it came to be born.
This part of human nature is changing, and is in perpetual evolution. The
interaction between both parts of human nature is the main component of human
behavior, and led to the creation of modern sociology.
The zenith of the Enlightenment
Max Weber, who has been considered together with Marx and Durkheim as one of the
authors who brought the culture of the Enlightenment to its zenith, recognized in
