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It can be said that there is no social science that has not been influenced by Weber, and there is no modern man who is not in the world described by Weber.
Weber's Manuscript of Economics and Society
Even readers who have never read Weber's original book have probably heard of Weber's concepts and golden sentences. More than 100 years later, people are still in dialogue with this soul that has forged passion and cold vision at the same time.
In the "Part I" of this "Quick Questions and Answers" collection, eight teachers in the fields of sociology, history, and law shared their opportunities to meet Weber for the first time and the path to Weber. In this article, as Weber's "old" readers, they share the inspiration and insights they have gained from Weber.
Editor's note: There are differences in the Weber versions referenced and quoted by different teachers, and the source will not be indicated in this manuscript, so please pay attention to the readers.
Q3: Could you please share one or more of the concepts or groups of concepts that inspired you the most in Weber's work, and briefly explain why?
Ying Xing
He is a tenured professor in the Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University
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卡里斯玛(Charisma).
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Li Fangchun
Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chongqing University
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As a historical researcher, one of the concepts that inspired me the most was the methodological concept of the 'historisches individuum' (historisches individuum) used in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It laid down a basic epistemological stance for me to carry out research on the Chinese revolution and pointed out the way forward. This concept was not actually created by Weber, but borrowed from his friend, the philosopher Lee Celt. Weber, however, exemplified the research.
By the way, Weber was very good at 'stealing', and many of the concepts were originally borrowed from others, but they were 'used by me', and they were very original. Such is the case with the 'capitalist spirit'.
As for Weber's new concept, perhaps the 'innerweltliche askese' proposed in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is one of the most instructive. This concept blends the two seemingly diametrically opposed things of 'accession' and 'abstinence', and grasps the changes in Christian civilization after the Reformation in a paradoxical and tense way, which can be called the finishing touch of his works.
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Sun Feiyu
Professor, Department of Sociology, Peking University
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What moved me most about Weber's work was the concept of rationalization and a series of related concepts, such as 'Disenchantment' ('Disenchantment', 'Beruf' (Vocation'), 'Ethik der Rationalisierung' ('Ethical Rationalization'), 'Depression' (Nüchternheit') and so on. Weber's understanding and use of these concepts is deeply rooted in the tradition of European civilization, reflecting the reflection of people in a modern situation on the fate that has been predestined for thousands of years, and at the same time it is an important reference object for Chinese's self-understanding, and has become a series of basic concepts for sociology to reflect on modern society due to the development of modern society.
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Li Min
Professor, School of Law, China University of Political Science and Law
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The set of concepts that inspired me the most was 'the relationship between politics and morality' (Politik und Ethik).
There are three main reasons:1. The question of the relationship between politics and morality is the question of the relationship between law and morality and the relationship between the constitution and morality, which are the basic issues of jurisprudence, and the question of morality generally penetrates the fields of politics, law, and constitution, and is a question concerning the legitimacy of politics, the legitimacy of the constitution, and the legitimacy of law. Weber, with the multiple intellectual perspectives of a national economist, sociologist, and political thinker, pointed out what kind of scientific method should be used to discuss such fundamental questions. 2. Weber's thinking on this issue has both the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of belief, so it is a political morality that combines realism and idealism, and this is the constitutional political philosophy problem that I am personally concerned with in constitutional theory. 3. Weber reveals the moral dilemma of politics by reminding people to think, 'What is the real relationship between politics and morality?' Is it true that there is nothing in common, as is sometimes said?, or is it the other way around: the morality of political action is no different from the morality of any other action?, and sometimes it is believed that there is an exclusive choice between the two statements: only one of the two statements must be true...... Is the moral requirement of politics really so ordinary and insignificant?'
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Zheng Zuoyu
Professor, School of Sociology, Nanjing University
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A single concept or a group of concepts, no. Weber's concepts are mostly based on the premise of 'Wertfreiheit' (value non-existent' (Wertfreiheit'), which are definitional classifications for analysis and are not very instructive.
But many of Weber's claims are well stated. For example, in the last paragraph of "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", he argues that in a modern society where everything is reasonable, professionals are no longer professional, and people pursue pleasure without a soul and enjoy it like a walking corpse. In such an era, this kind of person who excludes all human beings from their inner self still feels that they have ascended to a new realm of human beings and even be proud. Weber's quote is very incisive, and I feel that it is still very applicable today, or even more applicable, so there is a lot of room for discussion, and it opens up a lot of discussable issues for me.
However, "Weber's Complete Works" pointed out that this passage was not original to Weber, but Weber's quotation (albeit slightly adapted) Schmüller's statement. So while Weber's quote is good and inspiring to me, it doesn't seem to necessarily be directly attributable to Weber.
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Yan Fei
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University
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Weber's life has been devoted to the question of 'Rationalität' – how to achieve a balance between human liberalization and social rationalization, how to grasp the scale between human nature and social order, and how to drive the tension between emotion and reason.
In the process of transformation from traditional society to modern society, rationalization has played an important role and played a crucial role. However, economic rationalism, influenced by Protestant ethic, solidified into the modern capitalist economic order after the emergence of machine production technology and economic system. In this order, the pursuit of profit is calculated by precise formulas, and unbridled consumption punctures the original serious attitude to life and the sense of spiritual fulfillment. The 'mechanical tools and economic order' seem to control every corner of life, ignoring human nature and its needs, posing a great threat to individual freedom, causing everyone to gradually become trapped in the inescapable 'iron cage of humanity' (stahlhartes Gehäuse).
The iron cage of human nature is an important manifestation of the dilemma of human nature in modern society, and the pure Faustian life in Goethe's pen has long been abandoned, and people's daily life and work have been precise and calculated, just like the "unconscious" people embedded in the machine under the industrial production of "Modern Times", full of helplessness and sighs for life. According to Weber, 'Today, we are already witnessing the advent of ubiquitous bureaucracy and rationalization, and consider the consequences of them. Now, in all economic organizations that operate in a modern way, rational forecasts are already quite obvious at any stage. In this way, the actions of each laborer can be measured quantitatively, and each person becomes a cog in the machine, and, as soon as he realizes this, he strives to become a larger cog, which we are now more technically perfect, rational, and therefore more mechanical. ’
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Tian-plough
He is a tenured associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Peking University
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'Accession' (innerweltlichen). In the 'Protestant ethic', in the study of religion in India and in China, there are discussions on the core of this concept, and the meaning varies greatly, and the power of rationalization displayed by the accession to the WTO, the rejection of it and the cultivation of it, all became the key to Weber's understanding of 'world religion'.
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Sun Yufan
Founder of "Sociological Theory Vat".
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Bureaucracy or bureaucracy (Bürokratie). Our impression of bureaucracy or bureaucracy is mostly negative: why does the 'prove your mom be your mom' problem? Many of us have faced similar problems, but often only people like Weber have come up with good theories.
Of course, to a large extent, what attracted me to this concept was not only my years of experience working in government, think tanks and factories, but also my experience in organizing teams in starting academic public media. The road is not far away, but 'daily use is not known'. Nowadays, I often wonder what Weber would think if he looked at me, why wasn't my organization really bureaucratic or bureaucratic, what was the difference, why was it different, and what did it mean?
In fact, the implicit dialogue with Weber in our daily work is also the Nietzschean understanding of Weber's 'idealtypus' (idealtypus', such as the bureaucratic system), which is the meaning of our life, lies in how to transcend and overcome these 'ideals' with social shaping power. Specifically, how do we live a life that transcends and overcomes the bureaucratic system?
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Teenage Webb, 1878
Photo of Weber's themed event held by Wenjing
Q4: Could you please share one or more of Weber's works that impressed you the most?
Ying Xing
He is a tenured professor in the Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University
“
The expert has no spirit, and the indulgent has no heart. ’
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Li Fangchun
Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chongqing University
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A passage from Weber's preface, written specifically for his Essays on the Sociology of Religion: 'The course of human destiny is indeed to the horror of a man who glimpses it, but it is better for him to hide his insignificant personal opinions, as he does when confronted with the seas or mountains, unless he believes that he has been called and has the gift to express them in the form of art or prophecy. But in most other cases, chattering about intuition is just a disguise of not having insight into the problem, and the advantage is that it can be concluded that he has no insight into human beings either. This passage best reflects the vastness of Weber's scholarly mind and the balance of his state of mind.
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Sun Feiyu
Professor, Department of Sociology, Peking University
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The people who listened to it, who have been asking and waiting for more than 2,000 years, know their fearful fate. The lesson to be learned here is that prayer and waiting alone will lead to nothing, and that we should act differently. We should do our work and treat the 'requirements of the moment' in terms of human beings or vocations.
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Li Min
Professor, School of Law, China University of Political Science and Law
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What impresses me deeply, 'unclear', but still somewhat 'lingering' is a passage from Weber's Confucianism and Taoism – 'The concept of logic is a fantasy for non-dialectical Chinese philosophy, which is bound by the classics and attaches great importance to practical problems and hereditary bureaucracy. It is completely ignorant of this critical circle of issues in all Western philosophies, and its implications are extremely clearly reflected in the way of thinking of Chinese philosophers led by Confucius. A point of contention directly related to this passage is that Weber does not think that Chinese itself is antilogical, as some Chinese and Western scholars say, Weber's view is that although the Chinese language is logical, 'the Chinese have not yet grasped the power of logic, definition, and reasoning'.
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Yan Fei
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University
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Weber, Academia and Politics: 'Today, the great suffering of the masses of the people oppresses the social conscience of our generation heavily, but we must make it clear that what we feel is even heavier is our responsibility before history. ’
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The thought giants of the 20th century,
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The core text presents Weber's ideological map,
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