Blackwell Reference Online

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Simple intellectual integrity [involves giving account to oneself] of the final meaning of one's own actions. Max Weber Widely recognized as one of the major founding fathers of sociology, Max Weber (1864–1920) is perhaps today best known for his attempts to define the uniqueness of the modern West and to provide causal explanations for its specific historical development. However, far from offering a justification for industrial societies, his sociological and political writings both evidence a profound ambivalence toward them; although impressed by their capacity to sustain high standards of living, Weber feared that many of their foundational elements opposed the further unfolding of human compassion, ethical action, and individual autonomy. At the dawning of the twentieth century, he asked “where are we headed” and “how shall we live with dignity in this new age?” He worried that it might become an “iron cage” of impersonal, manipulative, and harsh relationships lacking binding values and noble ideals. His search for answers to these burning questions drove Weber to pursue, even by the ambitious standards of scholarship in his day, an extraordinarily broad and deep comparative agenda. Standing near the end of a long line of distinguished German scholars who undertook “universal-historical” investigations and convinced that the uniqueness of any particular society could be isolated ... log in or subscribe to read full text