page_title: Max Weber
section_title: Political involvements
hierarchical_section_title: Max Weber / Career and later life / Political involvements
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Max Weber auf der Lauenstein Tagung 1917. Im Hintergrund de:Ernst Toller English: Max Weber 1917 at the Lauensteiner Tagung. In background: Ernst Toller
context_page_description: Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist, who is regarded today as one of the most important theorists on the development of modern Western society. His ideas would profoundly influence social theory and social research.
  Unlike Durkheim, Weber did not believe in monocausal explanations, proposing instead that for any outcome there can be multiple causes. As such, he would be a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive methods, based on understanding the purpose and meanings that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment", which he took to be the result of a new way of thinking about the world, associating such processes with the rise of capitalism and modernity.
  Weber is best known for his thesis of combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, emphasising the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism.
context_section_description: Later in 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, in part because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals.
caption: Max Weber (middle, facing right) in 1917 with Ernst Toller (middle, facing camera)
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