Abstract
AbstractThough originally trained as a jurist before turning to political economy, Max Weber is today typically identified with his approach to sociology and his methodological cautions on what social science can and cannot do. However, his reputation as a founder of sociology has its roots in his encounter with political economy. As an economist, Weber sought to steer between the German historical political economy that derived economic institutions from the national culture in which they had developed and the new economic theory of marginal utility that derived general laws from formal deductive models. But he realized he could only resolve this dispute through sociology. From that viewpoint he wrote groundbreaking articles on the methodology of the social sciences, studies of the origins of capitalist development includingThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, studies on the economic ethics of world religions, and above all, inquiries laying out the variety of ideal types of social action and social relations, culminating in his massive unfinishedEconomy and Society.