The German Genius

aligned himself with such thinking, not keeping much of a distance, as Tönnies tried hard to do.
    Stefan Breuer has identified what he calls a “German” line in sociology. Its main elements are (or were) a “romantic criticism of capitalist rationality, the utility principle, and the lament over the breaking up of community bonds.” He includes Tönnies, Sombart, and even Simmel in this group, though he thinks that Max Weber stands apart. “Weber did not welcome the First World War as a chance for redemption from fragmentation and alienation by means of German heroism and, what seems more important, he defended liberal democracy and its institutions.” More than anyone else, then, Sombart felt the loss of Gemeinschaft. And, more than anyone else, as Herf says, he tried “to identify the guilty party for ruining it.” 38
    E CONOMIC B ILDUNG
     
    Max Weber (1864–1920) was also troubled by the “degenerate” nature of modern society. He was much influenced by Dilthey, Simmel, and Tönnies but differed from them in believing that what he saw around him was not wholly bad. 39 No stranger to the “alienation” that modern life could induce, he thought that group identity was a central factor in making life bearable in modern cities and that its importance had been overlooked. A tall, stooping man, for several years around the turn of the century he had produced almost no serious academic work (he was on the faculty at the University of Freiburg), being afflicted by a severe depression that showed no signs of recovery until 1904. Once begun, however, few recoveries can have been so dramatic.
    Weber was that rare combination, being both very practical and very theoretical. He wrote on the practicalities of parliamentary government, attacked the “Bismarck legend” but at the same time gave much thought to the methodology of the social sciences. He was equally interested in religion, bureaucracy, the whole question of authority—why some people obey others—in urban societies and in the role of scholarship and universities in the modern world. He was convinced that we don’t have to be Caesar to understand him, that “understanding” involves interpretation, which is a different form of explanation from causative explanation in the hard sciences, and he developed and contrasted this with his notion of “adequate causation.” He thought that there were types of religion—ascetic, mystic, and prophetic (or savior) religions—the latter coming more into conflict with the world and the former showing less the tension that he thought always exists between “religiosity and cognition.” He was impressed by Confucianism, which “knew no radical evil or salvation,” its aim being “dignified acceptance of the world and graceful adjustment to it.”
    By far his most well-known work on religion and sociology was Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus ( The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ), the very opening of which shows Weber’s way of thinking: “A glance at the occupation statistics of any country of mixed religious composition brings to light with remarkable frequency a situation which has several times provoked discussion in the Catholic press and literature, and in Catholic congresses in Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protestant.” 40
    That observation is, for Weber, the nub of the matter, the crucial discrepancy that needs to be explained. (Thomas Nipperdey says that certain Englishmen had pointed out this link before but, as their observations were confined to Britain, they had not attracted a lot of attention.) 41 Early on, Weber makes it clear he is not talking just about money. For him, a capitalist enterprise and the pursuit of gain are not at all the same thing. People have always wanted to be rich, but that has little to do with capitalism, which he identifies as “a regular orientation to the achievement of profit through [nominally peaceful] economic exchange.” Pointing out that there were mercantile operations—very successful and of considerable size—in Babylonia, Egypt, India, China, and medieval Europe, he insists it is only in Europe since the Reformation that capitalist activity has become associated with the rational organization of formally