Rationality Theorists - Max Weber, Robert Nozick, Jurgen Habermas, Thomas Bayes, John Searle, Jesus Mosterin, Eli Berman, Jon Elster (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 28. Chapters: Max Weber, Robert Nozick, Jurgen Habermas, Thomas Bayes, John Searle, Jesus Mosterin, Eli Berman, Jon Elster, Oskar Morgenstern, R. Duncan Luce, Albrecht Wellmer. Excerpt: Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber (German pronunciation: 21 April 1864 - 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research and the discipline of sociology itself. A key proponent of methodological antipositivism, which presents sociology as a non-empiricist field which must study social action through interpretive means based upon understanding the meaning and purpose that individuals attach to their own actions, Weber is often cited, with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science. Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularization, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. His thinking about the nature of these developments in the modern Western world led to the development of "critical theory," particularly in the work of later social thinkers such as Theodor W. Adorno and Jurgen Habermas. Also highly influential was his thesis in economic sociology, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state in the Western world. Against Marx's "historical materialism," Weber emphasised the importance, for understanding the development of capitalism, of cultural influences embedded in religion. The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest part in Weber's broader investigation into the sociology of religion: he would go on to examine the religions of China, the religio...