How Did Max Weber’s Illness Influence His Work on the Protestant Ethics, Essay Example

Max Weber, the German sociologist and political economist is renowned as one of the main founders of modern sociology. He was a literary genius, who had a tremendous influence on the social science of the twentieth century, especially in America, and one of the proponents to organize and reveal a systematic and methodical approach to the study of human behavior. Weber was the son of a rich liberal politician and a Calvinist mother. The extreme socio-political influence in the family influenced Weber, and he turned into an adherent scholar with strong notions of religion, sociology, economy and political espionage. However his work and notions suffered in the hands of strong criticism regarding his mental illness and strong circumstantial depression. To judge the work and craftsmanship of such a literary genius and accusing his mental illness to inflict his creation of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) would be prejudicial. However, Radkau who wrote a detailed biography on Max Weber finds out the inherent underlying truth and physical illness as reason to the stipulated perspective of the great hero.

We would analyze the affects of illness on the scholarly creativity and the direction of his thinking which paved the way for the ideology. There is a famous saying that ‘how you feel is how you think”, so it was calculated by Radkau on the basis of empirical evidence, that the condition and status of mind of Max Weber helped him evolve the theory of Protestant ethic. It would also be our structure for analysis.

Weber was first acclaimed for his noted work ‘the Protestant Ethic’ where he described ‘worldly asceticism’. It was not conventional but a belief, a psychological momentum stemmed from his imagination; it was a religion, a discovery of his eternal senses and realization. The most important part of his work evolved after his partial recovery from illness. This also suggests that the trauma and the torment of his physical and mental stature helped him develop the intricate insights of Calvinist morality and compulsive labor. It also developed his approach on the relationship between diverse religious ethics, social and economic processes. Indeed, in the seventeen years of his literary journey, Weber produced the best quality of his work during his illness and just before his death. During this time he evolved his political sociology that makes the important demarcation between charismatic, traditional and legal forms of authority. Charismatic authority as developed by Weber conforms to the spiritual inspiration and the superannuation of the prophets and the great political leaders. His interest in mysticism, aesthetic and spiritual affixation calls is attributed to his erotic feelings.

The illness of Max Weber had been a synopsis of factors and a trail of incidents that had finally led to his partial collapse. The main reasons for acute depression and such mental trauma can be attributed to the following:

His family and marital relations: His faced the estranged relationship of his parents; after his marriage his wife had an affair with his brother; the extra-marital relationship with his piano teacher. In 1893 Weber had dumped his first love, the mentally ill Fräulein Baumgarten and married his second cousin, Marianne Schnitger. There was an unequal love and incomplete emotional investment within the duo accentuated with the husband’s impotence in the wedding bed. Radkau observes, that the physical incompetency and his sexual discrepancies were the main contributors his later nervous crisis; they form ‘the fundamental fact of Weber’s passion story’. It was during the early years of his marriage, Weber was busy and his demanding work kept him away from his family which was also one of the causes of his breakdown. However, the most dramatic catalyst has been the accusation of his father and the estranged relationship with senior Max. He did not get a chance of reconciliation with his father and it was one of the major causes of his depression and the following summer, Max suffered the mental crisis.

His ill health: He suffered from insomnia with migraines, painful limbs, inability to work and recurring wet dreams and he resorted to sleeping pills and heroin to recover from it.

His puritanical tendencies: He was a compulsive worker, a workaholic that made his family life and ties with wife strained. He was also in constant fear of the incessant intellectual and spiritual dangers of self-indulgence. His sufferings and erotic experiences was also an important factor in establishing the spirituality of the scripture.

Weber returned to his work after his complete recovery after 1910. These are the years which bore the most enduring concepts of Weber: ‘charismatic leadership’ and ‘rationalization’, with the production of Economy and Society and the studies of world religion; they are also the years of the ‘value judgment controversy’ in German social science and enhancement of political involvement. The evolution of charisma just during the pre war was thought to be a severed second chance with his beloved Else, or the charisma he was looking in a political superpower that would lead the nation and give Germany a fair chance, with his charisma to rule over the hearts and minds of the people.

Thus his illness, his strong mental captivity, his eroticism, his sexual endeavours originated and coaxed him with ideas of religion and vision; a fury, an insight to the protestant womb of capitalism and formulation of the Protestant Ethics,  that would transform and sip into shaping the political and economic referendum of many countries.

Reference

Green, Robert (1959) Problems in European Civilization, Protestantism and Capitalism: The Weber Thesis and Its Critics

Svedberg, Richard(1999), “Max Weber as an Economist and as a Sociologist”, American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Weber, Marianne(1926/1988), Max Weber: A Biography, New Brunswick: Transaction Books

Radkau, Joachim (2005), Max Weber [The most important Weber biography on Max Weber’s life and torments since Marianne Weber.]

Mitzman, Arthur (1970/1985),The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber