Question

Relationship between modern state and society arguments of max weber?

Answer 1

this is a review ofMax Weber’s Theory of the Modern State in which Andreas Anter lays out Weber’s conception of the modern state. Working from fragmentary sources Anter reconstructs it by placing Weber in a long line of German political and legal theorists and explaining how Weber’s notions of order, force, chance, and legitimacy serve as some of the primary factors for an action oriented and non-substantive theory of the state.

Keywords: Max Weber, State, Andreas Anter, political theory

Review of Max Weber’s Theory of the Modern State: Origins, Structure and Significance. By Andreas Anter. Translated by Keith Tribe. Basingstoke, Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan. 261 pp. ISBN 978-1-137-36489-0. Hbk. £ 60.00

Reviewed by Christopher Adair-Toteff

German scholars have been able to study Andreas Anter’s Max Webers Theorie des modernen Staates for almost twenty years. First published as his thesis in 1995, it was reprinted the following year and has been used by many of those who are interested in Max Weber’s political thinking. It is now available as Max Weber’s Theory of the Modern State; a translation by Keith Tribe of a revision of the second edition. This translation will undoubtedly earn an even larger audience for Anter’s book.

Anter’s approach to the subject has many strengths; one is identifying what he calls Weber’s “yes—but” type of argumentation. Weber often makes an assertion and then immediately moves to qualify it (118).  Anter applies this to his own account of Weber’s work, demonstrating that Weber’s “theory” of the modern state does not actually exist as a fully fledged theory, it is fragmentary and unfinished. Anter argues that Johannes Winckelmann’s attempt to “complete” Weber’s sociology of the state was doomed to failure because it was not just fragmentary but contained ambiguities and contradictions (1-3, 146, 214, 216). Yet, he agrees with Winckelmann that it is well worth investigating. The subtitle of the book is “Origins, Structure and Significance”. Two of these themes are found continuously throughout the work, but “structure” is not. Instead, by “structure” Anter means that he will “elaborate, structure and compare” the various perspectives that make up Weber’s fragmentary theory of the modern state. He admits that this is a challenge, but he believes that Weber’s theory is not only of historical interest, but it serves as a departure point for many contemporary theorists, including Carl Schmitt and Wilhelm Hennis.

Answer 2

Weber is best known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he proposed that ascetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with the rise in the Western world of market- ...