title: Joseph Conrad

text: In a letter of 9 August 1877, Conrad's uncle Bobrowski broached two important subjects: the desirability of Conrad's naturalisation abroad (tantamount to release from being a Russian subject) and Conrad's plans to join the British merchant marine. "[D]o you speak English?... I never wished you to become naturalized in France, mainly because of the compulsory military service... I thought, however, of your getting naturalized in Switzerland..." In his next letter, Bobrowski supported Conrad's idea of seeking citizenship of the United States or of "one of the more important Southern [American] Republics".


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Eventually Conrad would make his home in England. On 2 July 1886 he applied for British nationality, which was granted on 19 August 1886. Yet, in spite of having become a subject of Queen Victoria, Conrad had not ceased to be a subject of Tsar Alexander III. To achieve his freedom from that subjection, he had to make many visits to the Russian Embassy in London and politely reiterate his request. He would later recall the Embassy's home at Belgrave Square in his novel "The Secret Agent". Finally, on 2 April 1889, the Russian Ministry of Home Affairs released "the son of a Polish man of letters, captain of the British merchant marine" from the status of Russian subject.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: An anchor-shaped monument to Conrad at Gdynia, on Poland's Baltic Seacoast, features a quotation from him in Polish: ""Nic tak nie nęci, nie rozczarowuje i nie zniewala, jak życie na morzu"" ("[T]here is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea" – ).


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia, a plaque in a "writers walk" commemorates Conrad's visits to Australia between 1879 and 1892. The plaque notes that "Many of his works reflect his 'affection for that young continent.'"


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In San Francisco in 1979, a small triangular square at Columbus Avenue and Beach Street, near Fisherman's Wharf, was dedicated as "Joseph Conrad Square" after Conrad. The square's dedication was timed to coincide with release of Francis Ford Coppola's "Heart of Darkness"-inspired film, "Apocalypse Now". Conrad does not appear to have ever visited San Francisco.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In the latter part of World War II, the Royal Navy cruiser "HMS Danae" was rechristened ORP "Conrad" and served as part of the Polish Navy.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Notwithstanding the undoubted sufferings that Conrad endured on many of his voyages, sentimentality and canny marketing place him at the best lodgings in several of his destinations. Hotels across the Far East still lay claim to him as an honoured guest, with, however, no evidence to back their claims: Singapore's Raffles Hotel continues to claim he stayed there though he lodged, in fact, at the Sailors' Home nearby. His visit to Bangkok also remains in that city's collective memory, and is recorded in the official history of The Oriental Hotel (where he never, in fact, stayed, lodging aboard his ship, the "Otago") along with that of a less well-behaved guest, Somerset Maugham, who pilloried the hotel in a short story in revenge for attempts to eject him.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: A plaque commemorating "Joseph Conrad–Korzeniowski" has been installed near Singapore's Fullerton Hotel.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Conrad is also reported to have stayed at Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel—at a port that, in fact, he never visited. Later literary admirers, notably Graham Greene, followed closely in his footsteps, sometimes requesting the same room and perpetuating myths that have no basis in fact. No Caribbean resort is yet known to have claimed Conrad's patronage, although he is believed to have stayed at a Fort-de-France "pension" upon arrival in Martinique on his first voyage, in 1875, when he travelled as a passenger on the "Mont Blanc".


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In April 2013, a monument to Conrad was unveiled in the Russian town of Vologda, where he and his parents lived in exile in 1862–63. The monument was removed, with unclear explanation, in June 2016.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: After the publication of "Chance" in 1913, Conrad was the subject of more discussion and praise than any other English writer of the time. He had a genius for companionship, and his circle of friends, which he had begun assembling even prior to his first publications, included authors and other leading lights in the arts, such as Henry James, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, John Galsworthy, Galsworthy's wife Ada Galsworthy (translator of French literature), Edward Garnett, Garnett's wife Constance Garnett (translator of Russian literature), Stephen Crane, Hugh Walpole, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells (whom Conrad dubbed "the historian of the ages to come"), Arnold Bennett, Norman Douglas, Jacob Epstein, T. E. Lawrence, André Gide, Paul Valéry, Maurice Ravel, Valery Larbaud, Saint-John Perse, Edith Wharton, James Huneker, anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, Józef Retinger (later a founder of the European Movement, which led to the European Union, and author of "Conrad and His Contemporaries"). In the early 1900s Conrad composed a short series of novels in collaboration with Ford Madox Ford.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In 1919 and 1922 Conrad's growing renown and prestige among writers and critics in continental Europe fostered his hopes for a Nobel Prize in Literature. It was apparently the French and Swedes—not the English—who favoured Conrad's candidacy.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In April 1924 Conrad, who possessed a hereditary Polish status of nobility and coat-of-arms ("Nałęcz"), declined a (non-hereditary) British knighthood offered by Labour Party Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Conrad kept a distance from official structures—he never voted in British national elections—and seems to have been averse to public honours generally; he had already refused honorary degrees from Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Yale universities.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: In the Polish People's Republic, translations of Conrad's works were openly published, except for "Under Western Eyes", which in the 1980s was published as an underground ""bibuła"".


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Conrad's narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors, including T. S. Eliot, Maria Dąbrowska, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Gerald Basil Edwards, Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, André Malraux, George Orwell, Graham Greene, William Golding, William Burroughs, Saul Bellow, Gabriel García Márquez, Peter Matthiessen, John le Carré, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon J. M. Coetzee, and Salman Rushdie. Many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's works.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: A striking portrait of Conrad, aged about 46, was drawn by the historian and poet Henry Newbolt, who met him about 1903:


title: Joseph Conrad

text: On 12 October 1912, American music critic James Huneker visited Conrad and later recalled being received by "a man of the world, neither sailor nor novelist, just a simple-mannered gentleman, whose welcome was sincere, whose glance was veiled, at times far-away, whose ways were French, Polish, anything but 'literary,' bluff or English."


title: Joseph Conrad

text: After respective separate visits to Conrad in August and September 1913, two British aristocrats, the socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell and the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell—who were lovers at the time—recorded their impressions of the novelist. In her diary, Morrell wrote:


title: Joseph Conrad

text: A month later, Bertrand Russell visited Conrad at Capel House in Orlestone, and the same day on the train wrote down his impressions:


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Russell's "Autobiography", published over half a century later in 1968, confirms his original experience:


title: Joseph Conrad

text: It was not only Anglophones who remarked Conrad's strong foreign accent when speaking English. After French poet Paul Valéry and French composer Maurice Ravel made Conrad's acquaintance in December 1922, Valéry wrote in 1924 of having been astonished at Conrad's "horrible" accent in English.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: The subsequent friendship and correspondence between Conrad and Russell lasted, with long intervals, to the end of Conrad's life. In one letter, Conrad avowed his "deep admiring affection, which, if you were never to see me again and forget my existence tomorrow will be unalterably yours "usque ad finem"." Conrad in his correspondence often used the Latin expression meaning "to the very end", which he seems to have adopted from his faithful guardian, mentor and benefactor, his maternal uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Conrad looked with less optimism than Russell on the possibilities of scientific and philosophic knowledge. In a 1913 letter to acquaintances who had invited Conrad to join their society, he reiterated his belief that it was impossible to understand the essence of either reality or life: both science and art penetrate no further than the outer shapes.


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Najder describes Conrad as "[a]n alienated émigré... haunted by a sense of the unreality of other people – a feeling natural to someone living outside the established structures of family, social milieu, and country".


title: Joseph Conrad

text: Conrad's sense of loneliness throughout his life in exile found memorable expression in the 1901 short story "Amy Foster".


title: Joseph Conrad

text: A number of works in various genres and media have been based on, or inspired by, Conrad's writings, including:


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: The "Ticonderoga" class of guided-missile cruisers is a class of warships in the United States Navy, first ordered and authorized in the 1978 fiscal year. The class uses passive phased-array radar and was originally planned as a class of destroyers. However, the increased combat capability offered by the Aegis Combat System and the AN/SPY-1 radar system, together with the capability of operating as a flagship, were used to justify the change of the classification from DDG (guided-missile destroyer) to CG (guided-missile cruiser) shortly before the keels were laid down for and .


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: "Ticonderoga"-class guided-missile cruisers are multi-role warships. Their Mk 41 VLS can launch Tomahawk cruise missiles to strike strategic or tactical targets, or fire long-range anti-aircraft SM-2MR/ERs for defense against aircraft or anti-ship missiles. Their LAMPS III helicopters, RUM-139 ASROCs, and sonar systems allow them to perform anti-submarine missions. "Ticonderoga"-class ships are designed to be elements of carrier battle groups or amphibious ready groups, as well as perform missions such as interdiction or escort. With upgrades to their AN/SPY-1 phased radar systems and their associated missile payloads as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, members of this class have, in successive tests, repeatedly demonstrated their proficiency as mobile anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite weaponry platforms.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Of the 27 completed vessels, 19 were built by Ingalls Shipbuilding and eight by Bath Iron Works (BIW). All but one () of the ships in the class are named for noteworthy events in U.S. military history, and at least twelve share their names with World War II-era aircraft carriers. As of October 2022, 17 ships remain active. The entire class is being progressively retired, with the last vessels scheduled for decommissioning in 2027.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: The "Ticonderoga" class was originally ordered as guided missile destroyers, with the designation DDG-47. These ships were intended to be lower-cost platforms for the new Aegis combat system by mounting the system on a hull based on that of the . They would complement the much larger and more capable Strike Cruiser (CSGN) design. With the cancelation of the Strike Cruiser as well as the scaled-down CGN-42 ("Virginia"-class cruiser hull) alternative, some of the requirements were transferred to the DDG-47, and the class was eventually re-designated as guided missile cruisers, CG-47, to reflect the additional flagship capabilities. Ships of the class from CG-52 onwards were equipped with the Mk 41 vertical launch system.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: As the Aegis combat system and the additional cruiser roles added substantial weight to the "Spruance"-derived hull, the design had limited growth potential in terms of weight and power margin. In the 1980s, a design study known as Cruiser Baseline (CGBL) was created to accommodate the capabilities of CG-52 (Mk 41-equipped ships of the "Ticonderoga" class) on a hull with design and construction techniques matching the DDG-51 () for improved survivability and weight allowances.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Due to Budget Control Act of 2011 requirements to cut the Defense Budget for FY2013 and subsequent years, plans were being considered to decommission some of the "Ticonderoga"-class cruisers. For the U.S. Defense 2013 Budget Proposal, the U.S. Navy was to decommission seven cruisers early in fiscal years 2013 and 2014.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Because of these retirements, the U.S. Navy was expected to fall short of its requirement for 94 missile defense cruisers and destroyers beginning in FY 2025 and continuing past the end of the 30-year planning period. While this was a new requirement as of 2011, and the U.S. Navy has historically never had so many large missile-armed surface combatants, the relative success of the Aegis ballistic missile defense system has shifted this national security requirement onto the U.S. Navy. Critics had charged that the early retirement of these cruisers would leave the Navy's ship fleet too small for the nation's defense tasks as the U.S. enacts a policy of "pivot" to the Western Pacific, a predominantly maritime theater. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget bill to require that these cruisers instead be refitted to handle the missile defense role.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: By October 2012, the U.S. Navy had decided not to retire four of the cruisers early in order to maintain the size of the fleet. Four "Ticonderoga"-class cruisers, plus 21 "Arleigh Burke"-class destroyers, are scheduled to be equipped for anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite operations.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In March 2019, the Navy proposed decommissioning the six oldest ships; "Bunker Hill", "Mobile Bay", "Antietam", "Leyte Gulf", "San Jacinto", and" Lake Champlain", in 2021 and 2022, instead of dry-docking them for life-extension maintenance updates, as a cost-saving measure. This would not technically be an "early retirement", as the ships would be at their originally planned 35-year life dates, but they would be able to serve longer with the upgrades. The proposal still needs the approval of Congress, which is usually hesitant to approve any actions that would reduce the size of the active combat fleet.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In December 2021, the House approved a bill that would allow the Navy to retire only five "Ticonderoga"-class cruisers versus the Navy's request to retire seven.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In December 2020, the U.S. Navy's Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels stated that the following ships were planned to be placed Out of Commission in Reserve: At this time, the proposed dates were:


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In July 2021, the Navy requested to retire seven cruisers in the Fiscal Year 2022, adding "Lake Champlain" (CG-57) to the six listed above. This request only included the Fiscal Year 2022 inactivations rather than the more common list for the next five years:


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: The final budget passed in December 2021 prohibited the Navy from using any funds "to retire, prepare to retire, inactivate, or place in storage more than 5 guided missile cruisers." The budget did not specify which cruisers could be retired, and the Navy ultimately chose to retire "Monterey" (CG-61), "Hué City" (CG-66), "Anzio" (CG-68), "Vella Gulf" (CG-72), and "Port Royal" (CG-73).


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In April 2022, the Navy requested to retire all 17 remaining cruisers by the end of Fiscal Year 2027. The schedule was as follows:


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Both the House and Senate draft budgets explicitly forbid retiring "Vicksburg" by name, as the ship is nearing the end of a modernization as part of the Phased Modernization Program (also known as the 2-4-6 Program). The House budget prohibits the Navy from using any funds "to retire, prepare to retire, inactivate, or place in storage more than four guided missile cruisers." Until the final budget is passed, all retirement requests are pending.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In their 2015 budget request, the Navy outlined a plan to operate eleven cruisers, while the other eleven were upgraded to a new standard. The upgraded cruisers would then start replacing the older ships, which would be retired starting in 2019. This would retain one cruiser per aircraft carrier group to host the group's air warfare commander, a role for which the destroyers do not have sufficient facilities. Flight III "Arleigh Burke"-class destroyers equipped with the Air and Missile Defense Radar provide enhanced coverage, but putting the radar on standard destroyer hulls does not allow enough room for extra staff and command and control facilities for the air warfare commander. Destroyers can be used tactically for air defense, but they augment cruisers that provide command and control in a carrier group and are primarily used for other missions like defending other fleet units and keeping sea lanes open. Congress opposed the plan on the grounds that it makes it easier for Navy officials to completely retire the ships once out of service. The Navy would have to retire all cruisers from the fleet by 2028 if all are kept in service, while deactivating half and gradually returning them into service could make 11 cruisers last from 2035 to 2045. Replacement of the cruisers was repeatedly delayed by funding due to commitment to the , so work on a new cruiser was expected to begin in the mid-2020s and begin fielding by the mid-2030s.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Due to the large overlap in size and capabilities of its guided missile cruisers and destroyers, the Navy eventually coalesced them into a single class of large multi-mission ships with an emphasis on air and missile defense called Large Surface Combatants (LSC); in 2018, the Navy stated that a future LSC would have capabilities of the Flight III "Arleigh Burke"-class guided-missile destroyers as a starting baseline while having future growth margins and air defense command and control of the "Ticonderoga" class. Consequently, the short-term replacement for the first decommissioned cruisers is the Flight III "Arleigh Burke" class starting in the mid-2020s, while the last of the "Ticonderoga"-class cruisers and Flights I and II of the "Arleigh Burke" class will be replaced by the DDG(X) program in the early 2030s. The program office was established in June 2021, and design work was contracted starting in February 2022. Despite the designation, the DDG(X) is expected to be considerably larger and at least as capable as the "Ticonderoga" class.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: The "Ticonderoga"-class cruiser's design was based on that of the "Spruance"-class destroyer. The "Ticonderoga" class introduced a new generation of guided missile warships based on the Aegis phased array radar that is capable of simultaneously scanning for threats, tracking targets, and guiding missiles to interception. When they were designed, they had the most powerful electronic warfare equipment and the most advanced underwater surveillance system in the U.S. Navy. These ships were one of the first classes of warships to be built in modules, rather than being assembled from the bottom up.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: The greater size and equipment on the CG-47-class cruisers increased displacement from 6,900 tons of the DD-963-class destroyers to 9,600 tons of displacement for the heavier cruisers. Aegis cruisers can steam in any ocean and conduct multi-warfare operations anywhere. Some cruisers reported some structural problems in early service after extended periods in extremely heavy seas; they were generally corrected from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. Several ships had superstructure cracks, which were repaired.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: These ships' superstructures were a modification of that on the "Spruance"-class destroyers and were required to support two deck-houses (one forward for antennas forward and starboard), and the aft deck-house housed the aft and port antenna arrays. The later "Arleigh Burke"-class Aegis destroyers are designed from the keel up to carry the SPY-1D radars and have them all clustered together on the forward deckhouse, saving space and weight and simplifying cooling requirements. The radar support equipment is closer together, minimizing cable runs and concentrating support equipment.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Operations research was used to study manpower requirements for the "Ticonderoga" class. It was found that four officers and 44 enlisted sailors could be removed from the ship's complement by removing traditional posts that had been made obsolete. However, manpower savings achieved by eliminating the very manpower-intensive Mk 26 guided missile system and replacing it with the far more capable and versatile Mk 41 Vertical Launching System (VLS) were harder to emulate with the Mk 45 127 mm (5") gun systems. The Aegis Cruisers are "double-enders", and along with the "Zumwalt" class, are the only surface combatants in the fleet that employ two large-caliber guns.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: In addition to the added radar capability, the "Ticonderoga"-class ships built after USS "Thomas S. Gates" (CG-51) included two Mark 41 Vertical Launching Systems (VLS). The two VLS allow the ship to have 122 missile storage and launching tubes that can carry a wide variety of missiles, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Standard Missile -2MR/ER and -6 surface-to-air missiles, Evolved SeaSparrow surface-to-air missiles, and RUM-139 anti-submarine warfare (ASW) ASROCs. More importantly, the VLS enables all missiles to be on full standby at any given time, shortening the warship's response time before firing. The original five ships ("Ticonderoga", "Yorktown", "Vincennes", "Valley Forge", and "Thomas S. Gates") had Mark 26 twin-arm launchers that limited their missile capacity to a total of 88 missiles and could only fire the SM-2MR and RUM-139. After the end of the Cold War, the less capable original five warships were limited to duties close to the home waters of the United States.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: A standard VLS loadout for a "Ticonderoga" cruiser as of 2018 is 12 SM-6s, 3 SM-2ERs, 56 SM-2MRs, 12 RIM-162 ESSMs, 10 SM-3s, 32 Tomahawks, and 6 RUM-139s. In addition, "Ticonderoga"s carry 8 Harpoon anti-ship missiles in standalone launchers at the fantail of the ships.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: Originally, the U.S. Navy had intended to replace its fleet of "Ticonderoga"-class guided-missile cruisers with cruisers produced as part of the CG(X) missile cruiser program; however, severe budget cuts from the 21st-century surface combatant program coupled with the increasing cost of the destroyer program resulted in the CG(X) program being canceled. The "Ticonderoga"-class cruisers were instead to be replaced by Flight III destroyers.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: All five of the twin-arm (Mk-26) cruisers have been decommissioned. In 2003, the newer 22 of the 27 ships (CG-52 to CG-73) in the class were upgraded to keep them combat-relevant, giving the ships a service life of 35 years. In the years leading up to their decommissioning, the five twin-arm ships had been assigned primarily home-waters duties, acting as command ships for destroyer squadrons assigned to the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic areas.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: As of July 2013, two cruisers have completed hull, mechanical, and electrical (HM&E) upgrades, and eight cruisers have had combat systems upgrades. These include an upgrade of the Aegis computational system with new computers and equipment cabinets, the SPQ-9B radar system upgrade introducing an increased capability over only gunfire control, optical fiber data communications and software upgrades, and modifications to the vertical launching system allowing two 8-cell modules to fire the RIM-162 ESSM. The most recent upgrade packages include SM-6 and Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA) capability. Another upgrade is improving the SQQ-89A(V)15 sonar with a multi-function towed array. Hull, sonar, radar, electrical, computer, and weapons systems upgrades can cost up to $250 million per ship.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: USS "Vincennes" (CG-49) achieved notoriety in 1988 when, amid a running gun battle with Iranian Revolutionary Guard gunboats, she shot down Iran Air Flight 655, resulting in 290 civilian deaths. The commanding officer of USS "Vincennes", William C. Rogers III, believed the airliner to be an Iranian Air Force F-14 Tomcat fighter jet on an attack vector, based on misreported radar returns. The investigation report recommended that the Aegis large screen display be changed to allow the display of altitude information on plots and that stress factors on personnel using Aegis be studied.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: On 14 February 2008, the United States Department of Defense announced that USS "Lake Erie" (CG-70) would attempt to hit the dead satellite USA-193 over the North Pacific Ocean just before it would burn up on reentry.<ref name="Reuters 2/14"></ref> On 20 February 2008, at approximately 22:30 EST (21 February, 03:30 UTC), an SM-3 was fired from "Lake Erie", which struck the satellite. The military intended that the missile's kinetic energy would rupture the hydrazine fuel tank allowing the toxic fuel to be consumed during re-entry. The Department of Defense confirmed that the missile had directly hit the fuel tank.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: As part of the federal budget, the Navy had originally requested to decommission seven cruisers in the fiscal year 2022 (FY 2022), releasing a schedule of when these ships would be retired, (note that as opposed to calendar years, fiscal years run from 1 October to 30 September). When Congress passed the final budget, they limited that number of retired cruisers to five. Concerns of lawmakers included the number of ships available in the battle force, how fast retired ships could be replaced with new ones, and overall costs. The budget did not specify which ships were to be retired but did specify certain ships that could not be retired due to factors such as expenditures on recent modernization programs.


title: Ticonderoga-class cruiser

text: The table below includes the proposed retirements from the latest budget request for FY 2023. The retirements for the next fiscal year are proposed by the Navy, and they are not official until approved by Congress. Those for the next four years are proposed only and must be requested in that year's budget request. Until the final budget is passed, all retirement requests are pending.


title: Max Weber

text: Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profoundly influence social theory and research. While Weber did not see himself as a sociologist, he is recognized as one of the fathers of sociology along with Karl Marx, and Émile Durkheim.


title: Max Weber

text: Unlike Durkheim, Weber did not believe in monocausal explanations, proposing instead that for any outcome there can be multiple causes. Also unlike Durkheim, Weber was a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive rather than purely empiricist methods, based on a subjective understanding of the meanings that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and the ensuing sense of "disenchantment". He formulated a thesis arguing that such processes are associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber is also known for his thesis combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, emphasising the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as driving factors of capitalism. This is in contrast to Marx's historical materialism, which considers the material base of any economic mode of production as the driving force which shapes religion. Weber first elaborated this theory in his seminal work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905), where he included ascetic Protestantism among the major "elective affinities" leading to the rise of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal systems of practice in the Western world. "Protestant Ethic" was the earliest part in Weber's broader consideration of world religions, as he later examined the religions of China and India, as well as ancient Judaism, with particular regard to their differing economic consequences and conditions of social stratification. In another major work, "Politics as a Vocation", Weber defined "the state" as an entity that successfully claims a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory". He was the first to categorise social authority into distinct forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. Weber's analysis of bureaucracy emphasized that modern institutions are increasingly based on rational-legal authority. Weber made a variety of other contributions in economic history, theory, and methodology. His ideas have been influential across the political spectrum—both among liberals and conservatives like Ludwig von Mises, Talcott Parsons, and Raymond Aron, and among radicals and critical theorists like Gyorgy Lukács, Frankfurt School, and C. Wright Mills.


title: Max Weber

text: After the First World War, Weber was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 56.


title: Max Weber

text: Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was born on 21 April 1864 in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Prussia, but his family moved to Berlin in 1869. He would be the oldest of eight children to Max Weber Sr. and his wife Helene Fallenstein. Over the course of his life, Weber Sr. held posts as a lawyer, a civil servant, and a parliamentarian for the National Liberal Party in the Prussian Landtag and German Reichstag. Fallenstein partly descended from French Huguenot immigrants and came from a wealthy background. Over time, Weber Jr. would be affected by the marital and personality tensions between his father, "a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures" while overlooking religious and philanthropic causes, and his mother, a devout Calvinist "who sought to lead an ascetic life" and held moral absolutist ideas.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed scholars and public figures like philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey and jurist Levin Goldschmidt. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, passed their formative years in this intellectual atmosphere. For Christmas in 1877, a thirteen-year-old Max Weber gifted his parents two historical essays, entitled "About the Course of German history, with Special Reference to the Positions of the Emperor and the Pope", and "About the Roman Imperial Period from Constantine to the Migration Period".


title: Max Weber

text: In class, bored and unimpressed with teacherswho, in turn, resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitudeWeber secretly read all forty volumes by writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and it has been argued that this was an important influence on his thought and methodology. Before entering university, he would read many other classical works, including those by philosopher Immanuel Kant.


title: Max Weber

text: In 1882, Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student, later transferring to Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin (today's Humboldt University of Berlin) and then the University of Göttingen. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior lawyer and lecturer. In 1886, Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and U.S. legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law and history. Under the tutelage of Levin Goldschmidt, a family acquaintance, Weber earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertation on legal history titled "Development of the Principle of Joint Liability and a Separate Fund of the General Partnership out of the Household Communities and Commercial Associations in Italian Cities". This work would be used as part of a longer work, "On the History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages, Based on Southern European Documents", published in the same year. Two years later, working with statistician August Meitzen, Weber completed his habilitation, a post-doctoral thesis titled "Roman Agrarian History and Its Significance for Public and Private Law". Having thus become a "privatdozent", Weber joined the faculty of Friedrich Wilhelm University, lecturing, doing research, and consulting for the government.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's years as a university student was dotted with several periods of military service, the longest of which lasted for a year and started in 1883. After his first few years in university, during which he spent much time "drinking beer and fencing", Weber would increasingly take his mother's side in family arguments and grew estranged from his father.


title: Max Weber

text: In 1893, Weber married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death, while her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life. They had no children. The marriage granted long-awaited financial independence to Weber, allowing him to finally leave his parents' household.


title: Max Weber

text: In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888, he joined the "Verein für Socialpolitik", a new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic issues. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress. In 1890, the Verein established a research program to examine "the Polish question", or "ostflucht": the influx of Polish farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrialising cities. Weber was put in charge of the study and wrote a large part of the final report, which generated considerable attention and controversy, marking the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scientist.


title: Max Weber

text: From 1893 to 1899, Weber was a member of the "Alldeutscher Verband" (Pan-German League), an organization that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars. In some of his work, in particular his provocative lecture on "The Nation State and Economic Policy" delivered in 1895, Weber criticises the immigration of Poles and blames the Junker class for perpetuating Slavic immigration to serve their selfish interests.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber and his wife, Marianne, moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at the Albert-Ludwigs University, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896. There, Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Weber Circle", composed of other intellectuals, including his wife Marianne, as well as Georg Jellinek, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart and Robert Michels. Weber also remained active in the Verein and the Evangelical Social Congress. His research in that period was focused on economics and legal history.


title: Max Weber

text: In 1897, Weber Sr. died two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved. After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depression, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and eventually leave his course unfinished in the autumn of 1899. After spending the summer and autumn of 1900 in a sanatorium, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy at the end of the year, not returning to Heidelberg until April 1902. He would again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and would not return until 1919. Weber's ordeal with mental illness was carefully described in a personal chronology that was destroyed by his wife. This chronicle was supposedly destroyed because Marianne feared that Weber's work would be discredited by the Nazis if his experience with mental illness were widely known.


title: Max Weber

text: After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish any papers between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in late 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as associate editor of the "Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare", where he worked with his colleagues and Werner Sombart. His new interests would lie in more fundamental issues of social sciences; his works from this latter period are of primary interest to modern scholars. In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", which became his most famous work and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. This essay was the only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during his lifetime. Some other of his works written in the first one and a half decades of the 20th centurypublished posthumously and dedicated primarily from the fields of sociology of religion, economic and legal sociologyare also recognised as among his most important intellectual contributions.


title: Max Weber

text: Also in 1904, Weber visited the United States, participating in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) in St. Louis. A monument to his visit was placed at the home of relatives whom Weber visited in Mt. Airy, North Carolina.


title: Max Weber

text: Despite his partial recovery evident in America, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907. In 1909, disappointed with the Verein, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (, or "DGS") and served as its first treasurer, though resigning in 1912.


title: Max Weber

text: Later in 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, in part because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals.


title: Max Weber

text: At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer in charge of organizing the army hospitals in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915. Weber's views on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict. Early on, he supported nationalist rhetoric and the war effort, though with some hesitation, viewing the war as a necessity to fulfill German duty as a leading state power. In time, however, Weber became one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war policies. Weber publicly attacked the Belgian annexation policy and unrestricted submarine warfare, later supporting calls for constitutional reform, democratisation, and universal suffrage.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber joined the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. He then served in the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and as advisor to the Confidential Committee for Constitutional Reform, which drafted the Weimar Constitution. Motivated by his understanding of the American model, he advocated a strong, popularly elected presidency as a constitutional counterbalance to the power of the professional bureaucracy. More controversially, he also defended the provisions for emergency presidential powers that became Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber would also run, though unsuccessfully, for a parliamentary seat, as a member of the liberal German Democratic Party, which he had co-founded. He opposed both the leftist German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, principled positions that defied the political alignments in Germany at that time, and which may have prevented Friedrich Ebert, the new social-democratic President of Germany, from appointing Weber as minister or ambassador. Weber commanded widespread respect but relatively little influence. Weber's role in German politics remains controversial to this day.


title: Max Weber

text: In Weber's critique of the left, he complained of the leaders of the leftist Spartacus League, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, that controlled the city government of Berlin while Weber was campaigning for his party:We have this [German] revolution to thank for the fact that we cannot send a single division against the Poles. All we see is dirt, muck, dung, and horse-playnothing else. Liebknecht belongs in the madhouse and Rosa Luxemburg in the zoological gardens.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber was, at the same time, critical of the Versailles Treaty, which he believed unjustly assigned "war guilt" to Germany when it came to the war, as Weber believed that many countries were guilty of starting it, not just Germany. In making this case, Weber argued:


title: Max Weber

text: In the case of this war there is one, and only one power that desired it under all circumstances through its own will and, according to their political goals required: Russia... It never crossed [my] mind that a German invasion of Belgium [in 1914] was nothing but an innocent act on the part of the Germans.


title: Max Weber

text: Later that same month, in January 1919, after Weber and his party were defeated for election, Weber delivered one of his greatest academic lectures, "Politics as a Vocation", which reflected on the inherent violence and dishonesty he saw among politiciansa profession in which only recently Weber was so personally active. About the nature of politicians, he concluded that, "in nine out of ten cases they are windbags puffed up with hot air about themselves. They are not in touch with reality, and they do not feel the burden they need to shoulder; they just intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations."


title: Max Weber

text: Frustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then, after 1919, at the University of Munich. His lectures from that period were collected into major works, such as the "General Economic History", "Science as a Vocation", and "Politics as a Vocation". In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but never held a professorial position in the discipline. Many colleagues and students in Munich attacked his response to the German Revolution, while some right-wing students held protests in front of his home.


title: Max Weber

text: On 14 June 1920, Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich. At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his on sociological theory: "Economy and Society". His widow, Marianne, helped prepare it for its publication in 1921–1922.


title: Max Weber

text: Sociology, for Max Weber, is "a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects".


title: Max Weber

text: Made clear in his methodology, Weber distinguished himself from Durkheim, Marx, and other classical figures, in that (a) his primary focus would be on individuals and culture; and (b) unlike theorists such as Comte and Durkheim, he did not (consciously) attempt to create any specific set of rules governing sociology or the social sciences in general. Whereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individual and their actions (i.e. structure and action). Compared to Marx, who argued for the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas, Weber valued ideas as motivating actions of individuals, at least in the big picture.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber would primarily be concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity, going on to distinguish social action from social behavior, noting that social action must be understood through how individuals "subjectively" relate to one another. Study of social action through interpretive means or ("to understand") must be based upon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that individuals attach to their actions. Social actions may have easily identifiable and objective means, but much more subjective ends and the understanding of those ends by a scientist is subject to yet another layer of subjective understanding (that of the scientist). Weber noted that the importance of subjectivity in social sciences makes creation of fool-proof, universal laws much more difficult than in natural sciences and that the amount of objective knowledge that social sciences may achieve is precariously limited.


title: Max Weber

text: Overall, Weber supported the goal of objective science as one definitely worth striving for, though he noted that it is ultimately an unreachable goal:


title: Max Weber

text: The principle of "methodological individualism", which holds that social scientists should seek to understand collectivities (e.g. nations, cultures, governments, churches, corporations, etc.) solely as the result and the context of the actions of individual persons, can be traced to Weber, particularly to the first chapter of "Economy and Society", in which he argues that only individuals "can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action". In other words, Weber contended that social phenomena can be understood scientifically only to the extent that they are captured by models of the behaviour of purposeful individualsmodels that Weber called "ideal types"from which actual historical events necessarily deviate due to accidental and irrational factors. The analytical constructs of an ideal type never exist in reality, but provide objective benchmarks against which real-life constructs can be measured:


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodology of social sciences, the "Methodenstreit" ("method dispute"). Weber's position was close to historicism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective motivations of individuals (social actors). Thus Weber's methodology emphasises the use of comparative historical analysis. As such, Weber was more interested in explaining how a certain outcome was the result of various historical processes rather than predicting an outcome of those processes in the future.


title: Max Weber

text: Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy, also known as the "rational-legal" model, attempts to explain bureaucracy from a rational point of view. Firstly, Weber argued that bureaucracy is "based on the general principle of precisely defined and organized across-the-board competencies of the various offices" which are "underpinned by rules, laws, or administrative regulations."


title: Max Weber

text: In particular, Weber notes three aspects that "constitute the essence of bureaucratic administration" in the public sector, and "the essence of a bureaucratic management of a private company" in the private sector:


title: Max Weber

text: As Weber noted, real bureaucracy is less optimal and effective than his ideal-type model. Each of Weber's principles can degenerate, especially when used to analyze individual levels in an organization. However, when implemented in a group setting in an organization, some form of efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved, especially with regard to better output. This is especially true when the Bureaucratic Model emphasizes qualification (merits), specialization of job-scope (labour), hierarchy of power, rules, and discipline.


title: Max Weber

text: Competencies, efficiency and effectiveness can be unclear and contradictory, especially when dealing with oversimplified matters. In a dehumanized bureaucracyinflexible in distributing the job-scope, with every worker having to specialize from day one without rotating tasks for fear of decreasing outputtasks are often routine and can contribute to boredom. Thus, employees can sometimes feel that they are not part of the organization's work vision and mission. Consequently, they do not have any sense of belonging in the long term. Furthermore, this type of organization tends to invite exploitation and underestimate the potential of the employees, as creativity of the workers is brushed aside in favour of strict adherence to rules, regulations and procedures.


title: Max Weber

text: Many scholars have described "rationalisation" and the question of individual freedom in an increasingly rational society, as the main theme of Weber's work. This theme was situated in the larger context of the relationship between psychological motivations, cultural values and beliefs (primarily religion), and the structure of the society (usually determined by the economy).


title: Max Weber

text: Weber understood rationalisation, first, as the individual cost-benefit calculation; second, as the wider bureaucratic organisation of the organisations; and finally, in the more general sense, as the opposite of understanding the reality through mystery and magic (i.e. "disenchantment").The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the world".


title: Max Weber

text: Weber began his studies of the subject in "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", in which he argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. In the Protestant religion, piety towards God was expressed through one's secular vocation (secularisation of "calling"). The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious and so the latter were eventually discarded.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of legitimate authority into three typesrational-legal, traditional and charismaticof which the rational-legal (through bureaucracy) is the dominant one in the modern world. In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalisation. Similarly, rationalisation could be seen in the economy, with the development of highly rational and calculating capitalism. Weber also saw rationalisation as one of the main factors setting the European West apart from the rest of the world. Rationalisation relied on deep changes in ethics, religion, psychology and culture; changes that first took place in the Western civilisation:


title: Max Weber

text: Features of rationalisation include increasing knowledge, growing impersonality and enhanced control of social and material life. Weber was ambivalent towards rationalisation; while admitting it was responsible for many advances, in particular, freeing humans from traditional, restrictive and illogical social guidelines, he also criticised it for dehumanising individuals as "cogs in the machine" and curtailing their freedom, trapping them in the bureaucratic iron cage of rationality and bureaucracy. Related to rationalisation is the process of disenchantment, in which the world is becoming more explained and less mystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones and finally to the Godless science of modernity. However, another interpretation of Weber's theory of disenchantment, advanced by historian of religion Jason Josephson-Storm, claims that Weber does not envision a binary between rationalisation and magical thinking, and that Weber actually referred to the sequestering and professionalisation of magic when he described disenchantment, not to the disappearances of magic. Regardless, for Weber the processes of rationalisation affect all of society, removing "sublime values... from public life" and making art less creative.


title: Max Weber

text: In a dystopian critique of rationalisation, Weber notes that modern society is a product of an individualistic drive of the Reformation, yet at the same time, the society created in this process is less and less welcoming of individualism: "How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend?"


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion began with the essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" and continued with his analyses in "The Religion of China", "The Religion of India", and "Ancient Judaism". His work on other religions, however, would be interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following "Ancient Judaism" with studies of early Christianity and Islam. The three main themes within the essays were: the effect of religious ideas on economic activities; the relation between social stratification and religious ideas; and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilisation.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in society. His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilisation. He maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Protestant) religious ideas had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of the West, but noted that they were not the only factors in this development. Other notable factors mentioned by Weber included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation and bureaucratisation of government administration and economic enterprise. In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, focused on one distinguishing part of the Western culture, the decline of beliefs in magic, or what he referred to as "disenchantment of the world".


title: Max Weber

text: Weber also proposed a socio-evolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, monotheism and finally, ethical monotheism. According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood. As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.


title: Max Weber

text: "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" is Weber's most famous work. It has been argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber's later works, especially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic behaviour as part of the rationalisation of the economic sphere. In the essay, Weber puts forward the thesis that Calvinist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. He notes the post-Reformation shift of Europe's economic centre away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Germany. Weber also notes that societies having more Protestants were those with a more highly developed capitalist economy. Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business leaders were Protestant. Weber thus argued that Roman Catholicism impeded the development of the capitalist economy in the West, as did other religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism elsewhere in the world:


title: Max Weber

text: Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. Weber showed that certain types of Protestantismnotably Calvinismwere supportive of rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities dedicated to it, seeing them as endowed with moral and spiritual significance. Weber argued that there were many reasons to look for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformation. In particular, the Protestant ethic (or more specifically, Calvinist ethic) motivated the believers to work hard, be successful in business, and reinvest their profits in further development rather than frivolous pleasures. The notion of calling meant that each individual had to take action as an indication of their salvation; just being a member of the Church was not enough. Predestination also reduced agonising over economic inequality and further, it meant that a material wealth could be taken as a sign of salvation in the afterlife. The believers therefore justified pursuit of profit with religion, as instead of being fuelled by morally suspect greed or ambition, their actions were motivated by a highly moral and respected philosophy. Weber would call this the "<dfn>spirit of capitalism</dfn>": it was the Protestant religious ideology that was behindand inevitably led tothe capitalist economic system. This theory is often viewed as a reversal of Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other aspects of it.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber abandoned research into Protestantism as his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on the book "Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects". Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area: laying the groundwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.


title: Max Weber

text: The phrase "work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "Protestant ethic" discussed by Weber. It was adopted when the idea of the Protestant ethic was generalised to apply to the Japanese people, Jews and other non-Christians and thus lost its religious connotations.


title: Max Weber

text: "The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism" was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Hans H. Gerth edited and translated this text into English, with an introduction by C.K. Wang. Weber focused on those aspects of Chinese society that were different from those of Western Europe, especially those aspects that contrasted with Puritanism. His work also questioned why capitalism did not develop in China. He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese patrimonialism and officialdom and Chinese religion and philosophy (primarily, Confucianism and Taoism), as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route.


title: Max Weber

text: According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive types of rational thought, each attempting to prescribe a way of life based on religious dogma. Notably, they both valued self-control and restraint and did not oppose accumulation of wealth. However, to both those qualities were just means to the final goal and here they were divided by a key difference. Confucianism's goal was "a cultured status position", while Puritanism's goal was to create individuals who are "tools of God". The intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were rare in Confucianism, but common in Protestantism. Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian. Therefore, Weber states that it was this difference in social attitudes and mentality, shaped by the respective, dominant religions, that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China.


title: Max Weber

text: "The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism" was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society. In Weber's view, Hinduism in India, like Confucianism in China, was a barrier for capitalism. The Indian caste system made it very difficult for individuals to advance in the society beyond their caste. Activity, including economic activity, was seen as unimportant in the context of the advancement of the soul. He noted, “Perhaps the most important gap in the ancient Veda is its lack of any reference to caste…. nowhere does it refer to the substantive content of the caste order in the meaning which it later assumed and which is characteristic only of Hinduism”.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber ended his research of society and religion in India by bringing in insights from his previous work on China to discuss similarities of the Asian belief systems. He notes that the beliefs saw the meaning of life as otherworldly mystical experience. The social world is fundamentally divided between the educated elite, following the guidance of a prophet or wise man and the uneducated masses whose beliefs are centered on magic. In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to give "plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike". Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies (aka ethical prophecies), notably from the Near East region to the exemplary prophecies found on the Asiatic mainland, focused more on reaching to the educated elites and enlightening them on the proper ways to live one's life, usually with little emphasis on hard work and the material world. It was those differences that prevented the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chinese and Indian civilisations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to prove this theory.


title: Max Weber

text: In "Ancient Judaism", his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the factors that resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. He contrasted the innerworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India. Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber claimed that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of the modern Occidental state; Judaism's influence was as important as Hellenistic and Roman cultures.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's death in 1920 prevented him from following his planned analysis of Psalms, the Book of Job, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.


title: Max Weber

text: The 'theodicy of fortune and misfortune' within sociology is the theory, as Weber suggested, of how "members of different social classes adopt different belief systems, or theodices, to explain their social situation."


title: Max Weber

text: The concept of "theodicy" was expanded mainly with the thought of Weber and his addition of ethical considerations to the subject of religion. There is an ethical part of religion, that includes:


title: Max Weber

text: There is a separation of different theodicies with regard to class: "theodicies of misfortune tend to the belief that wealth and other manifestations of privilege are indications or signs of evil... In contrast, theodicies of fortune emphasise the notion that privileges are a blessing and are deserved."


title: Max Weber

text: Weber also distinguishes that, "the affluent embrace good fortune theodicies, which emphasise that prosperity is a blessing of God [while] theodices of misfortune emphasise that affluence is a sign of evil and that suffering in this world will be rewarded in the next." Therefore, these two distinctions can be applied not only to class structure within society but denomination and racial segregation within religion.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber defines the importance of societal class within religion by examining the difference between the two theodicies and to what class structures they apply. The concept of "work ethic" is attached to the theodicy of fortune; thus, because of the Protestant "work ethic", there was a contribution of higher class outcomes and more education among Protestants. Those without the work ethic clung to the theodicy of misfortune, believing wealth and happiness were granted in the afterlife. Another example of how this belief of religious theodicy influences class, is that those of lower status, the poor, cling to deep religiousness and faith as a way to comfort themselves and provide hope for a more prosperous future, while those of higher status cling to the sacraments or actions that prove their right of possessing greater wealth.


title: Max Weber

text: These two theodicies manifest in socioeconomic stratification within religiously similar groups. For example, U.S. American "mainline" Protestant churches with upper class congregations generally "promote order, stability, and conservatism, and in so doing proved to be a powerful source of legitimation of the status quo and of existing disparities in the distribution of wealth and power," because much of the wealth of the church comes from the congregation. In contrast, Pentecostal churches find their roots in among working class persons with a theodicy of misfortune. Instead of supporting status quo, these churches may advocate "change intended to advance the cause of justice and fairness". The theodicies of these churches, which are enmeshed in their origins, practices, and preaching, thus reinforce segregation by social class.


title: Max Weber

text: In political sociology, one of Weber's most influential contributions is his essay ""Politik als Beruf"" ("Politics as a Vocation"), in which he defines "the state" as an entity that possesses a monopoly on "the legitimate use of physical force".


title: Max Weber

text: Accordingly, Weber proposed that politics is the sharing of state power between various groups, whereas political leaders are those who wield this power. As such, a politician, in Weber's view, must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic" (i.e. the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount), in that one cannot have the injunction to 'turn the other cheek'. An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood as a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it. The political realm is no realm for saints; a politician ought to marry the and the ("ethic of "responsibility"" and the "ethic of "attitude"") and must possess both a passion for his vocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).


title: Max Weber

text: Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (aka three types of domination, legitimisation or authority):


title: Max Weber

text: In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements, which can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction. Weber notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" into a more structured form of authority. In a pure type of traditional rule, sufficient resistance to a ruler can lead to a "traditional revolution". The move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, using a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end. Thus this theory can be sometimes viewed as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his masterpiece "Economy and Society" (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularisation of this term. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him and a classic, hierarchically organised civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service". As the most efficient and rational way of organising, bureaucratisation for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalisation of the Western society.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucracy, which resulted in a need for a more efficient administrative system, including:


title: Max Weber

text: Development of communication and transportation technologies made more efficient administration possible (and popularly requested) and democratisation and rationalisation of culture resulted in demands that the new system treat everybody equally.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and recorded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.


title: Max Weber

text: While recognising bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organisation and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms and the ongoing bureaucratisation as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalisation of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. To counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber also formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with social class, social status and political party as conceptually distinct elements. The three-component theory of stratification is in contrast to Karl Marx simpler theory of social class that ties all social stratification to what people own. In Weber's theory, issues of honour and prestige are important. This distinction is most clearly described in Weber's essay "Classes, Staende, Parties", which was first published in his book Economy and Society.


title: Max Weber

text: All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances" (opportunities to improve one's life). Weber scholars maintain a sharp distinction between the terms "status" and "class", even though, in casual use, people tend to use them interchangeably.


title: Max Weber

text: As part of his overarching effort to understand the unique development of the Western world, Weber produced a detailed general study of the city as the characteristic locus of the social and economic relations, political arrangements, and ideas that eventually came to define the West. This resulted in a monograph, "The City", which he probably compiled from research conducted in 1911–1913. It was published posthumously in 1921, and, in 1924, was incorporated into the second part of his "Economy and Society", as the sixteenth chapter, "The City (Non-legitimate Domination)".


title: Max Weber

text: According to Weber, the city as a politically autonomous organisation of people living in close proximity, employed in a variety of specialised trades, and physically separated from the surrounding countryside, only fully developed in the West and to a great extent shaped its cultural evolution:


title: Max Weber

text: Weber argued that Judaism, early Christianity, theology, and later the political party and modern science, were only possible in the urban context that reached a full development in the West alone. He also saw in the history of medieval European cities the rise of a unique form of "non-legitimate domination" that successfully challenged the existing forms of legitimate domination (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal) that had prevailed until then in the Medieval world. This new domination was based on the great economic and military power wielded by the organised community of city-dwellers ("citizens").


title: Max Weber

text: Weber regarded himself primarily as a "political economist", and all his professorial appointments were in economics, though today his contributions in that field are largely overshadowed by his role as a founder of modern sociology. As an economist, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics. The great differences between that school's interests and methods on the one hand and those of the neoclassical school (from which modern mainstream economics largely derives) on the other, explain why Weber's influence on economics today is hard to discern.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's magnum opus "Economy and Society" is a collection of his essays that he was working on at the time of his death in 1920. After his death, the final organization and editing of the book fell to his widow Marianne. The final German form published in 1921 reflected very much Marianne's work and intellectual commitment. The composition includes a wide range of essays dealing with Weber's views regarding sociology, social philosophy, politics, social stratification, world religion, diplomacy, and other subjects.


title: Max Weber

text: Beginning in 1956, the German jurist Johannes Winckelmann began editing and organizing the German edition of "Economy and Society" based on his study of the papers that Weber left at his death. English versions of the work were published as a collected volume in 1968, as edited by Gunther Roth and Claus Wittich. As a result of the various editions in German and English, there are differences between the organization of the different volumes. The book is typically published in a two volume set in both German and English, and is more than 1000 pages long.


title: Max Weber

text: Though his research interests were always in line with those of the German historicists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, Weber's defence of "methodological individualism" in the social sciences represented an important break with that school and an embracing of many of the arguments that had been made against the historicists by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, in the context of the academic "Methodenstreit" ("debate over methods") of the late 19th century. The phrase "methodological individualism", which has come into common usage in modern debates about the connection between microeconomics and macroeconomics, was coined by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1908 as a way of referring to the views of Weber. According to Weber's theses, social research cannot be fully inductive or descriptive, because "understanding" some phenomenon implies that the researcher must go beyond mere description and "interpret" it; interpretation requires classification according to abstract "ideal (pure) types". This, together with his antipositivistic argumentation (see "Verstehen"), can be taken as a methodological justification for the model of the "rational economic man" ("homo economicus"), which is at the heart of modern mainstream economics.


title: Max Weber

text: Unlike other historicists, Weber also accepted the marginal theory of value (aka "marginalism") and taught it to his students. In 1908, Weber published an article in which he drew a sharp methodological distinction between psychology and economics and attacked the claims that the marginal theory of value in economics reflected the form of the psychological response to stimuli as described by the Weber-Fechner law. Max Weber's article has been cited as a definitive refutation of the dependence of the economic theory of value on the laws of psychophysics by Lionel Robbins, George Stigler, and Friedrich Hayek, though the broader issue of the relation between economics and psychology has come back into the academic debate with the development of "behavioral economics".


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's best known work in economics concerned the preconditions for capitalist development, particularly the relations between religion and capitalism, which he explored in "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" as well as in his other works on the sociology of religion. He argued that bureaucratic political and economic systems emerging in the Middle Ages were essential in the rise of modern capitalism (including rational book-keeping and organisation of formally free labour), while they were a hindrance in the case of ancient capitalism, which had a different social and political structure based on conquest, slavery, and the coastal city-state. Other contributions include his early work on the economic history of Roman agrarian society (1891) and on the labour relations in Eastern Germany (1892), his analysis of the history of commercial partnerships in the Middle Ages (1889), his critique of Marxism, the discussion of the roles of idealism and materialism in the history of capitalism in his "Economy and Society" (1922) and his "General Economic History" (1923), a notable example of the kind of empirical work associated with the German Historical School.


title: Max Weber

text: Although today Weber is primarily read by sociologists and social philosophers, Weber's work did have a significant influence on Frank Knight, one of the founders of the neoclassical Chicago school of economics, who translated Weber's "General Economic History" into English in 1927. Knight also wrote in 1956 that Max Weber was the only economist who dealt with the problem of understanding the emergence of modern capitalism "...from the angle which alone can yield an answer to such questions, that is, the angle of comparative history in the broad sense."


title: Max Weber

text: Weber, like his colleague Werner Sombart, regarded economic calculation and especially the double-entry bookkeeping method of business accounting, as one of the most important forms of rationalisation associated with the development of modern capitalism. Weber's preoccupation with the importance of economic calculation led him to critique socialism as a system that lacked a mechanism for allocating resources efficiently to satisfy human needs. Socialist intellectuals like Otto Neurath had realised that in a completely socialised economy, prices would not exist and central planners would have to resort to in-kind (rather than monetary) economic calculation. According to Weber, this type of coordination would be inefficient, especially because it would be incapable of solving the problem of imputation (i.e. of accurately determining the relative values of capital goods). Weber wrote that, under full socialism:


title: Max Weber

text: This argument against socialism was made independently, at about the same time, by Ludwig von Mises. Weber himself had a significant influence on Mises, whom he had befriended when they were both at the University of Vienna in the spring of 1918, and, through Mises, on several other economists associated with the Austrian School in the 20th century. Friedrich Hayek in particular elaborated the arguments of Weber and Mises about economic calculation into a central part of free market economics's intellectual assault on socialism, as well as into a model for the spontaneous coordination of "dispersed knowledge" in markets.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's thinking was strongly influenced by German idealism, particularly by neo-Kantianism, which he had been exposed to through Heinrich Rickert, his professorial colleague at the University of Freiburg. Especially important to Weber's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incomprehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way the human mind focuses attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulting perceptions. Weber's opinions regarding the methodology of the social sciences show parallels with the work of contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher and pioneering sociologist Georg Simmel.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber was also influenced by Kantian ethics, which he nonetheless came to think of as obsolete in a modern age lacking in religious certainties. In this last respect, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is evident. According to the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", the "deep tension between the Kantian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world is apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethical worldview."


title: Max Weber

text: Another major influence in Weber's life was the writings of Karl Marx and the workings of socialist thought in academia and active politics. While Weber shares some of Marx's consternation with bureaucratic systems and maligns them as being capable of advancing their own logic to the detriment of human freedom and autonomy, Weber views conflict as perpetual and inevitable and does not host the spirit of a materially available utopia.


title: Max Weber

text: Writing in 1932, Karl Löwith, contrasted the work of Marx and Weber, arguing that both were interested in the causes and effects of Western Capitalism but that Marx viewed capitalism through the lens of alienation while Weber used the concept of rationalization.


title: Max Weber

text: Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work as he maintained a deep, lifelong interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.


title: Max Weber

text: As a political economist and economic historian, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics, represented by academics such as Gustav von Schmoller and his student Werner Sombart. However, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with this school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the traditional rivals of the historical school.


title: Max Weber

text: New research suggests that some of Weber's theories, including his interest in the sociology of Far Eastern religion and elements of his theory of disenchantment, were actually shaped by Weber's interaction with contemporary German occult figures. He is known to have visited the Ordo Templi Orientis at Monte Verità shortly before articulating his idea of disenchantment. He is known to have met the German poet and occultist Stefan George and developed some elements of his theory of charisma after observing George. However, Weber disagreed with many of George's views and never formally joined George's occult circle. Weber may have also had his first exposure to Taoism, albeit in a Westernized form, through Gustav Gräser at Monte Verità. Research on Weber's engagement with the occult has led some German and American scholars to re-interpret his theories of disenchantment.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's most influential work was on economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. But whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber was instrumental in developing an antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition in the social sciences. In this regard he belongs to a similar tradition as his German colleagues Werner Sombart, Georg Simmel, and Wilhelm Dilthey, who stressed the differences between the methodologies appropriate to the social and the natural sciences.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action that he separated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental. To Weber, sociology was:


title: Max Weber

text: In his own time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the depth of his social theory, Joachim Radkau (2009) writing:


title: Max Weber

text: Many of Weber's works famous today were collected, revised and published posthumously. Significant interpretations of his writings were produced by such sociological luminaries as Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills. Parsons in particular imparted to Weber's works a functionalist, teleological perspective; this personal interpretation has been criticised for a latent conservatism.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber influenced many later social theorists, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, György Lukács and Jürgen Habermas. His analysis of modernity and rationalisation significantly influenced the critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. Different elements of his thought were emphasised by Ludwig Lachmann, Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, and Raymond Aron. According to the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who had met Weber during his time at the University of Vienna, "The early death of this genius was a great disaster for Germany. Had Weber lived longer, the German people of today would be able to look to this example of an 'Aryan' who would not be broken by National Socialism."


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's friend, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, described him as "the greatest German of our era". Weber's untimely death felt to Jaspers "as if the German world had lost its heart". Harvard professor Paul Tillich (1968) observed about Weber that he was "perhaps the greatest scholar in Germany of the nineteenth century".


title: Max Weber

text: Nicholas Gane, argues that there are similarities between the work of postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault and Weber, with both thinkers being concerned with the effects of rationalization on how people lead their lives. Gane argues that Foucault goes further than Weber in offering two methods for the individual to resist rationalization: by looking at the history of the development of rationalization in so-called genealogy, the factors that influenced this rationalization, and how rationalization differed in the past; and looking at how power relations and current knowledge interaction with particular rationalizations.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber's explanations are highly specific to the historical periods he analysed. Some academics disagree, pointing out that, despite the fact that Weber did write in the early twentieth century, his ideas remain alive and relevant for understanding issues like politics, bureaucracy, and social stratification today.


title: Max Weber

text: Many scholars, however, disagree with specific claims in Weber's historical analysis. For example, the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1954) argued that capitalism did not begin with the Industrial Revolution but in 14th century Italy. In Milan, Venice and Florence, the small city-state governments led to the development of the earliest forms of capitalism. In the 16th century, Antwerp was a commercial centre of Europe. Also, the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland did not enjoy the same economic growth as the Netherlands, England and New England. It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinist majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland. Emil Kauder (1953) expanded Schumpeter's argument, by arguing the hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labour theory of value.


title: Max Weber

text: Weber wrote in German. Original titles printed after his death (1920) are most likely compilations of his unfinished works (of the "Collected Essays"... form). Many translations are made of parts or sections of various German originals and the names of the translations often do not reveal what part of the original they contain. Weber's writings are generally cited according to the critical "Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe" (Collected Works), published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: Keely Shаye Smith (born September 25, 1963), also known as Keely Shaye Brosnan, is an American journalist, author, television host, actress, producer, and director.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: Smith appeared with Huey Lewis in the MTV music video "Stuck with You" which spent three weeks at number one spot on the "Billboard" Hot 100 list from September 20 to October 10, 1986. Smith appeared as Valerie Freeman for one season on "General Нospital" (1990).


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: She was an environmental correspondent for six years for ABC's "The Home Show", which earned her two Genesis Аwards, a Special Achievement Award at the 1991 Environmental Film Festival, and a nomination from the Environmental Media Association (EMA). Women in Film, the Natural Resources Defense Council, EMA, Earth Communications Office, Heal the Bay, Oceana, Senator Barbara Boxer, "Malibu Times", and "Organic Style Magazine" have all honored Smith for her ongoing commitment to the environment.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: Smith served as a correspondent for NBC's primetime hit show "Unsolved Mysteries" from 1995 to 1997 in the show's "phone center", providing information on updated stories as well as for "special bulletin" segments.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: She served as a gardening expert and correspondent for ABC's "Good Morning America" and "Mike and Maty", as well as an entertainment correspondent for NBC's "Today Show", CBS's "Entertainment Tonight", and HBO's "World Entertainment Report". Additionally, she hosted "Great Bears", a series for the Outdoor Life Network.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: As a TV producer, Smith-Brosnan created and hosted an eco-friendly home and garden how-to show called "Home Green Home" for PBS.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: Smith made her directorial debut and produced the documentary film "Poisoning Paradise" (2017); the film delves into the seemingly idyllic world of Native Hawaiians, whose communities are surrounded by experimental test sites for genetically engineered seed corn and pesticides.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: From 1995 to 2000, Smith and her future husband worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the International Fund for Animal Welfare to stop a proposed salt factory from being built at Laguna San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico. The couple is committed to environmental education in the classroom for grades K-12 and currently sponsor long-time friend Jane Goodall's "Roots and Shoots" youth and humanitarian program.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: In Spring 2007, the couple also successfully fought the Cabrillo Port Liquefied Natural Gas facility that was proposed off the coast of Oxnard and Malibu; the State Lands Commission eventually denied the lease to build the terminal. In May 2007, the Brosnans donated $100,000 to help replace a playground on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. In 2009, the Brosnans visited the White House to help Congressman William Delahunt and Congressman Eni Faleomavaega introduce legislation to close loopholes on commercial and scientific whaling worldwide. In May 2009, the Brosnans both testified in Washington, D.C., before the Environmental Protection Agency in support of the new Climate Change Bill (known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act)..


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: Smith directed and produced the award winning documentary film "Poisoning Paradise" about the toxic agricultural environment of Kauai.


title: Keely Shaye Smith

text: Smith met actor Pierce Brosnan on a beach in Mexico on April 8, 1994. They married at Ballintubber Abbey in County Mayo, Ireland, on August 4, 2001. They have two sons, Dylan Thomas Brosnan (b. January 1997) and Paris Beckett Brosnan (b. February 2001).


title: 2022 Major League Soccer season

text: The 2022 Major League Soccer season was the 27th season of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. The league had 28 clubs following the addition of Charlotte FC as an expansion team.


title: 2022 Major League Soccer season

text: The regular season began on February 26 and concluded on October 9. The MLS Cup Final occurred on November 5, sixteen days prior to the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. New York City FC entered the season as defending champions, having defeated the Portland Timbers in MLS Cup 2021, while the New England Revolution entered the season as the reigning Supporters' Shield winners. Western Conference regular season and playoff champions, Los Angeles FC won their second Supporters' Shield and their first MLS Cup, defeating the Eastern Conference regular season and playoff champions, the Philadelphia Union, in a penalty shoot-out.


title: 2022 Major League Soccer season

text: A total of 476 matches were played over the course of the regular season and drew an average attendance of 21,033. Total attendance reached a record 10 million, but most teams in the league saw a decline in attendance since the 2019 season. In addition, this was the first season where all stadiums were open to full capacity since the 2019 season.


title: Chinese characters

text: Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as "kanji". Chinese characters in South Korea, which are known as "hanja", retain significant use in Korean academia to study its documents, history, literature and records. Vietnam once used the "chữ Hán" and developed chữ Nôm to write Vietnamese before turning to a romanized alphabet. Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world. By virtue of their widespread current use throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as their profound historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world by number of users.


title: Chinese characters

text: The total number of Chinese characters ever to appear in a dictionary is in the tens of thousands, though most are graphic variants, were used historically and passed out of use, or are of a specialized nature. A college graduate who is literate in written Chinese knows between three and four thousand characters, though more are required for specialized fields. In Japan, 2,136 are taught through secondary school (the "Jōyō kanji"); hundreds more are in everyday use. Due to separate simplifications of characters in Japan and in China, the "kanji" used in Japan today has some differences from Chinese simplified characters in several respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, and pronunciations. Simplified forms of certain characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia; traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and, to some extent, in South Korea. In Japan, common characters are often written in post-Tōyō kanji simplified forms, while uncommon characters are written in Japanese traditional forms. During the 1970s, Singapore had also briefly enacted its own simplification campaign, but eventually streamlined its simplification to be uniform with mainland China.


title: Chinese characters

text: In modern Chinese, most words are compounds written with two or more characters. Unlike alphabetic writing systems, in which the unit character roughly corresponds to one phoneme, the Chinese writing system associates each logogram with an entire syllable, and thus may be compared in some aspects to a syllabary. A character almost always corresponds to a single syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this general correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes (written with two characters), bimorphemic syllables (written with two characters) and cases where a single character represents a polysyllabic word or phrase.