SAMBART

Sombart, Werner Sombart (1863-1941), sociologist and economist. Born in Emsleiben, Germany on January 19, 1863, and died in Berlin on May 18, 1941. He studied law, economics, history and philosophy in Berlin and Rome in his early years, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Berlin in 1888. Associate professor at the University of Breslau from 1890 to 1906. Professor at the University of Berlin from 1917 until his retirement in 1931. Sambart participated in the founding of the German Social Society with M. Weber and co-founded the journal "Social Science and Social Policy". His major works include: Socialism and Social Movements in the Nineteenth Century (1896), Modern Capitalism (1902), Jews and Economic Life (1911), Capitalism (1930), and The New Social Philosophy (1934).

In his early years, Sambart leaned towards Marxism and was later influenced by Weber and historicism. He believed that sociology was not an all-encompassing discipline, but an independent discipline with a clear content and specific methods, whose task was to propose theories about the social connections in the spiritual realm. He opposed the value orientation in the humanities and advocated value neutrality.

Sambart's main contributions to sociological theory are concentrated in the fields of economic sociology and religious sociology. He borrowed the perspective of K. Marx to analyze the history, social structure, especially class structure and capitalist spirit of capitalist society, and roughly divided the development of capitalism into three stages: early, middle and late. When exploring the reasons for the emergence of capitalism, he believed that the Protestant ethics that played a major role in the development of capitalism originated from Judaism. He also used empirical methods to examine the religious ethics, legal systems, lifestyles and economic life of the Jews. When he explained the reasons for social and historical development, he often swayed between material factors and spiritual factors.