This article is an attempt to give an account of the problem of historicity in Weber, pointing at the origins of his understanding of identity and identity formation in modern philosophy, more specifically in Hobbes. It is our hypothesis that Weber’s account of history is deeply indebted to Hobbes own account of the emergence of normative, meaning-like, action orientation only within the political. Weber’s account of identity and society remains a paradigmatic necessity and shapes our understanding of how individuals get to have preferences and form a sense of self in modern societies. However, for all its paradigmatic importance, Weber’s account of the formation of self and identity has a blind spot in the notion of representation. It is our understanding that the centrality of the notion of representation for Weber’s understanding of social action and selfhood leaves him in a nominalistic position. Thus, though knowledge is produced locally, social life aims at and is limited by the production of knowledge. This leaves Weber unable to deal with the problem of disorder in social life without resorting to an interpretation of disorder as irrationality, which, we hold, is no longer acceptable.