MAX WEBER I N POLI TICS AND

SOCI AL THOUGHT
Max Weber is widely regarded as one of the foundational thinkers
of the twentieth century. But how did this reclusive German scholar
manage to leave such an indelible mark on modern political and
social thought? Max Weber in Politics and Social Tought is the
rst comprehensive account of Webers impact on both German
and American intellectuals. Drawing on a wide range of sources,
Joshua Derman illuminates what Weber meant to contemporaries
in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, and analyzes why they
reached for his concepts to articulate such widely divergent under-
standings of modern life. Te book also accounts for the transfor-
mations that Webers concepts underwent at the hands of migr
and American scholars, and, in doing so, elucidates one of the major
intellectual movements of the mid-twentieth century: the transat-
lantic migration of German thought.
;osuua oii xa x is Assistant Professor of World History at
the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was
a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University
Institute in Florence, Italy, and has received fellowships from the
German Academic Exchange Service and the Josephine de Karman
Fellowship Trust.

i oi as i x coxrixr :c:
MAX WEBER I N POLI TICS AND
SOCI AL THOUGHT
From Charisma to Canonization

i oi as i x coxrixr
Edited by DAVID ARMITAGE, JENNIFER PITTS,
QUENTIN SKINNER and JAMES TULLY
Te books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions and
of related new disciplines. Te procedures, aims, and vocabularies that were gen-
erated will be set in the context of the alternatives available within the contem-
porary frameworks of ideas and institutions. Trough detailed studies of the
evolution of such traditions, and their modication by dierent audiences, it is
hoped that a new picture will form of the development of ideas in their concrete
contexts. By this means, articial distinctions between the history of philoso-
phy, of the various sciences, of society and politics, and of literature may be seen
to dissolve.
Te series is published with the support of the Exxon Foundation.
A list of books in the series can be found at the end of the volume.
MAX WEBER I N POLI TICS
AND SOCI AL THOUGHT
From Charisma to Canonization
JOSHUA DERMAN
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology


ca xni i oci uxi v iis i r \ ii is s
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For my mother and father
ix
Contents
Acknowledgments page x
Note on translations and list of abbreviations xiv
Introduction :
: Max Weber and his circles :,
: Value freedom and polytheism o
, Te meaning of modern capitalism c
Skepticism and faith ::;
, Max Webers sociologies :,,
o Charismatic rulership :;o
Conclusion ::o
Bibliography ::;
Index :o:


x
Acknowledgments
Tis project began as a Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of History
at Princeton University, where I was extremely fortunate to have Anson
Rabinbach as my advisor. He opened my eyes to Max Weber, whose
Vocation Lectures I rst studied in his seminar, and to intellectual his-
tory as a discipline. Andys ability to break down the walls that separate
political, cultural, and intellectual history has been a huge inspiration to
me. His advice and support kept this project moving forward, and his
good humor ensured that I didnt lose sight of the forest for the trees.
Harold James guided me through the labyrinths of modern German his-
tory and helped me understand the complex relationship between econ-
omy and society. Time and again I have drawn on his insights to write
this book and to make sense of the world that lies beyond it. I received
a remarkable education from my conversations with Anthony Grafton,
whose supervision was all the more inspiring for its warmth and down-to-
earth charm. Te enthusiasm and acumen he brought to my project mean
a great deal to me.
I cannot thank Peter Gordon enough for advising and mentoring this
project through its many stages. He encouraged me not to shy away from
the big questions and instilled in me the condence to articulate my
answers with conviction.
No graduate student could wish for a more stimulating and support-
ive environment than the Department of History at Princeton University.
I proted immensely from seminars and conversations with Sheldon
Garon, Eagle Glassheim, Michael Gordin, Dirk Hartog, Stephen Kotkin,
Olga Litvak, Philip Nord, Daniel Rodgers, and Christine Stansell.
I also want to thank Princeton faculty in other departments Lionel
Gossman, Michael Jennings, Jan-Werner Mller, Tamsin Shaw, and Arnd
Wedemeyer for helping me understand the endlessly fascinating world
of German culture.

Acknowledgments xi
I am very grateful for the hospitality I received during my two years in
Germany. Ernst Schulin and Wolfgang Hardtwig kindly oered to super-
vise me during my tenure as a fellow of the German Academic Exchange
Service. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Edith Hanke of the Max-
Weber-Arbeitsstelle at the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften in
Munich. She encouraged me to pursue this project from its inception and
placed a treasure trove of primary source material at my disposal. Tis
book could not have been written without her help. I would also like to
thank Gangolf Hbinger, Volker Neumann, and Rainer Wiehl for shar-
ing their knowledge of Max Weber and German history with me.
Te German Academic Exchange Service and the Josephine de Karman
Foundation generously provided fellowships that enabled me to conduct
my research and write my dissertation. I began revising the manuscript
as a postdoctoral fellow in the Max Weber Program at the European
University Institute in Florence, Italy, where I learned how jurists, polit-
ical scientists, and economists continue to wrestle with the implications
of Webers ideas. I am very grateful to Ramon Marimon, Karin Tilmans,
and the sta of the Max Weber Program for giving me this wonderful
opportunity, and to Martin van Gelderen for his mentorship.
It has been a great privilege to be a faculty member of the Division
of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
I am grateful to James Lee, Billy So, Zongli Lu, and Kim-chong Chong for
welcoming me to the department, taking such a keen interest in my pro-
fessional development, and helping a Europeanist understand the world
beyond his own geographic and disciplinary horizons. I also would like to
thank the universitys librarians, who tracked down rare books, processed
endless interlibrary loan requests, patiently awaited the receipt of books
long overdue, and gladly shared the resources of their collections with me.
M. Rainer Lepsius, Georg Siebeck, and Peter Weber-Schfer kindly
granted me permission to examine Max and Marianne Webers papers.
Te handwriting of early-twentieth-century German intellectuals would
have been illegible to me had I not taken a summer seminar in die alte
deutsche Schrift sponsored by the German Historical Institute and led by
Astrid Eckert. I am also grateful to the archivists and librarians of the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv
Marbach, and the Bundesarchiv Koblenz, who helped me navigate archi-
val collections and patiently answered my many questions.
I have been very lucky to meet so many scholars who took an inter-
est in my project, and whose suggestions and encouragement improved
Acknowledgments xii
this book. I am very grateful to Martin Burke, David Chalcraft, Atina
Grossmann, Jerey Herf, Richard King, Frank Mecklenburg, Samuel
Moyn, Jerry Muller, Till van Rahden, Guenther Roth, Richard Wolin,
and Jonathan Zatlin for welcoming me into the community of scholars.
Te late Tony Judt invited me to a session of the Kandersteg Seminars
that immeasurably broadened my understanding of intellectual history.
His wide-ranging intellect and attentiveness to younger scholars made a
deep impression on me.
Just weeks before graduating college, I had the good fortune to meet
Tom Freudenheim, who invited me to come work for him at the Jewish
Museum Berlin. I want to thank Tom, W. Michael Blumenthal, Cilly
Kugelmann, Ken Gorbey, and the late Nigel Cox for kindling my interest
in German history and inspiring me to pursue it as a career.
As a long-time admirer of Peter Baehrs work, I am now doubly for-
tunate to count him as both a colleague and a friend. It has been an
honor to exchange ideas with someone whose scholarship and principles I
admire so greatly.
I am extremely grateful to Richard Fisher and Lucy Rhymer of
Cambridge University Press for bringing this project to fruition and for
their guidance along the way. Te Presss three anonymous readers gen-
erously oered constructive suggestions that helped me rene my argu-
ments. I am very appreciative of the time they took to make this book
a better one. I would also like to thank Emma Wildsmith and Robert
Whitelock for their help in preparing the manuscript.
I am fortunate to have friends whose encouragement helped me n-
ish this project, and whose wisdom helped me keep it in perspective.
Many thanks go to Andr Anchuelo, Ben Ansell, David Art, Adam
Brown, Emilie Conti, Mathias Delori, Martina Dillmann, Daniella
Doron, Daniel Epstein, Guy Geltner, Jane Gingrich, Simona Grassi,
Ben Harder, Alex Hawson, Sarah Hiron, Susan Karr, Liisi Keedus, Kate
Kingsley, Emily Levine, Simon Levis Sullam, Molly Loberg, Naomi
Lubrich, Martina Ldicke, James Marsh, Lukas Martin, Paolo Masella,
Tania Munz, David Nir, Cat Nisbett, Clara Oberle, Nick Popper, Timo
Reinfrank, Fabian Rhle, Jonathan Schiman, Roger Schoenman, Je
Schwegman, Will Slauter, Violet Soen, Scott Stedman, Yael Sternhell,
Noah Strote, Aaron Tugendhaft, Klaus Veigel, Ina and Michael Wetzel,
and Eric Yellin.
Helga Nagy introduced me to the German language, which is only
one of the many gifts she has given me. I feel blessed to have received her
Acknowledgments xiii
unconditional support in all my endeavors. My sister Sonya inspires me
with her brilliance, compassion, and creativity.
My wife Faina has taken me around the world and brought me to the
happiest place I could ever know the home we have created together. In
the writing of this book, as in all other things, her wisdom and support
have been invaluable.
None of my work would have been possible without the advice and
encouragement of my parents, Eva and Emanuel. Te education and
inspiration they have given me are simply too great for words to express.
In addition to being ideal parents, they are also this books ideal readers.
It is dedicated to them with love and gratitude.
Earlier versions of Chapters and o appeared as Skepticism and Faith:
Max Webers Anti-Utopianism in the Eyes of His Contemporaries,
Journal of the History of Ideas ;:, no. , (:c:c): :,c,, and Max Weber
and Charisma: A Transatlantic Aair, New German Critique ::, (:c::):
,:, respectively. A portion of Chapter : appeared as Philosophy
beyond the Bounds of Reason: Te Inuence of Max Weber on the
Development of Karl Jaspers Existenzphilosophie, :,c,:,,:, in Max
Weber Matters: Interweaving Past and Present, ed. David Chalcraft, Fanon
Howell, Marisol Lopez Menendez, and Hector Vera (Aldershot: Ashgate,
:cc), ,,;:. I am grateful to the University of Pennsylvania Press, Duke
University Press, and Ashgate for the permission to reprint previously
published material.
xiv
Translations and abbreviations
In rendering Max Webers and Marianne Webers writings into English,
I have consulted standard translations whenever possible, although I have
often adapted them for the sake of clarity or delity to the German ori-
ginal. Citations from these works are followed by parenthetical reference
to the corresponding English edition, where available. All italics are ori-
ginal, unless otherwise specied. All other translations, unless otherwise
noted, are my own.
ASAC Te Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations.
Translated by R. I. Frank. London: Verso, :,.
Biography Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography. Translated
and edited by Harry Zohn. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction, :,.
BW Te Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and
Other Writings. Edited and translated by Peter Baehr
and Gordon C. Wells. New York: Penguin, :cc:.
CH Te Protestant Ethic Debate: Max Webers Replies to His
Critics, . Edited by David J. Chalcraft and
Austin Harrington. Translated by Austin Harrington
and Mary Shields. Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, :cc:.
EaS Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology.
Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley:
University of California Press, :,;.
FMW From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited by H.
H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford
University Press, :,o.
GEH General Economic History. Translated by Frank H.
Knight. Mineola, NY: Dover, :cc, [:,:;].









Note on translations and list of abbreviations xv
Lebensbild Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild. Munich:
Piper, :, [:,:o].
MSS Te Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and
edited by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch. New
York: Free Press, :,,.
MWG Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe. Tbingen: Mohr (Siebeck),
:,.
PE Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des
Kapitalismus: Textausgabe auf der Grundlage der ersten
Fassung von / mit einem Verzeichnis der wichtigsten
Zustze und Vernderungen aus der zweiten Fassung von
. Edited by Klaus Lichtblau and Johannes Wei.
Weinheim: Beltz Athenum, :ccc.
PW Political Writings. Edited by Peter Lassman and Ronald
Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,.
RC Te Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism.
Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth. Glencoe, IL:
Free Press, :,,:.
RK Roscher and Knies: Te Logical Problems of Historical
Economics. Translated by Guy Oakes. New York: Free
Press, :,;,.
VL Te Vocation Lectures. Edited by David Owen and
Tracy B. Strong. Translated by Rodney Livingstone.
Indianapolis: Hackett, :cc.
WuG Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden
Soziologie. ,th edn. Studienausgabe. Edited by Johannes
Winckelmann. Tbingen: Mohr (Siebeck), :,c.









:
Introduction
Max Weber (:o:,:c) is today regarded as one of the most important
political and social thinkers of modern times. Te concepts he coined or
left his mark on such as value freedom, the Protestant ethic, bureau-
cracy, sociology, and charisma have become fundamental to the social
sciences and part of our everyday speech. How did this idiosyncratic and
reclusive German scholar manage to make such a profound impact on
modern thought? How did he become a name to conjure with for histo-
rians, sociologists, economists, political scientists, and commentators on
current aairs? Tis book answers these questions by examining a cul-
tural axis that was decisive for Webers emergence as a canonical gure:
the transmission of political and social thought from German-speaking
Europe to the United States in the rst half of the twentieth century.
:
It
seeks to explain why German intellectuals reached for Webers concepts
to articulate such dierent understandings of modern life, and how these
concepts and their uses were transformed by Americans and German
migrs. Trough investigating the history of Webers transatlantic recep-
tion, this book aims to shed new light on the meaning and cultural sig-
nicance of his thought, and on the generation of German and American
intellectuals who developed their own ideas in dialogue with his.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, communities of Weber
scholars have formed all over the world.
:
Considered in this global context,

:
For a classic account of this phenomenon, see H. Stuart Hughes, Te Sea Change: Te Migration
of Social Tought, :),o:), (New York: McGraw-Hill, :,;,). For recent literature on the recep-
tion of European thinkers in the United States, see Franois Cusset, French Teory: How Foucault,
Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, trans. Je Fort
with Josephine Berganza and Marlon Jones (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :cc);
Martin Woessner, Heidegger in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, :c::); and
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, :c::).

:
During his lifetime Weber was intensely discussed in Japan, and it was there that many of the
earliest translations of his work were published. See Wolfgang Schwentker, Max Weber in Japan:
Eine Untersuchung zur Wirkungsgeschichte :)o,:)), (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,,). For




Introduction :
his German and American reception has been distinctive in several
important ways. German intellectuals were Webers most immediate audi-
ence and respondents: they laid the groundwork for later engagements
with his work and promoted his reputation through emigration and aca-
demic exchange. Weber was read and discussed in a variety of countries
in the decades after his death, but it was in the United States during the
:,cs and :,,cs that he was rst elevated to the canonical position in the
social sciences that he occupies today. As the American social sciences
acquired unprecedented international prestige in the decades after World
War ii, so too did the authors and texts that had become seminal to their
self-understanding.
Webers popularity in the United States was so phenomenal that it
often blinded scholars to the signicance of his early German impact.
Webers inuence in Germany was very limited, declared the migr
political scientist Franz Neumann in the early :,,cs. It is characteristic
of German social science that it virtually destroyed Weber by an almost
exclusive concentration upon the discussion of his methodology. Neither
his demand for empirical studies nor his insistence upon the responsibil-
ity of the scholar to society were heeded. It is here, in the United States,
that Weber really came to life.
,
Tis conventional wisdom was eventually
revised by historians of sociology, who demonstrated that Weber had been
more important to Weimar and Nazi intellectuals than previously was
understood.

Yet no one has explained what Weber meant to his German

aspects of his reception outside Germany and the United States, see Johannes Weiss, Weber and
the Marxist World, trans. Elizabeth King-Utz and Michael J. King (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, :,o); Petra Kolonko, Mit Max gegen Marx? Zum Beginn einer Weber-Rezeption in der
VR China, Internationales Asienforum :, no. :/: (:,;): :,;o:; Monique Hirschhorn, Max
Weber et la sociologie franaise (Paris: LHarmattan, :,); Johannes Wei, ed., Max Weber heute:
Ertrge und Probleme der Forschung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,,); and Karl-Ludwig Ay
and Knut Borchardt, eds., Das Faszinosum Max Weber: Die Geschichte seiner Geltung (Constance:
UVK, :cco).

,
Franz L. Neumann, Te Social Sciences, in Te Cultural Migration: Te European Scholar
in America, by Franz L. Neumann, Henri Peyre, Erwin Panofsky, Wolfgang Khler, and Paul
Tillich (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, :,,,), ::.

Helmut Fogt, Max Weber und die deutsche Soziologie der Weimarer Republik: Aussenseiter
oder Grndervater?, in Soziologie in Deutschland und sterreich :)::),,: Materialien zur
Entwicklung, Emigration und Wirkungsgeschichte, ed. M. Rainer Lepsius (Opladen: Westdeutscher
Verlag, :,:), :,;:; Regis A. Factor and Stephen P. Turner, Webers Inuence in Weimar
Germany, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences : (:,:): :;,o; Stephen P. Turner
and Regis A. Factor, Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value: A Study in Philosophy,
Ethics, and Politics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :,); Dirk Ksler, Max Weber: An
Introduction to His Life and Work, trans. Philippa Hurd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
:,), Chapter ;; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Te Political and Social Teory of Max Weber: Collected
Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,,), Chapter ::; Carsten Klingemann, Soziologie
im Dritten Reich (Baden-Baden: Nomos, :,,o), Chapter ,.


Introduction ,
contemporaries in the broadest sense.
,
Tough he was not a household
name, Weber was read and written about by some of the most important
German thinkers of his time, such as Hans Freyer, Hans Gerth, Teodor
Heuss, Karl Jaspers, Siegfried Kracauer, Karl Lwith, Georg Lukcs,
Karl Mannheim, Gustav Radbruch, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Ernst
Troeltsch, and Erich Voegelin. Tese gures served as force multipliers
by virtue of their contemporary or subsequent prominence.
o
At the same
time, Weber received serious attention from numerous scholars and jour-
nalists who never achieved fame, or whose reputations subsequently faded
from historical memory.
;
By drawing on a wide range of sources, both
published and archival, this book aims to deepen our understanding of
the canonical responses to Weber and his work, and to unearth the for-
gotten and often surprising ways in which contemporaries engaged with
his ideas.
In recent years Webers American afterlife has received increasing
attention from intellectual historians.

Much of the analysis has focused

on how early English translations by Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils,
Hans Gerth, and C. Wright Mills altered the meaning of Webers texts
or shunted them into unanticipated interpretive paradigms.
,
Instead of

,
For this formulation I am indebted to Jan-Werner Mller, who has sought to explain what Carl
Schmitt meant to European intellectuals. See Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl
Schmitt in Post-War European Tought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, :cc,).

o
Brian Eno once said of the rock group Te Velvet Underground that hardly anyone bought
the Velvets albums when they were originally released, but everyone who did formed a band
(Elizabeth Knowles, ed., Te Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, :cc;]). Something similar could be said of Webers early reception, mutatis mutandis.

;
I have proted from consulting two indispensable bibliographies of secondary literature on
Weber: Hans Gerth and Hedwig Ide Gerth, Bibliography on Max Weber, Social Research :o,
no. : (:,,): ;c,; and Constans Seyfarth and Gert Schmidt, Max-Weber-Bibliographie: Eine
Dokumentation der Sekundrliteratur (Stuttgart: Enke, :,;;).

See Guy Oakes and Arthur J. Vidich, Collaboration, Reputation, and Ethics in American Academic
Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, :,,,); Keith
Tribe, Talcott Parsons as Translator of Max Webers Basic Sociological Categories, History of
European Ideas ,,, no. : (:cc;): :::,,; and Lawrence A. Sca, Max Weber in America (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, :c::). For earlier accounts, see Guenther Roth and Reinhard Bendix,
Max Webers Einu auf die amerikanische Soziologie, Klner Zeitschrift fr Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie :: (:,,,): ,,,; and Guenther Roth, introduction to Max Weber: An Intellectual
Portrait, by Reinhard Bendix (Berkeley: University of California Press, :,;;), xiiixxxvii.

,
See Gisela J. Hinkle, Te Americanization of Max Weber, Current Perspectives in Social Teory
; (:,o): ;:c; Peter Ghosh, Some Problems with Talcott Parsons Version of Te Protestant
Ethic, Archives europennes de sociologie ,, (:,,): :c:,; Peter Baehr, Te Iron Cage and the
Shell as Hard as Steel: Parsons, Weber, and the Stahlhartes Gehuse Metaphor in Te Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, History and Teory c, no. : (:cc:): :,,o,; Peter Ghosh,
Translation as a Conceptual Act, Max Weber Studies :, no. : (:cc:): ,,o,; and Jens Borchert,
From Politik als Beruf to Politics as a Vocation: Te Translation, Transformation, and Reception
of Max Webers Lecture, Contributions to the History of Concepts ,, no. : (:cc;): :;c.





Introduction
making the problem of translation its focus, this book investigates the
formative period when interest in Weber was rst generated in the United
States. It seeks to understand why this generation of American and migr
scholars was so interested in Webers concepts that the translation and
marketing of his texts seemed worthwhile to them in the rst place. Very
little of Webers writing was available in English translation between the
:,:cs and the late :,cs. However, it was precisely during this period that
the seminal interpretations and mobilizations of his work were made in
the United States by American and migr scholars. Tese individuals set
in motion many of the traditions that characterized Webers American
reception for over half a century.
rui xxi xc wi ru winiis coxciirs
When historians of reception articulate the subject of their inquiry, they
often do so in terms of the inuence wielded by intellectuals or texts. In
positing x inuenced y, they assert a connection between x and y that falls
short of being a cause in the scientic sense, but that nonetheless accounts
for ys intellectual production by way of reference to x.
:c
Tis way of talking
about intellectual liation is commonplace yet problematic for the rigor-
ous study of reception. One diculty with inuence-claims, as Quentin
Skinner has argued, is that they invariably force historians into arguing
something dierent from what they initially intended. If one entertains the
possibility that y might have gotten those ideas elsewhere, or that the simi-
larity between xs and ys work was purely coincidental, then any attempt
to demonstrate that it really was x who inuenced y becomes tantamount
to demonstrating that x was a necessary condition for ys work and this
sounds very much like a conventional causal argument.
::
Aside from the
ambiguity of their logical structure, inuence-claims pose another chal-
lenge for the historian: the empirical evidence necessary to conrm them
can be extremely dicult to nd. To prove that x inuenced y, histori-
ans must rst isolate the relevant doctrine A that is characteristic of both
authors. Ten they must demonstrate that y could have found doctrine A
only in x; that y did indeed read x; and that the similarities between x and
y could not have been merely accidental. Conclusive evidence to support
such claims, Skinner has argued, is rarely available.
::

:c
Quentin Skinner, Te Limits of Historical Explanations, Philosophy : (:,oo): :c.

::
Ibid., :c,.

::
Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, History and Teory ,
no. : (:,o,): :o;.




Tinking with Webers concepts ,
While there is a good case to be made that inuence-claims are less
problematic than Skinner suggests, it is not the logical status or the empir-
ical rigor of such claims that leads me to question their value for reception
history.
:,
Te major problem is that inuence does not adequately capture
how intellectuals engage with the work of other intellectuals. In claiming
x inuenced y, the historian places in the active role not the person who
is thinking, writing, or arguing, but rather the absent interlocutor who
is incapable of doing anything at all.
:
Moreover, what are we to make of
cases in which y cites or mobilizes xs arguments incorrectly, or with will-
ful distortions? Does it make sense here to say that y was inuenced by x,
or that x inuenced y? In light of such complications, Conal Condren has
recommended that we talk instead about the ways in which authors use
each other:
If we replace inuence with usage, at least the formal confusion is avoided, and
usage by being a general term covering a multitude of possibilities also invites
immediate specication how and in what way and to what extent did y in fact
use x? Inuence, by connoting a rm imprint, and the expectation of character-
istics transferred, makes it all too easy to overlook just what in fact was done by
the active partner (y) cast in the passive role.
:,
Tis book seeks to understand how intellectuals used Weber, even if it
means occasionally maintaining a position of agnosticism as to whether
he was the unique source of the ideas they expressed. My aim is to ascer-
tain what Webers readers actually did with him and not only what they
thought of him. Why and in what contexts did they avail themselves of
his arguments? When did they invoke him as an authority? How did they
mobilize and appropriate his views? What did his works enable them to
express that they could not have done otherwise? I call this range of activ-
ities thinking with an intellectual. Te study of the ways in which intel-
lectuals thought with Weber illuminates his signicance for intellectual
life in German-speaking Europe and the United States.
Some historians of reception have abjured the goal of oering authori-
tative readings against which subsequent interpretations of an authors
writings can be measured.
:o
Tat will not be the approach taken here.

:,
For a critique of Skinners argument, see Francis Oakley, Anxieties of Inuence: Skinner,
Figgis, Conciliarism and Early Modern Constitutionalism, Past and Present :,: (:,,o): oc::c.

:
Conal Condren, Te Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Teory, Its
Inheritance, and the History of Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, :,,), :,,o.

:,
Ibid., :,o.

:o
See, e.g., Steven E. Aschheim, Te Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, :)o:))o (Berkeley: University
of California Press, :,,:), ,.




Introduction o
Tis book commits itself to understanding Webers authorial intentions
as well as the new meanings that readers generated from his texts.
:;
Many
of Webers readers ascribed a sense to his writings quite dierent from the
one he intended. Tey mobilized his concepts for causes he did not sanc-
tion and attributed them to phenomena he would not have anticipated.
Furthermore, his contemporaries were eager to tweak or distort his claims
to further intellectual agendas of their own. Teir uses of Weber and his
texts were part and parcel of what he meant to German and American
intellectuals in the rst half of the twentieth century. By devoting atten-
tion to the careful reconstruction of Webers arguments, the tensions that
existed between his own projects and the uses to which his ideas were put
can be explained. Tis requires that we do justice to the contexts in which
Weber rst framed his ideas, as well as to the fact that, as Pierre Bourdieu
has observed, texts circulate without their context.
:
How, then, should we go about understanding the ways in which
German and American intellectuals thought with Weber? A central aim
of this book is to show how the process of reception can be understood
by studying it on the level of the history of concepts.
:,
When intellectu-
als think with other intellectuals, they tend to engage with only a limited
number of propositions at a time. If these propositions are suciently
general or abstract, concentrated in a complex of interrelated elements
and identied by a single word or a short phrase, we call them concepts.
It is in this sense, for example, that we speak of the concepts of cap-
italism, democracy, revolution, objectivity, and justice.
:c
Tese concepts

:;
For a critique of reception histories that disregard authorial intended meanings, see Martyn P.
Tompson, Reception Teory and the Interpretation of Meaning, History and Teory ,:, no. ,
(:,,,): :;:.

:
Pierre Bourdieu, Te Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas, in Bourdieu:
A Critical Reader, ed. Richard Shusterman (Oxford: Blackwell, :,,,), :::.

:,
My thoughts on the connections between reception history and the history of concepts have
been greatly stimulated by Martin Burke, From the Margins to the Center? Conceptual History
and Intellectual History (paper presented at the Tenth Conference of the International Society
for Intellectual History, Verona, May :o, :cc,).

:c
See Reinhart Koselleck, Einleitung, in Geschichtliche Grundbegrie: Historisches Lexikon
zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and
Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, :,;:), Vol. i, xxiixxiii; Reinhart Koselleck,
Begrisgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte, in Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher
Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,;,), :::c; and Reinhart Koselleck, A Response to
Comments on the Geschichtliche Grundbegrie, in Te Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts:
New Studies on Begrisgeschichte, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington,
DC: German Historical Institute, :,,o), o,. It is important to distinguish between words (or
terms) and concepts. It is possible that the same concept may be designated by more than one
word, or that an individual can be said to possess a concept without necessarily knowing the
right word for it. See Quentin Skinner, Te Idea of a Cultural Lexicon, in Regarding Method,
Vol. i of Visions of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :cc:), :,,oc. Finally, it




Tinking with Webers concepts ;
and others like them serve as pivots around which political and social
controversies turn; in times of crisis, intellectuals contest their meaning
and usage to legitimize or challenge the status quo.
::
By investigating the
distinctive character of Webers conceptual usages and innovations, and
then by ascertaining how and why his contemporaries appropriated them,
we can understand what it meant for intellectuals to think with him.
Few modern thinkers have left as powerful an imprint on our polit-
ical and social vocabularies as Weber. His major scholarly and political
innovations went hand in hand with the creation of new terms and con-
cepts, or the deployment of old concepts with new meanings and new
evaluative connotations.
::
Troughout his career Weber was deeply pre-
occupied by the role that concepts (Begrie) ought to play in the cultural
sciences (Kulturwissenschaften). In opposition to contemporaries who
believed that societies could only be understood on their own cultural
or historical terms, he insisted that a comparative theoretical framework
was necessary for purposes of comparison and causal attribution. In his
view, the unceasing development of the cultural sciences depended on
the transformation and repositioning of their theoretical concepts, a fate
determined by the changing cultural perspectives that scholars brought
to their work.
:,
To understand how German and American intellectu-
als thought with Weber, this book proposes to analyze his reception in
terms of the concepts he coined and redened, or were ascribed to him
by contemporaries. Webers writings became seminal for the way German
and American intellectuals conceived the value freedom of scholarship,
the meaning of modern capitalism, the task of sociology, and the charisma
of their political leaders. When they considered Webers heroism in the
face of the seemingly insuperable challenges of modern life, contem-
poraries were struck by his skepticism about utopian political movements,
but they also ascertained that he possessed a peculiar faith in the face
of adversity. Each of the main chapters of this book examines how one
should be noted that the denition of concept employed in this study diers from the one used
by linguists, psychologists, and philosophers, who equate concepts with the mental representa-
tions underlying cognition.

::
Koselleck, A Response to Comments, o,; Melvin Richter, Te History of Political and Social
Concepts: A Critical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, :,,,), :.

::
Kari Palonen, Die Umstrittenheit der Begrie bei Max Weber, in Die Interdisziplinaritt der
Begrisgeschichte, ed. Gunter Scholz (Hamburg: Meiner, :ccc), :,,; Kari Palonen, Max
Weber als Begrispolitiker, Etica & Politica ;, no. : (:cc,), www:.units.it/etica/:cc,_:/
palonen.pdf, accessed November ::, :c::.

:,
Max Weber, Die Objektivitt sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis
(:,c), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :,), :c; (MSS, :c,).



Introduction
or an interrelated set of Webers concepts was mobilized by a variety of
intellectuals across a span of several decades, in some cases from Europe
all the way to the United States.
Since the outbreak of World War ii, the signicance of Webers pol-
itical thought has been interpreted chiey through the lens of National
Socialism. Te rst to link Weber with fascist ideology was the philoso-
pher Karl Lwith, who argued that Weber positively paved the way for
an authoritarian and dictatorial leadership state [Fhrerstaat] by sup-
porting irrational, charismatic leadership and leadership democracy
[Fhrerdemokratie] with a machine, and negatively through the deliberate
lack of content, through the formality of his political ethos, whose nal
authority was only the decisive choice of one value among others, regard-
less which.
:
Another early admonition came from the Marxist histor-
ian Jrgen Kuczynski, who studied in Heidelberg and attended Marianne
Webers salon.
:,
Kuczynski spent the war years in Britain, where he pub-
lished a German-language brochure, On the Impracticality of the German
Intellectual, which blamed Webers value freedom for weakening the
resolve of German intellectuals to resist National Socialism:
Max Weber, one of the leading German democrats, one of the personally most
upstanding individuals well traveled in all elds of German culture, at home
in the works of German literature and philosophy, jurisprudence and art, his-
toriography and natural science is the incarnation of all the weaknesses of our
great thinkers. He is the last great scion of that great series of poets and thinkers
whose strengths are the healthy basis for a new Germany, and whose weaknesses
constitute the network in which the perverse system of fascism has captured our
intelligence. Banished from Germany thirteen years after his death in :,:c, he
[Weber], the greatest pride of our universities in this century, blindly and fanat-
ically opened the door to National Socialism.
:o
When Gerth and Mills published their rst Weber translation in :,,
they drew a passionate response from Meyer Schapiro, a leading art his-
torian at Columbia University. While he acknowledged that Weber had
rejected racist explanations of culture and would have been rmly

:
Karl Lwith, Max Weber und seine Nachfolger (:,,,/c), in Hegel und die Aufhebung der
Philosophie im :). Jahrhundert Max Weber, Vol. v of Smtliche Schriften (Stuttgart: Metzler,
:,), :,.

:,
On his student days in Heidelberg, see Jrgen Kuczynski, Memoiren: Die Erziehung des J. K.
zum Kommunisten und Wissenschaftler (Berlin: Auf bau, :,;:), oco.

:o
Jrgen Kuczynski, ber die Unpraktischkeit des deutschen Intellektuellen (London: Free German
League of Culture in Great Britain, :,), :. On Kuczynskis time in British emigration, see
Axel Fair-Schulz, Jrgen Kuczynski: A German-Jewish Marxist Scholar in Exile, in German
Scholars in Exile: New Studies in Intellectual History, ed. Axel Fair-Schulz and Mario Kessler
(Lanham, MD: Lexington, :c::), :,;,.



Max Weber in politics and social thought ,
against Nazi barbarity and anti-Semitism had he lived to experience
them, Schapiro insisted that Webers intense nationalism, fear of the
left, and respect for the strong leader with charismatic qualities led
him to speak in a way that anticipates the Nazis. Had Weber not died
so early, Schapiro speculated, it would have been a cruel dilemma for
him whether to accept or reject the man who was reestablishing German
power and preparing for a war against the national enemy.
:;
Te most thoroughgoing post-World War ii critiques of Webers pol-
itical thought were conducted by the West German historian Wolfgang
Mommsen, most notably in his :,,, book Max Weber and German
Politics.
:
Over half a century later, it is clear to us that Weber was not
just a defender of the Weimar Republic and a champion of the socially
marginalized, but also an extreme nationalist, a proponent of imperial-
ism, and on some occasions a racist. Rather than focus on the question
whether Weber was contaminated with the bacillus of fascism, a political
movement he never lived to experience, my primary goal is to understand
how intellectuals used Webers concepts to think politically and socially.
As a consequence, this book investigates the reception of his concepts
not only among intellectuals sympathetic to National Socialism, who
did indeed make use of them, but also among intellectuals across the
ideological spectrum, in both German-speaking Europe and the United
States.
xa x winii i x ioii ri cs axo soci ai ruoucur
Tis book begins by surveying the social contexts in which Webers con-
temporaries encountered his personality and written work, and the condi-
tions under which they disseminated and translated his texts. After falling
ill with depression in his mid thirties, Weber spent most of his life as a
private scholar, known only to a relatively small number of friends and
colleagues. In later years he attained wider visibility on the basis of his
published works and political involvements, but he died before he could
fully re-establish his career. Chapter : examines his interventions as a
teacher, scholar, and political leader, and explains why the longevity of his
reputation stood in jeopardy at the time of his death. It shows how per-
sonal and academic networks ensured that his concepts and texts would

:;
Meyer Schapiro, A Note on Max Webers Politics, Politics :, no. : (:,,): .

:
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik, :)o:):o (Tbingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], :,,,).



Introduction :c
nonetheless survive long after him, and traces the paths that brought his
texts and his admirers to the United States.
Webers contemporaries were fascinated by his conviction that
scholarship was incapable of yielding norms to guide action, and by
his insistence that scholars must keep the ascertainment of facts and
the judgment of the desirability of those facts rigorously separate.
Weber condensed these two claims into his famous concept of the
value freedom (Wertfreiheit) of scholarship. When pressed to defend
value freedom, Weber ultimately appealed to what he called the poly-
theism of modern life the notion that the highest values capable of
guiding human action were locked in a conict so fundamental that
no scholarship was capable of mediating among them. Chapter : sur-
veys the polemical purposes for which Weber invoked value freedom
and polytheism throughout his career, and then analyzes the ways in
which these concepts were mobilized and appropriated by German
intellectuals in the generation after his death. For all the resistance that
Webers views encountered, this chapter explains why a surprising num-
ber of intellectuals both in the Weimar Republic and under National
Socialist rule availed themselves of his concepts to articulate some
of the earliest statements of modern existentialism, to promote a new
social order based on racial homogeneity, and to defend a new political
scholarship based on vlkisch values.
Chapter , explores the divergent legacies of Webers theses on the mean-
ing of modern capitalism. It begins by explicating the argument behind
Te Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and situates it within the
context of n-de-sicle discussions about the origins of the modern econ-
omy. Next, the chapter investigates the academic and cultural controver-
sies that erupted over Webers writings on capitalism. It argues that the
popularity of Te Protestant Ethic derived not only from the audacity of
its historical claims, but also from the ease with which intellectuals could
mobilize it to promote German exceptionalism or champion the superior-
ity of their respective religious faiths. In the United States and elsewhere,
Weber has often been portrayed as an anti-Marxist theorist who empha-
sized the economic consequences of religious values and institutions. His
reception in German-speaking Europe followed a surprisingly dierent
course: some of his most prominent contemporaries were inspired to rec-
oncile his work with the tradition of historical materialism, or otherwise
to mobilize his ideas for heterodox Marxist purposes. Finally, this chapter
explains why Webers concept of a capitalist Betrieb captivated German
contemporaries, and why it was left to the American sociologist Talcott
Max Weber in politics and social thought ::
Parsons to popularize Weber as a theorist of bureaucracy in the United
States.
Weber distinguished himself from many other German intellectuals by
rejecting revolutionary attempts to transform the institutions of modern
western society. Chapter shows how his anti-utopianism was nonethe-
less capable of signifying radically dierent attitudes in the eyes of his
contemporaries. Depending on how they read his key texts, or whether
they prioritized the signicance of his personality over his written state-
ments, Weimar intellectuals came to see Weber as either a paragon of
stoic resignation, a pragmatic defender of the rationalism of western cul-
ture, or a Kierkegaardian knight of faith. Tese dierent interpretations
can best be understood by examining how and to what degree his
contemporaries ascribed the concepts of skepticism and faith to him. Te
reception of Webers anti-utopianism illustrates how a philosophers cul-
tural signicance is determined not just by published texts but also by the
force of personality.
Chapter , reconstructs Webers attempts to dene sociology as an aca-
demic discipline and explains how German intellectuals engaged with his
sociological writings during the Weimar Republic. No Weber school
emerged, in large part because Weber failed to articulate a coherent vision
of what it meant to practice sociology. His inability clearly to delimit
the scope of the discipline made it impossible for professional sociolo-
gists to endorse his work as exemplifying a single sociological method,
but at the same time enabled sociologists with very dierent visions of
the discipline to articulate their views through recourse to his writings.
Eort and idiosyncrasy were required to construct a sociological trad-
ition in which Weber could serve as a founding father. In the process of
doing so, Talcott Parsons rejected nearly all of the distinctive methodolo-
gies Weber employed in his sociological writings. Parsons did not simply
distort Webers writings in the process of articulating a new program for
American sociology. He also constructed a Weberian sociology out of
writings that contained no consistent vision for the discipline a reality
that Webers German contemporaries were far more honest in admitting.
Weber made a name for himself by campaigning for the parliamentari-
zation of Imperial Germany and the abolition of the plutocratic three-class
surage in Prussia. After some initial hesitations he came to support the
Weimar Republic, the parliamentary democracy introduced following the
monarchys collapse in :,:, but he grew increasingly unhappy with the
functioning of its government. In the last years of his life he argued that
the ossication of modern politics could only be counteracted by giving
Introduction ::
charismatic leaders the room to test their skills. In his scholarly writings
from the same period, Weber also used the concept of charisma to charac-
terize and analyze historical forms of rulership (Herrschaft) based on the
legitimacy of an extraordinary individual. By lifting the Greek concept
of charisma from its original theological context, Weber introduced both
a new word and a new concept into the modern social sciences. Chapter
o presents a transatlantic history of the reception of Webers concept of
charisma from the :,:cs through the late :,ocs. Despite the supercial
similarities between charisma and the general longing for leadership in
Weimar and Nazi Germany, Webers concept struck most of his contem-
poraries as too liberal, individualistic, foreign, or chaotic for their tastes.
It was in the United States, thanks to migr scholars writing in English
and a number of American sociologists acquainted with Webers work,
that charisma rst became a central concept in the social sciences. Tis
chapter argues that the concepts popularity was inseparable from its util-
ity in analyzing two contemporary political phenomena: the rise of Nazi
Germany in the :,,cs and the wave of decolonizations of the :,,cs and
:,ocs.
Tis book tells the story of Webers transformation from a charismatic
but eccentric gure whose impact, while alive, was seen by many to con-
sist exclusively [in] the eect of his person, into a seminal gure in
interwar German political and social thought, and nally into a founding
father of American sociology by the end of the :,cs.
:,
At the same time,
it seeks to reconstruct the broader arguments and controversies in which
Webers concepts were deployed, and thereby to illuminate some of the
central scholarly and political disputes in German-speaking Europe and
the United States in the rst half of the twentieth century. Te history of
Webers reception yields insights that are relevant for the interpretations
of the social world we continue to construct today. His concepts are very
much still with us. To judge their utility better, we must understand the
uses to which they have been put.

:,
Te quotation appears in Edgar Salin, Max Weber und seine Freunde: Zum :cc. Geburtstag
des groen Gelehrten, Die Zeit, April :, :,o, ,.

:,
cuairii :
Max Weber and his circles
Shortly after arriving in Heidelberg in :,::, the Hungarian philosopher
Karl Mannheim paused to reect on the intellectual character of the
German provinces. Having been raised in Budapest and educated partly
in Berlin, Mannheim was familiar with the glittering cultural life that
central European metropolises had to oer. But rather than express bore-
dom or disdain with his new environs, he took note of the powerful cur-
rents pulsing through this otherwise sleepy university town:
Tese letters are written from Heidelberg, a small university town in Germany,
and yet they are not necessarily provincial letters. Te reason that one can see the
soul of Germany from a small provincial town, lies in the fact that Germany is cul-
turally decentralised. Intellectual movements are not born within one cultivated
circle of people in a single major city. On the contrary, new experiences, events
and thoughts begin their journey from a variety of small towns.
:
From these starting conditions, the idiosyncrasy of a small German town
could soon become the cultural property of the wider world. Today, the
constellation of the history of philosophy is such that every local idea and
local movement begins a world-conquering journey, Mannheim wrote.
What would normally have been a partial teaching of a town or city,
now leaves its birth place, and, since the present atmosphere is hungry,
awaiting a belief, a new teaching nds another place with followers out-
side its original, narrow local circles.
:
It is hard to imagine Mannheim knew how prophetic his words would
be. From Heidelberg in the early decades of the twentieth century ema-
nated ripples, and eventually a major intellectual wave, that would leave
their mark on the social sciences not just in Germany but also in the

:
Karl Mannheim, Letter from Heidelberg i (October, :,::), in Selected Correspondence (:)::
:),) of Karl Mannheim, Scientist, Philosopher, and Sociologist, ed. va Gbor (Lewiston, NY:
Mellen, :cc,), ,,,.

:
Ibid., ,o::.




Max Weber and his circles :
rest of the world. At their epicenter was a somewhat unlikely gure: a
respected but retired professor of political economy, partially incapaci-
tated by depression, who had no noteworthy students of his own and
few close friends. Despite these inauspicious circumstances, Max Weber
developed a network of contacts and admirers who ensured that his repu-
tation, and later his books, reached an audience beyond a narrow circle
of colleagues and academic admirers. Tis chapter analyzes the various
public roles that Weber occupied during his life and the dierent capaci-
ties in which his contemporaries encountered him: as a university teacher
in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Vienna, and Munich; as the host of a Heidelberg
salon that attracted some of the outstanding young intellectuals of pre-
World War i Europe; as an aspiring politician who, in the last years of
his life, appeared to some as a potential savior for a defeated nation; and
as a sympathetic interlocutor for radical intellectuals in politics and the
arts. Tis chapter also explains how Heidelbergs academic institutions
and personalities helped disseminate Webers texts and ideas, and how
his admirers managed to cross the Atlantic and introduce his work to an
American audience.
rui ri acuii
Trained as a lawyer and legal historian, Weber received his doctorate in
:, with a dissertation on medieval trading companies; he completed
his Habilitation (the second dissertation required for university teach-
ing) two years later with a monograph on the agrarian history of ancient
Rome. On the basis of his academic work and his research on agricul-
tural labor for the Verein fr Sozialpolitik (Association for Social Policy),
the University of Freiburg took the unconventional step of oering him
a full professorship in political economy, a eld in which he had taken
only one class as a student. After two years of teaching in Freiburg he
received yet another call, this time to a chair in political economy at the
University of Heidelberg, which he assumed in the summer semester of
:,;. Among the younger teachers of political economy he has a very
special place even today he promises to be one of the leading men in
his eld, noted a hiring memorandum.
,
But within a year of his new
appointment Weber began to experience the rst symptoms of a nervous

,
Keith Tribe, Historical Economics, the Methodenstreit, and the Economics of Max Weber, in
Strategies of Economic Order: German Economic Discourse, :;,o:),o (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, :,,,), co; quotation on ,.


Te teacher :,
illness that soon debilitated him. He suered from insomnia, exhaustion,
and eventually the inability to raise his arms or walk properly. Even as he
recovered from the worst periods of his illness, he remained prone to epi-
sodes of manic creativity followed by long stretches of psychological par-
alysis symptoms that suggest a diagnosis of bipolar depression.

Unable
to withstand the strain of teaching, Weber was relieved of his lecturing
duties on grounds of poor health in the summer semester of :,, and held
his nal course in the winter semester of that year. Te state of Baden was
reluctant to accept his resignation, preferring instead to grant him long
periods of paid vacation, but in :,c, it nally agreed to release him from
his university appointment.
,
Weber remained absent from the classroom until the end of World
War i, when the strain on his nances impelled him to accept the oer
of a chair in political economy at the University of Vienna. He assumed
the new position on a trial basis in the summer semester of :,:. Within
weeks of the start of classes he had become a sensation; his class packed
the largest auditorium at the university and students kept opening the
doors to catch a glimpse of him.
o
Although the university and the minis-
try of culture were determined to keep him in Vienna, Weber decided not
to extend his contract. After weighing oers from a number of German
universities, he accepted a chair at the University of Munich in :,:,. Once
again students turned out in droves to hear him lecture. His classes were
held in the largest auditorium and attracted up to occ listeners.
;
But just
as he was on the verge of re-establishing his academic career, Weber con-
tracted a virulent lung infection. His condition deteriorated so rapidly
that many of his acquaintances rst learned of his illness through the
obituary notices. He died in Munich on June :, :,:c and was cremated
three days later at the Ostfriedhof cemetery.

As a doctoral advisor Weber left little legacy. None of the students

whose dissertations he supervised went on to achieve notable academic

On Webers mental breakdown, see Lebensbild, Chapter ; and Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A
Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity, :cc,).

,
Lebensbild, :,c;; (Biography, :,;o); Radkau, Biography, :,c.

o
Teodor Heuss, Erinnerungen :)o,:),, (Tbingen: Wunderlich, :,o,), ::,. Marianne Weber
estimated that a third of the audience consisted of politicians, government ocials, and lecturers.
See Lebensbild, o:; (Biography, oc).

;
Franz-Josef Ehrle, Max Weber und Wien (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Freiburg, :,,:), ,;;
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, :)o:):o, trans. Michael S. Steinberg
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,), :::; Lebensbild, o;,, ;c (Biography, oo:, o,).

Todesnachricht in der Frankfurter Zeitung (June :o, :,:c), in Max Weber zum Gedchtnis:
Materialien und Dokumente zur Bewertung von Werk und Persnlichkeit, ed. Ren Knig and
Johannes Winckelmann (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, :,o,), ,;.





Max Weber and his circles :o
success.
,
Yet his nal classes and lectures in Munich attracted a handful of
young listeners who would later become famous in their own right. Carl
Schmitt, the leading conservative jurist of the Weimar Republic and later
legal advisor to the Nazi regime, participated in his Dozentenkolloquium.
Arnold Bergstraesser, a prominent political scientist in the Federal
Republic of Germany, moved to Munich to attend Webers classes, as
did Max Rheinstein, a future professor at the University of Chicago and
translator of Webers sociology of law. Karl Lwith, one of the major post-
war German philosophers, attended Webers lectures on Wissenschaft
als Beruf (Scholarship as a Vocation) and Politik als Beruf (Politics
as a Vocation) in Munich. Johannes Winckelmann, the postwar editor
and archivist of Webers collected works, had hoped to study with Weber
in Munich but was unable to nd lodging in time.
:c
Webers popularity as a teacher stemmed in large part from his tal-
ents as a lecturer. He prided himself on his oratorical skills, and, when-
ever possible, preferred to extemporize large portions of his lectures rather
than stick to a prepared manuscript. But his appeal went far beyond the
mere style of his presentations. As one Viennese journalist who visited his
lectures observed, Tis extraordinary power of attraction is by no means
due only to the rhetorical mastery of this man, nor is it the original and
strictly objective nature of his argumentation. Rather, it is primarily his
ability to arouse feelings that have lain dormant in the souls of others.
::

To some Weber appeared as a modern incarnation of the Socratic teacher
who served as a midwife for his students ideas and ideals.
::
To others he
appeared as a spiritual leader who could give direct guidance. His widow
recalled that
many of the young men who had close contact with Weber as members of his
[Munich] seminar saw more than a teacher in him although he wished to
be nothing else. Tey secretly venerated him the way the Indians worship their

,
Dirk Ksler, Einfhrung in das Studium Max Webers (Munich: Beck, :,;,), ::,.

:c
Carl Schmitt, Die Militrzeit :):, bis :):): Tagebuch Februar bis Dezember :):,: Aufstze und
Materialien, ed. Ernst Hsmert and Gerd Giesler, Vol. ii of Tagebcher (Berlin: Akademie,
:cc,), :,; Reinhart Blomert, Intellektuelle im Aufbruch: Karl Mannheim, Alfred Weber, Norbert
Elias und die Heidelberger Sozialwissenschaften der Zwischenkriegszeit (Munich: Hanser, :,,,),
:; Gerhard Casper, Max Rheinstein, in Remembering the University of Chicago: Teachers,
Scientists, and Scholars, ed. Edward Shils (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,,:), ,c; Karl
Lwith, My Life in Germany before and after :),,, trans. Elizabeth King (Urbana, IL: University
of Illinois Press, :,,), :o:;; Johannes Winckelmann to Karl Jaspers, May , :,,:, Nachlass
Karl Jaspers, ;,.:,::, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach.

::
Lebensbild, o:c (Biography, oc;).

::
Karl Jaspers, Die Idee der Universitt (Berlin: Springer, :,:,), :c:.




Te myth of Heidelberg :;
gurus, those teachers of wisdom who are expected to be at once helpers in
need, counselors, and spiritual advisors.
:,
rui x\ ru oi uii oiiniic
A pension and sizeable inheritance, combined with full dispensation from
teaching duties, enabled Weber to spend most of his professional life as
a private scholar with few material concerns. He produced a steady out-
put of articles, helped found the Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie
(German Society for Sociology), attended the meetings of various aca-
demic associations, and joined Edgar Ja and Werner Sombart in tak-
ing over the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, which under
their leadership became one of the major social-scientic journals in
the world. Trough his editorial duties Weber established contact with
gifted young social scientists such as Robert Michels, Emil Lederer, and
Joseph Schumpeter.
:
But while these activities earned him the respect of
Germanys leading historians and social scientists, his reputation outside
these circles was based largely on hearsay. It was common for Heidelberg
students to refer to Weber, who was revered by their professors but seldom
seen in public, as the myth of Heidelberg.
:,
His wife Marianne mean-
while enjoyed the reputation of being one of Heidelbergs cultural lumi-
naries. She was highly regarded as a pioneer of the womens movement in
Germany and as the author of books on Fichtes socialism and the history
of womens legal rights. In :,:, she was elected to the constituent assem-
bly of the state of Baden and subsequently assumed the chairmanship
of the Federation of German Womens Associations.
:o
For most of Max
Webers life she was far better known than he. When he unexpectedly
spoke up at a political meeting in Heidelberg in :,c, a townsman in
the audience was overheard asking, Whos that Max Weber anyway?, to
which his neighbor replied, Oh, hes Mariannes guy.
:;

:,
Lebensbild, o; (Biography, oo:).

:
See Regis A. Factor, Guide to the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik Group, :)o,
:),,: A History and Comprehensive Bibliography (New York: Greenwood, :,).

:,
Karl Loewenstein, Persnliche Erinnerungen an Max Weber (:,:c), in Knig and
Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis, .

:o
Guenther Roth, Marianne Weber and Her Circle: Introduction to the Transaction Edition, in
Biography, xvlxi; Brbel Meurer, ed., Marianne Weber: Beitrge zu Werk und Person (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :cc); Edith Hanke, Max Webers desk is now my altar: Marianne Weber
and the Intellectual Heritage of Her Husband, History of European Ideas ,,, no. , (:cc,): ,,
,,; Brbel Meurer, Marianne Weber: Leben und Werk (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :c:c).

:;
Te incident is related in Lebensbild, :: (Biography, c;). Tis perceived imbalance was a source
of irritation for some. After attending a dinner party in Berlin, Marie Luise Gothein reported






Max Weber and his circles :
In :,:c the Webers moved into the Fallenstein House on the
Ziegelhuser Landstrae, an imposing mansion built by Max Webers
maternal grandfather on the banks of the Neckar River. Te spacious and
attractive residence provided a greater incentive for friends and colleagues
to visit, and soon the Webers social life was expanding by leaps and
bounds.
:
Our life is full to the brim, every day there is a visitor, at least
one searching soul, Marianne noted. But frequently there are several:
women and girls with lonely lives, budding scholars, the older friends,
they all come here. Te magnicence of the setting the cheerful balcony
and the shady garden in the back gives pleasure. It is all very beautiful
and rich, but some of it must be counted as work.
:,
Te visits provided
a welcome source of diversion and armation for Max Weber, who had
little other connection to university life, but they monopolized his time
and taxed his already fragile nerves. Rather than send the visitors home,
the Webers hit on the idea of organizing Sunday afternoon open houses,
or jours as they were known, for young people.
:c
Tese salons were Max
Webers main venue for meeting younger scholars and intellectuals from
Heidelberg and beyond.
After the inaugural event in May, :,::, the jours were held every Sunday
at p.m. during the semester in a large parlor on the rst oor of the
Fallenstein House. A ramp lined with ower vases led up to the room,
whose large windows oered a striking view across the river toward the
half-ruined sandstone castle on the opposite bank.
::
In contrast to most
social gatherings at the university, the Webers salon was an informal
and unstructured event where women were welcome as conversational
partners.
::
It was not dicult for talented young students to obtain an
to her husband, the Heidelberg political economist Eberhard Gothein, that it is very strange
how Marianne Weber is so overestimated out of town and Max so underestimated. Marie Luise
Gothein to Eberhard Gothein, October ::, :,::, in Eberhard Gothein and Marie Luise Gothein,
Im Schaen genieen: Der Briefwechsel der Kulturwissenschaftler Eberhard und Marie Luise
Gothein (:,:):,), ed. Michael Maurer, Johanna Snger, and Editha Ulrich (Cologne: Bhlau,
:cco), :,.

:
Lebensbild, ,;o (Biography, ,;); Einleitung, in MWG ii/o, ;.

:,
Lebensbild, o: (Biography, ,).

:c
Lebensbild, ;, (Biography, o;).

::
Lebensbild, ;,o (Biography, o;); Karl Loewenstein, Persnliche Erinnerungen an Max
Weber, in Max Weber: Gedchtnisschrift der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen zur
:oo. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages :),, ed. Karl Engisch, Bernhard Pster, and Johannes
Winckelmann (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :,oo), ,c. On the dating of the rst jour, see
Einleitung, in MWG ii/;, ,.

::
Gesa von Essen, Max Weber und die Kunst der Geselligkeit, in Heidelberg im Schnittpunkt
intellektueller Kreise: Zur Topographie der geistigen Geselligkeit eines Weltdorfes, :,o:),o, ed.
Hubert Treiber and Karol Sauerland (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, :,,,), o;, ;:.





Te myth of Heidelberg :,
invitation if they had a recommendation, and interesting foreigners
were always welcome.
:,
According to Marianne Weber, a large number
of young people of Semitic race attended, and the conversation often
turned to the problematic of Judaism.
:
Nahum Goldmann, the future
leader of the World Jewish Congress, attended the Webers jours in the
years before World War i, and remembered that privileged students
could visit him [Max Weber] at home, where he held a kind of seminar,
led conversations, and gave stimulation as only an intellectual million-
aire can aord.
:,
Max Weber was particularly eager to meet individuals
who refused to conform to the academic or political establishment. As
one frequent visitor remembered, this epitome of all arch-heretics gath-
ered a whole horde of people around himself whose best quality, perhaps
unknown even to themselves, consisted in the fact that they were all at
least outsiders, if not much more.
:o
While not all the Webers friends found this unconventional atmos-
phere congenial, many prominent professors and junior scholars from the
university regularly attended, such as the political economist Eberhard
Gothein, the anatomist Hermann Braus, the philosopher Emil Lask, and
the jurist Gustav Radbruch. From Berlin came the philosopher Georg
Simmel with his wife Gertrud, and from nearby Heilbronn, Elly Heuss-
Knapp and her husband Teodor Heuss, the future rst president of the
Federal Republic of Germany.
:;
Of particular importance for Max Webers
intellectual development and his future reception were three young schol-
ars Friedrich Gundolf, Karl Jaspers, and Georg Lukcs whom he rst
met during his period of heightened sociability in Heidelberg between
:,c, and :,::. Jaspers, a medical doctor, was working as a research assist-
ant at the universitys psychiatric clinic at the time; Gundolf and Lukcs
were writing their Habilitation theses. Tese three young men constituted
the inner circle around Max Weber at the Sunday jours. According to
one participant, they were the only actual conversational partners with
whom he wanted to have a real exchange of thoughts.
:
While it may be tempting to imagine Max Weber as a witty and ebul-
lient host, this was by all indications not the case. According to Marianne

:,
Hermann Glockner, Heidelberger Bilderbuch (Bonn: Bouvier, :,o,), ,,.

:
Lebensbild, ;o (Biography, o,).

:,
Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben als deutscher Jude (Munich: Langen-Mller, :,c), :,:,.

:o
Paul Honigsheim, Der Max-Weber-Kreis in Heidelberg, Klner Vierteljahrshefte fr Soziologie
,, no. , (:,:o): :;:. Te word Outsiders appears in English in the original.

:;
Lebensbild, ;o (Biography, o); Loewenstein, Persnliche Erinnerungen (:,oo), ,c.

:
Loewenstein, Persnliche Erinnerungen (:,oo), ,c.






Max Weber and his circles :c
Weber, only signicant intellectual exchange or intimate conversations
about personal matters were worthwhile as far as he was concerned.
Small talk made him feel almost as awkward as he had once felt at a
dance or a irtation.
:,
Although he could be quite attentive to the ques-
tions of younger guests, his preferred mode of social discourse was the
monologue. Given the opportunity he would gladly hold forth on top-
ics ranging from music to politics, and several acquaintances could recall
listening to him deliver speeches for hours on end.
,c
During the Sunday
jours he was able to test out the demagogic talent his illness otherwise
prevented him from exercising. But for the most part he preferred to sit
in some corner of the large room, appropriated by the men, and since the
other attendees were eager to eavesdrop on his conversations, there was
general productivity only during Webers occasional absences.
,:
xa x winii axo rui i aoi cai \ouru
Max Weber felt drawn to young people on the margins of German
intellectual and political life, and they in turn were drawn to him.
Despite its provincial location Heidelberg aorded many opportuni-
ties for encountering the avant-garde. Te university had the reputation
for accepting Habilitation theses that would have been rejected at other
German universities, and many postdoctoral students who had not yet
received teaching positions were attracted to the citys atmosphere and
contributed to its free-oating intellectual life.
,:
As compared with other
German universities, Heidelbergs student body was distinguished by
its large number of women and foreigners. Most of the latter were Poles
and Russians, especially Jews who had been prohibited from university
study at home. Americans, Englishmen, Swiss, Austrians, and Slavic
nationalities were also well represented.
,,
Weber felt particularly attracted
to the activist spirit of the eastern European students. If someday I am

:,
Lebensbild, ;, (Biography, o;).

,c
Essen, Max Weber, ;,.

,:
Lebensbild, ;o (Biography, o).

,:
Honigsheim, Der Max-Weber-Kreis, :;:. Heidelberg was not unique in this regard. For a case
study of another provincial university town that functioned as a center of German modern-
ism, see Meike G. Werner, Moderne in der Provinz: Kulturelle Experimente im Fin de Sicle Jena
(Gttingen: Wallstein, :cc,).

,,
Helene Tompert, Lebensformen und Denkweisen der akademischen Welt Heidelbergs im
Wilhelminischen Zeitalter (Lbeck: Matthiesen, :,o,), :o::, ::,; Eike Wolgast, Die Universitt
Heidelberg :,:) (Berlin: Springer, :,o), ::o, :::; Karol Sauerland, Heidelberg als
intellektuelles Zentrum, in Treiber and Sauerland, Heidelberg im Schnittpunkt intellektueller
Kreise, ::.






Max Weber and the radical youth ::
well again and can hold a seminar, he once remarked, I shall accept
only Russians, Poles, and Jews, no Germans. A nation which has never
chopped o the head of its monarch is not cultured.
,
On several occa-
sions he traveled further aeld to make contact with individuals on the
cultural fringe. He spent two Easters before World War i in the town of
Ascona on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland, notorious at the
time as a counter-cultural retreat. Tere he kept to a vegetarian diet and
socialized with anarchists and apostles of free love, and even lent his serv-
ices to representing them in their legal aairs.
,,
Max and Marianne Weber were receptive to the avant-gardes critique of
bourgeois society. Teir sympathy was evident in their complex relation-
ship with the symbolist poet Stefan George and his circle of starry-eyed
young followers, who for a time made Heidelberg their home. A striking
gure with a shock of white hair and a sunken visage, George cultivated a
circle of talented and attractive young men who shared not only his poetic
sensibility but also his aristocratic elitism and antipathy toward modern
industrial society. His followers regarded him as the prophetic leader of
a secret Germany, a hermetic brotherhood of souls that would provide
the template for a new social and cultural order.
,o
Max Weber and Stefan
George, who were introduced by their mutual friend Friedrich Gundolf,
eventually came to view each other as proponents of incommensurably
dierent ethics. But their mutual fascination should not be construed
as simply the attraction of opposites. Max and Marianne Weber sympa-
thized with Georges disciples longing for integration of the individual
into a whole, for redemption from the cult of the ego; with their eorts
for new forms of internal fashioning and a new law, even if they disap-
proved of the solutions George advocated.
,;
Had the circumstances been
dierent, one of Georges followers speculated, George and Max Weber
might have complemented each other like Goethe and Schiller.
,
Max Weber found the company of young radicals vastly prefer-
able to the Ordnungsmenschen (creatures of order) that he perceived as
ubiquitous in Wilhelmine society.
,,
Several of his Heidelberg colleagues

,
Paul Honigsheim, Memories of Max Weber (:,o,), in Te Unknown Max Weber, ed. Alan Sica
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, :ccc), :,,.

,,
See Sam Whimster, ed., Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy (Houndsmills: Macmillan,
:,,,).

,o
See Robert E. Norton, Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, :cc:).

,;
Lebensbild, ;c (Biography, o:).

,
Kurt Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen an Stefan George und seinen Kreis (Bonn: Bouvier, :,o,), :,.

,,
For this epithet, see Max Weber, Debattenreden auf der Tagung des Vereins fr Sozialpolitik in
Wien :,c, zu den Verhandlungen ber Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der Gemeinden,






Max Weber and his circles ::
and acquaintances played leading roles in a socialist revolution in Munich
in :,::,, and while he rejected their politics, Weber was pleased to
boast that the Munich revolutionaries all drank tea at my house.
c

Mere idealism, however, was insucient to earn his admiration. Weber
rmly believed that all action in the world was doomed to ineectual-
ity or meaninglessness without a sense of responsibility. He found the
George Circles cult of personality deeply oensive, and he had nothing
but scorn for independently wealthy intellectuals who lambasted bour-
geois society.
:
At the end of World War i Weber was appalled by radical
pacists and socialists who he thought were unwilling to consider the
consequences of their ideals. He feared that the German revolution risked
plunging Germany into a civil war and precipitating a foreign occupa-
tion. Tat these radicals were willing to jeopardize not only socialism and
international peace but also German sovereignty infuriated him.
:
In May, :,:; Max Weber made his rst appearance before the radical
youth at the Burg Lauenstein conference, where academics, politicians,
artists, and representatives of the youth movement had been invited by the
cultural impresario and publisher Eugen Diederichs to discuss Germanys
postwar cultural aims. (Diederichs had initially invited only Marianne
Weber, an indication that even at this late date she was more promi-
nent than her husband.)
,
In a passionate address, Max Weber attacked
the political romanticism of Germanys conservatives and declared that
universal surage was not the ideal but the only real possible form of
representation in the modern world. His criticism of conservative intel-
lectuals scored points with the young people in attendance, but his dis-
missive attitude toward pacism cost him their support. When a leading
gure in the youth movement declared that the war was the product
of the immorality of all the European great powers, Weber criticized
in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, ed. Marianne Weber (Tbingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], :,), :.

c
Helmuth Plessner, In Heidelberg :,:,, in Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum
Gedchtnis, ,. Te political economists Arthur Salz and Edgar Ja, and the poet Ernst Toller
all played signicant roles in the Munich revolutionary government.

:
Max Weber to Dora Jellinek, June ,, :,:c, in MWG ii/o, ,,,o,; Lawrence A. Sca, Fleeing the
Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Tought of Max Weber (Berkeley: University of
California Press, :,,), :c:.

:
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, :;.

,
Gangolf Hbinger, Eugen Diederichs Bemhungen um die Grundlegung einer neuen
Geisteskultur (Anhang: Protokoll der Lauensteiner Kulturtagung Pngsten :,:;), in Kultur und
Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Knstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Wolfgang
J. Mommsen with Elisabeth Mller-Luckner (Munich: Oldenbourg, :,,o), :,,;; editorial
introduction to Vortrge whrend der Lauensteiner Kulturtagen (:,:;), in MWG i/:,, ;c:n:.




Max Weber and the radical youth :,
the youth movement with so much sarcasm that a great portion of the
sympathy that he originally aroused in his listeners vanished, as one
eyewitness noted.

Te young poet Ernst Toller was nevertheless deeply

impressed by Webers performance at Burg Lauenstein and followed him
back to Heidelberg, where he read poetry aloud at the Sunday jours and
tried in vain to secure Webers endorsement for a pacist students league.
Toller was subsequently arrested for planning a general strike. Webers
personal intervention succeeded in releasing him from jail but could not
prevent him from being expelled from Heidelberg.
,
Weber never succeeded in striking the right balance with the German
youth movement in the aftermath of World War i. At times his nationalis-
tic outbursts left student listeners stupeed, such as when he tried to rally
them to ensure that a bullet meets the rst Polish ocial who dares to
enter Danzig.
o
But he also lost support from right-wing students by criti-
cizing their chauvinism. Nowhere was his nationalism so clearly pulled
in opposite directions as in the controversy over Count Arco-Valley. In
January, :,:c Arco-Valley was sentenced to death for assassinating Kurt
Eisner, the erstwhile leader of Munichs socialist republic. When con-
servative students gathered at the University of Munich to protest the
courts decision, they shouted down a socialist student who challenged
their views. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the demonstrators, the Bavarian
government decided to commute Arco-Valleys sentence to life imprison-
ment. At the beginning of his next lecture, Weber announced that he
would deviate from his usual practice of excluding political commentary
from the lecture hall to comment on recent events. He declared that it
was not only unjust but also politically foolish to have pardoned Arco,
for now Eisner would become a martyr and Arco-Valley a coee house
curiosity. Weber, who detested Eisners pacism, praised the strength
of Arco-Valleys convictions, but announced that if he were minister he
would have let Arco-Valley be shot. Last but not least, he denounced the
student demonstrators who had insulted their socialist classmate. As a
consequence of this tirade, Webers next lecture was mobbed by fraternity
students who brought whistles and noisemakers to drown him out. For

Hbinger, Eugen Diederichs Bemhungen, :;c:. See also the account in Ernst Toller, Eine
Jugend in Deutschland (Reinbek: Rowohlt, :,o, [:,,,]), ,;.

,
Lebensbild, o:, (Biography, oc:); Toller, Eine Jugend in Deutschland, ,,. When Toller was court-
martialed for his participation in the short-lived Munich Soviet Republic, Weber gave testimony
on his behalf. See Dittmar Dahlman, Max Webers Relation to Anarchism and Anarchists: Te
Case of Ernst Toller, in Max Weber and His Contemporaries, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and
Jrgen Osterhammel (London: Allen & Unwin, :,;), ,o;:.

o
Lebensbild, o, (Biography, o,::).



Max Weber and his circles :
the rest of the semester identication cards were checked at the door to
make sure that only registered students could attend.
;
Weber was deeply disappointed by his inability to form a lasting bond
with either the left or right wing of the youth movement. According to
his friend, the theologian Ernst Troeltsch, there are even people who
believe that he died of a broken heart because the youth movement
rejected him.

A cloud of disapproval hung over the memorial ser-

vice that was held in Munich immediately after his death. Speeches in
Webers honor were delivered by the rector and dean of the University of
Munich, representatives of the Verein fr Sozialpolitik and the German
Democratic Party (DDP), and wreaths were left by the Association of
Socialist Students and the Federation of German Womens Associations.
,

But when a local newspaper noted that the number of students in attend-
ance did not reect the signicance of his personality, a student wrote
to complain that the universitys senate and student government were
responsible for the low attendance by failing to make the news of his
death public. Most teachers declined to cancel their classes on the day of
the funeral.
,c
Te authorities at the University of Munich were evidently
disinclined to mourn the passing of their troublesome professor.
rui ioii ri cai i i aoii
Weber derived as much visibility and notoriety from his controversial pol-
itical views as he did from his scholarly work. It was through his inter-
ventions into debates over the political consequences of Germanys rapid
economic development that he rst came to the attention of his colleagues
in the early :,cs. Commissioned by the Verein fr Sozialpolitik to con-
duct empirical research into the condition of rural life in eastern Prussia,
Weber discovered that large landowners were increasingly hiring migrant
Polish laborers to replace the tenant farmers on their estates, with the
result that the frontier regions demography was becoming less ethnically

;
See the following reports of the event, both in Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum
Gedchtnis: Friedrich J. Berber, Aufzeichnungen, :,; Max Rehm, Erinnerungen an Max
Weber, :o;. See also Lebensbild, o, (Biography, o;:,).

Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Erstes Buch: Das logische Problem der
Geschichtsphilosophie, Vol. iii of Gesammelte Schriften (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,::), :o:n;,.

,
Professor Max Webers Feuerbestattung, Mnchner neuste Nachrichten, June :, :,:c (Morgen-
Ausgabe); Univ.-Prof. Dr. Max Weber, Mnchner Zeitung, June :, :,:c; Max Webers
Bestattung, Frankfurter Zeitung, June :, :,:c.

,c
Te observation about poor student attendance was carried in the Mnchner Post, June :, :,:c.
For the aggrieved students reply, see Zu Professor Max Webers Tod: Eine Piettslosigkeit,
Mnchner Post, June ::, :,:c.





Te political leader :,
German. Weber caused a sensation by arguing that the expansion of
capitalist agriculture posed a serious danger to national security. He took
conservative Prussian landowners to task for putting their own nancial
interests above the well-being of the nation, and advocated the closure of
the eastern border and the introduction of a state-sponsored program of
internal colonization to secure land for independent German farmers.
,:
Weber concluded that Germany could not compete with overseas agri-
cultural producers, and that it would remain reliant on international grain
markets for years to come. Germanys prosperity and national greatness
would depend on its ability to develop an industrial export-driven econ-
omy with access to markets all over the world. Weber grimly predicted a
future in which inexorable population growth and market saturation exac-
erbated international rivalries, and he demanded that Germany secure the
last remaining markets for its export industries before they all were gone.
,:

Tis task necessitated the building of a powerful navy and an ambitious
Weltpolitik (world policy) aimed at promoting the outward expansion of
Germanys economic sphere of power and the establishment of colo-
nial spheres of interest in the uncivilized regions like Africa.
,,
Weber
convinced Friedrich Naumann, a prominent young pastor and Christian
Social politician, that social reform was impossible without the wealth
generated by imperial expansion, and his ideas were subsequently incor-
porated into the program of Naumanns National Social Association.
,
Webers Weltpolitik was inspired by nationalist commitments that were
powerful but sometimes inconsistent. In his :,, inaugural address at the
University of Freiburg, he depicted Poles in distinctly racist terms, allud-
ing to the lower expectations of the standard of living, both in a material
and an ideal sense, something which is either natural to the Slav race or
has been bred into it in the course of its history.
,,
However, as he grew
older, the importance of race dimmed in his thought, and he came pub-
licly to question the explanatory value of racial concepts in the social sci-
ences.
,o
As David Beetham has argued, Weber ultimately articulated his

,:
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, :,,.

,:
Ibid., o, ;:, ;o, :.

,,
Max Webers remarks in the Verhandlungen des ;. Evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses (:,o) and in a
:,:; letter to Friedrich Naumann, both quoted in Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics,
; and :,,.

,
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, o,;:, ::,.

,,
Max Weber, Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik: Akademische Antrittsrede
(:,,), in MWG i/, ,,: (PW, ).

,o
David Beetham, Max Weber and the Teory of Modern Politics (Cambridge: Polity, :,,), ::,.
Webers sociology was regarded by contemporaries as distinctive by virtue of its rejection of racial






Max Weber and his circles :o
understanding of the nation not in biological concepts, but in the concept
of Kultur, which embraced both the objective dierences of language
and custom, and the subjective appreciation of their distinctiveness,
that constituted the essence of a nation.
,;
During World War i Weber
insisted that Germanys national mission was not simply to safeguard the
political and economic conditions of its own cultural independence, but
also to defend the distinctive cultures of the smaller European nation-
alities especially those in the shadow of Tsarist Russia against the
Entente powers imperialism.
,
At the same time, Weber did not spare his
own national culture from criticism. He was ruthless in his attacks on the
feudal values of the German aristocracy, which he saw manifested in all
aspects of national culture ranging from student fraternities to bourgeois
obsequiousness.
,,
For all the emphasis Weber placed on the importance
of cultural distinctiveness, he never clearly articulated the core features or
values of German culture that were worth defending. Even his contem-
poraries noted the peculiar ambivalence in his attitude toward German
culture. He frequently praises the good fortune of being a German,
Erich Voegelin observed, but the places are few and brief where he speaks
of the Germany he loved.
oc
Although Weber did not look forward to war in August, :,:, once
hostilities commenced he was determined that Germany must win. Te
philosopher Ernst Bloch remembered him as an enthusiastic militarist
who greeted visitors to his salon in his reserve ocers uniform.
o:
Unlike
many other German intellectuals who supported the war eort, Weber
opposed the governments pursuit of territorial annexations in Europe,
which he feared would ruin Germanys diplomatic standing and foment
greater resistance to its plans for future Weltpolitik.
o:
In the east, Weber
theories. See Friedrich Hertz, Rasse, in Handwrterbuch der Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt
(Stuttgart: Enke, :,,:), o,.

,;
Beetham, Teory of Modern Politics, ::;.

,
Ibid., ::. Webers wartime advocacy of the independence of eastern European nationalities
required him to revise his earlier, antagonistic attitudes toward the Poles. Tis shift in his think-
ing was spurred by the :,c, Russian Revolution, which impressed on him the political advan-
tages of winning the support of national minorities for the nation-state. See Mommsen, Max
Weber and German Politics, ,;,, :::.

,,
Max Weber, Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland (:,:;), in MWG i/:,, ,;o,c (PW,
:c,:).

oc
Erich Voegelin, Max Weber, Klner Vierteljahrshefte fr Soziologie ,, no. :/: (:,,c): ::. For an
insightful analysis of Webers lovehate relationship with German culture, see Stephen P. Turner
and Regis A. Factor, Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value: A Study in Philosophy,
Ethics, and Politics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :,), co.

o:
Michael Lwy, Interview with Ernst Bloch, New German Critique , (:,;o): ,,.

o:
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, :,:,, :c,, :::.






Te political leader :;
believed that German policy should aim to secure the independence of
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine from Russian rule; these newly
independent countries would gravitate into Germanys economic orbit
through a tari union, and host German fortications and military bases
to protect against a future Russian advance.
o,
While Weber had already dabbled in politics during the :,cs, it
was not until World War i that he actively sought a place for himself in
German political life. Unable to secure a position as an advisor in Berlin,
he expressed his frustrations with the governments conduct of the war in
articles for a number of left-liberal newspapers.
o
Weber long believed that
the essential problem with German foreign policy was that it lay solely in
the hands of a blustering, dilettantish Kaiser and his unelected ocials,
who could not be held responsible for their decisions.
o,
In his wartime
journalism Weber argued that the fault ultimately lay not with particular
personalities but with the constitutional structure of Imperial Germany.
Te Reichstag (national parliament) was elected on the basis of univer-
sal manhood surage, but its powers were limited to approving legisla-
tion and the federal budget; it could not dismiss the imperial chancellor
through a vote of no condence, nor could it directly aect foreign policy
or military aairs, which remained under the control of the Kaiser and
his administration. Te powers of the Reichstag were further constrained
by the Bundesrat, a federal council composed of appointed representa-
tives of Imperial Germanys constituent monarchies and free cities, whose
approval was necessary to pass legislation, and which shared in the exercise
of administration. To prevent parliamentary leaders from participating
in the national government, the constitution stipulated that members of
the Reichstag could not simultaneously serve in the Bundesrat, thereby
ensuring that the imperial chancellor and his leading ministers (who held
posts as Prussian representatives to the Bundesrat) would be unable to
draw on the strength of a parliamentary base.
Weber insisted that the ocialdoms monopoly on executive oces pre-
vented visionary politicians with party support and mass following from
attaining positions of responsible leadership. Te only way to remedy this
situation, he argued, was by turning the Reichstag into an institution
capable of controlling the imperial administration and selecting and train-
ing national leaders. To that end he recommended granting a qualied
o,
Ibid., :c,;.
o
Einleitung, in MWG i/:,, :,.
o,
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, ::,.



Max Weber and his circles :
minority in the Reichstag the right to form a parliamentary committee of
inquiry; amending the constitution to give party leaders in the Reichstag
the possibility of simultaneously serving in the Bundesrat; creating a
crown council of leading politicians and ocials in the Bundesrat to
advise the Kaiser on policy decisions and vet his public pronouncements;
and ending the plutocratic three-class surage in Prussia.
oo
While Weber
anticipated that the future would bring increasing parliamentarization in
the constituent states of Imperial Germany, he did not call for the insti-
tution of parliamentary government in the strict sense of the term: he
did not demand that the imperial chancellor be made dependent on the
condence of the Reichstag, nor did he endorse the abolition of the mon-
archy until the Kaisers abdication at the end of the war.
o;
Webers contemporaries well understood that his advocacy of parlia-
mentarization was not grounded in a sentimental or idealistic attachment
to popular sovereignty, but in a pragmatic desire for ecient leadership
selection, powerful foreign policy, and national solidarity.
o
Weber was
by no means the only intellectual to advocate the parliamentarization of
Imperial Germany as a means for producing strong political leadership
and unifying the nation. Te historian Friedrich Meinecke, the indus-
trialist Walther Rathenau, and the constitutional jurist Hugo Preuss
advocated many of the same ideas.
o,
However, it was Webers wartime
agitation on behalf of these positions that made him the primus inter
pares for many of his contemporaries. Politically he professed his faith
in democracy with determination in speech and print at a time when this
was not yet so pleasant and easy, the Mnchner Post reminded its readers
in an obituary. Te historian Georg von Below, a conservative critic of

oo
Max Weber, Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland: Zur politischen Kritik
des Beamtentums und Parteiwesens (:,:), in MWG i/:,, ::,,o (PW, :,c:;:); Weber,
Wahlrecht und Demokratie.

o;
Carl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :c:c [:,:]), ,,,; Mommsen, Max
Weber and German Politics, :;:,.

o
See Teodor Heuss, Zu Max Webers Gedchtnis (:,:c), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max
Weber zum Gedchtnis, o,; Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Max Weber als Nationalkonom
(:,:c), in ibid., ,,; Gustav Stolper, Max Weber (:,:c), in ibid., oc; Ernst Troeltsch, Max
Weber (:,:c), in ibid., ,; and Otto Hintze, Max Webers Soziologie (:,:o), in Soziologie
und Geschichte: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, Politik und Teorie der Geschichte, ed.
Gerhard Oestreich, Vol. ii of Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
:,o), :,.

o,
Friedrich Meinecke, Der Sinn unseres Wahlkampfes (:,::), in Politische Schriften und Reden,
ed. Georg Kotowski, Vol. ii of Werke (Darmstadt: Toeche-Mittler, :,,), ,,:; Walther
Rathenau, Politische Auslese (:,::) and Parlamentarismus (:,:,), in Zur Kritik der Zeit:
Mahnung und Warnung, Vol. i of Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Fischer, :,:,), :::,:, :,,,;
Hugo Preuss, Das deutsche Volk und die Politik (Jena: Diederichs, :,:,), ,,o, ::. See also
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, :;:.




Te political leader :,
the Weimar Republic, considered Weber the scholarly head of German
democracy, and the theater critic Julius Bab dubbed him the secret
emperor of all democratic spirits in Germany who were not yet bogged
down by class obstinacy and class interest.
;c
In late September, :,: the German general sta concluded that the
war was lost and instructed the Reichstag to form a government to nego-
tiate peace. Over the next three months Weber missed one chance after
another to receive a position of leadership in German politics. Friedrich
Ebert, the Socialist chairman of the transitional government and future
president of the Republic, considered appointing Weber secretary of state
of the interior, but he chose Hugo Preuss instead. Preuss in turn consid-
ered making Weber an undersecretary in the ministry of interior, but this,
too, did not come to pass.
;:
Weber was instead named an advisor to the
committee that drafted the outlines of the Weimar constitution, where
he helped secure the right of a parliamentary minority to form a com-
mittee of inquiry, and played a signicant role though not a decisive
one in the creation of the oce of the Reich presidency.
;:
In the run-up
to the rst election to the national assembly, Weber seemed to stand a
good chance of winning a seat for the left-liberal DDP. He delivered a
speech in Frankfurt am Main that so impressed the partys local repre-
sentatives that they placed him at the top of their list of nominees. But
when Weber declined actively to promote his candidacy within the DDP,
the regional convention of party delegates moved him toward the bottom
of the electoral list. His pride wounded, Weber refused to stand as a can-
didate. After this disappointment he tried to make an impact on German
politics in more indirect ways. He co-founded the Heidelberg Association
for a Policy of Justice, which aimed to mobilize public opinion on behalf
of Germanys position in the peace negotiations, and accompanied the
German delegation to the Paris peace conference, where he contributed to
writing a memorandum that denied the German governments guilt for
starting the war.
;,
During the last years of his life, a small but at the time inuential
group of the intellectually and morally best qualied people saw in Max

;c
Professor Max Weber, Mnchner Post, June :o, :,:c; Georg von Below, review of Max Weber,
Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, Zeitschrift fr Sozialwissenschaft ::, no. ,/ (:,::):
:::; Julius Bab, Max Weber, Die Weltbhne :o, no. ,c (:,:c): :c,.

;:
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, ,c::; Einleitung, in MWG i/:o, .

;:
Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, ,,,:.

;,
Lebensbild, o,;c (Biography, o,,); Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, ,c,,
,::c.




Max Weber and his circles ,c
Weber the coming man [den kommenden Mann] of Germany, the savior
in its hour of need, as one friend recalled.
;
It is dicult to ascertain the
exact composition of this group, but it appears to have included social-
ist students in Heidelberg and Vienna, Social Democratic politicians,
and academic colleagues and admirers from Webers left-liberal political
milieu.
;,
Te Heidelberger Tageblatt believed that Weber was the strong-
est mind in the [German Democratic] Party, and he certainly would
have been the strongest personality in the rst parliament of the German
Republic, had he been able to obtain a mandate.
;o
To us young stu-
dents who knew him, declared one speaker at Webers memorial service
in Heidelberg, he seemed called to be the statesman who would be for
us and with us a leader of the nation.
;;
Webers exclusion from pol-
itics and his untimely death constituted a national catastrophe for his
admirers. Obituaries mourned the fact that his political talents had been
squandered by his contemporaries and blamed the German middle class
for failing to recognize their true representative.
;
But not everyone who
admired Webers political ideals thought he was suited to be a leader. Hes
ultimately a scholar, and would be outstanding up top as an advisor, Karl
Jaspers observed in February, :,:, but he isnt suited for popular politics.
Hes fascinating in popular assemblies, but one doesnt follow him. Hes
not simple or transparent enough for the audience.
;,
Somewhat less at-
teringly, Teodor Heuss characterized Weber as a master of wrath and
hate whose stormy audacity and wounding candor would have alien-
ated the throng of party men.
c
xaii axxi winii axo uii uusnaxos woix
At the time of Webers death it seemed likely that little of his written work
would remain accessible for posterity. His dissertation and Habilitation
were the only books he published during his lifetime, and his other

;
Robert Michels, Bedeutende Mnner: Charakterologische Studien (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer,
:,:;), :::.

;,
Kthe Leichter, Max Weber als Lehrer und Politiker (:,:o), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max
Weber zum Gedchtnis, :,c; Lebensbild, o,,, oc: (Biography, o::, o:,).

;o
Max Weber, Heidelberger Tageblatt, June :o, :,:c.

;;
R. von Scholz, speech delivered at Webers memorial service in Heidelberg, July :;, :,:c, Ana
o: Deponat Max Weber-Schfer, box , Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

;
Carlo Mierendor, Portrt eines Politikers: Max Weber ins Grab (:,:c/:), in Knig and
Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis, c:; Bab, Max Weber, :c,.

;,
Karl Jaspers to his father, February :,, :,:, Nachlass Karl Jaspers, Familienarchiv.

c
Teodor Heuss, Max Weber (:,:c), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis, ;,.








Marianne Weber and her husbands work ,:
writings were dispersed in journals or newspapers.
:
Only the rst few
chapters of his magnum opus, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and
Society), had been readied for publication, while his desk drawers lay clut-
tered with illegibly written manuscripts that may or may not have
been drafts for the remaining chapters of the treatise. Te consequence
of his chaotic publication style was a dispersed and incomplete oeuvre
that resisted easy transmission. It was thanks rst and foremost to the
Herculean eorts of his widow, Marianne Weber, that contemporaries
were able to read his complete works. After his death she sidelined all her
other projects and devoted herself to safeguarding his intellectual legacy.
For the present, she wrote to a close friend shortly after her husbands
death, I want to live in order to convey everything from him that is
here a great harvest to posterity.
:
She immediately set out to collect
his writings and publish them in a series of volumes. In my opinion, his
fame is just at the beginning of its ascent, she wrote in October, :,:c.
People will be amazed when they hold his works (:c:: volumes) in their
hands. I live for his earthly immortalization.
,
She accomplished her stu-
pendous task in four years. When Gertrud Jaspers cautioned her not to
lose a grip on her own life, she responded passionately:
My dear Mrs. Jaspers, you mean that I must learn again to live my life. Is that
really my task? Isnt the only important thing that I collect all the documents
of this mans intellect and soul, that I capture his life in me and for others, and
wont this perhaps only happen if I bid farewell to what previously had been
my own strong life? I dont know. I know only that I stand before an almost
immense task and that I really mustnt lose a day I will need two years, it
seems to me, just until his letters have been dictated and written up. And espe-
cially the publication of his texts must make progress. I feel it so: this terrible
suering is here to keep all my energy on this task and every day I can hope to
grow a bit more accustomed to the renunciation of everything unimportant. Te
pain must not remain fruitless and I must not run away from it but everything
else is allowed for the time being, isnt it?

Since her late husband could no longer play a part in German pol-
itics, Marianne Webers rst priority was to ensure that his political

:
Weber planned to collect his essays on the sociology of religion in a series of volumes but man-
aged to edit only one of them before his death.

:
Marianne Weber to Marie Baum, June, :,:c, Nachlass Marie Baum, EE ::c;,
Universittsbibliothek Heidelberg.

,
Marianne Weber to Paul Honigsheim, October :,, :,:c, Ana o: Deponat Bayerische
Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Marianne Weber to Karl and Gertrud Jaspers, December :,, :,:c, Nachlass Karl Jaspers,
;,.:,c;c.




Max Weber and his circles ,:
ideas would survive him. Only a few weeks after his death, she set about
gathering his scattered political writings for a volume of his collected
works. Te Mohr Siebeck publishing house, which had a close personal
connection to the Weber family, wanted to postpone publishing it until
the price of production had dropped. Rather than run the risk of letting
his political writings become merely historical documents, Marianne
Weber sought out another publisher, Drei Masken, who would print
them immediately.
,
Drei Masken was also entrusted with the publication
of his manuscript on the sociology of music, which had been discovered
in a desk drawer and passed along to the musicologist Teodor Kroyer for
editing. Mohr Siebeck published the three volumes of Webers collected
essays on the sociology of religion; the remaining installments of Economy
and Society (which Marianne Weber assembled and edited with the help
of the economist Melchior Palyi and the jurist Karl Loewenstein); and
three volumes of collected essays on methodology, social and economic
history, and sociology and social policy. An edition of lectures on eco-
nomic history, derived from student notes and edited by Palyi and the
medieval historian Siegmund Hellmann, was published by Duncker &
Humblot. Te ten-volume edition of Webers collected works was com-
plete by :,:.
o
Marianne Weber made the full breadth of her husbands
oeuvre accessible to readers for the rst time. Without her eorts the ser-
ious reception of his ideas and the dissemination of his reputation would
have been impossible.
;
In addition to her editorial labors, Marianne Weber wrote a ;cc-page
biography of her husband, Max Weber: A Portrait of His Life (:,:o), which
remains unsurpassed as an account of his life and personality. Only a
few months after his death, she began collecting copies of his letters for
inclusion in the book.

Tese letters, which she quoted at length in the

biography, enabled her to relate delicate personal matters without appear-
ing indiscreet. When the letters speak, everything is moved to a pecu-
liar distance, as it seems to me then it is not I who say these things,

,
Marianne Weber to Siebeck Verlag, July , and :,, :,:c, Ana o: Deponat Siebeck.

o
Hanke, Marianne Weber, ,,:,; Marianne Weber, Lebenserinnerungen (Bremen: Storm, :,),
::,.

;
For contemporaries recognition of this fact, see Siegfried Marck, Max Webers politisches
Vermchtnis (:,:,), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis, ,; Robert
Wilbrandt, Max Weber als Erkenntniskritiker der Sozialwissenschaften, Zeitschrift fr die
gesamte Staatswissenschaft ;,, no. (:,:,): ,,; and Hermann Schumacher, Max Weber,
in Deutsches biographisches Jahrbuch, berleitungsband II: :):;:):o (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-
Anstalt, :,:), o:.

See Marianne Weber to Karl and Gertrud Jaspers, October ,:, :,:c, Nachlass Karl Jaspers,
;,.:,c;c.




Heidelberg during the Weimar Republic ,,
but rather long departed people, she explained to Else Ja, her friend
and Max Webers former lover.
,
Some readers were appalled by the frank
details Marianne Weber revealed about her husbands personality and his
struggles with mental illness. In a nasty turn of phrase, the Heidelberg
jurist Otto Gradenwitz remarked that it made the Indian custom of
widow-burning seem more comprehensible.
,c
But on the whole the biog-
raphy received stellar reviews and helped keep Max Webers reputation
alive in Germany throughout the :,:cs and :,,cs. Marianne Weber pre-
sented her husband as a nexus of political and spiritual forces contending
for the German soul at the turn of the century. As one contemporary
reviewer was moved to write, Te engagement with Weber is not simply
a matter of theoretical thought, but rather a matter of the entire human
being It is thus tting that the man and the fate of his life interest us
to an entirely dierent degree than is normally the case with scholars.
,:
uii oiiniic ouii xc rui wii xai i iiunii c
Te myth of Heidelberg persisted long after Max Webers death. One
of the key gures in the institutionalization of his memory was Marianne
Weber, who in :,:: returned to Heidelberg from Munich and subse-
quently moved back into the Fallenstein House. Within a few years she
resolved to start holding her salon again. It continued to meet throughout
the Weimar Republic and survived the years of National Socialism with
only a brief interruption, though the number of its participants was starkly
diminished.
,:
Another family member who cultivated Max Webers mem-
ory was his brother, Alfred Weber, also a professor of political economy at
Heidelberg. By the beginning of the :,:cs Alfred Weber had come to be
regarded as one of the most prominent social scientists in Germany. Te
Heidelberg Institute for Social and Political Sciences, which he founded
and directed, was a place where young faculty steeped in Max Webers
writings, such as Emil Lederer and Arnold Bergstraesser, trained a gener-
ation of students that included Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias.
,,

,
Marianne Weber to Else Ja, August ::, :,:,, Nachlass Alfred Weber, folder ,c, Bundesarchiv
Koblenz.

,c
Roth, Marianne Weber and Her Circle, xliv.

,:
Wilke, review of Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild, Hefte fr Bchereiwesen ::, no. ,
(:,:;): :c,.

,:
Marianne Weber, Lebenserinnerungen, :,,::,; Marianne Weber, Academic Conviviality,
Minerva :,, no. : (:,;;): ::o; Roth, Marianne Weber and Her Circle, xliii, xlixl.

,,
See Blomert, Intellektuelle im Aufbruch; and Reinhart Blomert, Hans Ulrich Elinger, and
Norbert Giovannini, eds., Heidelberger Sozial- und Staatswissenschaften: Das Institut fr Sozial-
und Staatswissenschaften zwischen :): und :), (Marburg: Metropolis, :,,;).






Max Weber and his circles ,
After Marianne Weber, the person in Heidelberg who most revered
Max Weber was Karl Jaspers. Trained as a psychiatrist, Jaspers obtained
a Habilitation and faculty position as a psychologist in Heidelberg with
Max Webers help. But shortly after Webers death Jaspers announced his
intention to become a philosopher, a decision he insisted was inspired by
the personality of Weber himself. At a memorial service that took place
in Heidelberg in July, :,:c, Jaspers apotheosized Weber to an audience
of admirers as the embodiment of the modern existential philosopher.
Tis struck many of his contemporaries as a bold and even outrageous
claim, especially since Weber, a professor of political economy, had never
once called himself a philosopher. Heinrich Rickert, the reigning neo-
Kantian philosopher in Heidelberg, angrily told Jaspers, Tat you con-
struct a philosophy out of Max Weber may be your rightful privilege, but
to call him a philosopher is absurd.
,
A year later Jaspers was nevertheless
appointed to one of the universitys two chairs in philosophy. As a teacher
and mentor to Heidelberg students, a member of Marianne Webers inner
circle, and the author of two books on Max Weber, Jaspers did his best to
ensure that his mentors name was remembered in Germany.
,,
Among the younger generation of scholars in Heidelberg, Karl
Mannheim played an especially important role in disseminating Webers
ideas. As a student Mannheim had spent several years in Berlin attending
Georg Simmels seminar before returning to Budapest to complete his
doctorate in philosophy. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Habsburg
Empire, he briey held a lectureship at the College of Education a pos-
ition to which he had been appointed by his friend Georg Lukcs, the
erstwhile Communist commissioner of education but chose to emigrate
when the government was overthrown and replaced by a reactionary and
anti-Semitic regime. Concerned about his professional future and per-
sonal safety in Hungary, Mannheim left for Vienna, then Freiburg and
Berlin, before nally settling in Heidelberg. He spent ve years as a private
scholar before he was nally named a lecturer in sociology.
,o
Mannheim
made Weber a part of his teaching in Heidelberg, and even considered

,
Karl Jaspers, Philosophical Autobiography, in Te Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. Paul Arthur
Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open Court, :,:), ,,.

,,
Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Rede bei der von der Heidelberger Studentenschaft am :;. Juli :):o veran-
stalteten Trauerfeier (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,::); Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Deutsches Wesen
im politischen Denken, im Forschen und Philosophieren (Oldenburg: Stalling, :,,:).

,o
Henk E. S. Woldring, Karl Mannheim: Te Development of His Tought (New York: St. Martins,
:,o), ,o;. In :,,c Mannheim moved to Frankfurt to accept a professorship in sociology.
After losing his position in :,,, he emigrated to England and taught at the London School of
Economics until his death in :,;.



Heidelberg during the Weimar Republic ,,
writing a book-length study on Weber, which he billed to the prospective
publisher as the rst work that attempts to grasp Weber not just meth-
odologically but also in his sociological-historical problematic.
,;
A young person of consequence who passed through these
Heidelberg circles was the American student Talcott Parsons. Te son
of a Congregational minister turned college professor, Parsons entered
Amherst College with the intention of studying biology or medicine but
soon found his interests drawn toward the social sciences.
,
After gradu-
ating in :,: he hesitated to enroll in an American doctoral program
and instead set o for England to spend a year as a nondegree student
at the London School of Economics. At the end of his stay in London
he made the fateful decision to accept another fellowship, this time to
study in Heidelberg as part of a new GermanAmerican exchange initia-
tive.
,,
On his way to a preparatory summer language course in Vienna, he
stopped in Heidelberg to orient himself and drop o his personal belong-
ings. Tere, in June, :,:,, Arnold Bergstraesser, a sta member of Alfred
Webers Heidelberg Institute for Social and Political Sciences, informed
him which German social scientists he should read. It became clear to
Parsons that Max Weber, whose name he had never heard before, was
regarded in Heidelberg as the central gure in the modern social sciences.
When Parsons returned in the fall he began to read Te Protestant Ethic
as absorbedly as if it were a detective story.
:cc
[Webers] dominance in
the intellectual atmosphere at Heidelberg was not without a great deal of
opposition, he later recalled. But this opposition meant that there was
an extremely lively controversy and that everyone who came there was
made familiar with his work immediately.
:c:
Parsons decided to become a formal degree candidate when he real-
ized that he could obtain a doctorate from Heidelberg with relatively little
time commitment. After consulting with the political economist Edgar

,;
Karl Mannheim to Paul Siebeck, March :,, :,:,, in Mannheim, Selected Correspondence, ,.
He later abandoned the manuscript of between ,cc and ,,c pages, and decided to integrate
some of its sections into his :,:, book Ideologie und Utopie.

,
Charles Camic, Introduction: Talcott Parsons before Te Structure of Social Action, in Te
Early Essays, by Talcott Parsons, ed. Charles Camic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
:,,:), ixxiv.

,,
Talcott Parsons, On Building Social System Teory: A Personal History, Ddalus ,,, no.
(:,;c): :o;.

:cc
Talcott Parsons, Te Circumstances of My Encounter with Max Weber, in Sociological
Traditions from Generation to Generation: Glimpses of the American Experience, ed. Robert K.
Merton and Matilda White Riley (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, :,c), ,,.

:c:
Talcott Parsons, A Short Account of My Intellectual Development, Alpha Kappa Deltan :,
(:,,,): .





Max Weber and his circles ,o
Salin, he decided to write his dissertation on Te Concept of Capitalism
in Recent German Literature, focusing on the work of Karl Marx,
Werner Sombart, and Max Weber.
:c:
For his oral examinations, he took
his major elds in economic theory with Salin and sociological theory
with Alfred Weber, and his minor elds in modern European history with
Willy Andreas and modern philosophy with Karl Jaspers.
:c,
He attended
Marianne Webers Sunday jours, took a seminar on Max Weber with Karl
Mannheim, and made the acquaintance of Alexander von Schelting, a
leading interpreter of Max Webers methodological writings.
:c
In early
:,:;, before he had even defended his dissertation, Parsons approached
Marianne Weber with the idea of translating Te Protestant Ethic into
English.
:c,
After weathering the British publishers skepticism about his
inexperience as a scholar and translator, Parsons persevered through sev-
eral rounds of negotiation and revision until his version of Te Protestant
Ethic was nally published in :,,c.
:co
iiox cii xax\ ro rui uxi rio s raris
As a consequence of his time spent in Heidelberg, Parsons enjoyed an
unparalleled degree of access to Max Webers intellectual milieu and
surviving circle of acquaintances. But most other members of the rst
generation of American Weber scholars also possessed some rsthand
knowledge of European social science. Frank Knight, the University of
Chicago economist who rst translated Weber into English, received his
M.A. in German in :,:,, and spent that summer in Germany collect-
ing socialist literature and attending lectures on theology in Marburg.
:c;

Howard Becker, a professor of sociology at Smith College and the

:c:
Parsons, Building Social System Teory, :;. Salin was a leading member of the George
Circle as well as a participant in the Webers Sunday jours. See Loewenstein, Persnliche
Erinnerungen (:,oo), ,c. Salin maintained a critical distance from Weber but nonetheless
regarded him as a powerful pedagogical role model and multifaceted scholar. See Edgar
Salin, Zur Methode und Aufgabe der Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Schmollers Jahrbuch , (:,::):
,,; and Geschichte der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Berlin: Springer, :,:,), ,. See also Salin, Um
Stefan George: Erinnerung und Zeugnis (Munich: Kpper, :,,), :c;::.

:c,
Parsons, Circumstances of My Encounter, c.

:c
Ibid.; William J. Buxton, Discussions with Professor Parsons & Kenichi Tominaga, American
Sociologist ,:, no. : (:ccc): o:.

:c,
Parsons, Circumstances of My Encounter, c.

:co
Te history of Parsonss edition is told in Lawrence A. Sca, Te Creation of the Sacred Text:
Talcott Parsons Translates Te Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber Studies
,, no. : (:cc,): :c,:.

:c;
Te rst English translation of Webers work to appear was General Economic History, trans.
Frank H. Knight (Mineola, NY: Dover, :cc, [:,:;]). On Knight, see Ross Emmett, Frank
Knight, Max Weber, Chicago Economics and Institutionalism, Max Weber Studies Beiheft i







From Germany to the United States ,;
University of Wisconsin-Madison who published several works high-
lighting Webers contributions to social thought, studied in Cologne in
:,:o; with Leopold von Wiese, Max Scheler, and Paul Honigsheim.
:c

Teodore Abel was born in Poland and studied with Florian Znaniecki
at Pozna before emigrating to the United States, where he received his
Ph.D. from Columbia University in :,:, with a dissertation contain-
ing the rst analysis of Webers sociological theory in English.
:c,
Te
rst English-language monograph on Webers sociology was a :,,, dis-
sertation published in Paris by Lowell Bennion, who rst read Weber
in Erich Voegelins seminar at the University of Vienna before mov-
ing to Strasbourg to complete his graduate studies under Maurice
Halbwachs.
::c
An exception to this rule was Edward Shils, a precocious autodidact
from a working-class Philadelphia family, who discovered Weber by
accident during his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania in
:,:;. Always eager to see what other people were reading, Shils was in
the habit of picking up library books that he found discarded on tables
or returned to the circulation desk. It was in the course of this foraging
that he came across R. H. Tawneys Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
and Nikolai Bukharins Historical Materialism, both of which contained
numerous references to the Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie
of a German professor named Max Weber. Fascinated by the unfamiliar
notion of a sociology of religion, Shils resolved to learn enough German
(:cco): :co; and Lawrence A. Sca, Max Weber in America (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, :c::), :c;.

:c
For Beckers early work on Weber, see Howard Becker, Culture Case Study and Ideal-Typical
Method: With Special Reference to Max Weber, Social Forces ::, no. , (:,,): ,,,c,; and
Harry Elmer Barnes and Howard Becker, Social Tought from Lore to Science, : vols. (Boston,
MA: Heath, :,,). On his biography, see Leopold von Wiese, Systematic Sociology on the Basis
of the Beziehungslehre and Gebildelehre, ed. Howard Becker (New York: Wiley, :,,:); xi;
Hans H. Gerth, Te Reception of Max Webers Work in American Sociology, in Politics,
Character, and Culture: Perspectives from Hans Gerth, ed. Joseph Bensman, Arthur Vidich, and
Nobuko Gerth (Westport, CT: Greenwood, :,:), :c,; and Hans H. Gerth, Howard Becker
:,,:,oc, American Sociological Review :,, no. , (:,oc): ;,. While stationed with the Oce
of Strategic Services in Heidelberg in the spring of :,,, Becker took the opportunity to visit
and interview Marianne Weber. See Howard Becker, Max Weber, Assassination, and German
Guilt: An Interview with Marianne Weber, American Journal of Economics and Sociology :c, no.
(:,,:): c,.

:c,
See Teodore Abel, Systematic Sociology in Germany: A Critical Analysis of Some Attempts to
Establish Sociology as an Independent Science (New York: Octagon Books, :,o, [:,:,]); and Te
Columbia Circle of Scholars: Selections from the Journal (:),o:),;), ed. Elzbieta Haas (Frankfurt
am Main: Lang, :cc:), ,.

::c
Sca, Max Weber in America, :c:; Laurie Newman DiPadova and Ralph S. Brower, A Piece of
Lost History: Max Weber and Lowell L. Bennion, American Sociologist :,, no. , (:,,:): ,;,o.



Max Weber and his circles ,
to read Weber in the original. After taking one semester of German, he
began to work his way through Webers Wirtschaftsgeschichte but even-
tually gave up without having made much headway. Te only one of
Webers texts that Shils managed to read fully prior to graduation was
Parsonss translation of Te Protestant Ethic.
:::
After spending a year in New York City as an apprentice student social
worker, Shils set out for Chicago in the fall of :,,: with the intention
of making ends meet through social work while continuing his educa-
tion at the University of Chicago.
:::
After several years of circling
around Webers work without directly engaging the original texts, it
was at Chicago that Shils began to study his writings in earnest.
::,
He
found encouragement from the economist Frank Knight, the only per-
son in Chicago, aside from myself, who took Max Weber seriously, and
he took a seminar with him on Part i of Economy and Society.
::
Shils
became a research assistant and then an instructor at the university, and
was eventually placed in charge of restructuring its required second-year-
undergraduate Social Science Survey course.
::,
In :,,, he succeeded in
integrating into the curriculum several of Webers texts that he had trans-
lated into English: Die Objektivitt sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozial-
politischer Erkenntnis; Der Sinn der Wertfreiheit der soziologischen
und konomischen Wissenschaften; Wissenschaft als Beruf ; parts of
Politik als Beruf ; and excerpts on political parties, classes, and estates
from Economy and Society.
::o
During the late :,,cs and :,cs Shilss Social
Science Survey curriculum introduced Weber to a generation of Chicago
undergraduates, among them the future Weber scholar Reinhard Bendix,
as well as a number of rising stars who taught the course, such as Daniel
Bell and David Riesman. As Lawrence Sca has noted, it was Shils who

:::
Edward Shils, Some Notes on Max Weber in America (c. :,;, or :,;o), ;:c, :,, in the
Edward Shils Papers, University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center. See
also Edward Shils, A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography: Te History of My Pursuit of a
Few Ideas, ed. Steven Grosby (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, :cco), :,. I am indebted to
Lawrence A. Sca, Max Webers Reception in the United States, :,:c:,oc, in Das Faszinosum
Max Weber: Die Geschichte seiner Geltung, ed. Karl-Ludwig Ay and Knut Borchardt (Constance:
UVK, :cco), ,,,, for referring me to Shilss unpublished text, and to Liisi Keedus for provid-
ing me with a copy.

:::
Shils, Sociological Autobiography, ::, :;, ,,c.

::,
Shils, Some Notes, :,, :;; Edward Shils, Some Academics, Mainly in Chicago, American
Scholar ,c, no. : (:,:): :.

::
Shils, Some Notes, :o; Shils, Some Academics, :.

::,
Shils, Sociological Autobiography, ;.

::o
Sca, Max Webers Reception, oc, ,.






From Germany to the United States ,,
was responsible for the rst major institutionalization of Weber in the
American undergraduate curriculum.
::;
Te second gure responsible for the institutionalization of Webers
thought was Parsons. After completing his coursework in Germany, he
taught for one year at Amherst College and then returned to Heidelberg
to defend his dissertation. On the advice of the chair of the Amherst eco-
nomics department, he then accepted a position at Harvard in the fall of
:,:; as an instructor in economics, a nonfaculty position that aorded
him enough time to brush up on his knowledge of economic theory in
graduate seminars. Soon after his arrival he was asked to teach in the
newly formed undergraduate Committee on Sociology and Social Ethics,
and he stayed on as a faculty instructor when it was subsequently trans-
formed into the Department of Sociology. It was not until :,,o that he
managed to obtain a secure tenure-track position as an assistant profes-
sor.
::
Despite his low rank in the department, Parsons was able to attract
promising young graduate students such as Robert Bierstedt, Kingsley
Davis, Edward Devereux, Edward Hartshorne, and Robert Merton. He
also held a formative sociological colloquium in Adams House where
recent European social thought and Webers work in particular served
as a central point of orientation. In the colloquiums minutes, Davis
revealed the degree to which Webers concepts had permeated the col-
loquium when he humorously noted that although it has two bureau-
cratic ocials, the group is quite informal, having a charismatic leader
and being controlled by gossip.
::,
Te third gure who played a major role in institutionalizing Weber
was the economist Alvin Johnson, who from :,:: onward directed the
New School for Social Research, an adult education program organized
by progressive intellectuals in New York City. Five years into his tenure at
the New School, Johnson accepted an oer to serve as associate editor of
the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, a new reference work that sought
contributions from leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Johnson
had visited Germany in :,:, and :,:, and returned once more in :,,:
to strengthen his academic contacts on behalf of the Encyclopaedia. In
the course of these trips he developed a friendship with Emil Lederer,
a professor of political economy at the University of Heidelberg and a

::;
Ibid., o:.

::
Charles Camic, Introduction, xxixxiii, xxxvixliv.

::,
Parsons Sociological Group: Reports of Meetings, :, in the Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP
:.o:, box :, folder Discussion Group Notes :,,o:,,;, Harvard University Archives.



Max Weber and his circles c
former member of the Weber Circle.
::c
It was likely thanks to Lederer
that Johnson developed a sympathy for Heidelbergs academic ethos,
which bore similarities to the progressive intellectual milieu he knew from
home. Weber became Johnsons touchstone for the best that German aca-
demia had to oer. In our search for contributors to the Encyclopaedia
we had become very familiar with German academic personnel, he later
recalled. We knew what professors were marking time and what ones
were forging new and interesting ideas. In the political sciences the schol-
ars we regarded as most promising were those who drew their inspiration
from Max Weber, the most creative thinker of our time.
:::
When the Nazi government red Jewish and politically oppositional
faculty from German universities in April, :,,,, Johnson saw an oppor-
tunity to help persecuted scholars and to acquire a research faculty for
the New School at the same time. He set out to create a University in
Exile drawing on connections he had made during his work on the
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. He turned to Emil Lederer for advice
about whom to approach.
:::
Many of the scholars whom Lederer recruited
to join the University in Exile were personally connected to the Weber
Circle. Te economist Eduard Heimann, the sociologist Albert Salomon,
and the politician Hans Staudinger had gotten to know Max Weber in
Heidelberg before World War i, while the economist Jakob Marschak and
the sociologists Hans Speier and Carl Mayer had studied under Webers
Heidelberg colleagues in the :,:cs.
::,
A shared admiration or at least
respect for Webers writing was an integral part of their educational back-
ground. Along with Salomon and Speier, the international lawyer Erich

::c
Peter M. Rutko and William B. Scott, New School: A History of the New School for Social
Research (New York: Free Press, :,o), o,,c. As a graduate student Lederer had attended the
Webers Sunday jours and worked as editorial secretary for the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und
Sozialpolitik. During the Weimar Republic he served as the journals editor and deputy director of
the Heidelberg Institute for Social and Political Sciences. See Blomert, Intellektuelle im Aufbruch;
Hans Ulrich Elinger, Interdisziplinaritt: Zu Emil Lederers Wissenschaftsverstndnis am
InSoSta, in Blomert et al., Heidelberger Sozial- und Staatswissenschaften, ::;,; and Factor,
Guide, :,,c.

:::
Alvin Johnson, Pioneers Progress (New York: Viking, :,,:), ,,o.

:::
Rutko and Scott, New School, ,::co; Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des
Denkens (Munich: Hanser, :cc,), ,.

::,
Loewenstein, Persnliche Erinnerungen (:,oo), ,c; Ulf Matthiesen, Im Schatten einer
endlosen groen Zeit: Etappen der intellektuellen Biographie Albert Salomons, in Exil,
Wissenschaft, Identitt: Die Emigration deutscher Sozialwissenschaftler :),,:),,, ed. Ilja Srubar
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,), ,c::; Hans Staudinger, Wirtschaftspolitik im Weimarer
Staat: Lebenserinnerungen eines politischen Beamten im Reich und in Preussen :) bis :),,, ed.
Hagen Schulze (Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft, :,:), ::; Lewis A. Coser, Refugee Scholars in
America: Teir Impact and Teir Experiences (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, :,), :,:;
Rutko and Scott, New School, :::, :::,.




Translating Max Weber in the United States :
Hula and the sociologist Alfred Schtz had published on Weber prior to
their emigration.
::
Whether these migr scholars armed his principles
or sought to go beyond them, Weber served as one of their major points
of intellectual orientation. Trough their teaching, scholarship, and their
in-house journal Social Research, the faculty of the New School made
important contributions to the dissemination of Webers concepts in the
United States between the :,,cs and the :,,cs.
ri axsi ari xc xa x winii i x rui uxi rio s raris
In the fall of :,,, Shils began to form plans for translating all of Webers
major works into English. Although he felt condent that he could handle
the translation work himself, he sought the guidance of a scholar who was
more knowledgeable about Webers biography and intellectual context.
He therefore wrote to Salomon, a recent arrival at the University in Exile,
who had just published a trilogy of interpretive articles on Max Weber in
Social Research.
::,
Shils proposed publishing a volume containing three
of Webers methodological essays: Der Sinn der Wertfreiheit, Die
Objektivitt sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,
and Wissenschaft als Beruf. Shils would contribute the translations,
while Salomon would serve as the volumes editor, writing an introduc-
tion that contextualized Webers life and work, and supplying explana-
tory notes for the texts. Shils envisaged a subsequent volume of Webers
political sociology, containing the Typen der Herrschaft (types of ruler-
ship) from Economy and Society along with Politik als Beruf, followed by
two volumes of his sociology of religion, and nally a volume containing
the rst two chapters of Economy and Society and the remaining essays
in the Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Salomon expressed his
eagerness to participate and suggested several alterations to the contents

::
Albert Salomon, Max Weber, Die Gesellschaft ,, Part i (:,:o): :,:,,; Albert Salomon, review
of Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Eine Gedenkrede and Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild,
Die Gesellschaft ,, Part ii (:,:o): :o,c, and in Archiv des entlichen Rechts :: (:,:;): :,,:;
Erich Hula, Ein einsamer Kmpfer (:,:;), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum
Gedchtnis, :,;; Erich Hula, Max Weber: Scholar and Politician, Contemporary Review
:, (:,:): ;,; Alfred Schtz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt: Einleitung in die ver-
stehende Soziologie (Vienna: Springer, :,,:); Hans Speier, Max Weber, in Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R. A. Seligman (New York: Macmillan, :,,,), Vol. xv, ,o,.

::,
Albert Salomon, Max Webers Methodology, Social Research :, no. : (:,,): :;o; Max
Webers Sociology, Social Research :, no. : (:,,,): oc;,; Max Webers Political Ideas, Social
Research :, no. , (:,,,): ,o. Prior to arriving in the United States via England, Salomon
had served on the sta of the Deutsche Hochschule fr Politik (German College of Politics) in
Berlin and edited the journal Die Gesellschaft.



Max Weber and his circles :
of the projected volumes.
::o
But by the late :,,cs the venture had stalled
or fallen apart. According to Shils, who mentioned the project decades
later in his memoirs, nothing came of it because I was not very sympa-
thetic with his [Salomons] cultural heroic pessimism.
::;
Te realization that Webers work was ripe for translation appears to
have dawned on several American scholars at around the same time. In
the spring of :,,o, while teaching a seminar at the University of Chicago
on Economy and Society, Knight began to contemplate making a rough
translation of the book. He wrote to Talcott Parsons to enquire whether
he, too, was working on a translation of Economy and Society, mention-
ing in passing that there is a youngster here in sociology [Shils] who is
working on a book of selections from Weber for a wider audience. When
Knight learned that Parsons had not planned such a project, he suggested
that the two of us together ought to arrange to get something done
about making the substance of the book available in English.
::
Parsons
suggested starting with either the rst two volumes of the Gesammelte
Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, or the sections from Economy and Society
on the city, the sociology of religion, the sociology of law, and the soci-
ology of rulership (Typen der Herrschaft). I understand that Salomon
of the New School has at least a selection from this part [the Typen der
Herrschaft] in mind, he added. Parsons considered Part i of Economy
and Society almost too terribly abstract to attempt to translate.
::,
In
the end, the only publication that ultimately emerged from Knight and
Parsonss planned collaboration was an edition of the sociology of law
from Economy and Society. Parsons recommended the project to Harvard
University Press but ultimately contributed little in the way of content;
Shils and the Chicago law professor Max Rheinstein carried out the
translation. While the work on this volume appears to have commenced
in :,,,, the nished volume did not appear until :,,.
:,c

::o
Edward A. Shils to Albert Salomon, October :, and November o, :,,,; Albert Salomon to
Edward Shils, n.d. (c. late October or early November, :,,,) and November :,, :,,,, Albert
Salomon Collection, box :, folder :, Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

::;
Shils, Some Notes, ,;.

::
Frank H. Knight to Talcott Parsons, April :, and May :, :,,o, Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP
:..:, box :, folder Personal Correspondence :,,,:,,,. In his correspondence with Salomon,
Shils reported that Knight was advising his translation project and had oered to help secure a
publisher.

::,
Talcott Parsons to Frank Knight, June ,, :,,o, Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP :..:, box :,
folder Personal Correspondence :,,,:,,o.

:,c
Max Weber, Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, ed. Max Rheinstein, trans. Edward
Shils and Max Rheinstein (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, :,oo). On the genesis
of the project, see William J. Buxton and David Rehorick, Te Place of Max Weber in the
Post-Structure Writings of Talcott Parsons, in Talcott Parsons Today: His Teory and Legacy in
Translating Max Weber in the United States ,
Despite his doubts concerning the translatability of the rst chapters
of Economy and Society, by the end of the :,,cs Parsons eventually found
himself involved in precisely such a translation project. Te Austrian
economist Friedrich Hayek, who at the time was teaching at the London
School of Economics, had commissioned a young Cambridge graduate,
Alexander Henderson, to prepare a draft translation of the rst two chap-
ters of Economy and Society, which was then sent to Parsons for review.
After reading the draft in the winter of :,,,, Parsons informed the
British publisher, William Hodge, that the translation was unpublishable
in its present form and that it required extensive revisions, the addition of
explanatory notes, and an interpretive introduction. On the basis of this
verdict, the publisher hired Parsons to edit and revise Hendersons transla-
tion. When war broke out and Henderson was called up for military ser-
vice, Parsons took over the project and added translations of the third and
fourth chapters of Economy and Society, aided by a draft that had earlier
been prepared by Shils and Schelting at Columbia University. Parsons
sent the draft and introduction to Hodge in the fall of :,:. Te war and
typesetting problems delayed its publication and the manuscript circu-
lated in mimeographed form for several years. Henderson and Parsonss
Teory of Social and Economic Organization nally appeared in :,;.
:,:
In the meantime another major translation project had taken shape
under the migr German sociologist Hans Gerth. As a young man in
the late :,:cs Gerth had read Politics as a Vocation in the Kassel public
library and set o to Heidelberg to study with its author, only to discover
on arrival that Weber had died seven years earlier. He nonetheless chose
to remain in Heidelberg, where he studied with Arnold Bergstraesser and
later Karl Mannheim, whom he served as unocial assistant and sub-
sequently followed to the University of Frankfurt to complete his stud-
ies.
:,:
After receiving his Ph.D. Gerth went to work as a journalist for the
Contemporary Sociology, ed. A. Javier Trevio (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, :cc:),
,o;.

:,:
Max Weber, Te Teory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons, trans. A. M.
Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Free Press, :,o [:,;]). Te history of the project
is detailed in Keith Tribe, Talcott Parsons as Translator of Max Webers Basic Sociological
Categories, History of European Ideas ,,, no. : (:cc;): :::,,. On the dating of Parsonss com-
pletion of the translation and introduction, see Talcott Parsons to Ephraim Fischo, April ::,
:,:, Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP :,.:, box :;, folder Weber translation corres. Shils
recalled rst meeting Schelting in :,,, or :,, in Chicago. When Shils spent the :,,; aca-
demic year at Columbia University, where Schelting was teaching at the time, they gave a joint
seminar on Weber and worked on a translation of the rst chapter of Economy and Society. See
Shils, Some Notes, ::,.

:,:
Mathias Grerath, ed., Die Zerstrung einer Zukunft: Gesprche mit emigrierten
Sozialwissenschaftlern (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, :,,), ,.
Max Weber and his circles
Berliner Tageblatt and other news services in Berlin. Tough not Jewish,
he eventually decided to emigrate in :,,; when he began to fear that the
Gestapo would arrest him for disclosing information about Nazi censor-
ship. As a relative latecomer to the United States, Gerth faced a chilly
reception from earlier migrs who had been forced to leave because
of racial or political persecution. With the assistance of Shils, Speier,
and other benefactors in the American sociological community, Gerth
managed to nd a position at the University of Illinois and then at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tere he whiled away his time trans-
lating some of Webers writings, giving them to graduate students to cor-
rect, and then assigning them in his classes. Tis exercise developed a
new dynamic when a young graduate student named C. Wright Mills
became involved in the process. Sensing an opportunity to promote both
their careers, Mills suggested that he and Gerth collaborate in revising
the translations for publication. Gerth would handle the translation
and scholarly apparatus, while Mills would improve the English prose,
organize the manuscript, and market it to prospective publishers and
reviewers.
:,,
Te rst product of their joint venture was a translation of Webers
section on Class, Status, Party from Economy and Society, which they
placed in Dwight Macdonalds journal Politics in :,. Soon Mills was
encouraging Gerth to produce an entire volume of translations. Millss
ambition to produce the rst Weber reader pitted them in a race against
Shils, who had meanwhile announced that he was planning to publish
two volumes of selections from Webers works.
:,
Gerth and Mills were
rst to the nish line, and their anthology From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology appeared in :,o.
:,,
From Max Weber included both Vocation
essays; sections from Economy and Society on social stratication, bur-
eaucracy, and charisma; excerpts from the Gesammelte Aufstze zur
Religionssoziologie; and short essays on society and politics in Imperial
Germany. Broadly assigning Webers contributions to the elds of science
and politics, power, religion, and social structures, and emphasiz-
ing the dual importance of bureaucracy and charisma in his oeuvre, From
Max Weber quickly became the foundational sourcebook for teaching

:,,
Guy Oakes and Arthur J. Vidich, Collaboration, Reputation, and Ethics in American Academic
Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, :,,,), :,,
:,:o.

:,
Ibid., :,,;.

:,,
Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New
York: Oxford University Press, :,o).



Translating Max Weber in the United States ,
Weber. Shils was left to publish Te Methodology of the Social Sciences, a
collection of Weber translations much more specialized than the major
anthology he originally envisaged.
:,o
Te three translation projects that came to fruition in the second
half of the :,cs From Max Weber, Te Teory of Social and Economic
Organization, and Te Methodology of the Social Sciences laid the ground-
work for the major boom in American Weber scholarship in the postwar
years. While translations of the full range of Webers works would not be
available until the late :,ocs, for the rst time many of his fundamental
texts were accessible to an English-speaking audience, just as American
social science was becoming the standard for scholarship around the
world. In the fall of :,;, at a time of food shortages and political uncer-
tainty in Germany, Marianne Weber had at least one reason to be opti-
mistic about the future. It seems to me, she wrote to one of Webers
migr admirers, that in America Max Webers time has now come.
:,;

:,o
Max Weber, Te Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A. Shils and Henry A.
Finch (New York: Free Press, :,,).

:,;
Marianne Weber to Paul Honigsheim, September :, :,;, Ana o: Deponat Bayerische
Akademie der Wissenschaften.


o
cuairii :
Value freedom and polytheism
From the beginning of his academic career until the end of his life, Max
Weber tirelessly repeated two claims about what he called the value
freedom (Wertfreiheit) of scholarship. First, he insisted that scholarly
inquiry was incapable of yielding norms for guiding practical action.
Systematic and rigorous study of the world could enlighten individuals as
to which means they should select for a given end, or which ultimate ends
were logically or practically incompatible with each other, but it could not
tell them which ends they must choose. Second, he demanded that schol-
ars keep their evaluative judgments separate from their ascertainment of
facts. While scholars might legitimately allow their subjective interests to
determine the kinds of questions they asked, they must strenuously avoid
concepts containing an implicit value judgment about the desirability of
those facts.
One of the peculiarities of Webers concept of value freedom is that
he never provided a philosophically rigorous justication for why empir-
ical scholarship and evaluative judgments could not be conjoined. At
times he treated the principle as self-evident, insisting that the validity
of a practical imperative as a norm, and the truth validity of an empirical
ascertainment of fact, are absolutely heterogeneous issues, and the spe-
cic dignity of each is violated if one misjudges this and forces the two
spheres together.
:
On other occasions, he simply insisted that the world
of everyday experience was fundamentally polytheistic, in the sense that
the ultimate possible values or ends in life stood in irreconcilable con-
ict with each other.
:
Only a prophet or savior could dictate which values

:
Max Weber, Der Sinn der Wertfreiheit der soziologischen und konomischen Wissenschaften
(:,:;), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :,), ,c: (MSS, ::).

:
Max Weber, Zwischen zwei Gesetzen (:,:o), in MWG i/:,, , (PW, ;); Weber, Der Sinn der
Wertfreiheit, ,c; (MSS, :;); Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (:,:,), in MWG i/:;, :: (VL, ;);
Max Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf (:,:,), in MWG i/:;, ,, (VL, ::).




Value freedom and polytheism ;
individuals must make their own; the most scholarship could do was
disclose the potential conicts between dierent ultimate ends, illumin-
ate the consequences of pursuing them, and assist individuals in choosing
among them with clarity and responsibility. Nothing resembling a logical
proof of the necessity of value freedom is to be found in Webers writ-
ings. He seems to have believed that honest empirical investigation of the
world was sucient to conrm his claim.
Te concerns Weber raised about the utility and meaning of scholar-
ship were not unique to n-de-sicle Germany. As the professionalization
and specialization of scholarship proceeded apace from the late nine-
teenth century onward, intellectuals in both Europe and America began
to worry that the growth of technical knowledge was outstripping its abil-
ity to answer social questions. Te eorts of governments and businesses
to exploit academic research meanwhile raised concerns about academic
freedom in the modern university.
,
When Edward Shils wrote to Albert
Salomon in :,,, to solicit his collaboration in publishing a series of vol-
umes of Weber translations, he proposed the following:
We should begin with the book which is the most apt of all his writings to have
a general appeal at this time, namely, those essays which deal with the quite
well known problem of scientic detachment and objectivity and their relation-
ship to political judgments and activity. Tis problem has been widely discussed
among the more literate lay public in the United States and England and even in
such magazines as Harpers the New Republic etc.

Shils was particularly concerned by the sanctions that small American col-
leges, especially those aliated with religious denominations or located in
the southern states, imposed on independent-minded faculty. He believed
that Webers writings on value freedom in scholarship were relevant for a
time and a place like America where academic freedom was curtailed
by prejudice and provincialism. Around the same time that Shils began
translating Webers methodological essays for inclusion in the University
of Chicagos Social Science Survey course, he published an article on the
limitations on the freedom of research and teaching in the social sci-
ences, in which he surveyed the various business interests, social groups,
and institutions that imposed or encouraged academic conformity. Shilss

,
See Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, Te Development of Academic Freedom in the
United States (New York: Columbia University Press, :,,,); and Mark C. Smith, Social Science in
the Crucible: Te American Debate over Objectivity and Purpose, :)::),: (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, :,,).

Edward A. Shils to Albert Salomon, November o, :,,,, Albert Salomon Collection, box :, folder
:, Leo Baeck Institute, New York.


Value freedom and polytheism
references to the self-coordination of American faculty suggested an
unattering comparison to the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of their
German colleagues under Nazi rule.
,
Calls for value freedom in scholarship have historically been deployed
for diverse purposes in very dierent contexts.
o
Weber himself invoked
the concept with two primary purposes in mind: to criticize his academic
colleagues sympathy for administrative solutions to social problems, and
to disabuse radical young intellectuals of their hopes for a spiritual revi-
talization of scholarship. Everything he did and thought was a battle,
everything that he comprehended and uttered became a weapon, recalled
one of his contemporaries.
;
Tis chapter seeks to illuminate the nature of
the battles Weber waged, and to explain how the concepts of value free-
dom and polytheism associated with his name were mobilized and appro-
priated by German intellectuals in the generation after his death.
In the aftermath of the death of God and the collapse of Imperial
Germany, many intellectuals regarded scholarship as the last remaining
source of spiritual guidance.

By arguing that scholarship lacked the cap-

acity to forge new world views (Weltanschauungen), Weber was under-
stood to have denied the possibility that transcendental values could bind
a community of modern individuals. While many German intellectuals
were moved by his analysis of their predicament, some of them, especially
in the circle around the poet Stefan George, argued that Weber underes-
timated the capacities of scholarship. During the early :,:cs these radical
intellectuals caused a sensation by calling for a revolution in scholarship
to disclose new values and establish a national community at one and the
same time.
,
Te ensuing controversy revealed that few intellectuals were
prepared to arm Webers concepts of value freedom and polytheism in
their entirety. As Wolfgang Schluchter has noted, Weber was especially
criticized for his insistence on the ineluctable polytheism of modern life.
Even if scholarship was indeed incapable of yielding world views, Webers

,
Edward A. Shils, Limitations on the Freedom of Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences,
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science :cc (:,,): :o.

o
Robert N. Proctor, Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, :,,:), x.

;
Kurt Singer, Max Weber in dieser Zeit (:,:c), in Staat und Wirtschaft seit dem Waenstillstand
(Jena: Fischer, :,:), ,o.

Klaus Lichtblau, Kulturkrise und Soziologie um die Jahrhundertwende: Zur Genealogie der
Kultursoziologie in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,,o), ,c.

,
Ernst Troeltsch, Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft, Schmollers Jahrbuch ,, no. (:,::): :cc:
,c. For some of the key contributions to this debate in English translation, see Peter Lassman and
Irving Velody with Herminio Martins, eds., Max Webers Science as a Vocation (London: Unwin
Hyman, :,,).





Value freedom and polytheism ,
defenders argued, then another form of knowledge such as philosophy
must be capable of reconciling clashing value spheres.
:c
Te Weimar controversy over the revolution in scholarship generated
light and heat, but it also obscured some of the surprising and import-
ant ways that German intellectuals thought with Webers concepts. Te
legal theorist Gustav Radbruch and the philosopher Karl Jaspers, two of
the most innovative German intellectuals of the interwar period, armed
Webers claim that human values were locked in conicts so profound
that no scholarship could harmonize them. Te task of scholarship, as
they understood it, was to illuminate the polytheism of everyday life and
encourage individuals to make decisions on the basis of their own sub-
jective valuations. Webers concepts served them as formidable tools for
articulating some of the earliest statements of twentieth-century exist-
entialism. But while Radbruch and Jaspers deployed value freedom and
polytheism to advance a radically individualistic vision of the world, the
Nazi political economist Klaus Wilhelm Rath deployed the same con-
cepts to justify a racist social order. From Webers contention that human
values fundamentally clashed with each other, Rath drew the conclu-
sion that only racial homogeneity, and not common values, could pro-
vide the basis for a national community. While the controversy over the
revolution in scholarship painted Weber as a conservative thinker out
of step with the expectations of German intellectuals, Radbruch, Jaspers,
and Rath demonstrated that value freedom and polytheism were equally
compatible with radical philosophical and political agendas.
In the early part of his career, Weber deployed the concept of value
freedom to dissuade his colleagues from allowing their political biases to
aect their determination of empirical facts. One might expect intellectu-
als in Nazi Germany to have roundly condemned Weber and his views.
After all, it was de rigueur in the early :,cs for German intellectuals
to promote political scholarship, an approach to research that was sup-
posed to disclose and serve the needs of the Volk. Nonetheless, as Carsten
Klingemann has observed, Weber was not anathema in the Tird Reich,
but rather the object of an extensive debate.
::
Even as they sought to go
beyond Weber, some intellectuals were moved to salvage or arm many
aspects of his ideas. Tis chapter concludes by explaining why prom-
inent scholars in Nazi Germany regarded Webers value freedom as an

:c
Wolfgang Schluchter, Paradoxes of Modernity: Culture and Conduct in the Teory of Max Weber,
trans. Neil Solomon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, :,,o), .

::
Carsten Klingemann, Soziologie im Dritten Reich (Baden-Baden: Nomos, :,,o), :,,.


Value freedom and polytheism ,c
important milestone in the development of political scholarship. In
their defense of Webers value freedom, the sociologist Andreas Walther
and the economists Wilhelm Vleugels and Georg Weippert argued that
Webers value freedom had been appropriate for its time and place. Tey
praised Weber for having purged German scholarship of warring subject-
ive valuations, because they believed he thereby paved the way for the
reign of truly objective values under National Socialism. Tese schol-
ars mobilized value freedom for purposes Weber doubtless would have
rejected. However, their eagerness to claim his mantle suggests that the
concept of value freedom, with all the stability and respectability it con-
notes, can be just as highly prized in antipluralistic intellectual milieus as
it is in liberal ones.
xa x winii axo vaiui ii iioox
Weber rst invoked value freedom in the context of debates over the
proper relationship between social science and social policy at the turn
of the twentieth century.
::
At the center of the controversy stood Gustav
Schmoller, professor of political economy at the University of Berlin
and founder of the Verein fr Sozialpolitik, a prominent academic
organization that brought together scholars and government ocials to
discuss issues of social reform. As a scholar Schmoller was outspoken
in his views about the proper economic policy for the state to pursue.
He blamed Manchesterism (laissez-faire and free trade) for creating
social tensions, and he argued that the Kaiser and his ocials ought
to play an important role in protecting weaker social groups against
rapacious entrepreneurs. Like other so-called Kathedersozialisten (social-
ists of the lectern), Schmoller wanted to improve the condition of the
German working classes while at the same time weakening the appeal
of socialism. He believed that the problems of industrial society could
best be solved by a strong bureaucratic administration and its corps of
highly trained technocrats.
:,
It was self-evident to him that technical,
hygienic, economic, socio-political, and economic knowledge, just like

::
Dieter Lindenlaub, Richtungskmpfe im Verein fr Sozialpolitik: Wissenschaft und Sozialpolitik
im Kaiserreich vornehmlich vom Beginn des neuen Kurses bis zum Ausbruch des ersten Weltkrieges
(:)o:):,) (Wiesbaden: Steiner, :,o;), ,,,. For contemporary, albeit partisan, accounts
of the controversy, see Heinrich Herkner, Der Kampf um das sittliche Werturteil in der
Nationalkonomie, Schmollers Jahrbuch ,o (:,::): ,:,,,; and Oskar Englnder, Die Erkenntnis
des Sittlich-Richtigen und die Nationalkonomie, Schmollers Jahrbuch , (:,:): :,c,o.

:,
Birger P. Priddat, Die andere konomie: Eine neue Einschtzung von Gustav Schmollers Versuch
einer ethisch-historischen Nationalkonomie im :). Jahrhundert (Marburg: Metropolis, :,,,).



Max Weber and value freedom ,:
individual psychological experience, work continually to develop ethical
knowledge, and to produce the victory of goodness and the predomin-
ance of value judgments that are increasingly puried and adapted to
new situations. Te progress of scientic knowledge would yield con-
sensus over the best social reform policy to implement in Germany.
Experience, scholarship, and ethical Zeitgeist have made it possible
for conservative landowners, liberal manufacturers, and socialist work-
ers to approach each other in many issues of social reform, Schmoller
insisted.
:
Beginning in the :,cs, a younger generation of economists led by
Werner Sombart, Max Weber, and his brother Alfred Weber, appealed to
the concept of value freedom to combat what they perceived as ideological
biases in the Verein fr Sozialpolitik. Te Weber brothers supported an
active trade union movement and armed the value of agonistic politics;
they believed that competition between interest groups, rather than an
articial harmony of interests, would promote both industrial expansion
and the well-being of the working classes.
:,
Max Webers frustration with
the biases expressed by leading members of the Verein fr Sozialpolitik
broke into the open at its :,c, meeting in Vienna. Supported by Sombart,
he lashed out at what he perceived to be the associations sympathies
for bureaucratic solutions to political problems. You, gentlemen, once
opposed the cheerleaders of industrial mechanizations purely techno-
logical achievements, as represented by the teachings of Manchesterism,
he declared. It seems to me that you are now in danger of becoming
cheerleaders of machinery in the eld of [public] administration and pol-
itics.
:o
Weber believed that political debates ultimately hinged on fun-
damental dierences of values and not on disagreements over technical
matters. When his colleagues tried to justify policy recommendations on
the basis of allegedly scientic concepts such as productivity or national
well-being, he accused them of shirking the responsibility for standing up
for their ideals:

:
Gustav Schmoller, Volkswirtschaft, Volkswirtschaftslehre und -methode, in Handwrterbuch
der Staatswissenschaften, ed. J. Conrad, L. Elster, W. Lexis, and Edg. Loening (Jena: Fischer,
:,::), Vol. viii, ,, ,,.

:,
Dieter Krger, Max Weber and the Younger Generation in the Verein fr Sozialpolitik, in Max
Weber and His Contemporaries, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jrgen Osterhammel (London:
Allen & Unwin, :,;), ;:;.

:o
Max Weber, Debattenreden auf der Tagung des Vereins fr Sozialpolitik in Wien :,c, zu den
Verhandlungen ber Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der Gemeinden, in Gesammelte
Aufstze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, ed. Marianne Weber (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,),
:,.



Value freedom and polytheism ,:
Te reason why I oppose the conation of value judgments and facts at every
opportunity with such extraordinary severity with a certain pedantry, if you
will is not because I underestimate questions of value, but rather for quite the
opposite reason: because I cannot bear to see problems of world-shaking signi-
cance and of the greatest spiritual consequence in a certain sense, the greatest
problems that can move the human heart transformed here into a technical
and economic question of productivity, and made into the object of discussion
of a specialized discipline like political economy.
:;
Frustrated by the Verein fr Sozialpolitiks failure to respect value free-
dom, Weber co-founded an alternative organization, the Deutsche
Gesellschaft fr Soziologie (German Society for Sociology), whose char-
ter announced that it refuses to represent any kind of practical goals
(ethical, religious, political, aesthetic etc.).
:
As it turned out, few of its
members were committed to policing the border between facts and values
with as much alacrity as Weber, and he soon withdrew from its governing
board in protest.
Te second context in which Weber deployed his concept of value
freedom was more philosophical in nature. At the turn of the twentieth
century many German intellectuals feared that modern scholarships spe-
cialization and positivism hindered its ability to grasp human experience
as a whole. Friedrich Nietzsche, the disgruntled philologist turned phi-
losopher, served as spiritus rector to these young malcontents, but their
real master, as his disciples called him, was the poet Stefan George. A
symbolist in the style of Stphane Mallarm, George became famous as a
reclusive cultural impresario who insisted that aesthetic experience could
redeem mankind from the fragmentation and rationalism of bourgeois
society.
:,
Tough he considered scholarly knowledge of little value in
comparison with artistic inspiration, his circle contained many aspiring
young researchers in the humanities and social sciences, some of whom
would go on to have successful academic careers. Inspired by Georges
pedagogical impulse and Nietzsches valorization of monumental
history, they hoped to return scholarship to its classical task of form-
ing great characters and serving the needs of life. Te task of scholar-
ship, as they saw it, was not to reduce reality into its constituent pieces
through naturalistic modes of explanation, but intuitively to grasp the

:;
Ibid., :,.

:
Verhandlungen des Ersten Deutschen Soziologentages vom :).::. Oktober :):o in Frankfurt a. M.
(Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,::), v.

:,
Robert E. Norton, Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, :cc:).



Max Weber and value freedom ,,
holistic essence (Wesen) of phenomena and the cultural values inherent
in them.
:c
Te poet Friedrich Gundolf, Georges most devoted disciple, met
Weber in :,c, and quickly became a xture in his social circle.
::
He
reported back to George that Max and Alfred Weber were the two profes-
sors who seem most to have felt a shudder of a profounder life, not just
in the form of knowledge, as [Georg] Simmel did, but as will. In a letter
to a fellow member of the George Circle, Gundolf characterized Weber
as the most signicant person among the scholars known to me, as the
originator of an economic theory that sees and values symbolically.
::

Gundolf facilitated the rst meeting between Max Weber and George
at the Webers house in :,:c. Since it was nearly universal practice for
George to receive visitors in his house in Bingen, the fact that he was
willing to make the trip to Heidelberg testied to his unusual respect
and deference toward the Webers.
:,
Over the next two years George vis-
ited the Webers three more times at their home, before withdrawing from
their company almost altogether.
:
Gundolf meanwhile completed his
Habilitation at Heidelberg, established a literary reputation on the basis of
books about great men such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Julius Caesar, and
Stefan George, and received a chair in literature at the university.
Te other radical who made a deep impression on Weber was the
young Hungarian critic and philosopher Georg Lukcs. A precocious
intellectual, Lukcs received doctorates in both law and aesthetics by the
time he turned twenty-ve. When his application to write a Habilitation
in Budapest was rejected, he let himself be convinced by Ernst Bloch, a
young philosopher whom he had met at Simmels seminar in Berlin, that
they should move to Heidelberg in search of a more congenial intellectual
climate. Following Bloch by a few months, Lukcs arrived in Heidelberg

:c
Helmut Frenzel, George-Kreis und Geschichtswissenschaft: Darstellung und Kritik der
Auassung des George-Kreises vom geschichtlichen Erkennen (Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Leipzig, :,,:), ,.

::
Teir mutual friend, the political economist Arthur Salz, facilitated the introduction. See
Friedrich Gundolf to Karl Wolfskehl, December, :,c,, in Karl and Hanna Wolfskehl,
Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Gundolf :)):),:, ed. Karlhans Kluncker (Amsterdam: Castrum
Peregrini, :,;;), : vols., Vol. ii, ,.

::
Friedrich Gundolf to Stefan George, November ::, :,:c, in Stefan George and Friedrich
Gundolf, Briefwechsel, ed. Robert Boehringer with Georg Peter Landmann (Munich: Kpper,
:,o:), ::,; Friedrich Gundolf to Ernst Bertram, June :c, :,::, quoted in Victor A. Schmitz,
Gundolf: Einfhrung in sein Werk (Dsseldorf: Kpper, :,o,), :o,n.

:,
Einleitung, in MWG ii/;, ,; Rainer Kolk, Literarische Gruppenbildung: Am Beispiel des George-
Kreises :)o:),, (Tbingen: Niemeyer, :,,), ,o.

:
Einleitung, in MWG ii/;, ,; Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller
(Cambridge: Polity, :cc,), :,,.





Value freedom and polytheism ,
in :,:: bearing a letter of introduction to Weber that Simmel had written
for him.
:,
Lukcs looked to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as harbingers of a
new order that would sweep away the edice of bourgeois society, and his
enthusiasm for Russian writers piqued Webers interest and initiated their
friendship.
:o
Tough not a member of the George Circle, Lukcs espoused
a critique of modern culture and scholarship that fascinated and irritated
Weber in equal measure. Weber hoped that Lukcs would blossom into
a serious academic, but as it turned out, the asceticism and specialization
required of a professor could not be reconciled with his essayistic inclina-
tions. Lukcs left Heidelberg during World War i without having com-
pleted his Habilitation.
:;
Having already established a reputation among reform-minded stu-
dents, Weber was invited in the fall of :,:; by a Munich student association
to speak about Scholarship as a Vocation (Wissenschaft als Beruf ).
:

His lecture engaged with Gundolf and Lukcss intellectual milieu, and
not with the professional economists and policy-makers he previously
addressed in the Verein fr Sozialpolitik.
:,
Weber tried to convince his
audience that scholarship, if it were to remain true to its name, could not
yield holistic world views or transcendental values. Scholarship today is a
profession [Beruf ] practiced in specialist disciplines in the service of self-
clarication and the knowledge of relationships between matters of fact,
and not a gift of grace on the part of seers and prophets dispensing sacred
values and revelations, or a part of the meditations of sages and philoso-
phers about the meaning of the world, he declared.
,c
Specialization and
incremental progress were the only path by which scholarly truth could

:,
Lee Congdon, Te Young Lukcs (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, :,,), :,
:,; Zoltn Tar, introduction to Selected Correspondence :)o::):o, by Georg Lukcs, ed. and
trans. Judith Marcus and Zoltn Tar (New York: Columbia University Press, :,o), ::,; Peter
Zudeick, Der Hintern des Teufels: Ernst Bloch Leben und Werk (Moos: Elster, :,,), ,,,;
va Kardi, Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukcs in Max Webers Heidelberg, in Mommsen and
Osterhammel, Max Weber and His Contemporaries, ,,,:.

:o
Michael Lwy, Interview with Ernst Bloch, New German Critique , (:,;o): ,.

:;
On the relationship between Weber and Lukcs, see Zoltn Tar, introduction, :::o; and Zoltn
Tar and Judith Marcus, Te WeberLukcs Encounter, in Max Webers Political Sociology: A
Pessimistic Vision of a Rationalized World, ed. Ronald M. Glassman and Vatro Murvar (Westport,
CT: Greenwood, :,), :c,,,.

:
Frequently and misleadingly translated into English as science, Wissenschaft in German
encompasses the social sciences and humanities as well as the natural sciences. It is therefore
more accurately translated as scholarship.

:,
Weber referred to Lukcs by name when he discussed the methodology of aesthetics as a schol-
arly discipline: modern aesthetic philosophers (explicitly, as with G. v. Lukacs [sic], or impli-
citly) proceed from the assumption that works of art exist and then go on to ask how that is
(meaningfully) possible. Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c; (VL, :,).

,c
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c, (VL, :;).






Max Weber and value freedom ,,
be obtained. In terms strikingly similar to those Lukcs had used in an
earlier essay, Weber emphasized that scholarly achievements, unlike works
of art, were made to be superseded. Tose who wished to pursue scholar-
ship as a vocation had to come to terms with its never-ending process of
development: To be superseded is not simply our fate but our goal.
We cannot work without hoping that others will advance beyond us. In
principle, this progress is innite.
,:
Webers lecture concerned itself not only with the personal qualities
necessary to pursue scholarship as a vocation, but also with the ultimate
value of scholarship its vocation or higher calling in human life. Te
central section of the lecture asked, What is the vocation of scholarship
within the total life of humanity? And what is its value?
,:
Did scholarship
have any value apart from its technical or utilitarian applications? Did the
specialized and never-ending search for objective truths about the world
have any dignity in itself? In his wartime writings on the sociology of reli-
gion, Weber used the word Entzauberung (demagication) to refer to the
process by which religions divested themselves of magical or supernatural
beliefs.
,,
Now, in Scholarship as a Vocation, he employed Entzauberung
in an explicitly secular context to describe the cultural eects wrought by
modern scholarship and technology. Te increasing intellectualization
and rationalization characteristic of modern European civilization had
not necessarily brought about an increase in individuals knowledge about
the material conditions under which they lived. Te most signicant con-
sequence of this historical development was simply the Entzauberung
der Welt (demagication of the world), the conviction that individuals
could, at least in principle, understand human and natural aairs with-
out making recourse to magical forces or transcendent principles the
conviction that they could in principle master everything by means of
calculation.
,
But what kind of meaning could such progress hold for the individ-
ual? Paraphrasing Tolstoy, Weber contrasted the lot of the simple peasant,

,:
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, , (VL, ::). See Georg Lukcss :,:: collection of essays, Soul
and Form, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, :,;), ;,: But the crucial
dierence between a work of art and a scientic work is perhaps this: the one is nite, the other
innite; the one closed in upon itself, the other open; the one is a purpose, the other is a means.
Te one we are now judging by consequences is incomparable, a rst and a last, the other is
rendered superuous by a better achievement. To put it briey, the one has form and the other
has not.

,:
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, (VL, :).

,,
MWG i/:,, ,c: (RC, ::o;).

,
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, o; (VL, :::,).




Value freedom and polytheism ,o
who could die old and fullled with life, with that of the cultivated
person (Kulturmensch):
[Te cultivated person, who] is inserted into a never-ending process by which
civilization is enriched with ideas, knowledge, and problems, may become tired
of life, but not fullled by it. For he can seize hold of only the minutest por-
tion of the new ideas that the life of the mind continually produces, and what
remains in his grasp is always merely provisional, never denitive, and therefore
death is a meaningless event for him.
,,
Weber believed that Tolstoy had given the simplest answer to the
question of scholarships vocation: It is meaningless because it gives no
answer to the only question of importance for us: What shall we do?
How shall we live? Te fact that it does not give an answer is absolutely
indisputable.
,o
Nevertheless Weber maintained that scholarship could
still contribute something positive for practical and personal life.
,;
It
could, above all, provide clarity to those who pursued it. Scholarship
could indicate the means necessary for a given end, illuminate the fore-
seeable consequences of pursuing that end, and nally clarify the practical
stances that followed from choosing an ultimate, fundamental position
as a world view. Teachers and scholars can force the individual, or at
least we can help him, to give himself an account of the ultimate meaning
of his own conduct I am tempted to say of a teacher who succeeds in
this: he is acting in the service of ethical forces, that is to say, of the duty
to foster clarity and a sense of responsibility.
,
Why did Weber believe that scholarship was incapable of answering the
Tolstoyan questions of life? Te fundamental reason he oered was sim-
ply that the dierent value orders of the world stand in insoluble conict
with one another, a conict so fundamental and profound that no kind of
scholarship was capable of reconciling them.
,,
What Weber meant by this
evocative and sweeping statement is dicult to ascertain with precision,
but a key example helps clarify the insoluble conict he had in mind.
During World War i and its immediate aftermath, Weber was deeply pre-
occupied by the conict between otherworldly ethics, as exemplied by
the Sermon on the Mount, and the worldly values of national greatness.

,,
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, (VL, :,). On Tolstoys reception in n-de-sicle Germany,
see Edith Hanke, Prophet des Unmodernen: Leo N. Tolstoi als Kulturkritiker in der deutschen
Diskussion der Jahrhundertwende (Tbingen: Niemeyer, :,,,).

,o
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, ,, (VL, :;).

,;
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c, (VL, :,).

,
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c, (VL, :o;).

,,
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, ,, (VL, ::).





Max Weber and value freedom ,;
He took umbrage at pacists who believed that statecraft should be made
commensurate with moralistic convictions, and he expressed frustration
with young radicals who made their unwavering commitment to revo-
lution the lodestar for political action. Weber was convinced that their
Gesinnungsethik (ethic of conviction) would lead not only to Germanys
ruin but also to the failure of the social transformations they desired.
Politicians who entered the public arena to pursue national independence
and human ourishing endangered the salvation of their souls, as they
were required to operate with physical force or the threat of it as their
distinctive means. Weber did not oer a philosophical argument for why
the absolute ethic of the Sermon on the Mount was incompatible with the
ultimate ends of national well-being. He appears to have considered it a
truth conrmed by human history.
c
Te conict between Christian and political ethics represented for
Weber the paradigmatic case of value conict.
:
Extending this phenom-
enon to other spheres of human life, he insisted that unbiased reection
on experience could only lead to the acceptance of what he guratively
called polytheism. By this he meant that the dierent possible values
or ultimate ends that loom over human lives formed something akin to a
pantheon of warring gods. Te conict was not restricted to the clash of
political ethics and the ethics of religious salvation; the values of aesthetic
beauty, erotic love, scholarly truth, moral goodness, and economic prot-
ability were also ultimate competitors.
:
Life, so long as it is left to itself
and is understood in its own terms, knows only the eternal struggle of
those gods or in nongurative language: the incompatibility of ultimate
possible attitudes toward life and the inability to resolve their conicts,
hence the necessity of deciding between them, he declared.
,
It had taken
the cultural force of a prophetic religion such as Christianity to suppress
these fundamental value conicts in the interest of the one thing that
is needful. In a modern age when Christianity had forfeited much of
its original strength, and no new prophets were likely to arrive bearing
tablets of values, individuals once again had to face the irreconcilability

c
For an insightful interpretation of the conict between Christian and political ethics that sheds
much light on Webers perspective, see Isaiah Berlin, Te Originality of Machiavelli, in Against
the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Penguin, :,:), :,;,.

:
See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,o, [:,,,]),
o, ;c:.

:
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, ,,:cc (VL, ::,); Max Weber, Zwischenbetrachtung:
Teorie der Stufen und Richtungen religiser Weltablehnung, in MWG i/:,, ;,,:: (FMW,
,:,,,).

,
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c, (VL, :;).




Value freedom and polytheism ,
of the highest values they might hold dear: Te numerous gods of yore,
demagied and hence assuming the shape of impersonal forces, arise
from their graves, strive for power over our lives, and resume their eternal
struggle among themselves.

Weber believed that only a prophet or savior was licensed to tell indi-
viduals which values they should serve. Te reality of the present time,
however, was that the prophet for whom so many of our younger gener-
ation yearn is simply not here.
,
In light of these conditions, scholarship
was existentially valuable because it brought latent value conicts to light,
and because it impressed on individuals the necessity of resolving funda-
mental value conicts through decision:
Te shallowness of daily life [Alltag] in the most signicant sense of the word
consists in the fact that the persons who are caught up in it do not become
aware, and above all do not wish to become aware, of this partly psychologic-
ally, part pragmatically conditioned motley of irreconcilably antagonistic values.
Tey avoid choosing between God and the Devil and ultimately deciding
which of the conicting values will be dominated by the one, and which by the
other. Te fruit of the tree of knowledge, which is distasteful to human compla-
cency but which is, nonetheless, inescapable, is none other than this: to know
these oppositions, and to be compelled to see that every single important activ-
ity and ultimately life as a whole, if it is not to be permitted to run on as a nat-
ural phenomenon but is instead to be consciously guided, is a chain of ultimate
decisions through which the soul as in Plato chooses its own fate, that is, the
meaning of its activity and existence.
o
According to Webers secularized version of the story of Genesis, the
progress of scholarship the fruit of the tree of knowledge yielded the
knowledge that scholarship was incapable of reconciling lifes fundamen-
tal value conicts. Yet a responsible and meaningful choice between values
was impossible unless scholarship rst illuminated the forking paths that
life presented. In an age without prophets or saviors, when each individ-
ual was cast upon him- or herself, scholarships vocation was to help indi-
viduals nd the courage to choose their own convictions and follow them
with consistency. Rather than wait indenitely for a messiah, as the Jews
had done, the lesson to be learned was that we must go about our work
and meet the challenge of the day both in our human relations and
our vocation, a lesson that would be simple and straightforward if each

Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c: (VL, :,, :).

,
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c, (VL, :).
o
Weber, Der Sinn der Wertfreiheit, ,c; (MSS, :).



Te meaning of modern scholarship ,,
person nds and obeys the daemon [Dmon] that holds the threads of his
life.
;
rui xi axi xc oi xooiix scuoi aisui i
Te context in which Germans engaged with Webers concept of value
freedom underwent a shift after his death in :,:c. As Gustav Schmollers
vision of a historical-ethical discipline of economics retreated from the
academic scene, discredited in large part by the criticism it had received
from Weber and Sombart, the issue of social reform no longer provided
the main background for debates about value freedom.

Tolstoys ques-
tion, What shall we do, how shall we live?, burned like never before in
the minds of German intellectuals after World War i. Many expected that
scholarship and Bildung (education or cultivation), institutions long held
sacrosanct in German cultural life, ought to contribute toward answering
this question, and they condemned modern academic specialization and
positivism for inhibiting the formation of world views that could pro-
vide cultural direction.
,
Stronger than before the war, the philosopher
Eduard Spranger averred in :,:,, I am met by a psychic wave emanat-
ing from the lecture hall that I feel in all my nerves, and which can be
captured in the words: We do not want scholarship we want religious
certainty, intuition submerged in beauty, we want sustenance and con-
rmation for our constructive instincts!
,c

;
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, ::: (VL, ,:). For the ancient Greeks, daimon signied an exter-
nal force that the individual incorporated into his own personality, or a conviction that an
individual chose and followed with devotion. At the turn of the nineteenth century German
philosophers employed Dmon as a key term in their discourse about the nature of human
genius. See Karl Holl, Ueber Begri und Bedeutung der dmonischen Persnlichkeit, in
Gesammelte Aufstze zur Kirchengeschichte (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,:), Vol. iii, ,c,c;
and Lawrence A. Sca, Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Tought of
Max Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, :,,), o,.

Robert Wilbrandt, Das Ende der historisch-ethischen Schule, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv :

(:,:o): ;,; Werner Falk, Das Werturteil: Eine logische Grundfrage der Wirtschaftswissenschaft
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Heidelberg, :,:,), :.

,
In the parlance of n-de-sicle German philosophy, world view signied an integrated conception
of reality with a normative element: it not only explained what the world was like but also how
one ought to relate to it. See Harvey Goldman, Politics, Death, and the Devil: Self and Power in
Max Weber and Tomas Mann (Berkeley: University of California Press, :,,:), ,,c. Te clas-
sic account of the reaction against academic expansion and specialization in Germany is Fritz
K. Ringer, Te Decline of the German Mandarins: Te German Academic Community, :)o:),,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, :,o,).

,c
Eduard Spranger, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Frankfurter Zeitung, December :, :,::
(Abendblatt).





Value freedom and polytheism oc
In this intellectual climate Webers espousal of value freedom alienated
many listeners. Max Horkheimer recalled attending Webers lectures on
socialism at the University of Munich and leaving feeling deeply frus-
trated by his approach:
Instead of theoretical reection and analysis, which, not only in posing the prob-
lem, but in every single step of thinking would have led to a reasoned structuring
of the future, we listened for two or three hours to nely balanced denitions of
the Russian system, shrewdly formulated ideal types, by which it was possible to
dene the Soviet order. It was all so precise, so scientically exact, so value-free
that we all went sadly home As we left the lecture-theatre that day with such
disappointment, we thought that Max Weber must be ultraconservative.
,:
Other listeners were refreshed by Webers intellectual sobriety. We
wanted to wish ourselves back to the time of a Fichte or Hegel, to the
intellectual world of a Nietzsche or Comte, if not even further back, to
seek unity in simplicity, wrote Jrg von Kap-herr, one Webers favorite
Munich students, in a eulogy. Max Weber knew this romanticism and
rejected it. He knew that modern scholarship could not lead to a uni-
ed and fullling world view [Weltbild], and he knew that this was not
its task. He nevertheless armed scholarship with the entire force of his
personality, and was far removed from the fanaticism of the specialist.
,:

Weber insisted that scholarship was incapable of providing direct guid-
ance for life, but at the same time he maintained that scholarship pos-
sessed an existential value for the individual who pursued it.
Te postwar controversy over Webers value freedom was touched o
in :,:c by the publication of Erich von Kahlers Vocation of Scholarship.
,,

Born in Prague to an ennobled Jewish family, Kahler met Gundolf
while studying in Heidelberg and through him became a peripheral
member of the George Circle.
,
Kahlers manifesto identied Weber
as our most dangerous opponent, since he places the attraction of his

,:
Otto Stammer, ed., Max Weber and Sociology Today, trans. Kathleen Morris (New York: Harper
& Row, :,;:), ,:, ,,. Horkheimer noted that his judgment of Webers political views had been
over-hasty, since Weber subsequently castigated the old-style conservative students at the
University of Munich. Ibid., ,,.

,:
Jrg von Kap-herr, Max Weber, Mnchner Studentendienst :, no. o (:,:c): :.

,,
Erich von Kahler, Der Beruf der Wissenschaft (Berlin: Bondi, :,:c). Kahlers manuscript had
been nished in November, :,:, but appeared in print only after Webers death.

,
See Anna Kiel, Erich Kahler: Ein uomo universale des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts seine
Begegnungen mit bedeutenden Zeitgenossen vom Georgekreis, Max Weber bis Hermann Broch
und Tomas Mann (Bern: Lang, :,,). Gundolf regarded Kahlers manuscript as his baby
(Nesthkchen) and ensured that the George Circles house publisher accepted it. Carola Groppe,
Die Macht der Bildung: Das deutsche Brgertum und der George-Kreis :)o:),, (Cologne:
Bhlau, :,,;), o::.




Te meaning of modern scholarship o:
mighty convictions and his genuine ethos, which he bears in a humane
fashion, completely in the service of a ruined institution. When con-
fronted with the burning questions of existence, Webers scholarship
simply shrugged its shoulders and claimed the inability to answer.
Since it was incapable of yielding world views, Kahler argued, contem-
porary scholarship possessed no existential value and would have to be
superseded by a new scholarship capable of directly providing guid-
ance and leadership.
,,
Kahler looked to two older conceptions of sys-
tematic knowledge ancient Greek philosophy and Johann Wolfgang
von Goethes science as models for what the new scholarship could
achieve. Te Greeks understood that the deep truths about human life
could not be apprehended by abstraction and generalization, but only
through a descent and return into the depths of individuality to nd
the uniqueness of an essence.
,o
Instead of likening human societies to
mechanisms, the new scholarship would imitate Goethes morphological
studies and treat societies as organic unities with their own developmen-
tal laws and inherent values. Te new scholarship would devote itself
to nding values that were binding for a given culture or community
at its present stage of development. Tere are no timeless and placeless
values, Kahler declared, but there are indeed eternal values, it is essen-
tial to grasp this distinction.
,;
Arthur Salz, a lecturer in political economy at Heidelberg, attempted
to defend Webers position without entirely disowning the spirit of
Kahlers new scholarship. Salz had been close friends with Gundolf since
their student days in Munich, and although he never considered himself
one of Georges disciples, he was the rst German academic to cultivate
close ties to his circle. Salz also developed a close rapport with Weber,
who aggressively defended him against plagiarism accusations from a
professor at the University of Prague.
,
Pulled in opposite directions by
the controversy over Scholarship as a Vocation, Salz felt compelled to
nd a middle path between the George Circles conception of scholarship
and Webers views.
,,
Salz articulated his position in a pamphlet titled

,,
Kahler, Der Beruf der Wissenschaft, .

,o
Ibid., :,.
,;
Ibid., :.

,
See Max Weber to Edgar Ja, February :,, :,:, in MWG ii/, ,:;,; and Johannes
Fried, Zwischen Geheimem Deutschland und geheimer Akademie der Arbeit: Der
Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Arthur Salz, in Geschichtsbilder im George-Kreis: Wege zur
Wissenschaft, ed. Barbara Schlieben, Olaf Schneider, and Kerstin Schulmeyer (Gttingen:
Wallstein, :cc), :,,c:.

,,
It was Salz, after all, who had introduced Gundolf and Weber to each other. See Fried, Der
Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Arthur Salz, :;:.




Value freedom and polytheism o:
For Scholarship: Against the Educated among Its Detractors. In almost all
individual questions, my views coincide with Kahlers ideas and agree
with him even in the formulations, he admitted.
oc
Salz made it clear
that he, too, found the state of modern scholarship existentially wanting,
and that he hoped a new scholarship would gradually and organically
emerge over time.
o:
Unlike Kahler, however, Salz maintained that the
transformation of scholarship could not be dictated from above. Neither
society nor scholarship could be transformed overnight without losing
their internal coherence and precipitating terror. Reform was desirable
but only within the limits of what institutions could bear. In view of the
revolutionary mood gripping Germany, Salz argued that Webers style
of conservative thinking was politically necessary.
o:
War and revolu-
tion had divested Germans of the beliefs that had previously held them
together as a nation. If you also take away the peoples faith in schol-
arship, he warned Kahler and his followers, you will have taken away
the last thing for which they still have reverence, you will have opened
the door to chaos and anarchy.
o,
Salz believed that a new kind of schol-
arship was desirable, but he hesitated to embark on the revolutionary
path of transformation that Kahler demanded. Tose sympathetic to the
George Circle did not nd Salzs argument persuasive. Te joke went
around Heidelberg that his book had been written without salt [Salz]
and without pepper.
o
Max Scheler, one of Weimar Germanys leading philosophers, was
more sympathetic to Webers position than either Kahler or Salz. He
agreed with Weber that scholarship the more seriously, rigorously, and
without presuppositions it is conceived and practiced has fundamen-
tally no signicance whatsoever for the acquisition and establishment of a
world view, since the specialization and provisional character of scholarly
knowledge precluded the formation of holistic attitudes.
o,
Scheler rejected
Kahlers ambition to refashion a :,ccc-year-old scholarly tradition as
grotesque.
oo
Yet he was unwilling to accept Webers claim that schol-
arship was existentially valuable despite its inability to yield world views.
Te ultimate mission of scholarship, as far as Scheler was concerned,

oc
Arthur Salz, Fr die Wissenschaft: Gegen die Gebildeten unter ihren Verchtern (Munich: Drei
Masken, :,::), ::.

o:
Ibid., ,.
o:
Ibid., :,.
o,
Ibid., :::.

o
Michael Landmann, Um die Wissenschaft, Castrum peregrini : (:,oc): ;.

o,
Max Scheler, Weltanschauungslehre, Soziologie und Weltanschauungssetzung, Klner
Vierteljahrshefte fr Sozialwissenschaften :, no. : (:,::): ::,, :,.

oo
Ibid., :,.





Te meaning of modern scholarship o,
was to discover quantitative laws for mastering nature.
o;
It was unrea-
sonable to expect it to possess any existential meaning for the individual
who pursued it. Te task of yielding knowledge of reality and theory of
absolute values at the same time belonged to a dierent form of know-
ledge, namely, metaphysical philosophy.
o
Webers shortcoming lay not
in his misjudgment of scholarships capacities, but in his complete fail-
ure to understand and thus his dismissal of the central link between
faith, religion, and positive scholarship that alone deserves the name
philosophy.
o,
What was needed was not a new scholarship but rather a
reform of philosophy in the direction of a fundamental ontology to pro-
vide guidance and wisdom.
;c
Weber was wrong to assume that mater-
ial values have only subjective meaning, that there cannot be a path of
binding knowledge of objective things and values, of goods and systems of
goods beyond positive scholarship, which could lead to a spiritual cross-
pollination between representatives of dierent value systems.
;:
Webers friend and Heidelberg colleague, the theologian Ernst
Troeltsch, came the closest to accepting his understanding of value free-
dom. I profess my absolute faith in the old scholarship because there is
no other kind whatsoever besides it, he declared. What Max Weber says
about it, in his clarity and manliness, is the only truth.
;:
In the early part
of his career Troeltsch had devoted much energy to defending the his-
torical study of religion against the charge that it undermined spiritual
values.
;,
Toward the end of his life he once again addressed the poten-
tially corrosive eects of historical knowledge on cultural values, a con-
dition he dubbed the crisis of historicism. Troeltsch concluded that the
problem had nothing to do with the state of German scholarship, which
he considered healthy, but with the absence of an adequate philoso-
phy of history to derive binding cultural values from the ow of history.
;


o;
Max Scheler, ber die positivistische Geschichtsphilosophie des Wissens (Dreistadiengesetz)
(:,::), in Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre, ed. Manfred S. Frings, Vol. vi of
Gesammelte Werke (Bonn: Bouvier, :,o), :;,,.

o
Max Scheler, Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens (:,:o), in Die Wissensformen und die
Gesellschaft, ed. Manfred S. Frings, Vol. viii of Gesammelte Werke (Bern: Francke, :,c), ;.

o,
Max Scheler, Max Webers Ausschaltung der Philosophie (Zur Psychologie und Soziologie der
nominalistischen Denkart) (c. :,::,), in Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, ,:.

;c
Scheler, Weltanschauungslehre, :,.

;:
Scheler, Max Webers Ausschaltung, ,:.

;:
Troeltsch, Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft, :c:,.

;,
Mark D. Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Teology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in
Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :cc:).

;
Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Erstes Buch: Das logische Problem der
Geschichtsphilosophie, Vol. iii of Gesammelte Schriften (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,::),
o;. For a reconstruction of Troeltschs philosophy of history, see Friedrich Wilhelm Graf








Value freedom and polytheism o
Troeltsch accused Kahler and his ilk of amalgamating three cognitive
perspectives that ought to be kept separate: the positive, more or less
exact sciences; philosophy, which seeks to grasp the whole; and the prac-
tical-personal attitude toward life.
;,
Weber, who regarded the discipline
of philosophy as simply one form of academic scholarship among others,
was in Troeltschs view equally guilty of misunderstanding this tripartite
relationship.
;o
However, unlike Scheler, who believed that philosophy was a form
of knowledge wholly separate from scholarship, Troeltsch insisted that
the philosophy of history presupposed the existence of value-free histor-
ical scholarship. Only if historians completed their work with rigor and
objectivity would the philosophy of history possess an adequate substrate
for its labors.
;;
Troeltsch thus attempted to stake out a position midway
between Schelers and Webers. While scholarship possessed no existen-
tial value in itself, he claimed, it was indirectly meaningful to the extent
that it supplied a source of raw materials necessary for the philosophy of
history to function. Troeltsch conceded that the philosophical inter-
pretation of historical facts could not rely on scholarly methods alone. At
some point philosophers would have to call on their powers of intuition
to make a leap from conditional facts to absolute values. But he failed to
explain how the relationship between value-free scholarship and value-
positing philosophy was supposed to work. Troeltsch was stuck with a
seemingly paradoxical position: the objectivity of historical knowledge
was somehow necessary for a cultural synthesis that itself transcended
the bounds of scholarship. But why should a cultural synthesis require
objective historical facts for its ingredients, when the process of trans-
muting them into binding values was itself no longer a scholarly one? Te
critic Siegfried Kracauer summed up the diculty of this position when
and Hartmut Ruddies, Ernst Troeltsch: Geschichtsphilosophie in praktischer Absicht, in
Philosophie der Neuzeit, ed. Josef Speck (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, :,o), Vol. iv,
::oc; Hartmut Ruddies, Geschichte durch Geschichte berwinden: Historismuskonzept
und Gegenwartsdeutung bei Ernst Troeltsch, in Die Historismusdebatte in der Weimarer
Republik, ed. Wolfgang Bialas and Grard Raulet (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, :,,o), :,::;;
Georg G. Iggers, Te German Conception of History: Te National Tradition of Historical Tought
from Herder to the Present, rev. edn. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, :,,), :;;,,;
and Annette Wittkau, Historismus: Zur Geschichte des Begries und des Problems (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, :,,:), :;oc.

;,
Troeltsch, Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft, :c:.

;o
Ibid., :c:,. For Webers brief remarks on philosophy as an academic discipline, see Weber,
Wissenschaft als Beruf, :c (VL, :o).

;;
Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, :;;; Troeltsch, Die Krisis des Historismus,
Die neue Rundschau ,,, Part i (:,::): ,,; Graf and Ruddies, Ernst Troeltsch, :,::.



Polytheism I: the existential value of scholarship o,
he noted that Troeltsch, unlike Weber, tried to leap out from relativism
and at the same time, as a scholar, remain in the conditional and practice
history.
;
ioi\ ruii sx i : rui i xi s rixri ai vaiui oi scuoi aisui i
None of the famous protagonists in this Weimar controversy was prepared
to fully accept Webers understanding of modern scholarship. Despite
their dierences in political and philosophical sensibilities, Kahler, Salz,
and Scheler all agreed that the old scholarship was existentially lacking
in meaning. Troeltsch conceded that it could be existentially meaning-
ful, but only if it were practiced in conjunction with an inchoate phil-
osophy of history. Te most prominent Weimar intellectuals who fully
endorsed Webers position that modern scholarship was existentially
valuable despite its inability to yield world views were the Heidelberg
philosophers Gustav Radbruch and Karl Jaspers. Teir major treatises,
both published in :,,:, expressed a similar credo. Scholarships value for
life, they argued, consisted in its unique ability to illuminate the war-
ring gods of dierent value systems. Te frustrations attendant in prac-
ticing value-free scholarship were existentially meaningful because they
compelled individuals to face fundamental choices honestly and articu-
late their own nonuniversalizable values. Tough they integrated Webers
concepts of value freedom and polytheism into dierent philosophical
idioms, Radbruch and Jaspers mobilized his vision of modern scholarship
to express strikingly similar visions of modern existentialism.
Radbruch established his scholarly reputation on the eve of World War
i as a proponent of legal relativism, a movement in jurisprudence that
rejected natural law theories and sharply distinguished statements of fact
from normative judgments. In the :,,: edition of his treatise Philosophy of
Law, Radbruch overtly paraphrased Webers Scholarship as a Vocation
and Politics as a Vocation to formulate the tasks he envisaged for the
philosophy of law as an academic discipline. Repeating Webers enumer-
ation of the tasks of scholarship, he asserted that the philosophy of law
was capable of elucidating the means to a given end, the consequences
that could be expected from the realization of a legal judgment, and
the nature of the world views that lay behind particular value positions.

;
Siegfried Kracauer, Die Wissenschaftskrisis: Zu den grundstzlichen Schriften Max Webers
und Ernst Troeltschs (:,:,), in Das Ornament der Masse: Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
:,;;), :c,.


Value freedom and polytheism oo
Finally, it was capable of bringing the objective sense of his volition
to the consciousness of the individual, thereby enabling him or her to
serve life through knowledge.
;,
One of the main goals of Radbruchs
philosophy of law was to illuminate the antinomies, or insoluble con-
tradictions, at the heart of the concept of law.
c
He began by arguing that
the concept of law was constituted by three fundamental principles: just-
ice, expediency, and certainty. Justice demanded that equals be treated
as equals. Since justice was a formal condition, incapable of indicating
who was equal to whom or how they should be treated, the principle of
expediency was needed to determine which values the law should serve.
Radbruch distinguished three kinds of values individual, collective,
and cultural whose ultimate objectives were freedom, the nation, and
culture, respectively. Citing Webers Politics as a Vocation, he pointed
out that the furtherance of each value required dierent and potentially
contradictory attitudes toward the world: cultural values demanded
devotion to a cause, individual values an ethic of conviction, and col-
lective values an ethic of responsibility. Te existence of a legal order
also demanded certainty, the guarantee that the law was determined by a
legitimate authority, since otherwise individuals would be free to decide
which law was most just and expedient for them. Radbruch believed that
justice, expediency, and the certainty of the law were necessary compo-
nents of the concept of law, yet at the same time principles whose real-
ization brought them into insoluble conicts with each other. Justice
demanded equality, which could only be achieved through abstracting
from concrete particularities, while expediency demanded specic goals
and distinctions; legal certainty required a positive and established law
but said nothing about equality or expediency. While dierent epochs
might give priority to dierent components of the concept of law (e.g.
expediency in the early-modern police state, justice in the age of natural
right, and certainty in the modern era of legal positivism), these historical

;,
Gustav Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie (:,,:), ,rd edn., ed. Ralf Dreier and Stanley L. Paulson
(Heidelberg: Mller, :cc,), :o:;.

c
Ibid., ,;;. Te term antinomy derives from Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans.
Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martins, :,o,), ,. Kant argued that the faculty of
pure reason possesses no proper concepts of its own but only regulative ideas that encourage
individuals to think of the universe as an ordered whole. Left to its own devices, pure reason has
the tendency to mistake these ideas for actually existing entities; the outcome is a set of contra-
dictory metaphysical propositions or antinomies. For a discussion of antinomies in Radbruchs
work, and the neo-Kantian intellectual heritage that provided their background, see Stephen
P. Turner and Regis A. Factor, Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value: A Study in
Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :,), ,c,, ,,.


Polytheism I: the existential value of scholarship o;
attempts to make pragmatic compromises did not ultimately resolve the
contradictory multifacetedness of the idea of law.
:
Radbruch ended his discussion of legal antinomies by ruminating on
the existential meaning of contradictions in human life and the role phil-
osophy ought to play in addressing them. We have pointed out contra-
dictions without being able to solve them, he observed. In this we do
not see the deciency of a system.
Philosophy should not relieve us of decisions, it should precisely confront us with
decisions. It should not make life easy, but problematic. A philosophical system
should resemble a gothic cathedral in which the structures carry each other by
opposing each other. How suspicious would a philosophy be that did not take
the world for a purposeful creation of reason and yet entirely reduced it, without
any contradictions, to a system of reason! And how superuous would existence
be, if the world were not ultimately contradiction, and life decision!
:
As far as Radbruch was concerned, the task of academic philosophy was
not to present individuals with an answer to Tolstoys question, but rather
to compel them to answer it for themselves. As a branch of scholarship, the
philosophy of law restricted itself to exhaustively presenting [the individ-
ual with] the possible positions he can take, but it leaves the position itself
to the decision forged from the depths of his personality not to his fancy,
but far more to his conscience.
,
Tere was a masochistic cast to the experi-
ence of scholarship as Radbruch envisioned it. Its job was not [to] make
life easy, but problematic, to place the individual into an uncomfortable
situation whose only egress lay in a leap beyond reason itself. Scholarship
could not disclose the existence of binding values, but it could induce indi-
viduals to arm their own values with absolute conviction. Tis might
mean renouncing the scholarly establishment of an ultimate position,
Radbruch noted, but not the renunciation of an ultimate position.

Jaspers was a young researcher at the University of Heidelbergs psy-

chiatric clinic when he rst met Max Weber in :,c,. At the turn of the
twentieth century the eld of psychopathology was dominated by dierent
schools and teachers, and there seemed to be little consensus about what
constituted its proper methodology or central questions. Te dominant
tendency was to pursue psychopathology as if it were a natural science of
the brain that could yield deterministic laws.
,
Jaspers believed that clearer

:
Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie, ;;.
:
Ibid.
,
Ibid., :;.

Ibid., :.

,
Hans Saner, Karl Jaspers (Reinbek: Rowohlt, :,;c), :,; Wolfram Schmitt, Karl Jaspers als
Psychiater und sein Einu auf die Psychiatrie, in Karl Jaspers in seiner Heidelberger Zeit, ed.
Joachim-Felix Leonhard (Heidelberg: Heidelberger Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei, :,,), :,:.


Value freedom and polytheism o
conceptual foundations were needed for psychopathology to qualify as a
branch of scholarship, but he doubted whether the natural sciences could
supply the necessary methods. Could the social sciences provide more
appropriate tools of concept formation? Tese considerations rst attracted
him to Weber. [Te psychiatrist Hans] Gruhle and I want to discuss
psychological and logical questions with him, to learn for our purposes,
Jaspers wrote to his father in :,:c. Max Weber is supposed to feel the need
to help young people.
o
In the years leading up to World War i Jaspers
developed a close intellectual rapport with Weber. A real principled discus-
sion has gotten going with Max Weber, he reported to his parents. Tat
gets me excited and makes me feel enthusiastic. To exchange opinions with
an intelligent person without having to mince ones words, to discuss and
not merely make claims, is a wonderful joy.
;
When Jaspers applied for
a Habilitation in psychology at Heidelberg in :,:,, Weber served as inter-
mediary and helped him nd a position on the universitys faculty.

Tough Jaspers began his career as a psychiatrist and switched to psych-

ology, it was in philosophy that he established his lasting reputation, a dis-
cipline he never formally studied and only began teaching when he was
nearly forty years old. His major innovation was to articulate a new form
of philosophy that he would later call Existenzphilosophie (existential phil-
osophy). Jaspers conceptualized the tasks of philosophy dierently from
Troeltsch, Scheler, Radbruch, and even Weber himself. As Jaspers under-
stood it, existential philosophy was neither a form of scholarship nor a pro-
phetic attempt to legislate for others the meaning of their lives.
,
Existential
philosophy was a process that disclosed the subjective truths constitutive
of individuals deepest personal Being, their Existenz. It encouraged them
to apprehend subjective truths through moments of autonomous decision
in which they dened themselves on the basis of nonuniversalizable values.
While Jaspers dened philosophy dierently from Weber and Radbruch,
he shared their conviction that value-free scholarship was indispensable for
helping individuals answer Tolstoys question for themselves.
Jasperss path toward the development of Existenzphilosophie began
during World War i, when his psychological research led him to the

o
Karl Jaspers to his father, January :,, :,:c, Nachlass Karl Jaspers, Familienarchiv, Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach.

;
Karl Jaspers to his parents, May ::, :,:,, Nachlass Karl Jaspers, Familienarchiv.

Saner, Karl Jaspers, ,,; Max Weber to Hans W. Gruhle, July :, :,:,, in MWG ii/, :,o;
Einleitung, in MWG ii/, .

,
On the distinction between philosophy and scholarship in Jasperss work, see Werner Schler,
Karl Jaspers zur Einfhrung (Hamburg: Junius, :,,,), :,,,.




Polytheism I: the existential value of scholarship o,
conclusion that no rational and systematic approach to understanding the
world the kind supplied by empirical science, religion, or traditional
philosophy was capable of fully answering the Tolstoyan questions of
life. His starting point was the insight that individuals naturally devel-
oped comprehensive attitudes toward life, or world views, to protect
themselves against the dangers of skepticism and nihilism. Te more sys-
tematic and rationalized a world view became, the more it functioned as
a shell (Gehuse) that trapped the individual within a static picture of
the world.
,c
Jaspers believed that individuals rst became aware of the
limitations of their world views during moments of cognitive dissonance
in which they faced the perplexing realities of conict, death, chance,
or guilt. Such limit situations (Grenzsituationen) resisted any system-
atic attempt to be mastered, explained, or even evaded. Like Radbruch,
Jaspers availed himself of the concept of antinomies to express the poly-
theism of everyday life. Limit situations made individuals aware of the
antinomical structure of the world, the fact that life was full of contra-
dictions incapable of being subsumed in a single explanatory scheme.
,:

To survive a limit situation with their psyche intact, individuals had to
choose the center point around which a new world view would be cre-
ated. Tere was no rational basis for this decision. While reason provided
universal rules and norms, limit situations forced individuals to confront
the problematics of life in a purely individual way. In making a decision
about the course to take after encountering a limit situation, individuals
staked binding claims for themselves with absolute validity.
Since philosophy was the discipline that traditionally dealt with abso-
lute truths, Jaspers concluded that the experience of truthfully confront-
ing limit situations constituted a new and essentially subjective mode
of philosophizing. On the day after Webers death, Jaspers explained to
Marianne Weber that her husband paved the way for this new mode of
philosophizing:
Te world of intellect, the German world, has lost its king, the man who alone
guaranteed the immediacy of intellect, whom we followed when we felt weak
and required a distinctive standard, who inspired us with ideas that make eyes

,c
Karl Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (Berlin: Springer, :,:,), :::,,. Jaspers likely
derived the concept of Gehuse from Webers Protestant Ethic and political writings. However,
it is also possible he found the concept in the work of Georg Simmel, whom he knew person-
ally through the Weber Circle. See Heinrich Rickert, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen und
Philosophie der Werte (:,:c), in Karl Jaspers in der Diskussion, ed. Hans Saner (Munich: Piper,
:,;,), ,;.

,:
Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, :c,.


Value freedom and polytheism ;c
see. With what hope did we look toward the coming years, which should have
brought the great works of this man, who was and will be the only philosopher
of our time.
,:
A day later Jaspers declared to his parents that he intended to leave psych-
ology and carry Webers torch into the halls of philosophy:
When the ame is extinguished, the glowing sparks have to be kindled I have
the feeling that he [Weber] saw in me this sort of glowing spark and I want to
strive with all my ability to achieve what I still can in philosophy to use this
general and vague word and to try to explain in this eld to the youth of today
his ideas and works.
,,
During the :,:cs Jaspers kept quiet as the controversy raged over
Scholarship as a Vocation. His endorsement of Webers value freedom
nonetheless rang clearly in his :,,: magnum opus Philosophy, where he
characterized existential philosophizing as a three-stage process con-
sisting of philosophical world-orientation, followed by the illumin-
ation of Existenz, and nally culminating in metaphysics.
,
Jaspers
equated philosophical world-orientation with the experience of pursuing
value-free scholarship. It was not the nature of scholarship to harmon-
ize our experiences of the phenomenal world, he suggested, but rather
to reveal its antinomical structure. As individuals discovered that schol-
arship could not provide a seamless account of the world, they would be
pushed toward the point of asserting their individual perspectives against
any claims to universal validity. Scholarship thus became an exercise in
ascetic renunciation that prepared the individual for absolute commit-
ments of a nonrational kind. Individuals could assert their autonomous
Being only after reason had demonstrated the inadequacy of all univer-
salizing norms and world views. Rigorous scholarship, when carried out
with the proper critical spirit, generated a springboard for existential phil-
osophy: it illuminated the fault lines in individuals conceptions of the
world and encouraged them to make the leap to the nonrational illu-
mination of existence.
,,
Shortly after Scholarship as a Vocation appeared in :,:,, Jaspers
and the Heidelberg law professor Richard Toma confronted Weber in

,:
Karl Jaspers to Marianne Weber, June :,, :,:c, Ana o: Deponat Max Weber-Schfer, box :c,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

,,
Karl Jaspers to his parents, June :o, :,:c, quoted in Suzanne Kirkbright, Karl Jaspers: A
Biography. Navigations in Truth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, :cc), o.

,
Karl Jaspers, Philosophie (Berlin: Springer, :,,o [:,,:]), , vols., Vol. i, :,;.

,,
Ibid., Vol. i, ::,.




Polytheism II: the search for a concrete order ;:
the garden of his house and asked him why he pursued scholarship as a
vocation. Flustered, Weber replied, Well, in order to see what one can
endure, but of such things one had better not speak.
,o
As Jaspers devel-
oped his own conception of existential philosophy, he came to interpret
Webers words as signifying that value-free scholarship was existentially
meaningful because it precipitated ineable limit situations. In Philosophy
Jaspers retold this episode in the idiom of his existential philosophy:
What is illuminated in the limit situations can only be captured through know-
ledge in its entire reality. A great and passionate researcher, when asked about
the meaning of scholarship for him, could reply, it was to see what a human
being was capable of enduring Knowledge provides no nal satisfaction. But
it is the path through which Existenz can come to itself.
,;
Jaspers explained that failure (Scheitern) was the condition that inev-
itably befell all philosophically truthful individuals.
,
Trough the pro-
cess of existential philosophizing, individuals were constantly thwarted
in their attempts to expand their rational knowledge and disclose their
Existenz, but these repeated eorts brought them asymptotically closer
toward subjective truth. In his monograph Max Weber: German Character
in Political Tought, in Scholarship and Philosophy, Jaspers presented what
might have seemed like tragic features of Webers life his failure to
develop a total system, his fragmentary scholarly output, his unresolved
wrestling with the problems of life as a condition of philosophical fruit-
fulness: Max Weber was the richest and most profound embodiment of
the meaning of failure in our time. Failure leads all the more deeply
to Being the more encompassing that knowledge grows.
,,
Despite its
negative connotations, Webers failure constituted the positive heart of
Jasperss existential philosophy.
ioi\ ruii sx i i : rui si aicu ioi a coxci iri oioii
Both Radbruch and Jaspers drew radically individualistic implications
from Webers concepts of value freedom and polytheism. As they under-
stood it, the honest and rigorous pursuit of scholarship impressed on

,o
Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, November :o, :,oo, in Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers,
Briefwechsel :)::)), ed. Lotte Khler and Hans Saner (Munich: Piper, :cc:), o,,.

,;
Jaspers, Philosophie, Vol. i, :,.

,
Ibid., Vol. iii, ::,,o.

,,
Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Deutsches Wesen im politischen Denken, im Forschen und Philosophieren
(Oldenburg: Stalling, :,,:), , ,,.





Value freedom and polytheism ;:
individuals the necessity of choosing their ultimate values for themselves.
Four years after their books appeared, in a very dierent political uni-
verse, a professor of political economy at the University of Gttingen
named Klaus Wilhelm Rath deployed these same concepts to frame an
argument that would have appalled Radbruch, Jaspers, and Weber him-
self. Rath was a member of the Nazi Party and the SA, an expert in the
Aryanization of Jewish businesses, and a member of the Reich Insurance
Committee.
:cc
His superiors in the Party considered him to be an ideolog-
ically committed Nazi. When his expertise in insurance was called into
question by an industry executive, the Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg
defended him by declaring that decisive for the judgment of a person
and his work are not his publications, but rather his will and capacity as
demonstrated by National Socialist deed.
:c:
In a :,,o review of a book on
the philosophical dimensions of Webers thought, Rath hailed Weber for
opening the doors to a new concrete order founded on racial homoge-
neity. His short text represents one of the most remarkable attempts by
a committed Nazi scholar to appropriate Webers ideas in the service of
National Socialism.
:c:
Rath freely acknowledged that the spirit of Webers writings ran counter
to the social order envisaged by National Socialism. Webers emphasis
on the importance of existential decision on the part of individuals
was incompatible with a community based on the Volk and its histor-
ical mission.
:c,
Yet Rath argued that Webers pessimistic vision of mod-
ern society set him apart from the typical proponents of value freedom,
who lauded the modern age for its scholarly progress, economic global-
ization, and cosmopolitanism. Even when we see that its above all a for-
eign [artfremde] intelligentsia that takes the trouble to (falsely!) present a
great German thinker as one of them, does that mean we must abandon
the eorts of one of our best?, Rath asked rhetorically. Should we, for
example, think little of Kants achievements because neo-Kantianism is
almost entirely of Jewish character? Rath asserted that Weber supplied
some of the best arguments against National Socialisms enemies: Where
can aggressive scholarship [die kmpfende Wissenschaft] nd more weapons

:cc
For an outline of Raths career, see Hauke Janssen, Nationalkonomie und Nationalsozialismus:
Die deutsche Volkswirtschaftslehre in den dreiiger Jahren (Marburg: Metropolis, :ccc), oc,. See
also Gerald D. Feldman, Allianz and the German Insurance Business, :),,:),, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, :cc:), ,,,,.

:c:
Feldman, Allianz, ,,.

:c:
Klaus Wilhelm Rath, review of Artur Mettler, Max Weber und die philosophische Problematik in
unserer Zeit. Zeitschrift fr die gesamte Staatswissenschaft ,o (:,,o): ::;,:.

:c,
Ibid., :,c.




Polytheism II: the search for a concrete order ;,
against pacist ideology, Marxist sociology of scholarship, Roman uni-
versalism, philanthropic liberal assertiveness, and reactionary economism
than in Max Weber? Who sees through the fallacy of this pseudo-conict
between neo-Tomism and neo-Romanticism, who sees through all the
small and great system-discoverers and plan-makers more clearly than
Weber?
:c
As Rath understood him, Weber reminded Germans that they would
have to take action, rather than rely on transcendental values, to create
a new social order. By preventing German thinkers from slipping back
into the quietism of nineteenth-century thought, Weber contributed to
the revolution of National Socialism: For what Weber sees is this: for
the new order of the social world there is only the struggle of creative
deeds, not world redemption through revelation or invention. Despite
the fact that Weber did not provide the cue [Stichwort] for this struggle,
and hence is no myth for us, he nonetheless served as a backstop against
ideological retreat.
:c,
By arguing that there could be no scholarly know-
ledge of binding values, and that the warring gods of dierent value sys-
tems could never be reconciled, Weber cleared the ground for new kinds
of communities based on something more powerful than shared values:
Webers work must be overcome. It is the salutary thorn that sticks in the esh
of all the German social sciences. For Max Webers work shows that the con-
crete order which we today seek cannot be constituted by value communities
of any kind; that values or ethical ideas do not possess the unifying power that
Idealism always tends to ascribe to them; that more is demanded than that!
Tis whole misconception, which senses in the dawning of the national com-
munity only ever a Hegelian renaissance mood, is thereby countered; this path,
which can only be a retreat, is cut o by M. Weber. An important discovery
in recent debates, namely that communities of shared values are symptoms of
decomposition especially when they present themselves as substitutes for con-
crete communities nds its conrmation in Webers work. Tus Webers work
demonstrates its true fruitfulness in being overcome, since it forces us to con-
front essential issues. Tis process of overcoming cannot be a retreat to values
of any kind, but must rather lead to the exploration of concrete community.
Understood correctly, Weber still unbars the path toward it. His radicalization
clears a path to the authentic sources.
:co


:c
Ibid., :,:.
:c,
Ibid.

:co
Ibid., :,::. Rath took the phrase communities of shared values are symptoms of
decomposition from a book by Reinhard Hhn, one of the leading Nazi legal theorists. Hhn
argued that National Socialist law was founded on a national community (Volksgemeinschaft)
rather than a legal community. For Hhn, a true concrete community was rooted in racial
and biological homogeneity. See Reinhard Hhn, Rechtsgemeinschaft und Volksgemeinschaft
(Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, :,,,), ;;.


Value freedom and polytheism ;
Raths review is an exemplary text for illustrating the dierence
between conservative revolutionaries like Kahler and intellectuals who
subscribed to the racist ideology of National Socialism.
:c;
Conservative
revolutionaries admired the societies of medieval times, when religion
and traditional values united individuals into a social whole greater than
the sum of its parts. Instead of seeking to recreate the past, they put their
hopes in new values or a Nietzschean transvaluation of values that
could provide the basis for an all-encompassing community in modern
times. For ideological National Socialists, however, all talk of values
represented a retreat into the musty philosophy of the nineteenth century.
Values could be the subject of endless debate, but only racial homogeneity
provided an incontrovertible standard for national community.
vaiui ii iioox, ioi\ ruii sx, axo iiui aii sx
In Scholarship as a Vocation Weber suggested that modern scholarship
had something in common with modern capitalism and governmental
bureaucracy: all required the service of specialists, the kind of individuals
who adopted a rationalized and methodical approach to life, laboring for
incremental progress in tasks whose end could not be glimpsed within
their own lifetimes. Webers conviction that the state of scholarship mir-
rored the status of society was widely accepted by his educated contem-
poraries. In the wake of World War i, many radical German intellectuals
believed that their goal of overcoming pluralism and liberalism could
only be achieved by transforming the condition of scholarship as it was
currently practiced. As a consequence, both Webers defenders and critics
strongly associated the kind of scholarship he defended with the liberal
democracy of the Weimar Republic.
:c
Troeltsch predicted that the revolution of scholarship was in truth
the beginning of the great world reaction against the democratic and
socialist Enlightenment, against the rational autocracy of reason and
its unbridled organization of existence, and the dogma of equality and
intelligence of men that it presupposes.
:c,
Salz warned that Kahlers

:c;
On the conservative revolutionaries among Weimar intellectuals, see Rolf Peter Sieferle, Die
Konservative Revolution: Fnf biographische Skizzen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, :,,,).

:c
See Ursula Henke, Die berwindung von Max Webers Wissenschaftskonzept in der
Zwischenkriegszeit, Annali di sociologia ,, Part ii (:,,): :o. On the connections between
Webers conception of scholarly objectivity and his advocacy of parliamentarism, see Kari
Palonen, Objectivity as Fair Play: Max Webers Parliamentary Redescription of a Normative
Concept, Redescriptions :: (:cc): ;:,,.

:c,
Troeltsch, Die Revolution in der Wissenschaft, :c:,.




Value freedom, polytheism, and pluralism ;,
scholarship would result in a dictatorship of the few or in tyranny,
a simultaneous valorization of the genius as leader and the collectivity
as destiny. Te old scholarship was fundamentally not esoteric, but
rather democratic or demagogic, not hierarchical, but rather repub-
lican; it addresses itself not to a chosen few, but rather to the market;
it is not the secret teaching of adepts, but rather the knowledge of lay-
men.
::c
Radbruch, a committed Social Democrat who briey served as
his partys minister of justice during the Weimar Republic, regarded
legal relativism as the cognitive presupposition of democracy, since
[ democracy] refuses to associate itself with a particular political concep-
tion, and is much more prepared to leave the leadership of state to any
political conception that can win a majority for itself, since it does not
know an obvious criterion for the correctness of political views, and it
does not acknowledge the possibility of a standpoint above the parties.
:::

Scheler, himself no great supporter of liberal democracy, also maintained
that value freedom and polytheism provided the epistemological basis
for Germanys parliamentarism:
Te new relativist theory of world views as introduced by W. Dilthey, M. Weber,
K. Jaspers, and G. Radbruch in the philosophy of law is the theoretical reec-
tion of a parliamentarism whose own world view is democratic, in which one
discusses the meaning of all possible opinions without making a claim; negotiates
without deciding; and consciously dispenses with mutual persuasion on the basis
of principles, as parliamentarism had once presupposed during its heyday.
:::
At the beginning of his career Weber had appealed to the value freedom
of scholarship to promote political pluralism. By making his colleagues
aware of their proclivity to import value judgments into their research, he
hoped to dissuade them from thinking that political disagreements could
be settled on a scientically objective basis. After the Nazis came to
power, calls for a political scholarship (politische Wissenschaft) drowned
out any residual interest in pursuing the kind of value-free scholarship
he endorsed. As one economist observed at the beginning of the :,cs,
nearly all voices now speak out against the value freedom of [economic]
theory.
::,
Yet it would be a mistake to assume that Weber could no longer

::c
Salz, Fr die Wissenschaft, ::, :,.

:::
Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie, .

:::
Scheler, Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens, . After :,: Scheler rejected both the reac-
tionary right and the revolutionary left and moved toward embracing liberal democracy, but he
still harbored a distrust of mass surage and the parliamentary system. See John Raphael Staude,
Max Scheler :;,:):: An Intellectual Portrait (New York: Free Press, :,o;), :,o:, ,,:,o.

::,
Walter Weddigen, Das Werturteil in der politischen Wissenschaft, Jahrbcher fr
Nationalkonomie und Statistik :,, (:,:): :.




Value freedom and polytheism ;o
possess any relevance under these changed political circumstances. At the
height of National Socialist rule several noteworthy scholars invoked his
name precisely to attack political pluralism. In their view he was to be
commended for ghting to keep the warring opinions of Wilhelmine and
Weimar politics from contaminating scholarship not because scholar-
ship and politics constituted heterogeneous spheres of life, but because
the partisanship of liberal politics was undesirable on its own terms. Te
anarchy of political values under liberalism was itself a thing of ill repute,
they argued, and Weber had been right to prevent it from contaminat-
ing German scholarship. Now that a prophet and savior had arrived in
the form of Adolf Hitler, bearing objective values that were binding
on all Germans, the war of the gods had ceased. Under these conditions,
the sociologist Andreas Walther and the economists Wilhelm Vleugels
and Georg Weippert argued, scholarship could be oriented toward the
German Volk and its historical destiny.
Walther, a professor of sociology at the universities of Gttingen and
Hamburg, was one of the most astute and engaged interpreters of Webers
sociology during the Weimar Republic.
::
Tough his scholarship did not
portend any sympathies with radical conservatism or National Socialism,
he joined the Nazi Party in May, :,,, and sought to put his discipline at
the service of the new political order.
::,
His manifesto, Te New Tasks of
the Social Sciences, called for moving beyond value-free scholarship even
while it depicted Webers work as one of the greatest scholarly accom-
plishments in all of history.
::o
In light of the chaos of values that sur-
rounded Weber in his own time, Walther argued, his endorsement of
value freedom had been understandable, since the admittance of one
propagandist into the halls of scholarship would have resulted in a stam-
pede. Now, with the advent of National Socialist rule, this danger had
passed. Te incorporation of value judgments into scholarship would no
longer result in a swarm of quarreling demagogues, since the common
German will for reconstruction would ensure that order prevailed.
::;
Wilhelm Vleugels, a professor of political economy at the University
of Bonn, similarly mobilized Webers value freedom to attack political

::
See Andreas Walther, Max Weber als Soziologe, Jahrbuch fr Soziologie : (:,:o): :o,.

::,
On Walthers career, see Rainer Wassner, Andreas Walther und das Seminar fr Soziologie
in Hamburg zwischen :,:o und :,,: Ein wissenschaftsbiographischer Umriss, in Ordnung
und Teorie: Beitrge zur Geschichte der Soziologie in Deutschland, ed. Sven Papcke (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, :,o), ,o:c.

::o
Andreas Walther, Die neuen Aufgaben der Sozialwissenschaften (Hamburg: Hansischer
Gildenverlag, :,,,), ,:.

::;
Ibid., :c::.




Value freedom, polytheism, and pluralism ;;
pluralism. In a :,,, lecture he called on German scholars to pursue a
political scholarship that would consciously bring out specically
those values that bind us to the vlkisch community and thereby increase
their fruitfulness.
::
Vleugels suggested that Webers concept of value
freedom could be regarded as a preliminary stage in the development of
political scholarship, rather than as a heterodox theory to be abandoned.
His struggle for value freedom concerned rst and foremost the rigor of
a scholarship sustained by the search for truth, the resistance against the
importation of party-political or merely individually subjective valuations
into the practice and theory of scholarship. To that extent it was indeed
a holy war that Max Weber waged.
::,
Vleugels believed that Webers
demand for value freedom was reasonable in the absence of generally
binding values. However, thanks to Adolf Hitler, who restored to the
nation the belief in the general commitment to vlkisch values and tasks,
such a context no longer obtained.
::c
Political scholarship would have to
abandon the neutrality but not the objectivity of traditional scholarship.
It needed to retain the ability to distinguish between values that were
objectively valid and pseudo-values which are only based in more or
less personal claims.
:::
Weber was to be credited with keeping the swarm
of subjective values from distracting scholars from their search for object-
ive values. So far as Max Webers struggle was aimed at rejecting those
values that are not believed to be generally binding, we follow him even
today, Vleugels declared, for this indeed objectively concerns the strug-
gle for the rigor of scholarship, and the rejection of merely partisan con-
tamination and destruction of scholarship.
:::
Georg Weippert, a professor of political economy at the University of
Knigsberg, also took Webers concept of value freedom as a point of ref-
erence for dening a new political scholarship.
::,
In the opening sections

::
Wilhelm Vleugels, ber die Wende von der wertfreien zur ethisch-politischen Wissenschaft
(Akademische Festvorlesung, gehalten an der Universitt Bonn am ,c. Januar :,,,), in
Zur Gegenwartslage der deutschen Volkswirtschaftslehre: Eine Sammlung von Aufstzen ber
Gegenwartslage, Erbe und heutige Aufgaben der deutschen volkswirtschaftlichen Teorie (Jena:
Fischer, :,,,), ;. On Vleugels career, see Janssen, Nationalkonomie und Nationalsozialismus,
o:o;.

::,
Vleugels, ber die Wende, :.

::c
Ibid., :, :,.
:::
Ibid., :::,.
:::
Ibid., ,.

::,
Weippert was viewed with suspicion by National Socialist ocials, who objected to his ali-
ations with the Catholic Church. His appreciation for Webers value freedom is also noted in
Klingemann, Soziologie im Dritten Reich, :;. Wilhelm Hennis, one of the leading modern
German Weber scholars, studied with Weippert at the University of Gttingen after World
War ii, and thanked him for encouraging his early interest in Weber. See Wilhelm Hennis, Max
Webers Fragestellung: Studien zur Biographie des Werks (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,;), iii.




Value freedom and polytheism ;
of a :,: article he recounted the controversy over value freedom in the
Verein fr Sozialpolitik, and presented a detailed and sympathetic recon-
struction of Weber and Sombarts arguments. He emphasized that Weber
and Sombarts value freedom had been a reasonable position to take given
the circumstances of their times. Teir interventions had been justied
to the extent that they opposed the sloppy conation of scholarly state-
ments with ethical-political judgments, and from the perspective of the
history of scholarship, the controversy over value judgments was neces-
sary and constitutes a not insignicant advancement of knowledge.
::

Having honored Weber and Sombarts accomplishments, Weippert went
on to argue that their concept of value freedom had been dictated by the
state of scholarship at that time, and not by [the nature of ] scholarship
itself.
::,
Weippert asserted that the fundamental essence of social institu-
tions, as creations of the human spirit, could in fact be revealed through
the phenomenological investigation of inner experience. Had Weber
and Sombart followed the method of Verstehen to its logical conclusions,
they would have discovered that scholars could obtain knowledge of
essences of social phenomena. Tis kind of intuitive knowledge revealed
not just the existential character of an object but also the objective
values associated with it. Te task of a political scholarship, as Weippert
understood it, was to focus phenomenological analysis on the concrete,
historical unity of life with the goal of discovering the political commu-
nitys essence and needs.
::o
Why were intellectuals in Nazi Germany keen to lay claim to Webers
concepts of value freedom and polytheism? Teir sense of kinship with
Weber stemmed in large part from their admiration for his stringent and
uncompromising ethos. As Walther took pains to point out, the best
known protagonist of the value freedom of scholarship, Max Weber,
was not a weakly relativist but a passionately political person.
::;
Vleugels
insisted that Weber will forever remain exemplary for the toughness
and, at the same time, the chivalry of his way of combat, for his authen-
tic commitment.
::
In his :,,o book Jewry and Economics, Rath distin-
guished between the kind of scholarly objectivity he admired, and the
type of value-free scholarship he associated with Jewish scholars in the
Weimar Republic: Te demand of objective devotion [sachliche Hingabe],

::
Georg Weippert, Vom Werturteilsstreit zur politischen Teorie, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv
,, no. : (:,,,): :;.

::,
Ibid., :.
::o
Ibid., ::,:.

::;
Walther, Die neuen Aufgaben, :c.

::
Vleugels, ber die Wende, ::.




Value freedom, polytheism, and pluralism ;,
which goes without saying for every kind of conscientious research, has
been exploited by the Jews into a veritable witches sabbath of value free
research, in which they are able to work o their subjectivities.
::,
For
Rath, Webers advocacy of value freedom clearly fell within the rst cat-
egory. It remains Webers achievement, he noted, that he understood
scholarship as the endurance of uncomfortable facts, as the courage to
face up to whatever situation knowledge may lead us to Max Weber
led a fanatical ght for the authenticity of scholarly seriousness, he sat
in terrible judgment over all those who wanted to sneak away from this
struggle.
:,c
Radbruch and Jaspers understood that the obvious implication of value
freedom and polytheism, as Weber himself conceived them, was a vision
of human individuality that valorized existential decision-making. But
those of Webers admirers who supported National Socialism looked past
his individualism because they could identify with his commitment to the
unconditional and the absolute. Stephen Turner and Regis Factor have
observed that the vehemence of Webers postwar speeches reected the
same mood that would later nd expression in the Nazi doctrines of
personal sacrice, commitment as against compromise, and especially the
belief, raised to the level of doctrine, in unsentimentality, or ruthlessness
in politics.
:,:
Te new social order endorsed by Webers Nazi-era admirers
was to be grounded in conviction, certainty, and rigor, and for that reason
they admired the intensity and exacting ethos of his value freedom.
From the perspective of the Weimar controversy over the revolution
in scholarship, Webers role in the generation after his death might seem
merely that of a conservative counterpoint to the radical intellectual
and political movements of his time. But the ways in which Radbruch,
Jaspers, Rath, Walther, Vleugels, and Weippert mobilized his concepts
demonstrate his signicance for contemporaries as a harbinger of revolu-
tionary philosophical and political transformations. Te ability of these
intellectuals to identify so strongly with Weber suggests that his intellec-
tual ethos bore stronger anities to the world of Weimar and Nazi-era
radicalism than we might otherwise think.

::,
Klaus Wilhelm Rath, Judentum und Wirtschaftswissenschaft (Berlin: Deutscher Rechts-Verlag,
:,,o), ,:.

:,c
Klaus Wilhelm Rath, review of Mettler, Max Weber, :,c, :,:.

:,:
Turner and Factor, Dispute over Reason and Value, :o. It is no surprise, the authors point out,
that later Weberians were not to stress these aspects of his conception of the demands of the
day.



c
cuairii ,
Te meaning of modern capitalism
Webers writings on the sociology of religion have made him into a
universally known author, observed the historian Georg von Below in
:,:. In particular, everyone talks about his derivation of capitalism
from Calvinism, and it is no exaggeration to say that an eager journalist
hardly misses the opportunity to operate with his formula.
:
Webers inter-
pretation of modern capitalism and his analysis of its historical precondi-
tions, perhaps more than any other element of his oeuvre, established his
reputation for a broad audience of readers. His Heidelberg colleague, the
political economist Eberhard Gothein, identied Te Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism as above all the work with which Max Webers
name will be associated in the future.
:
Te century that has elapsed since
its publication in :,c, has proven Gothein correct. Few texts have occu-
pied such a prominent position in the curriculum of the social sciences,
and few have engendered a scholarly controversy of such longevity and
undiminished interest: the thing that would not die, as one scholar has
called it.
,
Among historians, economists, theologians, and sociologists,
Webers writings have lost none of their ability to fascinate, frustrate, and
bae, despite the eorts of hundreds of articles and books to put the dis-
cussion to rest once and for all.
Tis chapter seeks to explain why Webers contemporaries found his
analysis of capitalism so compelling. It begins by analyzing the motiv-
ations and argument behind Te Protestant Ethic and situates the text
within the academic vocabulary and polemics of Webers time. It then
explores the scholarly and not-so-scholarly controversies that erupted over

:
Georg von Below, Max Webers Gesammelte Aufstze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,
Deutsche Literaturzeitung ,, no. :, (:,:): :;:.

:
Eberhard Gothein, Max Weber, Karlsruher Tagblatt, June :,, :,:c (Erstes Blatt).

,
Guy Oakes, Te Ting that Would Not Die: Notes on Refutation, in Webers Protestant Ethic,
ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,,),
:,,.





Te meaning of modern capitalism :
his work during his lifetime and well beyond. As early as :, one writer
lamented that unfortunately the whole Weberian thesis has been bedev-
iled by various extra-scientic valuations, and frequently has been the vic-
tim of partisan contention depending on the economic orientation and
religious aliation of the writers in question.

A more recent interpreter

has observed that we might see the whole Protestant ethic controversy
to have been dogged from the outset by the grinding of particular reli-
gious, political, or theoretical axes.
,
If contemporaries liked to grind their
axes against Te Protestant Ethic, it was largely because Weber oered
them a whetstone of massive proportions. Many of the major polemics
in early-twentieth-century German culture and society concerning the
Kulturkampf between Lutherans and Catholics, the validity of historical
materialism, and the meaning of life in an age of specialization and pro-
fessionalization could draw ammunition from Te Protestant Ethic, and
Webers contemporaries eagerly seized on his analysis to articulate their
own idiosyncratic views.
Later in life Weber turned from studying the peculiar mentalities
that distinguished early modern capitalist entrepreneurs to the institu-
tional features that made their enterprises unique. In his wartime article
Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order
he asserted that modern capitalist enterprises had much in common with
the modern state. Both could be characterized as a Betrieb a continu-
ously operating, rational organization oriented toward purposive activity,
administered by what Weber called bureaucracy. Te analogy he drew
between the modern state and capitalist enterprise shocked his German
contemporaries; it also helped three notable intellectuals the historian
Otto Hintze, the legal theorist Carl Schmitt, and the philosopher Georg
Lukcs formulate their own political visions for the modern state. At a
time when traditional conceptions of the German state had forfeited their
legitimacy, Hintze, Schmitt, and Lukcs believed that Weber had per-
fectly captured the nature of the modern state by comparing it with the
instrumentality of a business enterprise. Tey were less interested in the
converse of his analogy, namely, that the organization of modern capital-
ist enterprise could be illuminated by likening it to public administration.
Te chapter concludes by explaining how Talcott Parsons unlocked the

Ephraim Fischo, Te Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Te History of a

Controversy, Social Research ::, no. : (:,): ,;.

,
Gordon Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism: An Essay on Max Webers Protestant Ethic
Tesis (New York: Columbia University Press, :,:), :o,.


Te meaning of modern capitalism :
hidden potential in Webers analogy and, in the process, succeeded in
canonizing him as the pre-eminent modern theorist of bureaucracy.
xa x winii axo rui sii ii r oi caii raii sx
Webers friend, the pastor and left-liberal politician Friedrich Naumann,
observed in :,:: that just as the French have their theme: what was the
great Revolution?, so our national destiny has given us our theme for a
long time to come: what is capitalism?
o
In the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century Germany experienced industrialization at a rapid pace,
yielding Europes most dynamic economy and its most powerful social-
ist party. Te topic that fascinated Webers generation of political econo-
mists was in essence a historical one: what was the nature of this new
socioeconomic order and who was responsible for its rise? As bourgeois
scholars began to take Marxs writings seriously in the :,cs, they concep-
tualized these historical transformations in terms of the capitalist mode
of production.
;
However, Marx could not claim direct responsibility for
introducing Kapitalismus into everyday speech. Neither the term nor the
concept, which classied an entire historical epoch in terms of its dom-
inant mode of production, appeared in his writings. It was instead the
political economist Werner Sombart who in :,c: made capitalism famous
through his two-volume treatise Modern Capitalism.

Capitalism signied for Sombart a type of economy whose specic

economic form was the capitalist enterprise, which aimed to exploit an
asset through a sum of contracts concerning monetary services and counter-
services, in other words, to reproduce [the asset] for its owner with an add-
itional value (prot).
,
In the rst volume of Modern Capitalism Sombart
sought to explain how capitalist enterprises rst emerged in European

o
Quoted in ibid., :o.

;
On the reception of Marxs thought among German political economists, see Dieter Lindenlaub,
Richtungskmpfe im Verein fr Sozialpolitik: Wissenschaft und Sozialpolitik im Kaiserreich vornehm-
lich vom Beginn des neuen Kurses bis zum Ausbruch des ersten Weltkrieges (:)o:):,) (Wiesbaden:
Steiner, :,o;), :;:,; and Rita Aldenho, Kapitalismusanalyse und Kulturkritik: Brgerliche
Nationalkonomen entdecken Karl Marx, in Intellektuelle im Deutschen Kaiserreich, ed. Gangolf
Hbinger and Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, :,,,), ;,.

Marie-Elisabeth Hilger and Lucian Hlscher, Kapital, Kapitalist, Kapitalismus, in

Geschichtliche Grundbegrie: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland,
ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, :,:), Vol. iii,
,,,,; Fernand Braudel, Te Wheels of Commerce, trans. Sin Reynolds, Vol. ii of Civilization
and Capitalism, :,th:th Century (London: Phoenix, :cc:), :,:,, o:n.

,
Werner Sombart, Die Genesis des Kapitalismus, Vol. i of Der moderne Kapitalismus (Boston, MA:
Adamant, :cc, [:,c:]), :,,.





Max Weber and the spirit of capitalism ,
history. In contrast to Marxs narrative of primitive accumulation,
Sombart argued that the mere accumulation of monetary wealth did not
guarantee that it would be employed as capital. In centuries past, kings
and popes amassed huge fortunes only to expend them on consump-
tion, charity, and waging wars. Te idea that money could be employed
to produce more money was considered distasteful by the ruling aristo-
cratic classes; even bourgeois entrepreneurs preferred to retreat to their
landed estates once they had made enough money to retire from the
world of active commerce.
:c
Sombart insisted that capitalist enterprise
was unthinkable in the absence of a historically specic form of inten-
tionality on the part of the entrepreneur. Without the specic capitalist
spirit of its owner, which Sombart equated with all those psychological
qualities which we have come to recognize as peculiar to the capitalist
entrepreneur: the striving after prot, the calculatory sensibility, the eco-
nomic rationalism, capitalist enterprise could not have emerged to claim
the social hegemony it currently enjoyed.
::
Sombart claimed that the capitalist spirit rst appeared in the late
Middle Ages when a newly awakened drive for acquisition (Erwerbstrieb)
joined forces with an economic rationalism heretofore unknown in the
world.
::
According to Sombart, the Crusades served as an unprecedented
stimulus for Europeans demand for money: vast sums were needed
to wage holy war and to acquire the Byzantine and Arab luxuries that
Europeans discovered in the process. Kings and popes began to search for
alternative ways of procuring monetary wealth, such as introducing new
taxes and selling indulgences, while those without political or religious
power took o in search of the lost city of El Dorado or studied alchemy.
It took a while before Europeans realized that everyday economic activity
could be turned from its usual purpose that of simply making a living
toward the end of multiplying money.
:,
When, where, and how this
notion rst came into the world will probably always remain shrouded in
impenetrable darkness, Sombart mused. He nonetheless speculated that
it must have originated among people from a lower social stratum who
had no other means of increasing their wealth, who lacked the imagina-
tion for treasure hunting or alchemy, but who possessed cool calculation
and [a] rational conception of things, in other words, among ethnically
foreign shopkeepers and moneylenders.
:
Tis reasoning led Sombart to
conclude that the Jews had played a major role in stimulating the drive for

:c
Ibid., :c;, ,;.
::
Ibid., :c.

::
Ibid., ,,:.
:,
Ibid., ,:.
:
Ibid., ,, ,,.


Te meaning of modern capitalism
acquisition in western Europe, though he warned that their importance
should not be overstated, since their social function was often fullled by
foreign merchants from Aryan strata.
:,
Lastly, Sombart argued that the
emergence of the capitalist spirit required the combination of a height-
ened appetite for lucre with a peculiar technology of human cogitation,
the ability to calculate the outcome of each business venture and the eco-
nomic position of the enterprise as a whole. Te key milestones in the
development of this new economic rationalism were the publication of
Fibonaccis Liber abaci (::c:), which introduced European readers to the
Hindu-Arabic numeral system, and Luca Paciolos Summa (:,), which
systematized the principles of double-entry bookkeeping.
:o
Te originality of Webers approach to investigating the origins of
capitalism cannot be appreciated without understanding how he used
Sombarts Modern Capitalism as both model and foil. Weber not only
shared Sombarts guiding interest in the origins of capitalism as an eco-
nomic system; he also fundamentally agreed with Sombarts claim that
capitalism presupposed character traits in economic actors that were nei-
ther innate nor common in most historical societies. However, unlike
Sombart, Weber did not perceive any causal connection between the
historical emergence of capitalist enterprise and the rise of capitalism as
an economic system. While businesses based on capitalist principles had
existed in every world civilization since time immemorial, it had only
been since the mid nineteenth century in Europe that the aggregate of
such enterprises provided for the majority of everyday human needs.
:;
To
survive, much less thrive, under the conditions of full-blown capitalism

:,
Ibid., ,,c.
:o
Ibid., ,,:;.

:;
In Te Protestant Ethic, Weber dened a capitalist enterprise, much like Sombart, as an enter-
prise run by private entrepreneurs in the form of trade in capital (= money or goods with
money value) for the purpose of prot, gained by purchase of the means of production and
the sale of the products (PE, : [BW, :,]). Weber sometimes ascribed capitalism to any sec-
tor of the economy that was highly reliant on capitalist enterprise. In Te Agrarian Economy
in Antiquity (:,c,), he argued that a number of economic sectors in the Greek and Roman
world (such as government contracting, mining, sea trade, plantations, banking, mortgages,
and overland trade) could be legitimately classied as capitalist and thus, to a very limited
extent, it was legitimate to speak of the existence of capitalism in antiquity. See Max Weber,
Agrarverhltnisse im Altertum, in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,
ed. Marianne Weber (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,), ::,, (ASAC, o;). He eventually
became aware that his use of the concept of capitalism was potentially confusing to his readers.
In the second edition of Te Protestant Ethic, published in :,:c, he replaced references to capit-
alism with modern capitalism to emphasize that he was interested in tracing the origins of an
economic system that in his view had rst come into being in nineteenth-century Europe.
See also Weber, Antikritisches zum Geist des Kapitalismus (:,:c), in Die protestantische Ethik
II: Kritiken und Antikritiken, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Gtersloh: Gtersloher Verlagshaus,
:,;), :;c:, :on,, :;nc (CH, ;,, ,n,, ,n,o); and Max Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Abri


Max Weber and the spirit of capitalism ,
required character traits very dierent from those possessed by medieval
merchants and moneylenders who existed in the interstices of a predom-
inantly subsistence economy. For capitalist enterprise to transform the
world, entrepreneurs needed to be motivated by something more than
merely a drive for acquisition and economic rationalism.
Weber drew on anecdotes from his familys history in the Rhineland
textile industry to argue that the modern economic order demanded
something new from capitalist entrepreneurs.
:
He noted that until the
mid nineteenth century most cottage industries, though undoubtedly cap-
italist in their business strategy, were still run in a traditional manner.
Tey depended on a xed circle of clients and produced a modest return
on capital, which provided for a respectable standard of living and ena-
bled a leisured lifestyle. Te decisive changes came not so much with the
introduction of new machinery as with a new approach to entrepreneur-
ship. Young businessmen, newly arrived in the countryside from the big
city, shook up the way business traditionally was conducted. Tey exerted
greater discipline on the peasants who manufactured their textiles, mar-
keted the nished products themselves, reduced prices to increase sales
volume, pursued prot beyond the point of satisfying customary needs,
and carried out their business with a sense of professional obligation and
sober self-discipline. Before too long, the comfortable business practices
of yesterday were replaced by a struggle for survival.
:,
Te new-style entrepreneur whom Weber sketched was not sup-
posed to represent a concrete historical gure, but rather what he called
an ideal type, constructed from conditions in dierent industries in
diverse places. Weber did not provide any clarication of the meth-
odological function of such ideal types in Te Protestant Ethic.
:c
Te
signicance of his approach will be examined in the following chapter;
for now it suces to say that his sketch was intended to capture what
was typical or distinctive about the modern capitalist entrepreneur.
According to Weber, the typical modern capitalist entrepreneur was not
distinguished by unbounded acquisitiveness and avarice, since these traits
could be found equally if not exceedingly among Chinese ocials,
der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, ed. S. Hellmann and M. Palyi (Berlin: Duncker
& Humblot, :,,:), :,, (GEH, :;o).

:
On Webers family background, see Guenther Roth, Max Webers deutsch-englische
Familiengeschichte :oo:),o (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :cc:).

:,
PE, :,; (BW, :c,).

:c
He simply referred his readers to his essay published in the same year, Die Objektivitt sozial-
wissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis. PE, :,n,, :,n,, (BW, ,:nn,,).



Te meaning of modern capitalism o
Roman aristocrats, and modern peasants.
::
In a concession to Sombart,
Weber admitted that the typical modern capitalist entrepreneur possessed
economic rationalism insofar as he sought labor in the service of a
rational structuring of the provision of the material needs of humanity
and organized his business on the basis of strict mathematical calcula-
tion.
::
But Weber insisted that the peculiar aspect of the modern capital-
ist entrepreneurs personality was his seemingly irrational conviction that
a man exists for his business, and not vice versa. He treated his business
as an end in itself and not simply as a means for supplying a traditional
standard of living.
:,
His distinctive ethos was embodied in the idea of the
duty of the individual to work toward the increase of his wealth, which
is assumed to be an end in itself. It was this ethos of ethical obligation
toward the creation of prot that Weber dubbed the spirit of (modern)
capitalism, despite the fact that Sombart invested the concept with an
entirely dierent meaning.
:
Under the conditions of modern capitalism, economic growth no longer
depended on entrepreneurs voluntarily embracing the spirit of capitalism:
Todays capitalism, which has come to dominance in economic life, trains
and creates, by means of economic selection, the economic subjects
entrepreneurs and workers that it needs.
:,
Te struggle for economic
survival compelled individuals to pursue methodical capitalist activity
in the never-ending search for prots lest they be consigned to economic
irrelevance. Todays capitalist economic order is a monstrous cosmos, into
which the individual is born and which in practice is for him, at least as
an individual, simply a given, an immutable shell [Gehuse], in which he is
obliged to live, Weber observed. It forces on the individual, to the extent
that he is caught up in the relationships of the market, the norms of eco-
nomic activity.
:o
Historians nevertheless had to account for the emergence
of individuals who regarded the methodical accumulation of prot as an
end in itself. Without the prior existence of such individuals, there would
have been no human material from which the modern capitalist economy
could make its selection in the rst place. Te task of Te Protestant Ethic
was to explain the origins of these progenitors of modern capitalism.
:;
::
PE, : (BW, :).
::
PE, ,:: (BW, :o).
:,
PE, :, ,, (BW, :,, :).
:
PE, :, (BW, ::).
:,
PE, :o:; (BW, :,).
:o
PE, :o (BW, :,).
:;
PE, :o:; (BW, :,).







Max Weber and the spirit of capitalism ;
Weber called his readers attention to excerpts from two texts, Necessary
Hints to Tose that Would Be Rich (:;,o) and Advice to a Young Tradesman
(:;), by the colonial American author and polymath Benjamin Franklin.
His maxims encouraged young tradesmen to work hard, not waste time,
restrain their consumption, and regard their creditworthiness with the
utmost moral seriousness. Te essence of Franklins ethic was its enjoin-
ment to treat economic activity as a morally sanctioned duty to be sys-
tematically pursued as an end in itself, not merely as a means for fullling
material needs. It was the very embodiment of what Weber called the spirit
of capitalism.
:
Weber claimed that Franklins ethic constituted a revolu-
tionary break with the attitudes toward commerce that had dominated
European culture for over a millennium. Troughout the Middle Ages the
Church regarded moneymaking as a morally reprobate practice. It was not
uncommon for rich men to bequeath their wealth to the Church or even
their former debtors, as if frightened by the possibility that their wealth
might hinder their passage to heaven. Even in the cities of the Italian
Renaissance, the historical cradle of modern European capitalist enter-
prise, moneymaking was regarded as morally neutral at best. Te fact that
Franklin, who lived on a commercially undeveloped frontier of European
settlement, was able to conceive of acquisition as an ethical duty, suggested
to Weber that the spirit of capitalism predated the monstrous cosmos of
modern capitalism and was capable of existing independently of it.
:,
Weber did not aspire to account for the origins of the spirit of capit-
alism in its entirety. Te Protestant Ethic aimed to identify the source of
only one of its components, albeit a centrally important one: the notion
of a vocational duty [Berufspicht], a commitment that the individual
should and does feel toward the content of his professional activities.
,c

At the heart of the spirit of capitalism was the conviction that the indi-
vidual ought to lead a disciplined, consciously directed life in the pur-
suit of delimited professional goals. Weber believed that this ethos was
part and parcel of the bourgeois lifestyle as a whole. Goethes Wilhelm
Meisters Apprenticeship articulated this basic ascetic motive of the

:
PE, :, (BW, ::).
:,
PE, ,c: (BW, :,o).

,c
PE, :o (BW, :,). He emphasized that vocational duty constituted only one component of the
spirit of capitalism in Weber, Antikritisches zum Geist des Kapitalismus, :o,, :;, (CH, ;:, ;o);
Max Weber, Antikritisches Schluwort zum Geist des Kapitalismus (:,:c), in Winckelmann,
Die protestantische Ethik II, :, (CH, ,,). Tat this was Webers central question in Te
Protestant Ethic is convincingly argued in Wilhelm Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung: Studien
zur Biographie des Werks (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,;), ::.


Te meaning of modern capitalism
bourgeois lifestyle, namely that restricting oneself to specialized work,
with the inevitable consequence of abandoning the Faustian universality
of humankind, is the precondition in todays world for any worthwhile
action in other words, that action and renunciation are inevitably
bound together in mutual dependence.
,:
Weber sought to tie this mod-
ern vocational attitude to a revolution in spiritual life that had taken
place in early modern Europe. His central thesis in Te Protestant Ethic
was that a constituent part of the capitalist spirit, and not only this but
of modern culture, namely, rational life conduct on the foundation of the
idea of a vocation [Berufsidee], was born as this essay should prove out
of the spirit of Christian asceticism.
,:
More specically, the source of this
new vocational ethic was an innerworldly asceticism that only certain
branches of the Protestant Reformation Calvinism, Puritanism, and the
Protestant sects rst brought into being.
What was original or provocative about Webers thesis? His asser-
tion of a causal linkage between Protestantism and capitalism was in
itself not particularly controversial. Tat Protestantism, especially in its
Calvinist and Quaker variations, fundamentally promoted the develop-
ment of capitalism, is a fact that is too well known to require further
justication, Sombart observed in Modern Capitalism.
,,
As Joachim
Radkau has noted, most of Webers contemporaries would have under-
stood the connection between Protestantism and capitalism in terms of
a secularization process. On this view, it was the materialistic elements
of the Protestant Reformation that enabled the Scientic Revolution,
the Enlightenment, and nally the godless cosmos of modern capital-
ism to come into being. Webers originality lay in his contention that
it had been the fervent religiosity of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Calvinists and Protestant sectarians, their innerworldly asceticism, that
set in motion the development of modern capitalism.
,
Te inner anity
between the old Protestant spirit and modern capitalist culture was to
be found not in its more or less materialistic or at least anti-ascetic enjoy-
ment of life (as it is called), but rather in its purely religious features.
,,

Seen from this perspective, the argument of Te Protestant Ethic would

,:
PE, :,, (BW, ::c). For an interpretation of this theme in the broader world of n-de-sicle cul-
ture, see Harvey Goldman, Max Weber and Tomas Mann: Calling and the Shaping of the Self
(Berkeley: University of California Press, :,).

,:
PE, :,: (BW, ::c).

,,
Sombart, Die Genesis des Kapitalismus, ,c:. See also Sam Whimster, Understanding Weber
(London: Routledge, :cc;), ,o;.

,
Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity, :cc,), :,.

,,
PE, :c (BW, ;).





Max Weber and the spirit of capitalism ,
have appeared entirely counterintuitive to Webers contemporaries. Te
sociologist Othmar Spann likely spoke for many when he declared that
Webers thesis was as paradoxical as trying to explain coldness from
re.
,o
Weber began his argument by considering the etymology of the word
vocation (Beruf ). When an English speaker claims to pursue medicine as
a vocation, the term is used to signify a commitment to a circumscribed
sphere of labor; the speaker claims to pursue medicine as if called to
it, as suggested by the words Latin root, vocare (to call). Te analogous
German word Beruf signies both vocation and profession, and it, too,
is a cognate of a verb meaning to call (rufen). Weber claimed that this
family of words, which refer to ones station in life or a dened area
of work, existed only in the languages of Protestant countries.
,;
He
then proceeded to argue that not only the word but also the very con-
cept of vocation were inventions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Protestantism. Up until the Reformation, he claimed, Christianity had
maintained an ethically indierent attitude toward worldly occupations.
Martin Luther broke with this tradition by insisting that labor possessed
a high moral value before God. His German translation of the Bible
introduced the word Beruf to refer to mans duty in the world in accord-
ance with his station in life, the work that God literally called him to
perform.
,
But since Luther believed that mans duty in the world was a
fate to be passively accepted, Weber cautioned that his concept of Beruf
was too traditionalistic to serve as the direct antecedent of Franklins
vocational ethic.
,,
Weber identied a more activist interpretation of the Beruf within
ascetic Protestantism, a term he used to refer to the family of denomi-
nations that included Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the Protestant
sects. John Calvins doctrine of predestination held that all humans
were fated from birth for salvation or eternal damnation, and that any
attempt to divine Gods intentions was blasphemous.
c
For true believ-
ers who valued their spiritual salvation more than any other object in the
world, Calvins doctrine generated a great deal of anxiety, since it oered
no means to determine the fate of their souls. Breaking with the letter of
the doctrine as articulated by Calvin (who seemed unconcerned about

,o
Othmar Spann, Bemerkungen zu Max Webers Soziologie (:,:,), in Kmpfende Wissenschaft,
ed. Wolfgang Steanides, Vol. vii of Othmar Spann Gesamtausgabe (Graz: Akademische Druck-
und Verlagsanstalt, :,o,), :,;.

,;
PE, , (BW, :).
,
PE, ,,: (BW, :,,c).

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PE, (BW, ,:).
c
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Te meaning of modern capitalism ,c
the severity of this psychological predicament), later Calvinist preachers
encouraged their parishioners to alleviate their feelings of uncertainty by
taking action. Pious believers ought to consider themselves saved, since
any self-doubt about this matter was a sign that they had not been cho-
sen for salvation. Ceaseless work in a worldly vocation was recommended
as the best way to achieve a feeling of certainty about ones salvation.
Devotion to ones work and labor for the glory of God were signs of elec-
tion by Gods grace. By striving for these results, individuals could dem-
onstrate to themselves and others that they were destined to be saved.
:

Te practical consequence of following these maxims was a systematic,
rational organization of the whole of ethical life in the hope of attain-
ing the certainty of salvation.
:
Like medieval monks, Calvinists were
encouraged to resist their irrational drives and master their own lives
through ascetic self-discipline. However, instead of conning their labors
to the isolated world of the monastery, they were ordered to carry out
their mission within the world of everyday life.
,
Despite their doctrinal
dierences from Calvinism, Weber believed that other denominations
of ascetic Protestantism produced similar psychological premiums on
behavior that was ascetic yet oriented toward worldly activities.

In the nal sections of Te Protestant Ethic Weber attempted to model

the vocational ethics eects on economic behavior. Here he focused exclu-
sively on English Puritanism, since he regarded it as the most consistent
expression of the idea of the calling.
,
Puritans were required to lead a life
of innerworldly Protestant asceticism, which demanded renunciation
not of the world but only of certain creaturely pleasures and indulgences
within it. Clothing should be solemn and free of ornament; sexual inter-
course should serve only the purpose of procreation; dancing, drinking,
and other amusements wasted precious time that could be spent laboring
in the service of God.
o
Puritan theologians demanded that the faithful
pursue rational, methodical labor in a clearly delimited area of special-
ization, for otherwise, in the words of one theologian, the accomplish-
ments of a man are only casual and irregular, and he spends more time in
idleness than at work.
;
Puritans regarded the accumulation of wealth as
a spiritual danger because it tempted the individual toward luxury, indul-
gence, and especially idleness. Work was supposed to serve the glory of
God, the needs of the community, and the fulllment of ones calling. If

:
PE, ;, (BW, ;,).
:
PE, o (BW, o).
,
PE, ;: (BW, :,).

PE, ,::c (BW, ;:c,).

,
PE, ::: (BW, :c,).

o
PE, ::,, :,, (BW, :co;, ::::,).
;
PE, :,: (BW, :c,).



Te academic debate ,:
their profession fullled these criteria, then businessmen were enjoined
to pursue it with vigor and not miss opportunities for prot, for other-
wise they would be guilty of neglecting their calling.

Believers were thus

charged with an ethical obligation toward their wealth:
Te idea of the obligation of man to the possessions entrusted to him, to which
he subordinates himself as a serving trustee or even as acquisitive machine
[Erwerbsmaschine] lies on life with its chilling weight: if he perseveres on the
ascetic path, then the more possessions he acquires, the heavier becomes the
feeling of responsibility to preserve them undiminished for Gods glory and to
increase them through tireless labor.
,
Puritan reformers were concerned above all else with the salvation of
souls, and none would have countenanced the striving for earthly goods
as an end in itself. Yet the unintended consequence of their pastoral teach-
ings was to erode traditional inhibitions against striving for prot, while
at the same time encouraging individuals to limit their consumption and
increase their capital.
,c
Weber believed that the real economic eect of the
calling rst emerged in the eighteenth century, when its religious roots
had attenuated and were replaced by more utilitarian concerns. Te leg-
acy of the Protestant ethic for the eighteenth century was its promotion
of a specically bourgeois vocational ethic and sober, conscientious, and
unusually capable workers, who were devoted to work as the divinely
willed purpose in life.
,:
Franklins spirit of capitalism represented the
Puritan ethic of the calling shorn of its original religious foundations.
,:
rui acaoixi c oinari
As a work of scholarship, Te Protestant Ethic garnered high praise from
German professors during Webers lifetime and well beyond. Ernst
Troeltsch judged it brilliantly successful and, as a whole, a masterpiece
of historical-genetic analysis. At a conference celebrating the ccth anni-
versary of Calvins birth, the Heidelberg theologian Hans von Schubert
declared that the spirit of capitalism, the core of modern economic his-
tory, has correctly been derived from the determined individualism of the
Puritans with their inner asceticism. Te Berlin historian Otto Hintze
considered Webers thesis, despite the objections that have been raised
against it, to be a secure scholarly truth, provided that one understands

PE, :,, (BW, ::c).

,
PE, : (BW, ::,).

,c
PE, ,c, :o; (BW, ,,, ::o:;).
,:
PE, :,c (BW, ::, ::,).

,:
PE, :,:, (BW, ::c).




Te meaning of modern capitalism ,:
it correctly. Te Freiburg political economist Gerhart von Schulze-
Gaevernitz believed that Weber had been frequently attacked but, as
far as I can see, never refuted, and Gustav Aubin, professor of history
at the University of Halle, concluded that the lively discussion that has
been conducted in various dierent scholarly disciplines has conrmed
M. Webers results in their core.
,,
Nonetheless, like most speculative
and provocative works of scholarship, Te Protestant Ethic received more
criticism than unqualied praise. During his lifetime Weber engaged in
rounds of heated critique and anticritique with the historians H. Karl
Fischer and Felix Rachfahl, as well as with the political economists Lujo
Brentano and Sombart. Te decades after Webers death witnessed the
growth of a sizeable literature oriented to attacking his major claims in
Te Protestant Ethic: that modern capitalism, as distinct from instances of
capitalist enterprise in ages past, constituted a unique and unprecedented
economic system; that modern capitalism required the services of a non-
traditional type of person to grow and proliferate; and that the Protestant
conception of the calling inaugurated a radically new attitude toward
secular labor.
Webers distinction between capitalist enterprise as a generic form of
prot-based economic activity, and modern capitalism as a unique eco-
nomic system, supplied a central premise of Te Protestant Ethic. Te spirit
of capitalism was supposed to help explain the origins of the modern eco-
nomic system and not the mere existence of capitalist enterprise. However,
by referring to his explanandum as the spirit of capitalism instead of the
spirit of modern capitalism (an ambiguity he corrected in the revised edi-
tion of :,:c), Weber led many of his readers to conclude mistakenly that
his argument ran as follows: no capitalist enterprise without the spirit of
capitalism; no spirit of capitalism without ascetic Protestantism; therefore,
no capitalist enterprise without ascetic Protestants. Te historians Fischer
and Below pointed to Italy and Hamburg (where intensive and sophis-
ticated capitalist enterprise predated the arrival of Calvinism) as well as
Hungary and Friesland (where capitalism failed to proliferate despite the

,,
Ernst Troeltsch, Die Kulturbedeutung des Calvinismus (:,:c), in Winckelmann, Die prot-
estantische Ethik II, :,:; Hans von Schubert, Calvin, in Calvinreden aus dem Jubilumsjahr
:)o) (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,c,), :,; Otto Hintze, Max Webers Religionssoziologie
(:,::), in Soziologie und Geschichte: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, Politik und
Teorie der Geschichte, ed. Gerhard Oestreich, Vol. ii of Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, :,o), ::,; Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Die geistesgeschicht-
lichen Grundlagen der anglo-amerikanischen Weltsuprematie iii: Die Wirtschaftsethik des
Kapitalismus, Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik o: (:,:,): ::;; Gustav Aubin, Der
Einu der Reformation in der Geschichte der deutschen Wirtschaft (Halle: Niemeyer, :,:,), .

Te academic debate ,,
presence of Calvinists) as counter-examples. In doing so they attributed
to Weber a dierent argument than the one he actually intended to
advance.
,
While Fischer and Below based their criticisms on misunderstand-
ings of Webers explanandum, Rachfahl took issue with one of the actual
assumptions behind Te Protestant Ethic: Webers claim that the economic
attitudes of modern entrepreneurs signicantly departed from those of
previous generations.
,,
Troughout human history, Rachfahl argued,
there had always been some individuals who felt compelled to accumulate
more capital than was necessary to fulll their customary needs. Based
on observations of businessmen in his native Silesia, he pointed out that
entrepreneurs were frequently motivated by desires unrelated to any voca-
tional obligation. Teir thirst for personal power and desire to provide for
future generations functioned as powerful motivational factors. Rachfahl
simply did not accept the notion that modern capitalism required a revo-
lutionary type of personality to operate within its institutions.
,o
Webers
assertion that the Protestant conception of the calling inaugurated a new
ethical attitude toward labor was also attacked. Rachfahl insisted that
tradesmen had always possessed a vocational ethic in the sense of valuing
their professions as ends in themselves.
,;
Te theologian Robert Linhardt
argued that the ethical valuation of labor had been central to Christianity
since the time of Tomas Aquinas; Brentano traced it all the way back to
Saint Augustine.
,
In Te Jews and Economic Life Sombart abandoned his
earlier skepticism about the decisive economic impact of Judaism, and
now contended that it was the Jews, not ascetic Protestants, who contrib-
uted most to developing the spirit of capitalism.
,,
Some historians attempted to demonstrate empirically that Calvinism
did not necessarily promote the economic behavior Weber associated

,
H. Karl Fischer, Kritische Beitrge zu Professor Max Webers Abhandlung Die protestantische
Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (:,c;), in Winckelmann, Die protestantische Ethik II,
:,; Georg von Below, Probleme der Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Eine Einfhrung in das Studium der
Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,:c), ,:.

,,
Felix Rachfahl, Nochmals Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus (:,:c), in Winckelmann, Die protes-
tantische Ethik II, :,o;.

,o
Felix Rachfahl, Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus (:,c,), in Winckelmann, Die protestantische
Ethik II, ;o.

,;
Ibid., :c,; Rachfahl, Nochmals Kapitalismus und Kalvinismus, :o,.

,
Robert Linhardt, Die Sozialprinzipien des heiligen Tomas von Aquin: Versuch einer Grundlegung
der speziellen Soziallehren des Aquinaten (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, :,,:), :o,; Lujo
Brentano, Puritanismus und Kapitalismus (:,:o), in Der wirtschaftende Mensch in der
Geschichte: Gesammelte Reden und Aufstze (Leipzig: Meiner, :,:,), ,,,:.

,,
Werner Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, :,::).






Te meaning of modern capitalism ,
with it. Drawing on Bible commentaries, devotional literature, and
protocols of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, the historian Ernst
Beins concluded that Calvinism had actually exerted a retarding eect
on the development of the spirit of capitalism. At the heart of Calvinist
economic ethics, he claimed, was the principle of brotherly love and the
injunction not to strive for more wealth than was necessary to satisfy ones
immediate requirements. Righteous Calvinists were supposed to support
the common good and put the needs of the community before their own.
While Calvinist moralists praised hard work and modesty, they discour-
aged abnormal feats of labor or excessive devotion to work. After the mid-
dle of the seventeenth century the Calvinist ethic became more amenable
to capitalism, but only because the religion adapted to changing social
norms and institutions.
oc
Another historian, Paul Koch, examined the
impact of Calvinists on the textile industry in the lower Rhineland and
Switzerland. Koch concluded that their success had little to do with the
denomination of Protestantism they practiced, for it turned out that
Calvinist immigrants from Holland and France, and not local Calvinists,
were the ones most actively engaged in textile manufacturing. Koch
argued that the immigrants success could be attributed primarily to the
new techniques and commercial skills they brought with them from the
more economically developed countries of western Europe; to the fortuit-
ous combination of pre-existing industry, low wages, and favorable tari
regimes in the Rhineland and Switzerland; and nally to the particular
psychological incentives that generally motivate immigrants to establish
themselves in new environments.
o:
It is unlikely that Te Protestant Ethic would have stirred as much con-
troversy if it had not also stoked a theoretical debate. German intellectu-
als were fascinated by the ramications of Webers thesis for the Marxist
theory of historical materialism. Instead of portraying culture as a mere
expression of underlying economic interests, Weber argued that religious
ideas played an autonomous role in economic behavior. On a number
of occasions over the course of his career he explicitly stated that histor-
ical materialism failed accurately to describe the way social reality func-
tioned. If we look at the causal lines, we see them run, at one time, from
technical to economic and political matters, at another from political

oc
Ernst Beins, Die Wirtschaftsethik der calvinistischen Kirche der Niederlande :,o,:o,c,
Nederlandsch archief voor kerkgeschiedenis : (:,,:): ::,o.

o:
Paul Koch, Der Einu des Calvinismus und des Mennonitentums auf die Niederrhenische
Textilindustrie: Ein Beitrag zu Max Weber: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des
Kapitalismus (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Munich, :,:).


Te academic debate ,,
to religious and economic ones, etc., he declared at a meeting of the
Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie in :,:c. Tere is no resting point.
In my opinion, the view of historical materialism, frequently espoused,
that the economic is in some sense the ultimate point in the chain of
causes, is completely nished as a scientic proposition.
o:
For many of
Webers readers Te Protestant Ethic represented a major challenge to the
theory of historical materialism.
o,
No less a gure than Karl Kautsky, the
leading German theoretician of orthodox Marxism during the Second
International, emphasized the seriousness of the threat. If Max Weber
has correctly perceived this causal relationship [between religion and the
spirit of capitalism], he warned, then historical materialism and not
just the nave variety stands in a perilous position.
o
In the nal sentences of Te Protestant Ethic Weber cautioned his read-
ers not to interpret his essay as a manifesto on behalf of historical idealism.
It cannot, of course, be our purpose to replace a one-sided materialist
causal interpretation of culture and history with an equally one-sided
spiritual one, he insisted. Both are equally possible, but neither will serve
historical truth if they claim to be the conclusion of the investigation
rather than merely the preliminary work for it.
o,
Tis caveat did not stop
contemporaries from classifying him as an idealist. Fischer interpreted
Te Protestant Ethic as an attempt to demonstrate the truth of the ideal-
istic interpretation of history.
oo
Te philosopher Otto Neurath painted
Weber as a vulgar idealist. Ideas form the economy, that is the thesis of
Max Weber and a great number of bourgeois sociologists who are close to
him, he declared. With great acuity and mighty eort, Weber amassed
material in order to advance this thesis against Marxism.
o;
Schulze-

o:
Quoted in Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, :,,), ,,.

o,
See Alois Dempf, Religionssoziologie, Hochland :, no. o (:,:c/:): ;o; Carl Brinkmann,
Te Present Situation of German Sociology, Publications of the American Sociological Society ::
(:,:;): ,:; Beins, Die Wirtschaftsethik der calvinistischen Kirche der Niederlande, ,; Franz
Borkenau, Der bergang vom feudalen zum brgerlichen Weltbild: Studien zur Geschichte der
Philosophie der Manufakturperiode (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, :,;: [:,,]),
:,; Karl Jadziewski, Max Webers Stellung zur Religion, Die christliche Welt ,c, no. : (:,,o):
,,; and Hans Freyer, Gesellschaft und Geschichte (Leipzig: Teubner, :,,;), ;.

o
Karl Kautsky, Der Staat und die Entwicklung der Menschheit, Vol. ii of Die materialistische
Geschichtsauassung, :nd edn. (Berlin: Dietz, :,:,), ,o. Kautsky believed the challenge could
be met so long as one accepted that Webers spirit of capitalism was in fact the spirit of an
upwardly striving petty bourgeoisie.

o,
PE, :,, (BW, :::).

oo
Fischer, Kritische Beitrge, :.

o;
Otto Neurath, Marxismus eines Jesuiten (:,,:), in Gesammelte philosophische und methodolo-
gische Schriften, ed. Rudolf Haller and Heiner Rutte (Vienna: Hlder-Pichler-Tempsky, :,:),
Vol. i, c:.






Te meaning of modern capitalism ,o
Gaevernitz, who unlike Neurath was sympathetic to Webers argument,
claimed that Weber had explained the intellectual cause as the primary
one, as decisive for the development of the economy. It is the spirit that
creates the body!
o
A number of intellectuals nonetheless felt moved to reconcile Te
Protestant Ethic with Marxist doctrine. Emil Hammacher, a young phil-
osopher at the University of Bonn, insisted that Marx and Engels had
been the rst to connect the advent of a new mentality (the drive for
exchange-values) to the development of industrial capitalism, without,
however, being able to account for its origins. Webers concept of the spirit
of capitalism thus lled out a sensitive gap in their theory.
o,
Nikolai
Bukharin, the leading Soviet theoretician of the :,:cs, argued that the
recent turn toward the spirit of capitalism in Sombarts and Webers
work had unacknowledged roots in Marxs theoretical insights. Marx had
pointed out that both Protestantism and the rising bourgeoisie shared the
same sanctimonious, thrifty, and industrious mentality. Back then
people made fun of [Marxs comparison], Bukharin chided. But now
noted bourgeois scholars develop precisely this theory of Marxs, natur-
ally with little acknowledgment of its real author.
;c
Te Protestant Ethic particularly appealed to Marxist intellectuals
who admired Kantian philosophy and therefore hesitated to embrace a
purely materialistic perspective. Max Adler, one of the major theoreti-
cians of Austrian Socialism, was the most famous thinker to build bridges
between Marxism and the Kantian tradition. He refused to subscribe to
an interpretation of historical materialism that rigidly deduced the super-
structure of intellectual life from the underlying relations of production,

o
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Die geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen, ::,.

o,
Emil Hammacher, Das philosophisch-konomische System des Marxismus (Leipzig: Duncker &
Humblot, :,c,), o,. In the English edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientic (:,:) Engels
noted that Calvins creed was one t for the boldest of the bourgeoisie of the time. His pre-
destination doctrine was the religious expression of the fact that in the commercial world of
competition success or failure does not depend upon a mans activity or cleverness, but upon cir-
cumstances uncontrollable by him (quoted in Marshall, Spirit of Capitalism, ::). Hammacher
was a contributor to Webers Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and a member of the
Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie. On his aliations with the Weber Circle, see Lawrence
A. Sca, Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Tought of Max Weber
(Berkeley: University of California Press, :,,), :,::.

;c
Nikolai Bucharin (sic), Teorie des historischen Materialismus: Gemeinverstndliches Lehrbuch der
Marxistischen Soziologie, trans. Frida Rubiner (Milan: Feltrinelli, :,o; [:,::]), :,. Bukharin was
likely referring to Marxs observation that in so far as the hoarder of money combines asceti-
cism with assiduous diligence he is intrinsically a Protestant by religion and still more a Puritan.
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. S. W. Ryazanskaya, ed.
Maurice Dobb (New York: International, :,;c), :,c.



,; Kulturkritik, religion, and anticapitalism
since he was convinced, as one historian of Marxist thought has written,
that relations of production represented a system of conscious human
behavior and were thus no less spiritual than the superstructure itself.
;:

In keeping with these convictions, Adler believed that Webers work could
be integrated into a more sophisticated version of historical materialism:
Marx and Engels never understood the economic as anything other than a form
of consciousness, one that still has the closest connection with the vital needs of
life. It like all other higher forms of consciousness, as Engels emphasized has
its own spiritual movement. (Marxs economic critique is nothing other than the
sociological analysis of the economic forms of capitalist consciousness.) Once we
are clear about this, then we will think dierently about the relationship between
Webers work and the materialist interpretation of history. His profound inves-
tigations, which everywhere demonstrate the closest connection between the
transformations of economic, religious, and ethical life, will then be understood
more as a conrmation than as a refutation of Marxism.
;:
Te political economist and journalist Conrad Schmidt welcomed
Webers work for similar reasons. Like Adler, Schmidt sought to recon-
cile his socialist convictions with his attachment to German Idealism,
with the result that he came to see historical materialism as a heuristic
for interrogating the past rather than as a metaphysical dictum.
;,
Schmidt
praised Webers work as a valuable addition to the Marxist economic
conception of history, noting that Marx had also called attention to the
role that psychological factors, such as the frugal values of Manchester
entrepreneurs, played in the rise of capitalism.
;
K U L T U R K R I T I K , i iii ci ox, axo axri caii raii sx
Why did Te Protestant Ethic appeal to German intellectuals of such
dierent stripes? Te fact that so many Marxist economists took Te
Protestant Ethic seriously and on some occasions even sought to incorp-
orate it into the body of Marxist theory suggests that it engaged them
on a level beneath their particular academic or ideological commitments.
Tere is good reason to believe that Webers articulation of the cultural
condition of his time, rather than his causal arguments, was the feature of

;:
Leszek Koakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, trans. P. S. Falla (New York: Norton, :cc,),
,;,.

;:
Max Adler, Zum Tode Professor Max Webers, Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna), June :;, :,:c.

;,
Paul Kampmeyer, Die Lebensarbeit Conrad Schmidts, Sozialistische Monatshefte ;o (:,,:):
,o,c.

;
Conrad Schmidt, Weber, Sozialistische Monatshefte ,, no. ::/:, (:,:c): ,:.





Te meaning of modern capitalism ,
Te Protestant Ethic that resonated most strongly with his contemporaries.
In characterizing modern capitalism as a monstrous cosmos driven by
rational asceticism in pursuit of irrational goals, Weber gave voice to a cri-
sis of cultural meaning experienced by intellectuals from across the ideo-
logical spectrum. In the closing passages of Te Protestant Ethic Weber
famously ruminated on the fate of the calling once capitalism had become
entirely dissociated from the ideals that once supplied its motive force:
In [the Puritan minister Richard] Baxters view, concern for outward posses-
sions should sit lightly on the shoulders of his saints like a thin cloak which
can be thrown o at any time. But fate decreed that the cloak should become
a shell as hard as steel [stahlhartes Gehuse]. As asceticism began to reconstruct
the world and endeavored to exercise its inuence over it, the outward goods
of this world gained increasing and nally inescapable power over men, as
never before in history. Today its spirit has ed from this shell whether for
all time, who knows? No one yet knows who will live in that shell in the
future; whether at the end of this monstrous development entirely new proph-
ets will emerge, or powerful old ideas and ideals will be reborn, or if neither
of these occurs Chinese ossication, dressed up with a kind of desperate
self- importance, will set in. Ten, however, it might truly be said of the last
men in this cultural development: specialists without spirit, hedonists with-
out a heart, these nonentities imagine they have attained a stage of humankind
never before reached.
;,
Whereas the Puritans accumulated wealth as a byproduct of their
idealistic quest for the certainty of salvation, modern individuals were
compelled to participate in capitalist society without any sense of mean-
ing or mastery. In the absence of intervention by new prophets or the
recrudescence of powerful old ideas and ideals, this development might
continue apace until mankind had been reduced to the shallow last
men that Nietzsche lampooned in Tus Spoke Zarathrustra. Taken on its
own, the passage presented a diagnosis of modern life that resonated with
many of Webers contemporaries. For Schulze-Gaevernitz it constituted
the high point of Te Protestant Ethic as a whole:
Te greatness of Max Webers achievement is that he stands above past epochs
even while feeling empathy for their psychology, that he very well recognizes
how the Faustian all-sidedness of humanity has here been cut back, and how
the impersonality of work must become meaningless and joyless as soon as it is
no longer religiously transgured. Today the workplace has been robbed of its
metaphysical meaning and become an empty shell for the human beings who
;,
PE, :,, (BW, :::).
,, Kulturkritik, religion, and anticapitalism
live in it, the acquisitive machines. Max Weber thus leads us to the innermost
problems of our time and touches on many of the trains of thought of Walther
Rathenau.
;o
By making a comparison to the industrial entrepreneur and essayist
Walther Rathenau, whose criticisms of capitalist mechanization would
have been familiar to most educated readers, Schulze-Gaevernitz squarely
situated Weber within the broader context of Kulturkritik (cultural criti-
cism).
;;
As Michael Lwy has pointed out, there were strong similarities
between the terms of German cultural criticism and Webers vision of
capitalism. Since the age of Romanticism, German philosophers and art-
ists had called attention to the alienation and fragmentation of modern
society. With varying degrees of nostalgia for the past, they registered
the disappearance of traditional community life and criticized bourgeois
society for its atomization of human relationships. In their eyes the rise of
industrial society endangered not only the satisfactions of social life but
also the ability of individuals to achieve an authentic human existence.
;

What many German intellectuals found so engaging about Te Protestant
Ethic was its ability to connect this tradition of Kulturkritik with imperial
anxieties and confessional politics.
Te Protestant Ethic appealed to readers who were eager to under-
stand Germanys position in the international competition for economic
resources and political power. Tere is no scholarly work to be found,
far and wide, that is as suitable as Max Webers brilliant studies for
the self-understanding of Germans about themselves and their fate in
world history, remarked the journalist Robert Drill. For here emerges
before our eyes the Anglo-Saxon type in its relation to Germandom.
;,

Weber demonstrated that the prodigious development of Anglo-Saxon
capitalism had been largely determined by Puritanisms cultural and
spiritual traditions and its innerworldly asceticism. Were Germanys
contemplative cultural achievements incompatible with a leading polit-
ical position in the world? Should we wish that we had gone the way

;o
Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Max Weber als Nationalkonom (:,:c), in Max Weber zum
Gedchtnis: Materialien und Dokumente zur Bewertung von Werk und Persnlichkeit, ed. Ren
Knig and Johannes Winckelmann (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, :,o,), ,o.

;;
For an insightful comparison of Weber and Rathenau, see Ernst Schulin, Max Weber and
Walther Rathenau, in Max Weber and His Contemporaries, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and
Jrgen Osterhammel (London: Allen & Unwin, :,;), ,::::.

;
Michael Lwy, Naphta or Settembrini? Lukcs and Romantic Anticapitalism, New German
Critique : (:,;): :;,:.

;,
Robert Drill, Aus der Philosophen-Ecke: Kritische Glossen zu den geistigen Strmungen unserer Zeit
(Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Societts-Druckerei, :,:,), ::.




Te meaning of modern capitalism :cc
of Puritanism?, Drill wondered. Can a people bring forth a spiritual
and intellectual culture, such as German culture is, without fantasy,
without romanticism, without illusions? For a people that has it
in the blood, what choice do they have in the great commerce of the
world? Quo vadis?
c
At the same time Te Protestant Ethic gave hope
to those intellectuals who wished to see Britains world power dimin-
ished. If Calvinism had originally provided such a powerful impetus
for Britains commercial hegemony, Schulze-Gaevernitz suggested, then
the historical attenuation of those religious beliefs must herald an age
of decadence:
Not Italians, not Jews, but rather Calvinists, Baptists, Quakers, and Methodists
established the stronghold of modern capitalism on Anglo-American soil. Teir
descendants, not a few of whom are already troubled by the decomposing spirit
of the time, still hold the power of authority in their hands. To the eye of the
researcher who can see deeper, cracks and ssures are visible in the foundation
walls of the tower that overshadows the world. Te rocky soil of transcendence
on which it rests is sinking.
:
Drawing on Webers bleak depiction of the monstrous cosmos of
modern capitalism, religious writers with anticapitalist sympathies cited
Te Protestant Ethic to trumpet the merits of their respective faiths. In
one of the earliest reviews of Te Protestant Ethic, the Berlin school-
teacher Ferdinand Jakob Schmidt maintained that Lutherans should
take heart from Webers conclusions. While Weber appeared to hold
the Reformation responsible for the materialistic type of individualistic
capitalism that stands before our eyes today, he had in fact shown that
Lutheranism, the genuine idea of Reformation faith, was blameless.
Puritanism, a fundamentally dierent branch of Protestantism, had
set these capitalist developments in motion.
:
Only Lutheranism could
oer redemption from [the] new fall from grace that modern capital-
ism symbolized.
,
Te results of Webers investigation call on us to make
the redemptive power of this speculative, antirationalist, and antipositiv-
ist Protestantism [i.e. Lutheranism] once more visible in the core of its
spirit, he proclaimed.

Heinrich Boehmer, a professor of theology at

Leipzig, believed that Te Protestant Ethic succeeded in underscoring the
cultural virtues of Lutheranism despite Webers own sympathies toward

c
Ibid., ::o.

:
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Die geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlagen, :,;.

:
Ferdinand Jakob Schmidt, Kapitalismus und Protestantismus, Preuische Jahrbcher :::
(:,c,): :,.

,
Ibid., :c;.

Ibid., :,,.




:c: Kulturkritik, religion, and anticapitalism
Calvinism.
,
Boehmer deemed Lutheranism praiseworthy to the extent
that it did not encourage the rationalized, prot-maximizing, and disci-
plined lifestyle associated with Calvinism. Lutherans were hardworking
farmers and artisans who cared more about the quality of their work than
they did about prot. If one regards the culture of the soul as the soul
of culture, and sensitivity to the diabolical burden of civilization false-
hood, prevarication, duplicity, and hypocrisy as [its] most distinguish-
ing feature, Boehmer argued, then Lutheranism was clearly the superior
religion.
o
Catholic writers also found that Webers thesis could be adduced to
portray their religion in a positive light. By reading Te Protestant Ethic
broadly enough to implicate the entire Reformation in the rise of capit-
alism, they argued that the decisive step toward modern capitalism, with
its attendant ills and dehumanization, had been taken when Europeans
rst abandoned the Catholic Church.
;
Te philosopher Alois Dempf
asserted that Webers study had demonstrated the superiority of Catholic
over Protestant asceticism, largely against [the personal sympathies of ]
its own author, for unlike its Protestant counterpart, Catholic asceticism
was neither materialistic nor utilitarian, nor did it glorify society or the
state.

Te theologian Josef Hasenfu insisted that Te Protestant Ethic

had indirectly demonstrated the grandeur of Catholic doctrine and eth-
ics, which, through their adherence to eternal transcendental norms and
supernatural religious content, oer a certain resistance against the pro-
liferation of rationalism and capitalism.
,
Carl Schmitt, one of the most
important conservative legal theorists of the Weimar Republic, drew on
Te Protestant Ethic to show that Catholicism represented a complexio
oppositorum, a harmonious reconciliation of conicting values. Schmitt
argued that the division between a rationalistic and fully technologized
world of human labor, and a romantic unspoiled nature was foreign
to the Catholic conception of nature.
,c
Te Huguenot or Puritan can
erect his industry anywhere, turn every soil into a eld for his vocational

,
Heinrich Boehmer, Die Bedeutung des Luthertums fr die europische Kultur (:,::), in
Studien zur Kirchengeschichte, ed. Heinrich Bornkamm and Hans Hofmann (Munich: Kaiser,
:,;), ::;, :,.

o
Ibid., :,;.

;
On this general tendency in Catholic writing, see Georg Wnsch, Protestantischer Kapitalismus
und katholische Propaganda, Die christliche Welt ,, (:,:,): ,,c.

Dempf, Religionssoziologie, ;o;.

,
Josef Hasenfu, Die Beziehungen zwischen Religion und Gemeinschaft bei Max Weber,
Philosophisches Jahrbuch ,, (:,:): ,.

,c
Carl Schmitt, Rmischer Katholizismus und politische Form, :nd edn. (Stuttgart: KlettCotta,
:cc: [:,:,]), :;.






Te meaning of modern capitalism :c:
labor [Berufsarbeit] and innerworldly asceticism, and nally make a
comfortable home anywhere everything by making himself into the
master of nature and subjugating her. Catholic peoples, on the other
hand, seem to love the soil, the mother Earth, in a dierent way; they
all have their terrisme. For them, nature does not signify the opposite
of art and human work, or the opposite of understanding and feeling or
heart, but rather human labor and organic growth, nature and reason are
one.
,:
Te young intellectuals in the George Circle availed themselves of
Webers thesis to bolster their anti-Protestant propaganda. George had
been raised in a Rhenish Catholic milieu, and though he possessed no
particular attachment to the Church, he and his followers were sympa-
thetic toward Catholicisms mystical and communitarian features. While
preparing to teach a course in Heidelberg that covered the German
Reformation, Friedrich Gundolf sought advice from Weber, whose cul-
tural interpretation of Protestantism he found particularly profound.
,:

Several months after their discussions, an editorial appeared in the
Yearbook for the Spiritual Movement, the organ of the George Circle that
Gundolf co-edited, in which Webers ideas were mobilized to criticize
both Protestantism and capitalism:
Our rejection of Protestantism is based on the fact that it constitutes the pre-
condition for liberal, bourgeois, utilitarian development. It is no malicious
insinuation to say that a close connection exists between the Protestant and the
capitalist world, as this has irrefutably been proven by Max Webers classic text
Wherever the Protestant form of Christianity becomes established, it capital-
izes, industrializes, modernizes the people.
,,
Te publication of this editorial irritated Max Weber, who was distressed
to see his writings used to promote a view of society so antithetical to his
own.
,

,:
Ibid., :;:.

,:
According to Gundolf, Max Weber not only eortlessly masters the whole breadth of this
material, but also the better I understand him, the clearer this becomes to me penetrates
the entire conicts and ultimate sorrow and will of Protestantism, what Alfred Weber calls cul-
tural problems, more intensely and comprehensively than any other scholar today. Friedrich
Gundolf to Leonie Grn Keyserling, May :,, :,::, in Friedrich Gundolf, Briefe: Neue Folge, ed.
Lothar Helbing and Claus Victor Bock (Amsterdam: Castrum Peregrini, :,o,), c.

,,
Einleitung der Herausgeber, Jahrbuch fr die geistige Bewegung , (:,::): vii. Te editors
explained that they could not accept contemporary Catholicism, either, since it had accommo-
dated itself to Protestantism and therefore no longer served to protect the eternally vital, the
pagan principle.

,
Lebensbild, o,;: (Biography, o:).




:c, Te state as a capitalist Betrieb
Not only Lutherans and Catholics appealed to Webers thesis to
corroborate their own religious biases, but also the Prague writer Max
Brod, who discovered in Te Protestant Ethic the fullest conrmation of
Judaisms superiority over Christianity. Inspired by his beloved professor
Alfred Weber, Brod rst encountered Max Webers writings on the sociol-
ogy of religion as a student at the University of Prague in the years before
World War i.
,,
Brod considered Te Protestant Ethic to a certain extent
unintentionally, unconsciously, the most shocking indictment of the
Christian idea that has ever been written.
,o
Te Reformation had taught
that man belongs in the world just as it is, that he has to work there as
punishment, as asceticism (Weber calls this complex innerworldly asceti-
cism), without pleasure, without taking any joy in existence, that this
slave labor is his calling.
,;
Brod, who appears to have entirely misun-
derstood Webers concept of innerworldly asceticism, thought that Te
Protestant Ethic revealed that pernicious Christian conception of the
unimportance of everything earthly, which as a result created the spirit of
capitalism and with it the main source of all the ignoble misery that has
only been accumulated through our fault.
,
Tis attitude, Brod believed,
constituted the exact opposite of the Jewish [belief in the] transforma-
tion and miracle of this world.
,,
rui s rari as a caii raii s r B E T R I E B
Weber argued in Te Protestant Ethic that the advent of a new entrepre-
neurial spirit made modern capitalism unique. However, in the years after
its publication, Weber began to reect on the institutional and organiza-
tional factors that were distinctive to modern capitalist enterprises. By the
time of his death he had compiled a list of features that he believed distin-
guished modern capitalist enterprises (as they had emerged in nineteenth-
century Europe) from those in earlier eras or in other parts of the world
with highly developed commercial economies (such as India and China).

,,
Alfred Weber, who taught at the German university in Prague between :,c and :,c;, was for
Brod a phenomenon unlike any I had ever experienced before, a teacher with whom he fell
in love at rst acquaintance. After hearing Alfred Weber refer to his big brother with great
respect, Brod was inspired to read Max Webers essays on the sociology of religion in the Archiv
fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. Max Brod, Streitbares Leben: Autobiographie (Munich:
Kindler, :,oc), ,:,.

,o
Max Brod, Heidentum, Christentum, Judentum: Ein Bekenntnisbuch (Munich: Wol, :,::),
: vols., Vol. i, :;.

,;
Ibid., Vol., i, :,.
,
Ibid., Vol., i, :.

,,
Ibid., Vol., i, :,.





Te meaning of modern capitalism :c
Modern capitalist enterprises were based on free rather than slave labor,
they generated prots primarily through peaceful market transactions
rather than speculation or political monopolies, they relied on a level of
xed capital exceeding anything previously known, they were nancially
and legally separated from their owners households, and they quantied
their capital accounts in monetary terms with an unprecedented degree of
formal rationality.
:cc
Weber characterized this kind of modern western
economic activity as bourgeois Betrieb capitalism [Betriebskapitalismus]
with its rational organization of free labor.
:c:
Earlier in his career Weber
characterized modern capitalism in terms of the spirit in which it was
conducted. Now he characterized it in terms of Betrieb capitalism, a
unique type of institutional structure.
Te concept of the Betrieb (usually translated as enterprise, though
the word lacks a clear equivalent in English) played an important role
in the reception of Webers writings about capitalism. In German the
word can be used to signify a rm, or, in a more general sense, a continu-
ous form of organized activity.
:c:
In Economy and Society Weber dened
a Betrieb as continuous purposive activity [Zweckhandeln] of a specic
kind, which included business conducted by political and ecclesias-
tic organizations, voluntary associations, etc., so long as the feature of
purposive continuity obtains.
:c,
For Weber, continuous purposive activ-
ity, organized in a highly systematic and rational manner, was a feature
shared by many modern western institutions pursuing dierent ends. In
his wartime article Parliament and Government in Germany under a
New Political Order he used the concept of Betrieb to draw out the insti-
tutional similarities between modern capitalist enterprise and the modern
state. Looked at from a social-scientic point of view, he argued, the
modern state is a Betrieb just like a factory: indeed, that is its specic
historical characteristic. Te relations of rulership [Herrschaftsverhltnisse]
within the Betrieb are determined in the same way here and there.
:c

:cc
Tis rsum is derived from Weber, Agrarverhltnisse im Altertum, ::,, (ASAC, o;);
Max Weber, Vorbemerkung (:,:c), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :,), Vol. i, o:: (BW, ,oco); WuG, ,, ,,, ,o (EaS, ,o, ,c:cc,
:o,o).

:c:
Weber, Vorbemerkung, :c (BW, ,o).

:c:
See Peter Breiner, Max Weber and Democratic Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
:,,o), :,,; and Richard Swedberg, with the assistance of Ola Agevall, Te Max Weber
Dictionary: Key Words and Central Concepts (Stanford: Stanford University Press, :cc,), :o,
o;. See also the translators notes in PW, ,;:; and EaS, :cn:;.

:c,
WuG, : (EaS, ,:).

:c
Max Weber, Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland: Zur politischen Kritik
des Beamtentums und Parteiwesens (:,:), in MWG i/:,, ,: (PW, :o).





:c, Te state as a capitalist Betrieb
In a twist on Marxs theory of expropriation, Weber observed that the
separation of workers from the means of production was not unique to
modern capitalist enterprise. In the modern western world not only the
worker, but also the soldier, the civil servant, and the university scholar
were dependent on others: the instruments they needed to carry out
their jobs and earn their livelihood weapons, administrative resources,
laboratory equipment, or money were owned by the state. Te feature
that modern factories, armies, public administration, and universities
all shared was their bureaucratic apparatus [Apparat der Bureaukratie]
whose existence and function are inseparably linked, both as cause
and eect, with that concentration of the material means of operation
[sachliche Betriebsmittel ], and which is, moreover, the form taken by
that concentration.
:c,
Weber asserted that the state and modern capit-
alist enterprise had evolved profoundly similar forms of administration.
Moreover, the former provided a historical precondition for the latter.
Without the predictable legal administration of the modern state, mod-
ern capitalism could not have come into being: Te main inner foun-
dation of the capitalist Betrieb is calculation. It requires for its existence
a judiciary and an administration whose operation, at least in principle,
can be rationally calculated according to stable, general norms, just as one
calculates the predictable performance of a machine.
:co
Since the early nineteenth century it had become commonplace for
German intellectuals to ascribe a moral or metaphysical grandeur to the
state. Even after the decline of Hegelianism as a philosophical movement,
Webers analogy between the German state and a profane economic
organization, the capitalist Betrieb, was still bound to be provocative.
:c;

In the closing years of World War i Weber deployed this analogy to dis-
credit those literati who believed that Otto von Bismarcks constitution
was the only conceivable form of government in Germany. Weber wished
to convince his contemporaries that there was nothing inherently sacred
about the German form of constitutional monarchy. A states constitu-
tion, just like the organizational structure of any enterprise, could and

:c,
Max Weber, Parlament und Regierung, ,, (PW, :;).

:co
Max Weber, Parlament und Regierung, ,, (PW, :;).

:c;
Peter Lassman, Te Rule of Man over Man: Politics, Power and Legitimation, in Te
Cambridge Companion to Weber, ed. Stephen Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
:ccc), ,. On the relationship between Webers conceptualization of the state and the tradition
of German Staatsrechtslehre, see Duncan Kelly, Te State of the Political: Conceptions of Politics
and the State in the Tought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, :cc,), Chapter ,.



Te meaning of modern capitalism :co
should be altered in the interests of eciency, which for Weber meant
promoting the parliamentarization of Imperial Germany.
:c
Webers vision of the state as merely one Betrieb among many con-
tinued to fascinate German intellectuals after his death. What was so
stimulating about his perspective, the political economist Hermann
Schumacher observed, was that Weber transferred perspectives from
economics into another area. Weber had taken a concept that was at
home in the sphere of economics, the Betrieb, and turned it into a pol-
itical concept.
:c,
In the aftermath of World War i, when the edice of
Imperial Germany had collapsed and a new political order was struggling
to emerge, German intellectuals found Webers disabused depiction of the
state particularly provocative. Some found it distasteful. Webers entire
attitude toward the modern state is, in my view, determined by the fact
that he judges matters of state from the perspective of economics, argued
Otto Koellreutter, later a prominent legal thinker in Nazi Germany. Te
state is for him ultimately nothing other than a Betrieb, which like every
other Betrieb, every factory, must be operated with rational organizational
methods.
::c
Koellreutter bridled at what he regarded as an invitation to
equate political leaders with entrepreneurs pursuing private interests. Te
struggle of interest groups in parliamentary politics was far less desirable,
Koellreutter argued, than the communitarian ethos of a bureaucracy pur-
suing the states general interests.
:::
However, three of the most innovative
political thinkers in Weimar Germany the historian Otto Hintze, the
legal theorist Carl Schmitt, and the philosopher Georg Lukcs availed
themselves of Webers analogy between the state and modern capitalist
enterprise to advance their own understandings of politics in the modern
age. Webers passage in Parliament and Government gave them insight
into the reality of what the modern state had become, even if they did not
all wish for it to remain in such a condition.
At that time when we members of the older generation were young,
and in our Reich a feeling of devotion toward the state was still in bloom,
it would have seemed almost blasphemous to denigrate the majesty of
the state by comparing it to an economic corporation, Otto Hintze

:c
Weber, Parlament und Regierung, ,:o, ,,:: (PW, :,c,, :oo;).

:c,
Hermann Schumacher, Max Weber, in Deutsches biographisches Jahrbuch, berleitungsband II:
:):;:):o (Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, :,:), o:c.

::c
Otto Koellreutter, Die staatspolitischen Anschauungen Max Webers und Oswald Spenglers,
Zeitschrift fr Politik : (:,:/,): ,.

:::
Ibid., ,,, ,,,cc.




:c; Te state as a capitalist Betrieb
remembered. But by the late :,:cs the Berlin historian had come to
respect the hard and sober doctrine of Max Weber, which ignored ideol-
ogy and only considered the crux of the matter.
:::
After the collapse of
Imperial Germany, Hintze found Webers realism more insightful than
the ideological justications for the monarchy that had been promulgated
during the war: Tat the state at its core is an institution [Anstalt] or
Betrieb, regardless which ideologies one uses to cloak it, seems to me to
have been palpably demonstrated by the catastrophic experiences of our
time.
::,
Hintze also used the concept of the state as a Betrieb to advance
a concrete political position of his own, namely, that Germany needed to
centralize its public administration and reduce the bureaucracies of the
Reichs constituent states, since their ideology of autonomy was no
longer timely for a generation that has come to understand the state as an
institutional Betrieb [Anstaltsbetrieb] that must be operated according to
rational principles.
::
A generation younger than Hintze, Carl Schmitt belonged to a cohort
of antiliberal thinkers whose political horizons were dened by Germanys
defeat in World War i and the civil unrest of the immediate postwar
period. As one of the leading German constitutional lawyers in the :,:cs
and early :,,cs, Schmitt made his reputation by arguing that jurists
needed to accept a sovereign political force capable of defending the states
integrity at a time of crisis. Schmitt perceived the major intellectual threat
to the German state in statutory positivism, a school of jurisprudence that
formally interpreted the constitution by excluding all considerations of
natural law, history, or politics. For a statutory positivist, a valid law was
simply a law that had been passed through the constitutionally mandated
procedure; constitutional questions were to be answered without appeal-
ing to any philosophical, political, or ethical considerations.
::,
By refusing
to acknowledge that the Weimar constitution expressed values that took
precedence over the letter of its laws, Schmitt argued, positivist jurists

:::
Otto Hintze, Der Staat als Betrieb und die Verfassungsreform (:,:;), in Soziologie und
Geschichte, :c,; review of Rudolf Smend, Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht (:,:,), reprinted in
Soziologie und Geschichte, :,. On the relationship between Webers and Hintzes views on the
state, see Georg G. Iggers, Te German Conception of History: Te National Tradition of Historical
Tought from Herder to the Present, rev. edn. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
:,,), :,,o; and Jrgen Kocka, Otto Hintze and Max Weber: Attempts at a Comparison, in
Mommsen and Osterhammel, Max Weber and His Contemporaries, :, :,c:.

::,
Hintze, review of Smend, Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht, in Soziologie und Geschichte, :,;.

::
Hintze, Der Staat als Betrieb, :c,.

::,
See Peter C. Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law:
Te Teory and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
:,,;).




Te meaning of modern capitalism :c
deprived the state of any means of defending itself against enemies who
exploited the system. Te principle of formal legality permitted any pol-
itical party to come to power so long as it played by the procedural rules
of the game, even if it were committed to destroying the constitution as
soon as it legally acquired the means to do so.
::o
In Schmitts eyes, Webers
greatest achievement was that he accurately predicted how Weimar jurists
would fail to support the states integrity:
Max Webers diagnosis and prognosis[:] Under all circumstances, as a result of
technical and economic developments, the increasing valorization of the posi-
tive law as a rational technical apparatus, which can be transformed at any time
through purposive rationality [zweckrational ] and is devoid of any sacredness of
content, is the inevitable fate (of the legal profession). Tis fate may be obscured
by the tendency of acquiescence in the existing law, which is growing in many
ways for general reasons, but it cannot really be averted! (Before :,,,, who
besides me had spoken of this and attempted to do something about it?)
::;
Among the leading constitutional lawyers of the Weimar Republic,
Schmitt was not alone in arguing that statutory positivism failed to
account for the substantive values required by a stable political order.
::

What made Schmitt unique was his ability to articulate the shortcomings
of liberal jurisprudence from a world-historical perspective, to interpret
the crisis of constitutional law as epiphenomenal of an entire age of neu-
tralizations and depoliticizations.
::,
Born under the same intellectual and
historical constellation as modern technology and capitalism, the liberal
state was in Schmitts view incapable of positing substantive values. Its
task had been reduced to merely executing whatever socioeconomic pro-
gram had gained momentary dominance in the clash of interest groups.
Purposive rationality, oriented toward matching suitable means to an end,
vitiated all fundamentally political reasoning, which Schmitt conceived
as the ability to distinguish between friends and enemies.
::c
Webers

::o
See Carl Schmitt, Legalitt und Legitimitt (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :cc, [:,,:]), :,:.

::;
Diary entry from March :o, :,, in Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre :),;
:),:, ed. Eberhard Freiherr von Medem (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :,,:), ::o. Te passage
quotes, with signicant ellipses and some alteration of punctuation, from Webers sociology of
law in Economy and Society. See MWG i/::,, o,, (EaS, ,,).

::
See Wolfram Bauer, Wertrelativismus und Wertbestimmtheit im Kampf um die Weimarer
Demokratie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :,o).

::,
See Carl Schmitt, Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen (:,:,), in Der
Begri des Politischen: Text von :),: mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, :cc:), ;,,,.

::c
John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,;).





:c, Te state as a capitalist Betrieb
vision of the state as a Betrieb that existed only to solve technical problems,
irrespective of the goal, perfectly expressed the situation Schmitt wanted
to overcome:
Today nothing is more modern than the struggle against the political. American
nanciers, industrial technicians, Marxist socialists, and anarcho-syndicalist
revolutionaries are united in the demand that the nonobjective [unsachlich]
domination of politics over the objectivity [Sachlichkeit] of economic life must
be eliminated. Tere should no longer be political problems, only organization-
al-technical and economic-sociological tasks. Te dominant form of economic-
technical thinking today is no longer capable of perceiving a political idea. Te
modern state really seems to have become what Max Weber saw in it: a large
Betrieb.
:::
During his Heidelberg years Lukcs was known for his opposition to
the bourgeoisie, liberalism, the constitutional state, parliamentarism,
revisionistic socialism, the Enlightenment, relativism, and individual-
ism, as one acquaintance recalled.
:::
His early books of literary criti-
cism expressed a longing for a utopian community that would overcome
the fragmentation of modern life. Tough it came as a surprise to his
friends when he abruptly joined the Hungarian Communist Party in
December, :,:, it is likely that Lukcs embraced the Communist revo-
lution primarily because it oered the best means for sweeping aside
bourgeois society and rejuvenating high culture, two goals he had car-
ried with him since the beginning of his intellectual career. Appointed
deputy commissar for culture and educational aairs under Hungarys
short-lived Soviet Republic, Lukcs aspired to institute a wide-rang-
ing program of cultural reform, but the governments short tenure
prevented anything substantial from being accomplished.
::,
After the
Soviet Republic was suppressed, Lukcs narrowly escaped to Vienna.
Tere he composed History and Class Consciousness, which articulated
a novel version of Marxism through a philosophical idiom drawn from
Lebensphilosophie, Hegels metaphysics, and Webers wartime political
journalism.
::

:::
Carl Schmitt, Politische Teologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souvernitt (Berlin: Duncker
& Humblot, :cc [:,::]), o,. See also Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen
Parlamentarismus (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :c:c [:,:o]), ,,.

:::
Paul Honigsheim, Memories of Max Weber (:,o,), in Te Unknown Max Weber, ed. Alan Sica
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, :ccc), :;.

::,
David Kettler, Culture and Revolution: Lukcs in the Hungarian Revolutions of :,:/:,, Telos
:c (:,;:): ,,,:.

::
Georg Lukcs, Geschichte und Klassenbewutsein: Studien ber marxistische Dialektik (:,:,),
Vol. iv of Politische Aufstze (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, :,;).




Te meaning of modern capitalism ::c
Te central chapter of Lukcss book, Reication and the
Consciousness of the Proletariat, took its starting point from the con-
cept of the fetishism of the commodity in Marxs Capital.
::,
Marx dis-
tinguished between two measures of a commoditys economic value: its
use-value, a qualitative determination of an objects ability to satisfy
specic human needs, and its exchange-value, a quantitative measure
of the amount of abstract labor-power necessary to produce it. Marx
believed that the quantication of exchange-value presupposed a society
of individual producers creating objects for sale in a market; only in this
form of social organization could a commoditys value be determined
by the abstract notion of the time taken by the average worker to cre-
ate it. Marx criticized bourgeois economists for believing that exchange-
value was a natural property of objects. Entranced by the fetishism of
commodities, the ability of commodities to mask the social relations of
production whence they derived their exchange-value, bourgeois econo-
mists were unable to recognize that their theories described only a con-
tingent social formation. In Reication and the Consciousness of the
Proletariat Lukcs presented the concept of fetishism, which occupied
a relatively small section of Capital, as the linchpin of Marxs work as a
whole.
Te phenomenon of commodity exchange was so central to modern
bourgeois society, Lukcs argued, that it was capable of inuencing
the entire outer as well as the inner life of society.
::o
Te experience of
life under capitalism inclined bourgeois and worker alike to regard the
social organization of labor as having a xed and immutable existence.
Capitalism divested man-made creations of their qualitative features and
transformed them into mere objects of quantitative calculation. Workers,
compelled to produce commodities in a tedious and mechanized process
of divided labor, came to regard not only the products of their work, but
also their very labor as alienated from their own being. Tis experience
of reication (Verdinglichung), whereby uid human relationships ossi-
ed into passive objects, encouraged individuals to view themselves as the
playthings of inexorable natural laws and vitiated their ability to conceive
of an alternative form of life.
Te essence of modern capitalism, Lukcs argued, was that the com-
modity sought to penetrate all forms of life in society and reshape them

::,
Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. i, ed. Ernest Mandel, trans. Ben
Fowkes (London: Penguin, :,,c), :o,;;.

::o
Lukcs, Geschichte und Klassenbewutsein, :;:.


::: Te state as a capitalist Betrieb
according to its own image.
::;
He availed himself of Webers analogy
between the modern state and the capitalist Betrieb to lend credence to
this theory. According to Weber, modern capitalisms development and
proliferation presupposed the existence of the modern state and its legal
and administrative institutions. Lukcs quoted Webers analysis of the
Betrieb at length, but when it came to interpreting it, he put a spin on it
quite dierent from the one Weber had intended.
::
Since modern political
and legal administrations were necessary conditions for the development
of modern capitalism, Lukcs argued, it stood to reason that capitalism
had historically transformed the state to ensure the conditions for its own
expansion. Te development of capitalism created a system of law that
corresponded to its needs and structurally conformed to its structure, a
state that corresponded to it, etc., he insisted. Te structural similarity
is indeed so great that it must be recognized by all truly insightful his-
torians of modern capitalism.
::,
It was modern capitalism that called
bureaucracy into being, as bureaucracy represents a similar accommo-
dation of lifestyle and method of working and correspondingly also of
consciousness to the general socioeconomic prerequisites of the capi-
talist economy.
:,c
Here Lukcs plainly reversed the causality of Webers
argument. In Parliament and Government Weber noted that modern
governmental bureaucracy emerged from pure state rationalism, and in
Economy and Society he emphasized that capitalism does not possess a
factor that has been decisive in the promotion of that form of legal ration-
alization which has been peculiar to the continental West ever since the
rise of Romanist studies in the medieval universities.
:,:
Weber under-
stood legal and administrative rationalization as historically autonomous
processes that, at particular locations and moments in time, assisted the
emergence of modern capitalism. Lukcs, however, wanted to make a dif-
ferent point, namely, that capitalism was both the causal agent of and the
paradigm for the repressive institutions of modern life. Lukcs evidently
found the notion of the modern state as a capitalist Betrieb so beguiling
and so congenial to the point he himself wanted to make that he was
willing to ignore the historical causality and context in which Weber had
situated it.

::;
Ibid., :;:.
::
Ibid., :;,.
::,
Ibid., :;.
:,c
Ibid., :,:.

:,:
Weber, Parlament und Regierung, ,n: (PW, :,n); MWG i/::,, o,, (EaS, ,:). See also
Weber, Vorbemerkung, :: (BW, ,o,). Even though Geschichte und Klassenbewutsein appeared
only a year after all the installments of Econonomy and Society were published, Lukcs was
clearly familiar with Webers sociology of law, which he cited on two occasions (Geschichte und
Klassenbewutsein, :,n:c, ,,,n:o,).


Te meaning of modern capitalism :::
ruioii zi xc nui i auci ac\
By comparing the modern state to a capitalist Betrieb, Weber framed
an analogy that was capable of being mobilized in two dierent ways.
Read in one direction, it illuminated the nature of the modern state by
emphasizing its dependence on expropriation and instrumental calcula-
tion. Read in the other direction, it illuminated the nature of modern
capitalist enterprise by emphasizing its reliance on rational administra-
tion. Weber made the latter point by calling attention to the import-
ance of bureaucracy in modern capitalism. Ever since its coinage by the
French economist Vincent de Gournay in the last decades of the Ancien
Rgime, bureaucracy had been used almost exclusively by writers to char-
acterize (and usually criticize) the power of ocials in public adminis-
tration.
:,:
Weber was the rst social thinker systematically to extend the
usage of this concept to cover forms of administration beside governmen-
tal bureaus. He argued that bureaucracy could be found in many dier-
ent spheres of modern life, provided that bureaucracy was understood to
mean an organization composed of individuals who were hierarchically
organized, invested with discrete spheres of competence, appointed on
the basis of specialized qualications, remunerated with xed salaries,
divested of the ownership of the means of administration, and subject
to strict discipline.
:,,
Tis type of organization is in principle applic-
able to prot-making or charitable organizations, or any number of other
types of private Betrieb serving ideal or material ends, he observed. It
is equally applicable to political and to hierocratic organizations. With
varying degrees of approximation to the pure type, its historical existence
can be demonstrated in all these elds.
:,
Troughout his career Weber warned of the threat posed to individual
freedom by the encroachment of bureaucracy.
:,,
While many of his aca-
demic colleagues believed that a comprehensive welfare state adminis-
tered by a supposedly impartial corps of technocrats was the best way
to manage the social shocks of rapid industrialization, Weber strongly
opposed the idea that political struggle could or should be neutralized

:,:
Martin Albrow, Bureaucracy (London: Macmillan, :,;c); Bernd Wunder, Geschichte der
Brokratie in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,o), ;:c; Wunder, Verwaltung,
Brokratie, Selbstverwaltung, Amt und Beamter seit :cc, in Geschichtliche Grundbegrie:
Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner
Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, :,,:), Vol. vii, o,,o.

:,,
WuG, ::o; (EaS, ::c:).
:,
WuG, ::; (EaS, :::).

:,,
See David Beetham, Max Weber and the Teory of Modern Politics (Cambridge: Polity, :,,),
Chapter ,.




Teorizing bureaucracy ::,
by public administration. He especially feared that unelected ocials
domination of foreign policy would prevent truly gifted and visionary
leaders from attaining positions of responsibility. At the same time, he
argued that the destruction of bureaucratic institutions was neither feas-
ible nor desirable. Te elimination of bureaucratic administration from
private enterprise would precipitate a catastrophic decline in the stand-
ard of living, while the introduction of socialism would merely increase
the power of bureaucracy.
:,o
Weber expressed particularly dark forebod-
ings about a future socialized economy. If private capitalism were elimi-
nated, he warned, state bureaucracy would rule alone. Private and public
bureaucracies would then be merged into a single hierarchy, whereas they
now operate alongside and, at least potentially, against one another, thus
keeping one another in check.
:,;
In light of these considerations, Weber
rhetorically asked, How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of
individual freedom of movement in any sense, given this all-powerful
trend toward bureaucratization?
:,
His solution was to ensure that
capi talist entrepreneurs and visionary politicians were granted enough
oppor tunities to inject dynamism into society.
:,,
Tough Webers German contemporaries were well aware of the role
that bureaucracy played in his political journalism, they did not follow
him in applying the concept of bureaucracy outside the sphere of public
administration.
:c
It was instead in the United States that Webers repu-
tation as the Adam Smith of organizational study was forged in the
decade before World War ii.
::
At the origin of this canonization process

:,o
MWG i/::, :c, (EaS, ,); WuG, ::, (EaS, ::,).

:,;
Weber, Parlament und Regierung, o (PW, :,;).

:,
Weber, Parlament und Regierung, o,o (PW, :,,).

:,,
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Te Political and Social Teory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, :,,), :,, :c,:c.

:c
For engagements with Webers vision of bureaucratization, see Adler, Zum Tode Professor Max
Webers; Zoltn Rnai, Max Webers soziologische und sozialpolitische Bedeutung (:,:,), in
Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis, :c;; Albert Salomon, Max Weber, Die
Gesellschaft ,, Part i (:,:o): :,; Alfred Vierkandt, Kultur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und
der Gegenwart, in Handwrterbuch der Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt (Stuttgart: Enke, :,,:),
:,; Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit (Berlin: de Gruyter, :,,, [:,,:]), ;; Schmitt,
Legalitt und Legitimitt, :o; Christoph Steding, Politik und Wissenschaft bei Max Weber
(Breslau: Korn, :,,:), o;; Karl Mannheim, German Sociology (:,::,,,) (:,,), in Essays
on Sociology and Social Psychology, ed. Paul Kecskemeti, Vol. vi of Collected Works (London:
Routledge, :,,,), :::,; and Artur Mettler, Max Weber und die philosophische Problematik in
unserer Zeit (Leipzig: Hirzel, :,,), :o. An exception to this focus on political bureaucracy was
Otto Heinrich v. d. Gablentz, Industriebureaukratie, Schmollers Jahrbuch ,c (:,:o): ,,,;:,
although its debt to Weber did not extend far beyond the articles title.

::
Tis epithet can be found in Paul H. Appleby, Bureaucracy and the Future, Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science :,: (:,,): :,.






Te meaning of modern capitalism ::
stood the young economist turned sociologist Talcott Parsons. As the rst
scholar to acknowledge the importance of bureaucracy as a central organ-
izing concept in Webers oeuvre, Parsons showed how the concept cap-
tured the distinctive features of a range of modern institutions. Whereas
Hintze, Schmitt, and Lukcs used the economic concept of the Betrieb to
articulate their vision of the modern state, Parsons used bureaucracy a
concept originally associated with public administration to shed light
on the institutions of modern capitalism.
Unlike his German contemporaries, Parsons was fascinated by the fact
that Weber used the concept of bureaucracy outside its normal disciplin-
ary context. Bureaucracy is here used in a more general sense than that
of common speech, Parsons observed. It refers to any large-scale organ-
ization and does not carry any of the implications of cumbersome-
ness, red tape, etc., which are so often associated with it.
::
As Parsons
understood it, bureaucracy functioned as the linchpin in Webers analysis
of modern life, since all major modern institutions could be conceived
as instantiations of bureaucratic administration oriented toward dierent
ends:
It is Webers peculiar view that this all-important bureaucracy is essentially
the same phenomenon whether it appears in a great corporation, a govern-
ment department, or a political party machine. Its spread rests primarily upon
its purely technical superiority to all other forms of large-scale organization of
human activity. Capitalism is, one may say, simply bureaucratic organization
placed in the service of pecuniary prot.
:,
While Parsons thought that Webers estimation of the dominating
importance of bureaucracy was exaggerated, he believed it certainly
calls attention in a most striking way to an aspect of our modern society
which we have all felt to be there, but which has received far less attention
from the economists than it deserves.
:
For Parsons, the most signicant implication of Webers concept of
bureaucracy was its ability to draw out the similarities between capitalism
and socialism. In contradistinction to Marx and most liberal theories,
he pointed out, it [Webers attention to bureaucracy] strongly minimizes
the dierences between capitalism and socialism, emphasizing rather
their continuity.
:,
Weber had shown that the most distinctive features

::
Talcott Parsons, Capitalism in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber (:,:/,), in
Te Early Essays, ed. Charles Camic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,,:), :,n,.

:,
Ibid., :o.
:
Ibid., ,o;.

:,
Talcott Parsons, Te Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Teory with Special Reference to
a Group of Recent European Writers (New York: Free Press, :,o [:,,;]), ,c,.



Teorizing bureaucracy ::,
of modern capitalism its high degree of rational organization, hierarchy,
specialization, and impersonality were characteristic of all forms of
modern social organization. Under a socialist regime these features would
persist long after the private ownership of capital had disappeared:
All the specic elements of capitalism which we think of as contrasting it with
socialism competition, private property, production for exchange, class antag-
onism between bourgeois and proletariat, although a part of Webers theory are
of secondary importance as compared with the great central fact of bureaucracy.
Te nal result of the development, a great unied organization in the service of
economic production, would not be far from socialism as ordinarily conceived
So in the aspect which is for Weber by far the most important, socialism is
not fundamentally dierent from capitalism, but a further stage in the same line
of development.
:o
Weber rejected socialism because he believed it would magnify the
coercive and compulsive features already present in capitalism. Parsons,
however, likely drew a very dierent conclusion from the presence of
structural homologies between capitalism and socialism. As a student
and young professor, Parsons moved in progressive intellectual circles
and espoused many of the ideals associated with American social reform
movements of the :,:cs and :,,cs. Te historian Howard Brick has con-
vincingly shown that the young Parsons contrary to his later reputa-
tion as a conservative was a social democrat who longed for a society
grounded in greater solidarity. His early economic writings were moti-
vated by the reformist conviction that modern capitalism contained the
resources within itself to forge a more cooperative social order.
:;
Parsons
thought that there seems to be little reason to believe that it is not pos-
sible on the basis which we now have to build by a continuous process
something more nearly approaching an ideal society [and] in the tran-
sition from capitalism to a dierent social system surely many elements
of the present would be built into the new order.
:
If Weber was correct
in predicting a tendency toward greater planning and administration in
advanced capitalism, then was it not reasonable to conclude that the shift
to a postcapitalist, planned society would require progressive rather than
revolutionary means? Parsons did not make this conjecture explicit in his
writings on Weber. But his remarks about the signicance of bureaucracy,

:o
Parsons, Capitalism, :o;.

:;
Howard Brick, Te Reformist Dimension of Talcott Parsonss Early Social Teory, in Te
Culture of the Market: Historical Essays, ed. Tomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,,), ,;,.

:
Parsons, Capitalism, :,. Quoted in Brick, Parsonss Early Social Teory, ,;:.



Te meaning of modern capitalism ::o
viewed from the perspective of his personal investment in the transition
from capitalism to a dierent social system, suggest that he was fasci-
nated by Webers concept because it demonstrated that socialization was
neither impossible nor fundamentally radical in nature.
Webers interest in comparative bureaucracy was not so much invisible
as it was irrelevant to German intellectuals in the interwar years. Reading
Weber in the shadow of catastrophe, as Anson Rabinbach has called this
moment of postwar reection, they mobilized the concept of Betrieb to
grapple with a German state that had lost the basis for its legitimacy.
:,
On
another continent, and preoccupied with entirely dierent political and
social concerns, Parsons was able to mobilize Webers analogy between the
modern state and modern capitalist enterprise for new purposes. Trough
the work of Parsonss student Robert Merton, and the work of Mertons
own students Alvin Gouldner, Peter Blau, and Philip Selznick in
turn, the popularization of Webers concept of bureaucracy helped set the
agenda for modern industrial and organizational sociology.
:,c
Parsons may
well have had axes of his own to grind, but he nonetheless succeeded in
showing how bureaucracy cut a cross-section through Webers oeuvre and
opened promising avenues for empirical research. Webers analysis of capi-
talism resonated with contemporaries not merely on account of its scholarly
thesis, but largely because it engaged their political hopes and fears. In
some cases these extra-scientic valuations induced interpreters to distort
the meaning of what Weber was trying to say. But as Weber was himself
aware, there comes a time when the light of the great cultural problems
moves on [and] scholarship prepares to change its standpoint and its
conceptual apparatus, and to view the stream of events from the heights of
thought.
:,:
As Parsonss case suggests, such unexpected geographical and
cultural transpositions are often necessary to unlock a concepts power to
organize and explain social reality.

:,
Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and
Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, :,,;).

:,c
See Guenther Roth and Reinhard Bendix, Max Webers Einu auf die amerikanische
Soziologie, Klner Zeitschrift fr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie :: (:,,,): ,,,; Albrow,
Bureaucracy, ,coo; Marshall W. Meyer, Te Weberian Tradition in Organizational
Research, in Structures of Power and Constraint: Papers in Honor of Peter M. Blau, ed. Craig
Calhoun, Marshall W. Meyer, and W. Richard Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
:,,c), :,:::,; and Charles Crothers, Te Dysfunctions of Bureaucracies: Mertons Work in
Organizational Sociology, in Robert K. Merton: Consensus and Controversy, ed. Jon Clark, Celia
Modgil, and Sohan Modgil (London: Falmer, :,,c), :,,::o.

:,:
Max Weber, Die Objektivitt sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis
(:,c), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :,), :: (MSS, :::).



::;
cuairii
Skepticism and faith
Max Weber holds a central place in the literature of twentieth-century
cultural criticism, an honor that would have likely irked him had he lived
to experience it. Trained as a lawyer and historian, he spent most of his
short academic career as a professor of political economy. He never con-
sidered himself to be a philosopher and bristled at the suggestion that
metaphysical laws or developmental tendencies guide the course of his-
tory.
:
Yet his scholarship continually generated questions of philosoph-
ical import. Weber often brushed them aside with a wave of the hand,
declaring that we are getting into the area of judgments of value and
faith, with which this purely historical study should not be encumbered.
:

However, for many German intellectuals in the :,:cs and :,,cs, it was
precisely this aspect of his thought that fascinated more than any other.
Te sociologist Albert Salomon spoke for many of his contemporaries
when he asserted that it was ultimately philosophical questions that were
historically investigated and presented in Webers sociological analyses.
,
In the immediate aftermath of World War i, the experience of combat,
defeat, and revolution transformed the longing for new sources of nor-
mativity originally the ide xe of the avant-garde before :,: into a
broader cultural condition.

In this climate Weber set himself apart from

most German intellectuals by rejecting calls for a fundamental trans-
formation of scholarship. His anti-utopian attitude similarly extended to
the political and social issues of his day. In opposition to pacists who
wished to divest politics of its coercive forces, Weber insisted that conict

:
On Webers uneasy relationship with the genre of universal history, see Wolfgang J. Mommsen,
Universalgeschichtliches und politisches Denken bei Max Weber, in Max Weber: Sein Werk
und seine Wirkung, ed. Dirk Ksler (Munich: Nymphenburger, :,;:), :o,cc.

:
PE, :, (BW, :::).

,
Albert Salomon, review of Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Eine Gedenkrede, and Marianne Weber, Max
Weber: Ein Lebensbild, Die Gesellschaft ,, Part ii (:,:o): :,c.

On the continuities between pre- and post-World War i avant-gardes, see Modris Eksteins, Rites
of Spring: Te Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, MA: Houghton Miin, :,,).






Skepticism and faith ::
cannot be excluded from all cultured life [Kulturleben]. One can change
its means, its object, even its fundamental direction and its bearers, but
it cannot be eliminated.
,
In a challenge to radical socialists, he argued
that capitalism and its attendant bureaucratic administration could not
be abandoned without precipitating a catastrophic decline in the stand-
ard of living: Increasingly the material fate of the masses depends on the
continuous and correct functioning of the ever more bureaucratic organi-
zations of private capitalism, and the idea of eliminating them becomes
more and more utopian.
o
Weber was extremely critical of radical young
students whose ethic of conviction committed them to pursuing their
ideals without regard for the human cost. In Politics as a Vocation he
argued that the challenges of postrevolutionary Germany demanded poli-
ticians who were willing to take responsibility for the foreseeable conse-
quences of their ideals. Tat Weber could take such an attitude in the
face of the challenges of modern life came as a shock to his contemporar-
ies, especially since he freely acknowledged the dangers posed by modern
capitalism and bureaucratic administration for human freedom.
;
After Webers death some unsympathetic critics interpreted his anti-
utopianism as an apathetic gesture on the part of an enervated old schol-
arship, or as the expression of a reied bourgeois mentality incapable
of conceptualizing social change.

But there were also many contempor-

aries who believed that Webers anti-utopianism evinced a heroic ethos
peculiarly suited to modern life.
,
Te sociologist Erich Franzen expressed
this view when he declared that the unique, personal heroism of the age
of iron was embodied in Max Weber.
:c
Even intellectuals with antithet-
ical attitudes toward modern society were captivated by his attitude. Te
conservative historian Christoph Steding, later a rising star in the Nazi

,
Max Weber, Der Sinn der Wertfreiheit der soziologischen und konomischen Wissenschaften
(:,:;), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :,), ,:; (MSS, :o).

o
MWG i/::, :c, (EaS, ,).

;
For Webers most famous warnings about the autocracy of bureaucratic ideals and the shell as
hard as steel (stahlhartes Gehuse) of modern capitalism, see Max Weber, Debattenreden auf der
Tagung des Vereins fr Sozialpolitik in Wien :,c, zu den Verhandlungen ber Die wirtschaft-
lichen Unternehmungen der Gemeinden, in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik,
ed. Marianne Weber (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,), :; and PE, :,, (BW, ::c:).

See, for instance, Erich von Kahler, Der Beruf der Wissenschaft (Berlin: Bondi, :,:c); and Georg
Lukcs, Geschichte und Klassenbewutsein: Studien ber marxistische Dialektik (:,:,), Vol. iv of
Politische Aufstze (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, :,;).

,
Webers contemporaries fascination with his heroism has been noted in Stephen P. Turner and
Regis A. Factor, Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value: A Study in Philosophy, Ethics,
and Politics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, :,), ,,.

:c
Erich Franzen, Lebensbild Max Webers, Deutsche allgemeine Zeitung, July ::, :,:o.






Skepticism and faith ::,
academic establishment, observed in :,,: that there is, for good reason,
no real disciple of Max Weber. Tere is only a community of those who
admire his heroic humanity.
::
A heroic stance requires an act of oppos-
ition against the world and the demands it presents. But what sort of
heroism is possible if one accepts that the parameters set by modern life
are ultimately inescapable? Tis was a question that preoccupied some of
Weimar Germanys most important sociologists and philosophers, such
as Karl Jaspers, Siegfried Kracauer, Karl Lwith, Karl Mannheim, Ernst
Troeltsch, and Erich Voegelin, as well as a number of gures who have
long since been forgotten. Tey regarded Webers anti-utopianism as a
self-conscious and principled attempt to come to terms with the prob-
lems of modern culture, even if they did not necessarily endorse it them-
selves. Tis chapter examines a curious feature of Webers reception that
has gone unremarked and that in large part explains the fascination he
elicited in his contemporaries: for dierent interpreters, Webers heroic
anti-utopianism came to signify radically dierent attitudes toward the
modern world. My aim is to construct a typology of these interpretations
and, in the process, to explain why Weber was able to make such dierent
impressions on his contemporaries.
I distinguish between three categories of interpretations based on the
degree to which they attributed to Weber a habitus of skepticism or faith
(Glaube). To borrow a phrase from the literary scholar Helmuth Lethen,
who has associated Webers ethos with the cool conduct of the Weimar
avant-garde, the rst category will be called cold anti- utopianism.
::

According to this interpretation, Webers anti-utopianism was a manifest-
ation of his rational skepticism or disillusionment about the possibility
of suprapersonal values in a demagied (entzaubert) world. For those
who understood him in these terms, Weber endorsed an attitude of res-
ignation or renunciation in the face of modern life. Other, more subtle
interpreters believed that Webers skepticism about the possibility of alter-
ing modern society was tempered by a passionate commitment to indi-
vidual autonomy. Since Weber believed that cultural rationalization led
to personal responsibility, they argued, his anti-utopianism signied that
modern life was worth arming and not simply enduring. Expanding on
Lethens temperature metaphor, this attitude will be called temperate
anti- utopianism. Finally, there were those admirers to whom Weber

::
Christoph Steding, Politik und Wissenschaft bei Max Weber (Breslau: Korn, :,,:), :.

::
Helmut Lethen, Cool Conduct: Te Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany, trans. Don Reneau
(Berkeley: University of California Press, :cc:), :.


Skepticism and faith ::c
appeared not as a teacher of skepticism or even tempered armation, but
rather as a man of supreme faith in the face of insuperable obstacles. In
their eyes Webers willingness to defend his intensely personal convictions
against the innite resistance of the world made him an existential hero
on the model of Sren Kierkegaards knight of faith. Tis will be called
hot anti-utopianism.
Te fact that Webers anti-utopianism could lend itself to cold and
temperate interpretations derived from the presence of rhetorical tensions
in his texts. Te problem [of political leadership] is: how can hot passion
and a cool sense of proportion be forced together in one and the same
soul?, Weber observed in Politics as a Vocation.
:,
In keeping with this
aim, his published writings frequently attempted to combine the rhetoric
of realism with an appeal for individual commitment, although for some
readers it was his cool sense of proportion, rather than its combination
with hot passion, that made the greater impression. However, it was
not the analysis of Webers published work that provided the basis for
the hot interpretation, but rather the experience of his personality and
life conduct. Some of Webers closest associates believed that his personal
attitude toward life evinced a passionate and unconditioned ethos that
often ran contrary to his published utterances. Tey regarded his hot
anti- utopianism as a profoundly inspiring but esoteric teaching that could
not be fully appreciated by outsiders. Te fact that this interpretation
was based almost entirely on rsthand knowledge of Webers personality
accounts for its absence in the secondary literature today.
coio axri-uroii axi sx
In the wake of military defeat, political revolution, and a punitive peace
treaty, Weber declared that what lies before us is not the summers front
but, initially at least, a polar night of icy darkness and harshness, regard-
less which group may outwardly turn out to be the victor now.
:
In a time
devoid of gods or prophets, it was pointless to wait for a redeemer. To
anyone who is unable to endure the fate of the age like a man we must say
that he should return to the welcoming and merciful embrace of the old
churches simply, silently, and without any of the usual public bluster of
the renegade.
:,
For proponents of the cold interpretation, Webers stance
:,
Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (:,:,), in MWG i/:;, :: (VL, ;;).
:
Weber, Politik als Beruf, :,: (VL, ,,).
:,
Max Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf (:,:,), in MWG i/:;, :co (VL, ,c).




Cold anti-utopianism :::
toward modern life was characterized by the stereotypically masculine
qualities evoked by these admonitions: renunciation, endurance, forti-
tude, and ascetic self-discipline.
:o
By far the coldest interpretation came from the pen of Siegfried
Kracauer, one of Weimar Germanys most astute critics. In Tose who
Wait, a :,:: article published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, Kracauer exam-
ined the dierent reactions among his contemporaries to the metaphys-
ical suering from the lack of a higher meaning in the world, a modern
condition produced by the attenuation of religious and traditional values.
After discussing the appeal that anthroposophy, communitarian move-
ments, and religious revivals held for needy individuals, Kracauer turned
to consider those people who, conscious of their situation, linger in the
void. Weber exemplied the skeptic as a matter of principle, the kind
of person who rejected all intellectually unscrupulous attempts to nd
redemption from the emptiness of modern life:
His intellectual conscience rebels against embarking on any of the paths toward
supposed redemption that present themselves at every turn, since these appear to
him as so many wrong tracks and illicit retreats into the sphere of arbitrary limi-
tation. As a result, he decides out of inner truthfulness to turn his back on the
absolute: his inability to believe becomes an unwillingness to believe. Hatred of
the faith swindlers a hatred in which an already forgotten and long-repressed
yearning perhaps still resonates drives him to ght for the demagication of
the world, and his existence runs its course in the bad innity of empty space.
Tis lonely existence, however, is no longer nave in any sense. Rather, it is born
of an unequalled heroism; in its self-chosen wretchedness, it comes closer to sal-
vation than the carefully tended existence of the self-righteous.
:;
For Kracauer, Webers heroism consisted in his renunciation of any abso-
lute cause or belief. It was a principled rejection of the utopian move-
ments of his time as intellectually dishonest, fanatical, or escapist. Weber
chose to remain oating in empty space, untethered to any value that
might ground him, heroically enduring the lonely existence of modern
life rather than ee into compromised or inauthentic forms of salvation.
Not all cold interpretations depicted Webers anti-utopianism in
such dispassionate terms. Ernst Troeltsch called attention to the values

:o
For references to the manliness of Webers renunciation or asceticism, see Siegmund Hellmann,
Max Weber, Deutsche Akademische Rundschau ;, no. , (:,:,): ,; and Hans Heinrich Schrader,
Max Weber als Politiker, Gewissen ,, no. , (:,::): ,.

:;
Siegfried Kracauer, Die Wartenden (:,::), in Das Ornament der Masse: Essays (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, :,;;), ::,; translation adapted from Siegfried Kracauer, Tose who Wait, in
Te Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. and ed. Tomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, :,,,), :,,o.


Skepticism and faith :::
that remained invariant within Webers relativist world view: He was
a complete relativist in all political and social matters, and recognized
only two absolute dogmas: faith in the nation and the categorical impera-
tive of human dignity and justice. However, Troeltsch suggested that the
demoralizing experience of defeat and revolution had enervated Webers
faith in both the nation and human rights. Te nal years must have
meant a terrible spiritual torment for him, Troeltsch mused. His nal
utterances [Scholarship as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation]
breathe a spirit that I had not previously known in him to this degree,
and which I can only characterize as heroic skepticism. Troeltsch attrib-
uted a deep moral element to Webers anti-utopianism:
His life was a tragedy, like that of his nations, but he did not enjoy making
himself seem interesting in a tragic way or wallowing in feeling. Duty as the
meaning of life, in the simple and strict sense of Kant, was enough for him. He
despised the modern subjectivities, curiosities, and bermensch ideas, and he did
not participate in the general attraction toward religion.
Tis was an attitude that Troeltsch saw mirrored in the teachings of
ancient Stoicism: A stoic greatness and hardness radiated from him as
from Shakespeares Brutus, only it was still a few degrees harder and more
heroic.
:
Whereas Kracauer and Troeltsch called attention to the skepticism at
the heart of Webers anti-utopianism, Karl Mannheim emphasized a dis-
tinct but related attitude, namely disillusionment. In his early book,
Conservatism, Mannheim identied Weber as the outstanding modern
representative of Desillusionsrealismus (the realism of disillusionment), a
condition that ensued when intellectuals from one social class assimilated
the ideology of their opponents and in the process relativized both world
views. For such intellectuals, freedom from norms and the absence of
utopias are the criteria of objectivity and realism.
:,
Inspired by the social-
ist critique of bourgeois society, Weber called for the sober illumination
of the apparatus of world events (demagication of the world), while at
the same time employing the bourgeois critique of socialism to demon-
strate its own utopian nature. Te end result was his inability to remain

:
Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber (:,:c), in Max Weber zum Gedchtnis: Materialien und Dokumente
zur Bewertung von Werk und Persnlichkeit, ed. Ren Knig and Johannes Winckelmann
(Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, :,o,), o. On the reprisal of Stoicism in Weimar thought,
see Peter Eli Gordon, Te Concept of the Apolitical: German Jewish Tought and Weimar
Political Teology, Social Research ;, no. , (:cc;): ,,;.

:,
Karl Mannheim, Konservatismus: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Wissens (:,:,), ed. David Kettler,
Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,), ::c.


Cold anti-utopianism ::,
comfortably rooted in any world view. Te predicament in which Weber
found himself, Mannheim argued, was symptomatic of late bourgeois
thought in general.
:c
In a dissertation on Webers sociology, a student named Franz Schmidt
presented Weber not as a gure oating in the void, but rather as some-
one who had bound himself, with great discipline and asceticism, to life
in the real world.
::
In the closing lines of Scholarship as a Vocation,
Weber enjoined readers to pursue their lives with a combination of sobri-
ety and passion: We must go about our work and meet the challenge of
the day both in our human relations and our vocation. But that moral
is simple and straightforward if each person nds and obeys the daemon
that holds the threads of his life.
::
As Schmidt understood him, Weber
believed that modern individuals should seek meaning, or at least attempt
to sublimate their anxiety over the absence of meaning, by focusing on
the mundane and limited tasks of everyday life. Weber believed that
passionate devotion to a cause and the voice of his daemon would
enable modern man to nd an outlet for the pressure of the fate that
weighs heavily on him, and thereby drown out the question as to the
meaning of life.
:,
Weber was thus torn between a desire for absolute val-
ues and an inability to embrace them with a good conscience:
Max Weber had no other religious faith except for the faith in his daemon.
Tis faith, however, bore all the marks of the Calvinist religiosity that he had
thoroughly investigated: the cold conception of power and domination, the
sober calculation, the elimination of everything personal and intimate, and in
its place the coldness of objectivity, labor for the sake of labor in sober, ascetic
renunciation. But Max Weber on the whole lacked a warming and harmonizing
faith in the religious sense of Calvinism. On the one hand he longingly desired
such a faith, but on the other hand he could not defend it before his scientic
intellect.
:
Te ethos Schmidt attributed to Weber was one of rational and resigned
endurance. After rational inquiry had demagied the world, the heroic
individual had to toughen himself to endure the chilly climate of a world
without nave convictions. Intellectual honesty prohibited him from

:c
Ibid., :::.

::
Franz Schmidt, Max Webers Soziologie (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Mnster, :,:,). Te
dissertation was advised by Johann Plenge, a sociologist and economist who advocated a dual
project of technocratic socialism and German nationalism. On Plenge, see Rolf Peter Sieferle,
Die Konservative Revolution: Fnf biographische Skizzen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, :,,,),
Chapter :.

::
Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, ::: (VL, ,:).

:,
Schmidt, Max Webers Soziologie, ;,c.
:
Ibid., :,.




Skepticism and faith ::
heeding the siren call of new salvation cults. Even if he chose to follow his
own personal values as a calling, he remained aware that this was not the
authentic form of grace envisioned by the Puritans, but rather a deliberate
attempt to construct a sense of meaning in life.
rixiii ari axri-uroii axi sx
Not all of Webers contemporaries regarded him as a paragon of sobriety
and renunciation. One of the rst writers to emphasize the impassioned
tone of Webers anti-utopianism was Erich (later Eric) Voegelin, one of
the major political philosophers of the twentieth century. A few years
after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, Voegelin
published an article in which he called attention to the peculiar paradox
of resignation with passion that is characteristic of Max Weber.
:,
Tis
paradox manifested itself in Politics as a Vocation, where Weber enu-
merated three qualities an individual must possess to pursue politics as a
calling: passion, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.
:o

How were these potentially contradictory qualities to be combined in one
and the same individual? In Voegelins view, the signicance of Webers
remark went far beyond the sphere of professional politics. Te gure of
the politician represented Webers prototype of the man of action and
thus revealed something fundamental about his conception of a mean-
ingful life under modern conditions.
:;
Te sense of proportion or resignation that Weber attributed to the
man of action, Voegelin believed, was a peculiar consequence of respon-
sible action in a demagied world. It reected an awareness of what it
meant to choose something in a world where many choices were mutually
exclusive. Te process of rationalization had enabled individuals to know
the consequences of their actions and thus take responsibility for their
choices; they were now aware of the struggle between dierent incompat-
ible value systems, the tragic fate that clings to all life, that the irreducible
multiplicity of existence the gods, powers, orders, and origins never

:,
Erich Voegelin, ber Max Weber, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fr Literaturwissenschaft und
Geistesgeschichte ,, no. : (:,:,): :,. While Voegelins attitude toward Weber was generally sym-
pathetic if not outright armative in his early writings, he later criticized the doctrine of
value freedom in Eric Voegelin, Te New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :,; [:,,:]), :,::. On the history of his engagement with Weber and his work, see Peter J.
Opitz, Max Weber und Eric Voegelin, Politisches Denken: Jahrbuch , ed. Volker Gebhardt,
Henning Ottmann, and Martyn P. Tompson (Stuttgart: Metzler, :,,,), :,,:.

:o
Weber, Politik als Beruf, ::; (VL, ;o).

:;
Voegelin, ber Max Weber, :,.




Temperate anti-utopianism ::,
conforms to the will for a unity of meaning.
:
With the knowledge that
every point in life is an intersection of numerous, ultimately mutually
incompatible orders or forces, the decision to devote oneself to a particu-
lar goal necessarily entailed the feeling of renouncing all others, a feeling
of painful loss for resignation is not simply renunciation, but rather
renunciation with the full consciousness and recognition of the value that
has been lost.
:,
As Voegelin understood him, Weber seemed to suggest that a heroic
life under modern conditions required not simply renunciation, but also
passionate commitment to the values one had chosen. Tis combination
of resignation and passion distinguished Webers attitude from the fatal-
ism of other n-de-sicle cultural critics:
Max Webers resignation is not characterized by the mood of aesthetic distance,
it does not bloom from quiet melancholy and mourning over the eternal rift
between man and world, it is not as with Simmel the emotional state of a
man whom fate has barred from entering the promised land, seen from afar:
Webers resignation arises precisely from the passion with which the man of
action plunges into reality, to work unconditionally and immediately in it.
,c
Like many other Weimar-era commentators, Voegelin identied faith as
a central concept in Webers anti-utopianism. Demagication and every-
day life, passion and resignation, responsibility and proportion merge
within a lifestyle whose distinctive feature for the supercial observer
is its absence of faith [Glaubenslosigkeit], Voegelin pointed out. Indeed,
faith is lacking here, if by faith one understands the orientation of ones
action toward a rationally formulated order of values, or the directing
of ones life toward a denitely given goal, an ideal or wishful picture.
,:

And yet Voegelin did not want wholly to discount the presence of faith in
Webers thought. Weber did possess a kind of faith, only it was a wholly
individual one, based on personal convictions for which he and not
the objective order of the world bore responsibility. He always avoided
making professions [Bekenntnisse] or setting forth programs, for his faith
was of a kind that does not let itself be expressed as an ideal or future
plan, Voegelin explained. Te peculiar nature of this faith was a conse-
quence of the historical situation Weber diagnosed. Since the demagica-
tion of the world had divested society of its traditional norms, it was now
up to the individuals daemon and his responsibility to determine the
concrete shape and fate of history.
,:

:
Ibid., :,.
:,
Ibid., ::.
,c
Ibid., :.
,:
Ibid., :,.
,:
Ibid., :;.
Skepticism and faith ::o
Karl Lwiths extended essay in the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und
Sozialpolitik, Karl Marx and Max Weber, expanded on many aspects
of the temperate interpretation that Voegelin rst suggested. It appeared
at the end of the Weimar Republic and has since become one of the
most widely cited essays on Webers social thought. A student of Martin
Heideggers, Lwith had already made a name for himself by the end
of the :,:cs, and after World War ii he earned a reputation as one of
the Federal Republics most important philosophers. While studying in
Munich in :,:; he heard Weber deliver Scholarship as a Vocation to the
association of Free Students. Te impact was stunning, he recalled in
his memoirs.
Te experience and knowledge of a lifetime were condensed into these sentences
Te acuteness of the questions he posed corresponded with his refusal to oer
any cheap solutions. He tore down all the veils from desirable objects, yet every-
one none the less sensed that the heart of this clear-thinking intellect was pro-
foundly humane. After the innumerable revolutionary speeches by the literary
activists, Webers words were like a salvation.
,,
Te message of Webers thought, as Lwith rst experienced it, armed
life even as it disabused the audience members of their illusions. A simi-
lar spirit characterized Lwiths interpretation of Webers ethos in Karl
Marx and Max Weber.
Given the similarities in their diagnoses of modern life, Lwith asked,
why did Weber not follow Marx in calling for the revolutionary trans-
formation of society? Lwith believed that both thinkers shared a pro-
found concern for the future of humanity under the adverse conditions
of industrial modernity.
,
Modern society had constructed an objectied
network of relationships that were increasingly dissociated from human
purposes a phenomenon Marx had called alienation but which Weber
analyzed more abstractly under the rubric of rationalization. Unlike
Marx, however, who argued that alienation could be overcome through
the triumph of the proletarian class, Weber oered a diagnosis of ration-
alizations discontents but no thoroughgoing therapy to correct them.
,,


,,
Karl Lwith, My Life in Germany before and after , trans. Elizabeth King (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, :,,), :;.

,
Karl Lwith, Max Weber und Karl Marx, Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik o;
(:,,:): ,o.

,,
Ibid., o:. Lwith borrowed the distinction between diagnosis and therapy in Webers
thought from Erik Wolf, Max Webers ethischer Kritizismus und das Problem der Metaphysik,
Logos :,, no. , (:,,c): ,o,.



Temperate anti-utopianism ::;
Does not Weber contradictorily arm and reject this fateful process of
rationalization at the same time? Lwith asked.
,o
Te key to understanding Webers ambivalence toward rationalization,
Lwith argued, could be found in his philosophical understanding of
what constituted the human personality (Persnlichkeit).
,;
While Weber
never directly elaborated such a theory, Lwith believed that it could
be reconstructed from a careful reading of his methodological writings.
Weber criticized the Romantic conception of personality that his contem-
poraries frequently incorporated into their political economy: they impli-
citly dened freedom in terms of the scientic unpredictability of an
individuals actions, thereby shutting the door on any attempts to apply
rigorous conceptual analysis to social behavior. In the interests of defend-
ing a role for the sciences of human action, Weber emphasized that such
unpredictability was solely the property of insane or animalistic personal-
ities. Te free action of individuals, on the other hand, was distinguished
by the fact that their choice of means was rationally connected to the
ends they had chosen. It was only by virtue of this consistent relationship
between means and ends that one could speak of an individual having a
coherent personality at all.
,
Based on these considerations, Lwith concluded that, in Webers
eyes, the freedom and dignity of human action were inextricably linked
to rationality. By means of a constant relationship between an individ-
ual and his ultimate values, the individual personality lifted itself above
the semiconscious morass of mere instincts and drives. Without this kind
of regular relationship between ends and the means necessary to achieve
them, individuals would lack the direction necessary for having agency or
accomplishing anything in the world at all. Scholarship, which provided
empirical knowledge about the world, enabled individuals to calculate
the relationship between means and ends and thereby increased the inner
consistency of their actions. Tis kind of knowledge imparted individuals
with a sense of responsibility for their actions, since it made them con-
scious of the cost of attempting to realize their ultimate aims in the world
and enabled them to answer for the consequences. Rationality was not
merely compatible with human individuality and ethical responsibility
but actually constitutive of it.
,,
As Lwith understood it, the paradox of sociocultural rationaliza-
tion lay for Weber in the fact that it threatened to dissolve the purposive

,o
Lwith, Max Weber und Karl Marx, .
,;
Ibid., ,o.

,
Ibid., :,.
,,
Ibid., ,,.


Skepticism and faith ::
rationality at the heart of the human personality. As institutions became
increasingly rationalized and acquired a logic of their own, what previ-
ously had been regarded as a means was soon treated as an end in itself.
Lwith saw this narrative as analogous to Marxs story of alienation. But
whereas Marx had sought to transcend the entire social system of capit-
alism, Weber abjured the hope of radically altering the forms of human
relationships.
c
Tis anti-utopian character of Webers thought was due in
part to pragmatic considerations. Weber saw the scope of rationalization
as even more inexorable and all-encompassing than that of capitalism in
modern civilization.
:
At the same time, Lwith pointed out, Weber per-
ceived an inherent value in the process of modern rationalization. Te
demagication of the world wrought by scholarship, which divested the
world of objective sources of meaning and value, placed the individual
in a position of greater self-responsibility. Compared to every transcen-
dental faith, this faith in the fate of the time and in the passion of dis-
crete action is positive faithlessness, Lwith explained. Te positive side
of this lack of faith in something that exceeds the faith of the time and
the demands of the day a lack of faith in objective values, meanings,
validities is the subjectivity of rational responsibility in the sense of
pure self-responsibility of the individual to himself. Te kind of self that
Weber esteemed, and which he believed rst arose in the context of mod-
ern western culture and nowhere else, was a personality that had been
constituted through the process of rationalization and specialization. It
was a self that identied otherworldly goals and yet proceeded to realize
them through concentrated, specialized, and rational activity. Te fun-
damental attitude that Weber takes toward this rationalized world, and
which also determines his methodology, Lwith asserted, is that of
an objectively unfounded steadfastness of the self-responsible individual
through himself. Trust into this world of submission, the individual as
human being belongs to himself and stands on his own feet.
:
uor axri-uroii axi sx
In the interpretations of Webers anti-utopianism examined thus far, we
have seen that Weimar intellectuals sought to locate a fundamental con-
ception of human dignity at the heart of his thought. Te proponents of a
cold interpretation regarded Weber as an exemplar of heroic resignation in
the face of modern nihilism, whereas more temperate interpreters, such as

c
Ibid., ,;.
:
Ibid., ,::.
:
Ibid., ,,.


Hot anti-utopianism ::,
Voegelin and Lwith, believed that Weber armed the value of modern
life despite the challenges it posed for human freedom. Te nal group
of intellectuals we will examine espoused a hot interpretation of Webers
anti-utopianism. Tey believed that Weber had located the source of
human individuality in the realm of faith. His anti-utopianism was thus
perfectly compatible with championing lost causes. Profound convictions
defended by the individual against the resistance of the world, these inter-
preters argued, constituted his conception of human dignity.
Webers published oeuvre contained passages that could be mobilized
for such an interpretation, most notably the nal sentences of Politics
as a Vocation. Here, in what seemed to be a surprisingly utopian turn,
Weber reminded aspiring leaders that what is possible could never have
been achieved unless people had tried again and again to achieve the
impossible in this world. To have a true vocation for politics, a leader had
to be certain that he is sure that his spirit will not be broken if the world,
when looked at from his point of view, proves too stupid or base for what
he oers it, that when faced with all that, he can still say Nevertheless!
,

However, for proponents of the hot interpretation, the signicance of
Webers anti-utopianism was revealed not so much by what he wrote as by
how he lived.
In obituaries and reminiscences, Webers admirers used a common lan-
guage to suggest that the Weber they knew was the real one, whereas those
who merely read his writings or listened to his public utterances could
not grasp his true signicance. Despite all the power of critique that
stood at his disposal, Max Weber was at heart not a destroyer but rather
a builder, not a denier but rather an armer of ultimate values, empha-
sized Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, a former colleague of Webers at
the University of Freiburg. If he disguised this core of his being, perhaps
it was because he did not wish to reveal this fundamental inwardness to
the eye of the scholarly that is to say, profane reader.

Like every
great scholar and teacher, Max Weber owed his inuence above all to his
personality, declared another colleague, the Heidelberg political econo-
mist Eberhard Gothein. Here stands a man who is all strength and will
that was the rst impression that he made on everybody; and since a holy
earnestness glowed in this will, an ethical strength of conscience that no
one could evade (even those who disagreed with the details and made

,
Weber, Politik als Beruf, :,: (VL, ,,). See also Webers critique of Realpolitik in Der Sinn
der Wertfreiheit, ,:,: (MSS, :,).

Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, review of Othmar Spann, Tote und lebendige Wissenschaft.
Schmollers Jahrbuch ,, no. , (:,:,): ::.


Skepticism and faith :,c
reservations about the whole), he elicited enthusiasm from the students.
,

Alluding to Webers Huguenot ancestry, the political economist Robert
Wilbrandt asserted that the hero of faith [Glaubensheld], who was once
expelled from France on account of his beliefs, arises once more in him
poised like a duelist and simultaneously hidden in the modern vestments
of theoretical agnosticism.
o
What was it about Webers personal conduct that could have conveyed
such an impression? Although Weber insisted in Politics as a Vocation
that a sense of proportion is required [of the politician], the ability to
allow realities to impinge on you while maintaining an inner calm and
composure, the reality was that he often engaged in long feuds with col-
leagues and political adversaries over matters of principle, seemingly with-
out regard for the practical consequences. Weber excoriated his political
and academic opponents in editorials, pursued libel charges when he felt
his honor insulted, and on one occasion challenged a younger colleague to
a duel.
;
Unable to tolerate opposition to his principle of value-free schol-
arship, he caused public scenes in some of Germanys most august aca-
demic institutions. His combativeness impressed many of his colleagues
just as it alienated others. He was more than just a scholar, since his per-
sonality always stood behind all his work and became palpable: the man
and the ghter, noted the Frankfurter Zeitung in an obituary. Tere
were many who did not love him, because he always fought against
something, but others followed him all the more joyfully.

Close friends
perceived something almost fanatical about Webers polemics. Gothein
expressed perplexity at the contrast between Webers academic sobriety
and his excessive personality:
In him exists a rare combination of theoretical thinking and historical know-
ledge that no one else currently possesses in equal measure. It is strange that
the same person becomes a fanatic when he takes a practical stand. As the type
of person who values strength of will above all else, it is understandable that he
especially loves the fanatics of history.
,

,
Eberhard Gothein, Max Weber, Karlsruher Tagblatt, June :,, :,:c (Erstes Blatt).

o
Robert Wilbrandt, Max Weber als Erkenntniskritiker der Sozialwissenschaften, Zeitschrift
fr die gesamte Staatswissenschaft ;,, no. (:,:,): o,,. For more of his personal recollections of
Weber, see Robert Wilbrandt, Ihr glcklichen Augen: Lebenserinnerungen (Stuttgart: Mittelbach,
:,;), ,,,:.

;
See Lebensbild, ,,o (Biography, :,).

Todesnachricht in der Frankfurter Zeitung (June :o, :,:c), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max
Weber zum Gedchtnis, ,,, ,o.

,
Eberhard Gothein to Marie Luise Gothein, August :,, :,c, in Eberhard Gothein and Marie
Luise Gothein, Im Schaen genieen: Der Briefwechsel der Kulturwissenschaftler Eberhard und





Hot anti-utopianism :,:
Paul Honigsheim, a young historian and sociologist who befriended
Weber in Heidelberg in the years shortly before World War i, believed
that a quixotic temperament constituted the essence of Webers moral
vision of the world.
,c
According to Honigsheim, the central concern of
Webers life and work was to ensure the production of human heroes
(menschliche Helden), the kind of individuals who were motivated by an
attitude that, for the sake of loyalty to a cause or conviction, demands
that one ght against institutions of authority and, if necessary, risk the
downfall of ones own person.
,:
In his own friendships with radical intel-
lectuals in Heidelberg, Weber loved each and every one, even if he was a
Don Quixote, who sought to support himself and the individual as such
against the unjustied demands of institutions.
,:
Honigsheim empha-
sized that even though Weber opposed utopian cultural and political
movements, his personal attitude ought not be construed as pessimistic:
Indeed, he denounced dreamers and romantics. When he wrestled with messi-
anic boys and messianic youths, who were full of their God, he was capable
of placing himself not only in substantive opposition, but also of appearing pes-
simistic and gloomy. But those who really knew him, as only his wife and some
friends did, knew that all his implacable criticism and opposition served not
least of all to hide something something that this austere ascetic felt obligated
not to let others notice: faithful love [glaubende Liebe].
,,
Jrg von Kap-herr, whom Marianne Weber identied as one of her
husbands most mature and noble-minded students at the University
of Munich, came away with a similar impression of the strength of his
teachers faith.
,
In a eulogy at Webers Munich memorial service he
declared that we who were his students had a leader and a master in
Marie Luise Gothein (), ed. Michael Maurer, Johanna Snger, and Editha Ulrich
(Cologne: Bhlau, :cco), :,.

,c
During the Weimar Republic Honigsheim taught at the University of Cologne and directed the
Cologne Volkshochschule (college for adult education). In :,,, he emigrated rst to France, then
Panama, and nally the United States, where he arrived in :,, and took a teaching position
at Michigan State College. See Gottfried Eisermann, Das Lebenswerk von Paul Honigsheim
(:,:,o,), in Kultur, Volksbildung und Gesellschaft: Paul Honigsheim zum Gedenken seines
. Geburtstages, ed. Alphons Silbermann and Paul Rhrig (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, :,;),
:,,.

,:
Paul Honigsheim, Max Weber als Soziologe: Ein Wort zum Gedchtnis (:,::), in Knig
and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis, ,; Paul Honigsheim, Max Weber, in
Internationales Handwrterbuch des Gewerkschaftswesens, ed. Ludwig Heyde (Berlin: Werk und
Wirtschaft, :,,:), : vols., Vol. ii, :,o;. For Webers own use of the phrase human hero, see
MWG i/:,, :c,, :,,, : (FMW, :,; RC, ::,, :c;).

,:
Paul Honigsheim, Der Max-Weber-Kreis in Heidelberg, Klner Vierteljahrshefte fr Soziologie
,, no. , (:,:o): :;:.

,,
Ibid., :;.
,
Lebensbild, o; (Biography, oo:).




Skepticism and faith :,:
him and also a teacher, but he insisted that Webers leadership did not
demand personal devotion or adherence to a doctrine: He did not tell us
what we ought to do or believe. He was certain of his faith, but he knew
that such a faith was a grace and could not be taught like the sentences
of a catechism.
,,
Above all, Kap-herr was deeply moved by Webers opti-
mism that Germany would someday rise again after its defeat in World
War i.
,o
He was certain of his faith, of his faith in Germany and the German mission.
On account of this certainty he could understand so much, he could look reality
unconcernedly in the eye, perceive it in its greatness and tragedy, even when it
was hostile to us. His goodness, his love, his faith had thus become the core of
his being, they were without question, they were beyond experience. Whatever
fate might be, he could say: nevertheless.
,;
Kap-herr was a melancholic personality who had been traumatized by
the front experience during World War i. He and his wife committed sui-
cide together in November, :,:,.
,
In light of Kap-herrs depressive nature,
Webers personal impression must have been extraordinarily inspiring to
evoke such praise.
Te most prominent hot interpretation of Webers anti-utopianism
came from the pen of Karl Jaspers, the founder of modern existential-
ism. Of all Webers admirers during the Weimar Republic, Jaspers was
arguably the most fervent. Among my contemporaries, he avowed in his
memoirs, the actuality of human greatness, the standard for men histor-
ically distant, became embodied for me, in a singular, marvelous fashion,
in the person of Max Weber His thought as well as his nature became
as essential for my philosophy, even til today, as no other thinker.
,,
When

,,
Jrg von Kap-herr, Max Weber zum Gedenken (:,:c), Freiburger Universittsbltter , (:,o):
. For newspaper reports on Kap-herrs eulogy, see Max Webers Bestattung, Frankfurter
Zeitung, June :, :,:c; and Professor Max Webers Feuerbestattung, Mnchner neueste
Nachrichten, June :, :,:c (Morgen-Ausgabe).

,o
On Webers optimism, see his letters to the classical philologist Friedrich Crusius from November
: and December :o, :,:: One hundred and ten years ago we showed the world that we only
we were capable of being one of the very great civilized nations under foreign rule. Tat we
shall now do once more! Ten history, which has already given us only us a second youth,
will give us a third For I believe in the indestructibility of this Germany, and never before have
I regarded my being a German as such a gift from heaven as I do in these darkest days of Germanys
disgrace. (Lebensbild, o, [Biography, o,;, o,]).

,;
Kap-herr, Max Weber zum Gedenken, . [N]evertheless is a reference to the nal sentence
of Politics as a Vocation. See Weber, Politik als Beruf, :,: (VL, ,).

,
Marianne Weber, Lebenserinnerungen (Bremen: Storm, :,), ::;. See also the eulogy for Kap-
herr in Ana o: Deponat Max Weber-Schfer, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

,,
Karl Jaspers, Philosophical Autobiography, in Te Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. Paul Arthur
Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open Court, :,:), :,. Toward the end of his life Jaspers began to revise





Hot anti-utopianism :,,
Marianne Weber asked Jaspers whether he had stretched Max Weber
over the framework of his own philosophy and thus somewhat altered
him, he insisted with great seriousness, no, quite the contrary, I have
oriented my idea of existential philosophy on Max Webers character.
oc

Jaspers believed that Webers character often belied the message of his
published writings: He could appear as the consummate relativist and
yet he was the man with the strongest faith of our time.
o:
As Jaspers understood it, the essence of a philosophical existence was
consciousness of the absolute and a way of acting and behaving that is
supported in its unconditionedness by the vital seriousness of the abso-
lute. In a memorial speech delivered in July, :,:c, a month after Webers
death, Jaspers declared that Weber gave the idea of the philosopher a new
fulllment.
o:
Weber represented the incarnation of the modern existen-
tial philosopher because he espoused deeply personal truths that were
absolute and yet not universalizable like the truths of traditional phil-
osophy: It was wonderful that everything this man grasped, he grasped
with complete seriousness, with an absolute passion, that he stood behind
it with his most fundamental Being.
o,
Jaspers emphasized that Webers
commitments persisted even when the world appeared to make their real-
ization impossible:
His faith grew the worse [the situation] got. When things were going well, he
was an implacable pessimist who wanted to save the day, but when disaster
occurred he became calm: something always remains as a possibility, some-
thing always returns. One might call it banal optimism, when it was in fact
an indestructible, faithful armation in the midst of a continuous struggle for
essential Being.
o
In characterizing Webers philosophical existence as a paradoxical com-
bination of the absolute and the relative, Jaspers alluded to the gure of the
knight of faith in Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling (:,). In Psychology
of World Views Jaspers referred explicitly to the knight of faith as an illus-
tration of the true absolutist, the type of person who wins the absolute
his view of Weber as the standard for human greatness when he discovered that Weber had
carried on extra-marital aairs. See Dieter Henrich, Karl Jaspers: Tinking with Max Weber
in Mind, in Max Weber and His Contemporaries, ed. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jrgen
Osterhammel (London: Allen & Unwin, :,;), ,:.

oc
Marianne Weber, Lebenserinnerungen, :oc.

o:
Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Rede bei der von der Heidelberger Studentenschaft am . Juli veran-
stalteten Trauerfeier (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,::), :o.

o:
Ibid, :.
o,
Ibid., ::.

o
Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Deutsches Wesen im politischen Denken, im Forschen und Philosophieren
(Oldenburg: Stalling, :,,:), ;:.




Skepticism and faith :,
from the particular.
o,
Kierkegaard had developed the allegorical distinction
between the knight of faith and the knight of resignation to explain
Abrahams willingness to sacrice his son Isaac. Abraham might have out-
wardly resembled a knight of resignation who was capable of renouncing
all that he loved dearest in the world, but in fact this comparison did lit-
tle to explain his greatness. Abraham did not truly believe that sacricing
Isaac meant losing his beloved son forever. Instead, he had faith that God
would nd some inexplicable way to halt the sacrice or restore his son
to life. Abraham experienced resignation about the objective possibility of
Isaacs survival, but he went beyond this resignation to accept with innite
faith, on the strength of the absurd, that Gods promise to give him a son
would be fullled. Tis made him a knight of faith.
oo
As Kierkegaard
explained, Innite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone
who has not made this movement does not have faith; for only in innite
resignation does my eternal validity become transparent to me, and only
then can there be talk of grasping existence on the strength of faith.
o;
In
Jasperss eyes, it was Webers reaction to Germanys defeat in World War i
that particularly made him appear as a Kierkegaardian knight of faith:
He was a man who took on the entire breadth of German culture and lived in
the German state at a time when both were already in ruins; he did it with a
spirit that not only suered as a result, but also brought to illumination what
had occurred not with a calm skepticism that looks on from the sidelines, but
rather in each present and unique moment with a faith in spite of everything,
making a stand even in hopeless situations. He was a man who actively fullled
his essence in the moment of doom.
o
In the darkest hour of defeat, Weber was convinced that Germany would
one day rise again. Tat made him not a skeptic but rather a man of
unshakeable faith. And yet Jaspers took pains to note that Weber was nei-
ther a utopian nor a warrior of faith (Glaubenskmpfer). Unlike political
utopians from the left and right of the political spectrum, Weber abjured
all claims to represent totality. His personal commitments were always
directed at concrete goals instead of dogmas or universal systems.
o,
In the nal years of the Weimar Republic, Jaspers attempted to ele-
vate Webers faith in the German nation into a model for well-intentioned
but misguided nationalist youth. On the heels of the success of his short

o,
Karl Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (Berlin: Springer, :,:,), ,,.

oo
Sren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alistair Hannay (London: Penguin, :cc,),
o,:.

o;
Ibid., ;,.
o
Jaspers, Deutsches Wesen, .
o,
Ibid., ;::.



Hot anti-utopianism :,,
book of cultural criticism, Te Intellectual Situation of Our Time, Jaspers
was approached by a conservative publishing house for a contribution to
Books for the Nation, a comprehensive publishing project that espe-
cially wants to have an impact on the youth.
;c
Jaspers was uneasy about
the conservative and nationalist orientation of the series, but decided
to accept the oer in part for sentimental reasons: the editor of the ser-
ies was a friend of his late brother, and the publisher was located in his
hometown of Oldenburg. Jaspers proposed writing a short book on Max
Weber, whose lack of obvious aliation with any ideology would pre-
vent Jaspers from being labeled as the adherent of one political party or
another. Since I am neither right nor left, he explained to his parents, I
place a value on appearing connected to the name Max Weber, so that
theres no misunderstanding.
;:
Tis decision did not, however, spare him
from all criticism. Hannah Arendt, his favorite student, was shocked by
the books suggestion that existential freedom might somehow be served
by the cause of German nationalism.
;:
In an exchange of letters during
the nal weeks of the Weimar Republic, she boldly questioned the coher-
ency and ultimately the humanity of her mentors appropriation of
Webers hot anti-utopianism.
On the very rst page of his book, Max Weber: German Essence in
Political Tought, Scholarship, and Philosophy, Jaspers characterized Weber
as a recently departed and yet contemporary German essence [deutsches
Wesen] the essence of true rationality and humanity originating in
passion.
;,
However, in the nal chapter he declared that Webers con-
ception of freedom was not to be dened in the world as a form of spirit,
or idealism, or liberalism, or Germanness, but simply as humanness.
;

Arendt was troubled by Jasperss eort to present Weber as simultan-
eously a symbol of humanity and an embodiment of essential German
characteristics. Te nal straw was Jasperss decision uncritically to quote
a pronouncement Weber had made in the aftermath of World War i: To
achieve the resurrection of Germany in its old glory, I would certainly
make a pact with any power on earth, and even with the devil himself,

;c
Martin Venzky to Karl Jaspers, April :o, :,,:, Nachlass Karl Jaspers, ;,.:,;:, Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach. For his cultural criticism, see Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der
Zeit (Berlin: de Gruyter, :,,, [:,,:]). Te rst edition was published in :,,:.

;:
Karl Jaspers to his parents, June :,, :,,:, Nachlass Karl Jaspers, Familienarchiv.

;:
On Arendts evaluation of Weber in the context of her friendship with Jaspers, see Peter Baehr,
Te Grammar of Prudence: Arendt, Jaspers, and the Appraisal of Max Weber, in Hannah
Arendt in Jerusalem, ed. Steven E. Aschheim (Berkeley: University of California Press, :cc:),
,co:.

;,
Jaspers, Deutsches Wesen, ;.
;
Ibid., o,.




Skepticism and faith :,o
but not with the power of stupidity.
;,
As a Jew, Arendt felt excluded by
Jasperss apparent identication of the German essence with rationality
and humanity, but she was particularly horried by the suggestion that
a willingness to take the most sinister leap of faith, a pact with the devil,
counted as a laudable expression of nationalist sentiment:
I do not have to distance myself so long as you are talking about the meaning
of German world power and its mission for the culture of the future. I can
still identify with this German mission, even if I am not unquestioningly iden-
tical with it. For me, Germany is the mother tongue, philosophy, and literature.
I can and must vouch for all that. But I am obliged to keep my distance, I can
neither be for nor against when I read Max Webers magnicent sentence, that
to achieve the resurrection of Germany he would make a pact with the devil
himself.
;o
Jaspers could only oer a feeble reply. When I say that the German
essence is rationality, etc., I am not saying that rationality is exclusively
German, he tried to explain. He insisted that he was guided in his unfor-
tunate formulations by a desire to demonstrate to the extremist youth that
Weber, and not other gures on the right, was the true example of what
it meant to be a national thinker.
;;
But could Jaspers truly have it both
ways? At what point did hot anti-utopianism, with its simultaneous com-
mitment to existential sacrice and sober reection, become an incoherent
position a leap into the politically absurd, if not something far worse?
Arendt accepted that Jasperss apotheosis of Weber was well intentioned.
But in the face of nationalist enthusiasm, she understood that skepticism
was superior to faith.
iiisoxaii r \ axo ri xr
Having examined these three distinct interpretations of Webers anti-
utopianism, we inevitably face a vexing question: Which interpretation
reected Webers ultimate intentions? If we compare the cold with the
temperate interpretations proposed by his contemporaries, we nd
that the latter oer a much more convincing resolution of the apparent

;,
Ibid., ,,. Weber made this statement before his class at the University of Munich in response
to Arco-Valleys pardon. Jaspers omitted the nal line of Webers statement: But so long as
lunatics from right to left mess about with politics, I will stay away from it. Lebensbild, o,
(Biography, o;,).

;o
Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, January :, :,,,, in Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel
, ed. Lotte Khler and Hans Saner (Munich: Piper, :cc:), ,:.

;;
Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, January ,, :,,,, in ibid., ,,.




Personality and text :,;
rhetorical contradictions in Webers published texts. In his lectures and
political essays, Weber insisted that the age of traditional, metaphysically
legitimated values had passed, and that the modern bureaucratic appar-
atus of governmental and economic administration was here to stay. Tis
was a fate that modern individuals would have to come to terms with if
they wanted to lead an intellectually honest life hence Webers skepti-
cism about the possibility of an objectively grounded faith, and the atti-
tude of resignation and stoicism evinced by many of his texts. At the same
time, he suggested that subjective values, pursued with the methodical
and responsible habitus that only modern rational culture fostered, could
oer orientation for meaningful activity in the world. By heightening
individuals sense of responsibility for their own purposes, the conditions
of modern life actually provided the setting for a new kind of heroism
based on radical autonomy.
Te hot interpretation, as put forward by Webers close friends and
admirers, overlapped to a certain extent with Voegelins and Lwiths tem-
perate interpretations. In the absence of utopias, both hot and temperate
interpreters emphasized, Webers vision of a meaningful or even heroic life
required passionate commitment to the possibilities of the modern world,
rather than the mere endurance of its shortcomings. Nevertheless, the
hot interpreters were a good deal more radical in their vision of Webers
individualism. Whereas Voegelin and Lwith were reluctant to speak
about Webers faith without making qualications, the hot interpreters
perceived faith as the very essence of his ethos. Tey saw Weber as a man
whose chief distinction was his consciousness of the absolute (Jaspers),
holy earnestness (Gothein), faithful love (Honigsheim), and faith in
spite of everything (Kap-herr). For the hot interpreters, Webers vision
of heroism went beyond what Lwith called the objectively unfounded
steadfastness of the self-responsible individual through himself.
;
It sig-
nied an unconditioned commitment to the realization of subjectively
meaningful values even in the face of their objective impossibility. Despite
Webers professed anti-utopianism, some of those closest to him associated
his heroism with a kind of quixotic or Sisyphusian extremism. What set
him apart from radical pacists and socialists, they believed, was not the
unconditionedness of his convictions, for in this regard they were equally
absolute, but rather his rejection of holistic schemes for humanity. Tis
was an interpretation they derived not so much from his published work
as from the way in which he lived his life.
;
Lwith, Max Weber und Karl Marx, ,,.
Skepticism and faith :,
How should we adjudicate the dierences between the temperate and hot
interpretations, seeing as how they were based on incommensurable sources
(texts versus personality)? One possible answer was suggested in :,:c by
Teodor Heuss, a young journalist and member of the Weber Circle who
would later become the rst president of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Heuss believed that Webers fundamental genius lay in Dionysian exces-
siveness, which his intellectual sobriety barely served to contain:
Te elemental force of his being was a sheer unrestrained subjectivism, which,
with a crushing force of judgments, destructive and yet fertilizing, grabbed a
hold of individuals and institutions. Beside it was an almost anxious eort to
free social science from ethical and other evaluations. When he took up the ght
against value judgments in economics in the Verein fr Sozialpolitik, it was
something like a safety measure against his own dynamic.
;,
Was Webers cold rhetoric a semiconscious eort to suppress the hot
aspects of his own personality? Recent work on Webers biography sug-
gests that the struggle to come to terms with his own sensuality, especially
his masochistic propensities, may help explain many of the intellectual
tensions in his oeuvre.
c
Te conicting interpretations of Webers anti-utopianism in the
Weimar Republic present an important reminder for historians who seek
to understand intellectual legacies. If we wish to understand what a phil-
osopher meant to his or her contemporaries, we must do more than sim-
ply investigate the way that books and articles were received. Te study
of Webers reception provides an exemplary case study for understanding
how an intellectuals impact is determined not just by the interpretation
of published texts, but also by the tension that exists between those texts
and the authors charismatic personality. As one of Webers contemporar-
ies observed, Te more human in the deepest and most comprehen-
sive sense of the word a gure and his work is, the more he will lend
himself to the most diverse interpretations Max Weber lent himself to
the most multifarious representations precisely for this reason.
:

;,
Teodor Heuss, Max Weber (:,:c), in Knig and Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedchtnis,
;:. For similar explanations of the tensions between Webers excessiveness and his scholarly
value freedom, see Friedrich Meinecke, Marianne Weber ber Max Weber (:,:;), in Zur
Geschichte der Geschichtsschreibung, ed. Eberhard Kessel, Vol. vii of Werke (Munich: Oldenbourg,
:,o), ,; and Steding, Politik und Wissenschaft bei Max Weber, ,.

c
See Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity,
:cc,), especially ,o::o.

:
Artur Mettler, Max Weber und die philosophische Problematik in unserer Zeit (Leipzig: Hirzel,
:,,), ,.



:,,
cuairii ,
Max Webers sociologies
For over half a century, scholars and laypeople alike have regarded Max
Weber as one of the founding fathers of modern sociology. As a testament
to his reputation, in :,,; the members of the International Sociological
Association elected Economy and Society the most inuential book of
sociology in the twentieth century.
:
But while Webers place within the
academic pantheon is undisputed today, his status as a sociologist was
hotly contested by German scholars during the :,:cs and :,,cs. German
contemporaries frequently rejected his works as insuciently socio-
logical in their methodology, and even his admirers failed to reach
consensus over which parts of his oeuvre should be endorsed by the dis-
cipline.
:
It was not in Germany but rather in the United States that Weber
rst acquired canonical stature among sociologists, thanks in large part
to the eorts of Talcott Parsons, whose :,,; treatise Te Structure of Social
Action placed Weber alongside Vilfredo Pareto and Emile Durkheim
in the disciplines pantheon.
Historians have suggested that Webers apparent lack of inuence in
interwar German sociology stemmed from his opposition to the holis-
tic, anti-empiricist, and irrationalist spirit that animated much German
scholarship at the time.
,
His failure to recruit disciples has also been

:
Te Protestant Ethic nished in fourth place. Te results of the survey were based on a poll of ,,
responding members of the International Sociological Association. See www.isa-sociology.org/
books, accessed on August ,, :cc.

:
After reading a two-volume posthumous festschrift for Weber, the philosopher Eduard Spranger
observed with some puzzlement that it is simply impossible to nd even two authors in these
volumes who understand approximately the same thing as sociology. Eduard Spranger, Die
Soziologie in der Erinnerungsgabe fr Max Weber (:,:,), in Grundlagen der Geisteswissenschaften,
ed. Hans Walter Bhr, Vol. vi of Gesammelte Schriften (Tbingen: Niemeyer, :,c), :,. Te
work in question was Melchior Palyi, ed., Hauptprobleme der Soziologie: Erinnerungsgabe fr Max
Weber, : vols. (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, :,:,).

,
Friedrich Jonas, Von der Jahrhundertwende bis zur Gegenwart, Vol. ii of Geschichte der Soziologie
(Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, :,c), :::,;; Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Te Political and Social
Teory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,,), :;:;.





Max Webers sociologies :c
attributed to factors unrelated to the content or methodology of his work.
Interwar German sociologists were for the most part a guild of virtu-
osos: to make a career, each sociologist was expected to create an original
system, and there was little academic market for merely continuing the
research agenda of others.

Tese factors help explain why no Weber

school of sociology emerged during the Weimar Republic, but they
do not account for the general fascination that disparate elements of his
sociological writings exerted on his contemporaries. Tis chapter oers
an additional explanation that accounts for Webers lack of sociological
disciples as well as for the wide range of interest in his work. Tere were
no Weberian sociologists in the Weimar Republic, in large part because
the sociological approach illustrated in his writings appeared incoherent
in the eyes of his contemporaries. Webers incoherency was not merely a
matter of appearance: over the course of the last decade of his life, Weber
did in fact espouse two incommensurable conceptions of sociology as a
discipline. His current reputation as a founding father of sociology makes
it dicult for us to understand something that seemed obvious to his
German contemporaries, namely, that his oeuvre failed to evince a con-
sistent denition of what sociology as a discipline should be. As a result,
warring partisans of formal sociology and historical (or concrete)
sociology, the two major wings of the discipline in interwar Germany, felt
compelled to thresh Webers sociological writings in search of a core they
could accept. Webers inconsistencies militated against his institutional-
ization into German sociology, but they also encouraged sociologists with
very dierent conceptions of the discipline to appropriate his ideas.
In the years prior to his emergence as a self-styled sociologist, Weber
expounded a vision of the role that theoretical concepts ought to play
in the discipline of political economy. Tis chapter begins by explaining
how his attempts to resolve a methodological impasse in political econ-
omy led him to formulate his theory of ideal types. Tese theoretical
concepts constituted a distinctive feature of Webers sociological writ-
ings, but they were rejected by nearly all of his sociological admirers and
detractors. Te chapter reconstructs what Weber meant when he claimed
to pursue sociology during the last ten years of his life, and analyzes
how Webers idiosyncratic conception of the discipline was interpreted
and mobilized by German sociologists in the generation after his death.

Helmut Fogt, Max Weber und die deutsche Soziologie der Weimarer Republik: Aussenseiter
oder Grndervater?, in Soziologie in Deutschland und sterreich : Materialien zur
Entwicklung, Emigration und Wirkungsgeschichte, ed. M. Rainer Lepsius (Opladen: Westdeutscher
Verlag, :,:), :o;.

Te role of theory in the cultural sciences ::
Finally, it explains how and why Talcott Parsons was able to apotheosize
Weber as a founding father of modern sociology. To elevate Weber to this
position, Parsons had to transcend interwar German controversies that
pitted formal sociologists against their historical or concrete colleagues,
and in doing so create an entirely new understanding of what it meant to
be a sociologist. What Parsons understood as the goals of this discipline
bore little resemblance to any of the tasks or methods Weber envisaged
for it.
rui ioi i oi ruioi\ i x rui cuirui ai sci ixcis
Webers views on the proper role of theory in the cultural sciences were
forged through his response to the Methodenstreit (conict over methods),
a controversy that roiled the discipline of political economy at the end of
the nineteenth century. When Weber began his studies, political econ-
omy in Germany was dominated by the Historical School, a movement
that emerged in the :cs and :,cs in opposition to classical economics.
Whereas classical economists regarded individuals as rational maximizers
of their own self-interest, the economists of the Historical School insisted
that economic behavior was determined by a complex web of institutions
and values that were specic to individual cultures. Tey denied that
abstract economic laws could be of central importance for understand-
ing how economic societies really functioned. Instead, scholars had to
acquire detailed knowledge about social and cultural institutions if they
wanted to understand the coherency of economic societies.
,
Te leading
gure in the Historical School at the turn of the twentieth century was
Gustav Schmoller, who held a chair in political economy at the University
of Berlin. Schmoller and his students did not dismiss the importance of
economic laws. However, unlike economists of the classical school, they
expected that such laws would be derived through inductive reasoning
on the basis of exhaustive empirical evidence. If and when they were
nally formulated, economic laws would not describe the behavior of
some abstract homo economicus, but rather the developmental trajectory
of entire societies.
o

,
See Keith Tribe, Historical Schools of Economics: German and English, in A Companion to the
History of Economic Tought, ed. Warren J. Samuels, Je E. Biddle, and John B. Davis (Malden,
MA: Blackwell, :cc;), ::,,c.

o
Tomas Burger, Max Webers Teory of Concept Formation: History, Laws, and Ideal Types
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, :,;o), :,c; H. H. Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in
Max Webers Methodology (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, :,;:), ::.



Max Webers sociologies ::
Starting in the early :cs Schmollers conception of the role that laws
ought to play in economics came under attack from the Austrian econo-
mist Carl Menger, one of the founders of the theory of marginal util-
ity. Menger advocated an abstract approach to analyzing how economic
actors made decisions on the basis of their subjective preferences. He
argued that the deductive constructions of pure economic theory, when
isolated in the form of exact laws, possessed the same methodological
status as the laws of the natural sciences: they described regularities that
would necessarily occur in a frictionless world where no other motiv-
ations interfered. Menger believed that Schmollers vision of economic
laws as the distant goal of scholarship was absurd. In the absence of clear
concepts and principles to order reality, scholars would be unable to make
coherent observations about empirical reality in the rst place.
;
Te clash
between Schmoller and Menger developed into a major rift between two
approaches to political economy, and their Methodenstreit polarized the
discipline until the outbreak of World War i.
As Weber emerged from the worst phase of his depression, he composed
a series of essays that addressed the central question of the Methodenstreit:
Should political economy seek the production of laws as its primary goal?

Following in the footsteps of the neo-Kantian philosopher Heinrich
Rickert, he began by drawing a logical distinction between the natural
and cultural sciences. Te natural sciences approached reality by select-
ing features that dierent phenomena had in common; on the basis of
such commonalities, they formed class concepts and ultimately natural
laws. Te cultural sciences, on the other hand, concerned themselves with
features of reality that were peculiar and culturally signicant from a par-
ticular point of view. Only the individual researcher and the surround-
ing community of scholars and readers could determine which features
of reality were culturally signicant. Tough researchers were bound by
intersubjective rules of inference in explaining the causal origins of the
phenomena they studied, they still had to select their subject matter and
point of view the features of phenomena that counted for them as worth
knowing on the basis of their subjective interests.

;
Burger, Max Webers Teory, :,,c; Heino Heinrich Nau, Eine Wissenschaft vom Menschen:
Max Weber und die Begrndung der Sozialkonomik in der deutschsprachigen konomie bis
(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :,,;), ::,,;.

Max Weber, Die Objektivitt sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis (:,c),

in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tbingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], :,), :o:: (MSS, ,:::); Max Weber, Kritische Studien auf dem Gebiet der
kulturwissenschaftlichen Logik (:,co), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ::,,c
(MSS, ::,).


Te role of theory in the cultural sciences :,
Weber argued that social science should be subsumed under Rickerts
category of cultural science. Social science was a science of empirical real-
ity (Wirklichkeitswissenschaft) that aimed to understand the reality of
life that surrounds us, the reality in which we have been placed, in its
uniqueness on the one hand, the relationships and the cultural signi-
cance of individual phenomena in their contemporary manifestations,
and on the other hand, the reasons for their historically being so and not
otherwise.
,
Tis declaration armed many of the key interests of the
German Historical School. At the same time, Weber sided with Menger
in arming the role of economic theory as a necessary handmaiden for
empirical research. Webers line of reasoning could be summarized as
follows. Suppose a scholar wants to decide whether the concept of mod-
ern capitalism should be ascribed to a particular society. Modern cap-
italism does not refer to a singular historical phenomenon, since it can
occur in many dierent places. Nor does it function like a class concept
in the natural sciences: scholars do not form a concept of modern cap-
italism by inductively generalizing from features shared by every mem-
ber of a set of societies. Instead, they imagine an ideal modern capitalist
society (ideal in the Platonic, not moral, sense) in which certain stylized
relationships hold true; real existing societies are then characterized in
comparison to it. For the concept to be useful, it is irrelevant whether a
society has ever existed in which all business enterprise was structured
on the basis of prot-seeking by private rms. What matters is that such
a society would be logically plausible if all its inhabitants consistently
followed certain guidelines of action. Ten the scholar can say of dier-
ent real societies that they approximate this ideal capitalist society to
varying degrees.
Weber called such concepts ideal types (Idealtypen), and he insisted
that they played a central role in history, economics, and other discip-
lines in the cultural sciences.
:c
What were the concepts of Mengers pure
economic theory if not ideal types? Te theory of marginal utility did

,
Weber, Die Objektivitt, :;c: (MSS, ;:). Here I translate Wissenschaft as science so as to
make the dichotomy of Naturwissenschaft (natural science) and Kulturwissenschaft (cultural sci-
ence) more comprehensible in English.

:c
Te fullest discussion of ideal types can be found in Weber, Die Objektivitt, :,:: (MSS,
,:::). Te following exegesis draws on Alexander von Schelting, Die logische Teorie der his-
torischen Kulturwissenschaft von Max Weber und im besonderen sein Begri des Idealtypus,
Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik ,, no. , (:,::): o:,;,:; Andreas Walther, Max
Weber als Soziologe, Jahrbuch der Soziologie : (:,:o): :o,; Burger, Max Webers Teory, ::,;,;
and Stephen Kalberg, Max Webers Comparative-Historical Sociology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, :,,), :::.


Max Webers sociologies :
not describe an acquisitive psychological drive in its pure but seldom
observed state. It was merely a ction, a simplied version of real life
that willfully ignored other factors or motivations that might normally
be present. Unlike natural laws, ideal types did not lose their explana-
tory value if an empirical instance failed to conform to them. Te theory
of marginal utility would not have to be discarded if a real person were
discovered who sometimes failed to maximize utility. Te only formal
condition ideal types had to satisfy was that they described phenomena
that were objectively possible and causally adequate. In other words,
ideal types should not violate any general understandings of how real-
ity would function if individuals were guided by only these simplied
considerations.
Weber thought that these ctions were, in a seemingly paradoxical
way, essential tools for understanding reality.
::
To make sense of a world
that was incapable of declaring that a given phenomenon was mean-
ingful, ideal types aided in identifying those phenomena that tended
toward a boundary case whose signicance would be subjectively mean-
ingful. A particular process became relevant as bureaucratization when
it could be conceived as approximating a more extreme case that would
elicit our subjective cultural interest.
::
Ideal types helped scholars make
distinctions or describe phenomena in reference to something meaning-
ful. Weber did not believe that cultural scientists were required to select
their ideal types from a xed list. Te past or present could be compared
against whatever yardstick one chose, so long as the yardstick was coher-
ent and consistently applied.
:,
Tere are sciences to which eternal youth
is granted, Weber declared, and those are all the historical disciplines
all those to which the eternally owing stream of culture perpetually
brings new ways of posing problems. At the heart of their task lies not
only the transience of all ideal-typical constructions, but also the inev-
itability of new ones.
:
In addition to helping classify and describe phe-
nomena of cultural signicance, ideal types could be used as heuristic
tools for causal explanation. Te social scientist could create ideal types
to model how people would behave if they were guided by only specied

::
Friedrich H. Tenbruck, Die Genesis der Methodologie Max Webers, Klner Zeitschrift fr
Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie :: (:,,,): ,,.

::
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Toward the Iron Cage of Future Serfdom? On the Methodological
Status of Max Webers Ideal-Typical Concept of Bureaucratization, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society (Fifth Series) ,c (:,c): :,;:.

:,
On the use of ideal types as yardsticks, see Kalberg, Max Webers Comparative-Historical
Sociology, ;,:.

:
Weber, Die Objektivitt, :co (MSS, :c).




Te varieties of sociology :,
motives under unrealistically simplied conditions.
:,
By comparing a real
event to an ideal-typical model, the researcher gained insight into the real
causal forces at work. To the extent that the actual phenomena conformed
to the pattern described in the ideal-typical model, the researcher could
hypothesize that similar motivations were indeed at work. If the pattern
deviated from the model, the researcher ought to look for other motiv-
ations that explained why things turned out the way they did.
rui vaii iri is oi soci oioc\
In his methodological essays Weber emphasized the importance of ideal
types mainly for historical inquiry. He regarded Te Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism, the rst empirical work in which he self-con-
sciously used ideal types, as an essay in cultural history.
:o
However, by
the end of his life Weber had become primarily concerned with construct-
ing and deploying ideal types in a distinctly dierent discipline, one that
he came to call sociology. His self-identication with sociology was the
outcome of an unexpected path of intellectual development. Like so many
of his other scholarly endeavors, it began with an outside assignment: in
this case, a request from his publisher, J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), to
oversee the production of the Outline of Social Economics (Grundriss der
Sozialkonomik), a multi-volume encyclopedia of political economy. In
:,c, Weber agreed to guide the general direction of the project and to
contribute a chapter of his own on the topic Economy and Society.
:;
In Te Protestant Ethic Weber investigated why modern capitalism rst
emerged in the West and nowhere else. He concluded that the develop-
ment of modern capitalism could not be explained simply by reference
to economic processes; historians had to consider the decisive impact of
noneconomic phenomena in this case, religious ethics on the behav-
ior of economic actors. It was thus in keeping with his pre-existing schol-
arly interests when he oered to write his contribution to the Outline
of Social Economics on the relationship between the economy and other
social spheres: law, social groups (family and community organizations,
status groups and classes, the state), and culture.
:
But as more and more
of the contributors he had contracted to write chapters dropped out or

:,
Burger, Max Webers Teory, ::,.

:o
Max Weber to Heinrich Rickert, April :, :,c,, in Lebensbild, ,,, (Biography, ,,o).

:;
On the history of Economy and Society, see Johannes Winckelmann, Max Webers hinterlassenes
Hauptwerk (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,o), ,,; and MWG i/:.

:
Max Weber, Stoverteilungsplan (:,:c), in MWG i/:, :,o.





Max Webers sociologies :o
delivered shoddy work, Weber felt compelled to add their subject mat-
ter to his own. Before long, his chapter had developed into a massive
stand-alone treatise. Te turning point in his conceptualization of his
enterprise occurred in the fall of :,:,. Frustrated by the poor quality of
a colleagues chapter on the epochs and stages of the economy, Weber
explained that he had expanded my contribution into a sociology, which
he noted was a task that I would otherwise never have undertaken in
this manner.
:,
But he did not feel entirely at ease ascribing the concept
of sociology to his eorts. In a letter to his publisher Weber admitted
that I could never really call it that.
:c
Why was he so reluctant to call
his sociology a work of sociology? And why did he nonetheless feel it
merited the title?
When Weber began his academic career in the early :,cs sociology
was generally held in low esteem by German scholars. Tere was no chair
of sociology at any German university, and practitioners of the discipline
were regarded as extravagant outsiders by the academic establishment.
::

German professors of philosophy and political science ignore sociology
entirely, noted one observer in :,;, and whatever is done within this
territory, either on the continent or on the other side of the channel, is
hardly taken seriously here.
::
For most German scholars, sociology was
synonymous with the work of Auguste Comte (:;,:,;) and Herbert
Spencer (::c:,c,), the rst two thinkers who promoted an independ-
ent science of society. Despite their dierences in political outlook and
temperament, both Comte and Spencer envisaged sociology as a discip-
line that would derive general laws of historical development for societies.
While some scholars in the Habsburg Empire such as Albert Sche,
Ludwig Gumplowicz, and Gustav Ratzenhofer published works of soci-
ology in the mode of Comte and Spencer, most German academics did
not take their naturalistic approach seriously. Te concepts of society and
sociology carried strong socialist connotations in Germany, which hardly
endeared them to the conservative academic establishment.
:,

:,
Max Weber to Paul Siebeck, November ,, :,:,, in MWG ii/, ,; Max Weber to the contribu-
tors to the Outline of Social Economics, December , :,:,, in ibid., :;.

:c
Max Weber to Paul Siebeck, November o, :,:,, in ibid., ,,.

::
Andreas Walther, Te Present Position of Sociology in Germany, Journal of Applied Sociology
:c (:,:o): ::,.

::
O. Ton, Te Present Status of Sociology in Germany, American Journal of Sociology : (:,;):
,o;.

:,
Walther, Present Position, :,:. On Comte and Spencers German admirers, see Philip P. Jacobs,
German Sociology (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, :,c,); Harry Elmer Barnes, ed.,
An Introduction to the History of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,).





Te varieties of sociology :;
When Weber rst spoke of sociologists in his essay Roscher and
Knies (:,c,o), he used the term to disparage scholars who employed
organic or naturalistic analogies to understand social behavior.
:
Tis
suggests he initially associated sociology with the organic theories of
social development purveyed by Comte, Spencer, and their German
admirers. Te reliance of soi-disant sociologists on organological models
was probably the major reason why he was reluctant to identify him-
self as one.
:,
However, Webers estimation of sociology underwent a
change following the :,c publication of his friend Georg Simmels
treatise Sociology. Breaking with the sociological tradition of Comte
and Spencer, Simmel argued that the discipline of sociology required
a unique method to qualify as a serious branch of scholarship. To dis-
tinguish itself from other social sciences, sociology ought to limit itself
to studying the abstract form of social relationships as opposed to
their historically and culturally variable content. Sociology was to be
conceived of as an analytic geometry of social relationships. Instead of
proposing stages and morphologies of cultural development, it would
concern itself with ahistorical subject matter: the kinds of social forms
universal to all cultures.
Sociology, as a theory of the social being of mankind (which can be the
object of scholarly inquiry from countless other perspectives), is related to
the other specialist disciplines in the same way that geometry is related to
the physico-chemical sciences of matter: it considers the form through which
matter becomes empirically embodied the form which independently exists
only in abstraction, just like the forms of socialization [Vergesellschaftung].
Both geometry and sociology leave to other disciplines the investigation of
the contents of these forms, or the total phenomena, whose mere form they
study.
:o
Weber once observed that one is bound to react to Simmels works
from a point of view that is overwhelmingly antagonistic, and yet one
nds oneself absolutely compelled to arm that this mode of exposition
is simply brilliant and, what is more important, attains results that are

:
Max Weber, Roscher und Knies und die logischen Probleme der historischen Nationalkonomie
(:,c,o), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ::, (RK, o,, :cc).

:,
If I now happen to be a sociologist according to my appointment papers, Weber declared a few
months before his death, then I became one in order to put an end to the mischievous enter-
prise which still operates with collectivist notions. Max Weber to Robert Liefmann, March ,,
:,:c, quoted in Guenther Roth, History and Sociology in the Work of Max Weber, British
Journal of Sociology :;, no. , (:,;o): ,co.

:o
Georg Simmel, Soziologie: Untersuchungen ber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, ed. Otthein
Rammstedt, Vol. xi of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, :,,:), :,.



Max Webers sociologies :
intrinsic to it and not to be attained by any imitator.
:;
Whatever his
ambivalence concerning Simmels methodology may have been, Weber
soon began to associate sociology with the study of a particular kind of
social form, namely, the association (Verein) or organization (Verband).
:

In :,c, Weber co-founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie,
the rst academic organization in Germany to embrace sociology in its
title.
:,
In his address at the Societys rst meeting in Frankfurt in :,:c,
he declared that in light of the uctuating content of the concept soci-
ology, a society that bears this otherwise so unpopular name would do
well to clarify what it would like to be, as far as possible, through con-
crete specications of its present constitution and next tasks.
,c
He spent
the better part of his address outlining the objectives of the Deutsche
Gesellschaft fr Soziologies proposed inquiries into the sociology of the
press and the sociology of associations. In discussing the latter study,
Weber framed the following questions: How do associations enable indi-
viduals to attain positions of rulership? How does membership in a par-
ticular type of association impact an individuals personality? What types
of personalities are able to acquire rulership in an association and how
do they obtain the loyalty of their followers? He also wished to inves-
tigate the anities that existed between particular world views and the
forms of the association in which they manifested themselves: What
kind of relationship exists between an association of whatever kind
and something that one might call a world view in the broadest sense of
the word? Everywhere such a relationship is somehow present, even there
where one would not expect it.
,:
Weber summed up his central ques-
tion (Fragestellung) toward the end of the address:
Gentlemen, we now come [in our discussion of associations] nally to two
principal questions that are similar to those we ask of the press: How do the

:;
Max Weber, Georg Simmel as Sociologist, Social Research ,,, no. : (:,;:): :,. Tis posthu-
mously published text was written c. :,c.

:
Verband and Verein, which Weber used roughly interchangeably c. :,:c, later received more spe-
cic denition in Economy and Society. See WuG, :o (EaS, ,c, ,:,).

:,
Weber was not motivated primarily by concern for the future of sociology as a discipline when
he joined the Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie. As he made clear to his friend Edgar Ja,
I have eagerly participated in the founding of this society only because I hoped to nd here a
place for value-free scholarly work and discussion, a desideratum he found lacking in his other
institutional home, the Verein fr Sozialpolitik. Max Weber to Edgar Ja, January ::, :,:, in
MWG ii/, ;,.

,c
Max Weber, Rede auf dem ersten Deutschen Soziologentage in Frankfurt :,:c, in Gesammelte
Aufstze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, ed. Marianne Weber (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,),
,:.

,:
Ibid., .





Te varieties of sociology :,
individual categories of such organizations and associations and with what
means, make an impact in two directions: on the shaping of the individual, and
on the shaping of objective, suprapersonal cultural values?
,:
Besides having read Simmels Sociology, there was another reason
why categories of associations may have already entered Webers mind
by :,:c. Te Protestant Ethic had suggested that the social structure of
Protestant sects played a crucial role in fostering the development of the
vocational ethic. Unlike mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches,
which enrolled all individuals from birth and did not discriminate
between righteous and unrighteous, Protestant sects admitted only those
individuals who demonstrated that they had been personally awakened
and called by God. Te sects moral suasion was all the more powerful
because it depended on people subjecting themselves to it voluntarily.
,,

Webers appreciation of the historical role of Anglo-American sects was
strengthened by his two-month visit to the United States in :,c.
,
In
his travels across the East Coast, Midwest, and South, he was surprised
to learn how much social prestige Americans attached to membership in
a religious congregation. Membership implied that an individuals moral
qualications had been vetted by colleagues. As a result, many business-
men were keen to make potential clients aware of their membership, since
it implicitly testied to their credit-worthiness. Te sectarian spirit inhab-
ited the exclusive clubs and civic associations that typied American social
life, even if their religious character had long since attenuated.
,,
From his
personal experience of American associational life, Weber came to realize
that there was something about the structure of a particular association
and the demands it made on its members, independent of whatever con-
tent it pursued, that aected the way individuals behaved and saw them-
selves.
,o
When Weber tried to impress on his colleagues in the Deutsche
Gesellschaft fr Soziologie that associations were capable of leaving a

,:
Ibid., ;. For an important interpretation of Webers central question based on a reading
of this text, see Wilhelm Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung: Studien zur Biographie des Werks
(Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,;), ,,.

,,
PE, :::, ::, (BW, ,,, :c).

,
On the impact of Webers American travels on his understanding of sects and associational life
more generally, see Lawrence A. Sca, Te Cool Objectivity of Sociation: Max Weber and
Marianne Weber in America, History of the Human Sciences ::, no. : (:,,): o::.

,,
Max Weber, Churches and Sects in North America: An Ecclesiastical and Sociopolitical
Sketch, in BW, :c,:c. Tis article, written shortly after Webers return from the United States,
appeared in Die Christliche Welt in :,co. A revised version was published in :,:c as Die protes-
tantischen Sekte und der Geist des Kapitalismus, in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie
(Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,), Vol. i, :c;,o (FMW, ,c:::).

,o
Editors Introduction, in BW, xix.





Max Webers sociologies :,c
profound imprint on their members, most of the examples he cited were
based on his experiences in the United States.
,;
Te kind of sociology that Weber proposed in Frankfurt in :,:c was
aimed at elucidating the relationships between the structures of associ-
ations and the life conduct and values of individuals. At the same time, it
aimed to explain how cultural values manifested themselves in particular
forms of group association. Like Simmel, Weber was deeply interested
in the forms of social associations the structures of membership and
group dynamics that were compatible with dierent kinds of content.
Over the following decade Weber emphasized how ideal-typical models
of priesthoods, bureaucracies, Betrieb, and clans could be derived from
and protably applied to a wide variety of historical cultures. He also
argued that particular forms of association, such as bureaucracy, could be
found in a variety of specic contexts (the army, modern capitalist enter-
prise, and public administration). Transcending Simmels exclusive inter-
est in the abstract geometry of human relationships, Weber also wished
to understand how these forms left their mark on individuals economic,
spiritual, and political habitus. Tis anthropological-characterological
motif, as Wilhelm Hennis has called it, was already a distinctive element
of Webers understanding of sociology by :,:c.
,
Tree years after the Frankfurt meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft
fr Soziologie, Weber announced to his colleagues that his chapter in the
Outline of Social Economics was turning into a sociology. In a letter to
his editor, Weber explained how his desire to compensate for other con-
tributors shortcomings had driven him to adopt a sociological approach
to his subject matter:
Since [the political economist Karl] Bchers stages of development is totally
inadequate, I have worked out a complete sociological theory and presentation
that situates all the major social forms [Gemeinschaftsformen] in relation to the
economy: ranging from family and household to Betrieb, clan, ethnic com-
munity, religion (including all the major world religions: sociology of salvation
doctrines and religious ethics what [Ernst] Trltsch [sic] did but now for all
religions, only signicantly more succinct), nally a comprehensive sociological
theory of the state and rulership. I would claim that nothing of this sort yet
exists, not even a prototype.
,,

,;
Weber, Rede auf dem ersten Deutschen Soziologentage, :,.

,
Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung, o.

,,
Max Weber to Paul Siebeck, December ,c, :,:,, in MWG ii/, ,,c. Karl Bcher had been
asked to write a chapter on epochs and stages of the economy for Book i of the Outline of
Social Economics. Webers Economy and Society was intended as part of the third chapter of
the same volume. See Weber, Stoverteilungsplan, in MWG i/:, :,.



Te varieties of sociology :,:
Here we can see that Weber was still operating with the same understand-
ing of sociology he had articulated in Frankfurt. A sociological theory
was supposed to examine how dierent types of associations (family and
clan groups, Betrieb, religion, the state and organized forms of rulership)
aected human conduct and values in this case, economic conduct and
attitudes. In addition, sociological theory should examine the way that
certain values, such as salvation doctrines and religious ethics, aected
the formation of associations relevant for economic life. Weber found a
precedent for this project in the work of his friend Ernst Troeltsch. In Te
Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (:,::), Troeltsch credited Weber
with brilliantly framing the question, What has been the actual inu-
ence of the churches upon social phenomena? Troeltsch then attempted
to answer it for all major types of Christian churches from antiquity up to
the present.
c
Rather than try to repeat Troeltschs performance, Weber
decided to examine the relationship between the economy and the forms
of religious associations found in all major world religions. Tis was a
project whose scope he believed was truly unprecedented.
What made Webers sociological theory unique was not only its scope
but also how it set about conceptualizing social forms and the economy.
Unlike Simmel, who had classied social groups on the basis of external
criteria such as their geometry, Weber was interested in the group struc-
tures that arose when individuals repeatedly acted in accordance with the
same maxims or motivations. Tese ideal types would be framed from
the subjectively meaningful perspective of actors attempting rationally to
match means with ends.
:
Within the realm of social action [soziales Handeln] certain regularities can be
observed, that is, courses of action with typically the same intended meaning
that are repeated by the same actor or are (possibly simultaneously) common
to numerous actors. Sociological investigation is concerned with these types
of action, unlike history, which concerns itself with the causal explanation of
important that is to say fateful individual events.
:
Ideal types that exaggerated strictly purposively rational [zweckra-
tional ] action possessed the merit of clear understandability and lack
of ambiguity. Irrational action, itself no less signicant for human life,
could best be conceptualized in terms of deviations from strictly rational
norms.
,

c
Ernst Troeltsch, Te Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon (New York:
Harper & Brothers, :,oc), : vols., Vol. i, ,. In a note, Troeltsch cited Webers :,co article
Churches and Sects in North America.

:
WuG, ::: (EaS, ,::).
:
WuG, : (EaS, :,).
,
WuG, , (EaS, o).


Max Webers sociologies :,:
Weber believed that the anity between major social forms and the
aggregate economic action of individuals ought to be studied through the
use of ideal types. Researchers could frame ideal-typical models of asso-
ciational relationships from the subjective perspective of the individual
actor, and then gauge their logical or practical anity with or antagon-
ism to ideal types of particular kinds of economic activity.

We can generalize about the degree of elective anity between concrete struc-
tural forms of social action [Gemeinschaftshandeln] and concrete economic
forms, that is to say: whether and how strongly they mutually favor or, con-
versely, impede or exclude one another, whether they are adequate or inad-
equate in relation to one another Moreover, at least some generalizations can
be advanced about the manner in which economic interests tend to lead to social
action of a particular character.
,
Te goal of this enquiry was to develop general models of the relationship
between ideal types. Weber explicitly stated this vision of sociology in the
last manuscripts he revised for Economy and Society: We have taken it for
granted that sociology formulates type concepts and seeks general rules of
action. Tis distinguishes it from history, which strives for the causal ana-
lysis and explanation of individual actions, structures, and personalities
that are culturally signicant.
o
Modern capitalism was the economic form that interested Weber
most. His inquiries in Economy and Society ultimately gravitated toward
a central question: What kinds of social forms encourage or inhibit mod-
ern capitalist enterprise? Tis question could only be answered if the fea-
tures that typied modern capitalism were determined in the rst place.
And so, as his work on Economy and Society progressed, Weber came to
articulate an ideal type that captured modern capitalist economic activ-
ity from an actor-oriented perspective. Rational economic prot-making
(Erwerben), the basis of capitalist activity, was to be modeled as an activ-
ity which is oriented to opportunities for seeking new powers of control
over goods (on a single occasion, repeatedly, or continuously), using
peaceful means and market situations.
;
Essential to the ideal type of
rational capitalist activity was the ability to quantify precisely the amount
of prot made in each cycle of operation.

Weber believed that modern

capitalist enterprises could be distinguished from their antecedents and
from noncapitalist economic enterprises by the formal rationality of

On anity and antagonism models, see Kalberg, Max Webers Comparative-Historical

Sociology, :c::;.

,
MWG i/:::, : (EaS, ,:).
o
WuG, , (EaS, :,:c).

;
WuG, (EaS, ,c:).

WuG, , (EaS, ,:).

Te varieties of sociology :,,
their accounting procedures, by their ability to calculate prots and losses
in the most precise quantitative terms.
,
At the heart of Economy and Society stood a fundamental claim: that
the calculable economic action so distinctive of modern capitalism pre-
supposed the rationalization of particular types of associations and cul-
tural values. Weber rst announced his thesis in a :,: prospectus for
the Outline of Social Economics: Te relationships between the economy
and technology as well as the social orders is handled in such a way so
that the autonomy of these spheres vis--vis the economy becomes clear,
proceeding from the view that the development of the economy must be
understood above all as a special symptom of the general rationalization
of life.
,c
Although Weber never specied what he meant by rationaliza-
tion in general terms, he tended to apply the concept to any process that
sought to master reality through systematicity, abstraction, or calcula-
tion, the latter understood in the sense of quantication as well as fore-
thought or prediction.
,:
But it was not the mere systematicity, abstraction,
or calculability of a social action or ideational system that determined
its impact on what Weber, in his :,:c speech in Frankfurt, had called
the shaping of the individual and the shaping of objective, supraper-
sonal cultural values. What mattered was in which spheres and in which
direction the actions or ideas were subjected to systematicity, abstrac-
tion, or calculation.
,:
Despite its numerous detours and digressions, Economy and Society
was principally concerned with deriving ideal-typical models of how dif-
ferent rationalization processes, taking place autonomously in dierent
spheres of social life and operating on dierent kinds of cultural content,
impacted one another. Te relationship of these social rationalization
processes to the rationality of economic action constituted a red thread
that connected the disparate sections of his manuscripts. Te chapters

,
On the formal rationality of economic action, see WuG, (EaS, ,). See also Max Weber,
Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Abri der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, ed. S. Hellmann
and M. Palyi (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :,,:), :,, (GEH, :;o).

,c
Max Weber, Vorwort, in Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftswissenschaft, by K. Bcher, J. Schumpeter,
and Fr. Freiherr von Wieser, Part i of Grundriss der Sozialkonomik (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck],
:,:), vii. For this reference I am indebted to Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of
Economic Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, :,,), ,o.

,:
Stephen Kalberg, Max Webers Types of Rationality: Cornerstones for the Analysis of
Rationalization Processes in History, American Journal of Sociology ,, no. , (:,c): ::,;,. See
also Rogers Brubaker, Te Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Tought of Max
Weber (London: Allen & Unwin, :,), Chapter :.

,:
Max Weber, Vorbemerkung (:,:c), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, Vol. i, ::
(BW, ,oo). See also MWG i/:,, ::;: (FMW, :,,).




Max Webers sociologies :,
on the sociology of rulership [Herrschaft], the sociology of law, and
the sociology of religion emphasized how associations and social classes
impacted the rationalization of public administration, law, and religious
ethics, and how these in turn aected individuals economic attitudes
and behavior. His sociology of rulership explained how the features of
dierent kinds of administrative associations patrimonialism, bureauc-
racy, and charismatic rulership were based on dierent concepts of
legitimacy traditionalism, legality, and charisma; it then explained how
these forms of rulership aected the economic rationality of their mem-
bers. His sociology of law tried to show how the development of for-
mal legal rationality was determined largely by political developments
and the type of social strata employed in practice of the law. Finally, his
sociology of religion explored the conditions and eects of a particu-
lar kind of social action [Gemeinschaftshandeln] motivated by dierent
religions.
,,
Using ideal types, Weber set out to model how social groups
such as the priesthood, prophets, and laity (itself composed of peasants,
aristocrats, ocials, bourgeois, intellectuals, proletarians, and so-called
pariah peoples) drove the rationalization of religious ethics in dierent
directions, thereby promoting or inhibiting the practical rationalism of
individual life conduct.
Te manuscripts Weber wrote before :,: developed these models in
a discursive manner. Tey sifted through large quantities of historical
material to develop the outlines of models inductively, applied deductive
reasoning to bring these outlines into focus, and nally deployed the n-
ished models to investigate relationships with other spheres of social life.
When war broke out Weber put his writing for the book on hold and only
resumed work on it in the nal years of his life. As he began to revise his
manuscripts in :,:,, he decided to remove much of the historical material
that informed the construction of his models and to present them in a
more abstract fashion. He also started constructing ideal types of very
basic, ahistorical social forms that potentially formed the building blocks
of more complex and historically unique ones.
,
At the time of his death
Weber had only nished revising four chapters. Marianne Weber decided
to publish the revised chapters as Part i of Economy and Society, and the
earlier manuscripts as Parts ii and iii. Te entire work appeared in several
installments between :,:: and :,::. How Weber envisaged the nished
work still remains a mystery. Some scholars surmise that he planned to

,,
MWG i/:::, ::: (EaS, ,,,).

,
Stephen Kalberg, Max Weber, in Te Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Teorists,
ed. George Ritzer (Malden, MA: Blackwell, :cc,), :,,.


Te varieties of sociology :,,
cull his earlier manuscripts of their historical digressions and inductive
historical reasoning until the entire book took on the style of his revised
chapters.
,,
Structured as a textbook, Economy and Society presented ideal-typical
models of the relationship between the economy and the major social
forms. At the same time, a universal-historical narrative emerged as a
product of these investigations. In the midst of elaborating the general
rules that connected the economy to social forms in law, family, politics,
and religion, Weber identied a constellation of rationalizations that he
believed had rst aligned only in the West, making modern capitalism
possible there and nowhere else. At various points in the last decade of
his life, Weber provided dierent lists of the factors that enabled the for-
mal rationality of capital accounting in the West. Tese included market
freedom, managerial freedom, free labor, freedom of contract, advanced
mechanized technologies, separation of the business enterprise from the
private budgetary unit, a developed monetary system, and a commercial-
ized economy.
,o
In addition, he argued that a high degree of formal eco-
nomic rationality presupposed the rational structure of law and [public]
administration and the capacity and disposition of individuals toward
particular kinds of practical-rational life conduct, which had allegedly
arisen rst in the West and nowhere else.
,;
Tese three factors law, pub-
lic administration, and life conduct comprised the subject matter of
Webers sociologies of law, rulership, and religion, respectively.
To mollify his publisher for the delay in nishing Economy and Society,
Weber agreed to serialize a number of essays titled Te Economic Ethics of
the World Religions in the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik
between :,:, and :,:;.
,
Like Webers chapters on the sociology of religion
in Economy and Society, these essays explored how the social carriers
of organized religions (priesthoods, prophets, and laity of dierent social
strata), acting on dierent religious values and beliefs, determined the

,,
See Wolfgang Schluchter, Rationalism, Religion, and Domination: A Weberian Perspective, trans.
Neil Solomon (Berkeley: University of California Press, :,,), ,,o,; Wolfgang Schluchter,
Max Webers Beitrag zum Grundriss der Sozialkonomik, Klner Zeitschrift fr Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie ,c, no. : (:,,): ,:;,; and Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Webers Grand
Sociology: Te Origins and Composition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Soziologie, History and
Teory ,,, no. , (:ccc): ,o,.

,o
WuG, , (EaS, :o::); Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, :,,c (GEH, :;o). See Randall Collins,
Webers Last Teory of Capitalism: A Systematization, American Sociological Review ,, no. o
(:,c): ,:,:.

,;
Weber, Vorbemerkung, ::, :: (BW, ,o,, ,oo). See also WuG, , (EaS, :o:).

,
Schluchter, Rationalism, Religion, and Domination, ::,:. Both the Archiv and the Outline of
Social Economics were published by Mohr (Siebeck).




Max Webers sociologies :,o
type of salvation sought by world religions and thereby helped determine
individuals life conduct.
,,
However, these essays adopted an approach
very dierent from the one featured in Economy and Society. For the
most part they did not seek to develop general rules. Instead, like Te
Protestant Ethic, their ultimate aim was to explain why modern capitalism
had rst emerged in the West.
oc
Te Economic Ethics of the World Religions
aimed to show that Asian and Middle Eastern religions (Confucianism,
Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and ancient Judaism) gave little impetus
to the development of a personality type that, while not sucient for the
rise of modern capitalism, constituted a necessary factor.
o:
Weber cautioned that Te Economic Ethics of the World Religions should
not be considered a work of history, strictly speaking, since it took the
liberty [of being] unhistorical, in the sense that the ethics of individ-
ual religions are presented systematically and essentially in greater unity
than has ever been the case in the ux of their actual development.
o:

Te essays bore the subtitle sketches in the sociology of religion (reli-
gionssoziologische Skizzen). Yet they placed relatively little emphasis on the
construction of general rules, the method Weber identied in Part i of
Economy and Society as specically sociological. What, then, was socio-
logical about these essays? In a :,: letter to the historian Georg von
Below, Weber put forward an alternative denition of sociology as a
discipline:
I see it thus: that which is specic to the medieval city something that history
ought to reveal (on this we are in total agreement!) can only be discerned by
establishing what is missing in other cities (ancient, Chinese, Islamic), and so it
is with everything. After that, it is the task of history to causally explain to us this
specicity Sociology, as I understand it, can provide this very modest prelim-
inary work.
o,
Sociology, thus dened, designated a discipline engaged in longue dure
cross-cultural comparison in the service of discerning historical peculiar-
ity. Aside from its reliance on ideal types, the method Weber endorsed in
his letter to Below had nothing in common with the famous denition of
sociology that later appeared in Part i of Economy and Society. In one of the
last pieces of writing he nished before his death, the Preface to Volume
i of his Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, Weber articulated

,,
MWG i/:,, o;, :cc,, :c,:c (FMW, :o,, :;,:, :o;).

oc
Te major exception was a section titled Zwischenbetrachtung: Teorie der Stufen und
Richtungen religiser Weltablehnung, in MWG i/:,, ;,,:: (FMW, ,:,,,).

o:
MWG i/:,, : (RC, :c).
o:
MWG i/:,, :: (FMW, :,).

o,
Max Weber to Georg von Below, June ::, :,:, in MWG ii/, ;:,.




Weber and formal sociology :,;
his fundamental interests in a manner reminiscent of his letter to Below.
While highly developed forms of rationalization could be found in all
world cultures, he noted, the development of modern capitalism in the
West was epiphenomenal of a specic form of rationalism of Western
culture.
o
His collected essays on the sociology of religion were intended
to help scholars recognize the distinctive characteristics of Western ration-
alism, and, within this, of modern Western rationalism, and to explain
how it came into being.
o,
When Weber claimed to be doing sociology, he always meant a schol-
arly activity that investigated the reciprocal relationships between ideal-
typical models of social forms and individual attitudes and activities. But
he nonetheless ascribed the concept to strikingly dierent methodological
approaches. Economy and Society employed ideal-typical models to inves-
tigate the impact of associational forms in dierent social spheres on
individual economic attitudes and activities. Te Economic Ethics of the
World Religions, on the other hand, rarely concerned itself with general-
ities. Here Weber deployed ideal types to model the macro-causal eect
of dierences in religious ethics on economic development. His method
in Te Economic Ethics of the World Religions was almost identical to that
employed in Te Protestant Ethic, with the crucial dierence that asso-
ciations and social strata played a central role in the former but not the
latter. Why Weber labeled both approaches sociology remains unclear,
though his manic temperament and resistance to revising his own work
may help explain the presence of multiple methods in his writings.
winii axo ioi xai soci oioc\
Shortly after Webers death in :,:c, the German government and private
philanthropists began to establish academic chairs and research institutes
for sociology. Te precarious position of sociology at German universities,
combined with a cultural predilection for epistemological rigor in schol-
arship, conspired to place methodological concerns at the forefront of the
discipline.
oo
Under pressure to constitute their discipline as an autono-
mous eld of scholarship, many mainstream German sociologists styled
themselves as practitioners of formal sociology. Tis descriptive title,

o
Weber, Vorbemerkung, :: (BW, ,o,).

o,
Weber, Vorbemerkung, :: (BW, ,oo).

oo
Carl Brinkmann, Te Present Situation of German Sociology, Publications of the American
Sociological Society :: (:,:;): ,; Franz Oppenheimer, Tendencies in Recent German Sociology,
Sociological Review : (:,,:): :c.




Max Webers sociologies :,
derived from Simmels work, implied that sociology ought to study the
abstract forms of associations, the general properties of groups that
remained invariant across time and culture. Only by dening the discip-
line in terms of a unique subject matter and method, they believed, could
sociologists hope to carve out a niche against historians and economists.
Part i of Marianne Webers edition of Economy and Society, which con-
tained her husbands revised chapters, largely conformed to formal soci-
ologists self-understanding. Here Max Weber put forward pure types
of very basic social forms such as the four orientations of social action
(purposively rational, value-rational, aectual, and traditional), legitim-
ate orders, communal and associative relationships that could later be
used as building blocks for constructing ideal types of much more com-
plicated, historically specic social forms.
o;
However, Webers interest in
the impact of social forms on human personality and values, a question
that could only be framed with historical comparisons in mind, proved
far too concrete for the taste of most formal sociologists in the Weimar
Republic. Tey tended to believe that a truly formal sociology should
either derive general relationships between the economy and religion that
were true for all societies, or elucidate the geometry of social forms that
appeared in religious life and nowhere else.
Why, for instance, does a man like Max Weber speak of sociology of
religion? wondered Alfred Vierkandt, an eminent formal sociologist at
the University of Berlin. He deals with particular connections between
religion and the economy for a series of cultures. Tis is, in reality, a purely
historical task One can only speak of sociology in the sense of a sys-
tematic science if general relationships between dierent areas of culture
are discussed, or if general types are established.
o
Friedrich Schumann,
a lecturer in theology at the University of Tbingen, also maintained that
Webers sociology of religion did not deserve to carry that name. Schumann
argued that a sociology of religion must concern itself with social forms
unique to religious life. It should not study the development of such forms,
since that would be a question for the discipline of history, but rather pre-
sent a theory of the essences and types of life forms.
o,
Tis conception
of sociology was also endorsed by Dietrich Bonhoeer, later one of the
most famous resisters to National Socialism. To pursue the sociology of

o;
See WuG, :: (EaS, :,).

o
Alfred Vierkandt, Gesellschaftslehre: Hauptprobleme der philosophischen Soziologie (Stuttgart:
Enke, :,:,), ,:c.

o,
Friedrich K. Schumann, Zur Grundfrage der Religionssoziologie, Zeitschrift fr systematische
Teologie (:,:;): ;cc:.



Weber and formal sociology :,,
religion means phenomenologically investigating the structural uniqueness
of religious communities, he argued in his dissertation. It is barely com-
prehensible that Weber could speak of the sociology of religion when he
presented the relationships between politics, economy, and religion, that
is between several dierent cultural spheres, and thus carried out histor-
ical work.
;c
Te philosopher Erich Rothacker, a leading theorist of the
cultural sciences, maintained that Webers Economic Ethics of the World
Religions pursued a purely historical task, even though its contents were
presented in a highly conceptualized and thematic form. Had Weber not
attached the title sociology of religion to these essays, he argued, no one
would have considered them anything but a work of history.
;:
Two major formal sociologists in Weimar Germany looked to Webers
methodological writings for inspiration. Te rst was Leopold von Wiese,
a professor at the University of Cologne and a prominent gure in the
German sociological community. Wiese edited one of the leading socio-
logical journals in Germany, co-directed an institute for social research in
Cologne, and occupied a prominent position in the Deutsche Gesellschaft
fr Soziologie.
;:
Following in the tradition of Simmel, the Belgian soci-
ologist Emile Waxweiler, and the American sociologist E. A. Ross, Wiese
dened sociology as a Beziehungslehre (theory of social relationships).
;,
He
set out to develop a classied, complete ordering of all typical interper-
sonal processes, with the goal of achieving a unied overview of social
life in this manner.
;
Beginning with the notion that the formation and
dissolution of social bonds constituted the two basic forms of human rela-
tionships, he developed an elaborate system that attempted to encompass
all categories of social relationships. Te substance of these relationships
was immaterial to him. Te task of sociology, as he understood it, was
to focus on formal and ahistorical properties.
;,
Wiese emphasized that
his Beziehungslehre was continuous with Webers interpretive sociology
insofar as both took the action of individuals and the interpretation of

;c
Dietrich Bonhoeer, Sanctorum communio: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der
Kirche (:,,c), ed. Joachim von Soosten, Vol. i of Werke (Munich: Kaiser, :,o), :; and n.

;:
Erich Rothacker, M. Webers Arbeiten zur Soziologie, Vierteljahrschrift fr Sozial- und
Wirtschaftsgeschichte :o, no. ,/ (:,::): ,:.

;:
On Wieses career, see Erhard Stlting, Akademische Soziologie in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot, :,o), ::,, :o;,, :c,:,.

;,
Leopold von Wiese, Beziehungslehre, Vol. i of Allgemeine Soziologie als Lehre von den Beziehungen
und Beziehungsgebilden der Menschen (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, :,:), viii; Zur
Methodologie der Beziehungslehre, Klner Vierteljahrshefte fr Sozialwissenschaften :, no. :
(:,::): ,.

;
Leopold von Wiese, Soziologie: Geschichte und Hauptprobleme (Berlin: de Gruyter, :,,:), :,:.

;,
Wiese, Beziehungslehre, :c, :o, ,:.






Max Webers sociologies :oc
their subjective meanings as their subject matter.
;o
On one occasion he
declared to an American colleague that Weber was certainly the greatest
[sociologist] of the present generation.
;;
But he nonetheless maintained
that formal sociology needed to go beyond Webers insights to establish a
general sociology.
;
Webers methodological principles undergirded the
Beziehungslehre, but they could not suce as a foundation for a truly sys-
tematic approach to the discipline: While it remains Webers outstand-
ing accomplishment to have promoted the general theory of the social
sciences, as well as some of the specialized sociologies (especially the soci-
ology of religion), more than anyone else, it is doubtful to me whether the
individual discipline, general sociology has been extensively shaped by
Weber.
;,
Te formal sociologist Andreas Walther also engaged extensively with
Webers work. Walther saw sociology as the science of functional con-
nections, the study of the relationships between individual social elem-
ents, and the analysis of the structural functions those individual parts
played within the social whole.
c
In :,:o he published an interpretive
essay on Webers sociology that remains one of the most lucid exegeses
of Webers methodology.
:
Even at the height of National Socialist rule
he felt unconstrained to declare his admiration for Webers intellectual
legacy. His :,,, manifesto for a new nationally oriented social science
praised Webers work as one of the greatest scholarly achievements of all
history.
:
However, Walther believed that Weber had made a clear devel-
opment from history to sociology without fully completing the transi-
tion. History and sociology often lie inextricably entwined with each
other in Webers works, and his individualizing interest was palpable

;o
Ibid., ,,, c:, ; Leopold von Wiese, Systematic Sociology as the Science of Interhuman
Behavior, Sociology and Social Research :,, no. : (:,,c): :c,.

;;
Dirk Ksler, Sociological Adventures: Earle Edward Eubanks Visits with European Sociologists
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, :,,:), :,:.

;
Leopold von Wiese, Systematische Soziologie in Deutschland (Bemerkungen zu Teodore
Abels Buch), Klner Vierteljahrshefte fr Soziologie , no. : (:,:,): :,:.

;,
Ibid., :,,.

c
Andreas Walther, Zur Verwirklichung einer vollstndigen Soziologie, Zeitschrift fr
Vlkerpsychologie und Soziologie ,, no. : (:,:,): :,;. On Walthers version of structural functional-
ism, see Rainer Wassner, Andreas Walther und das Seminar fr Soziologie in Hamburg zwischen
:,:o und :,,: Ein wissenschaftsbiographischer Umriss, in Ordnung und Teorie: Beitrge
zur Geschichte der Soziologie in Deutschland, ed. Sven Papcke (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, :,o), ,,,; and Dirk Ksler, Der Streit um die Bestimmung der Soziologie
auf den deutschen Soziologentagen :,:c bis :,,c, in Lepsius, Soziologie in Deutschland und
sterreich, :::.

:
Walther, Max Weber als Soziologe.

:
Andreas Walther, Die neuen Aufgaben der Sozialwissenschaften (Hamburg: Hansischer
Gildenverlag, :,,,), ,:.







Weber and historical sociology :o:
even in the specically sociological Part i of Economy and Society.
,
A
systematic sociology unsuccessfully struggled to emerge from Webers
universal-historical works. He remained too much an individualizing
historian at heart, Walther lamented. Despite everything, he had too
many points of contact with intuitivistic and subjectivizing attitudes, he
was at heart too averse to every form of construction to be able to turn
his interests decisively and consistently toward systematicity, even when
he acknowledged and armed its importance for sociology.

Walther
endorsed Webers use of ideal types to characterize historical phenomena
that were culturally signicant to the individual researcher. But when it
came to formulating general rules of social action, Walther believed it
was necessary to establish a system that all researchers in the eld could
adopt. In Part i of Economy and Society Weber seemed to provide just such
a framework, an axiomatic classication of all the possible ways in which
basic social groups, economic relationships, and political associations
could be constructed from the subjective perspective of the individuals
who comprised them. Yet Weber never demonstrated why these particular
ideal types, as opposed to others, were best suited for interrogating the
social world. Why, for instance, did he distinguish between three forms of
legitimate rule rather than four or ve?
,
Walther concluded that Webers
system should be judged only as a magnicent stimulus, not, however,
as a denitive foundation on which sociology might simply build further.
Sociology will have to incorporate his inspiring suggestions into a system
which demands necessity and objective demonstrability as its hallmarks.
o
winii axo ui s roii cai soci oioc\
In his address at the rst meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fr
Soziologie, Weber articulated the central question of his sociology by ask-
ing, How do the individual categories of such organizations and associ-
ations and with which means make an impact in two directions: on
the character of the individual, and on the character of objective, supra-
personal cultural values?
;
Answering this question involved constructing
ideal types of the major social forms and then modeling their impact on
the individuals who conducted their lives within them. For formal sociol-
ogists who wished to dene the autonomy of their discipline by virtue of

,
Walther, Max Weber als Soziologe, ,.

Ibid., ,.
,
Ibid., ,,oc.
o
Ibid., o,.

;
Weber, Rede auf dem ersten Deutschen Soziologentage, ;.




Max Webers sociologies :o:
its method, Webers interest in modeling social forms provided a modest
resource for their own work. At the same time, however, there were other
German sociologists for whom Webers systematic development of ideal
types did not represent the truly provocative aspect of his sociology. What
made his oeuvre distinctive in their eyes was its attempt to understand
the historical development and fate of the character of the individual
and the character of objective, suprapersonal cultural values. Tis enter-
prise did not fall under the rubric of academic history, which emphasized
the reconstruction of individual causal chains, nor could it be addressed
by formal sociology, which privileged abstract forms over historical and
cultural peculiarities. For German sociologists who wished to break with
formal sociology and revitalize an older, universal-historical approach to
the discipline, Webers writings oered a powerful source of inspiration
and orientation.
Instead of deducing ahistorical regularities about social groups, histor-
ical sociologists maintained that sociology ought to situate modern soci-
ety in the context of broader developmental patterns and provide a sense
of orientation during times of crisis.

What appealed most to these soci-

ologists about Webers oeuvre was its genealogical sensibility: its eort to
uncover the contingent historical factors that gave rise to modern west-
ern individuals and their peculiar life conduct (Lebensfhrung), and its
ability to make these factors comprehensible in terms of an overarching
process such as rationalization. As Karl Mannheim explained in a :,,
article on German Sociology for English readers, this was not the kind
of enterprise that could be carried out by a specialized historian, but only
by someone who interrogated the past with an eye toward understanding
its cultural signicance for the problems of modern life:
[Weber] does not study the past like an archivist, whose task it is to look after
ancient documents and who sees a big hiatus between the yesterday and the to-
day; he investigates the most distant past, e.g. Chinese and Indian religion, or
the economic system of Rome, relates all these historical data to the present, and
is most concerned with the similarities and dierences between the operation
of social forces then and now. Te great problem that engaged the attention of
both [Werner] Sombart and Max Weber, namely the rise and development of
capitalism, was so worked out as to provide a diagnosis of the contemporary
situation. What are the roots of Western society; whence do we come, whither

Volker Kruse, Historisch-soziologische Zeitdiagnostik der Zwanziger Jahre, in

Geisteswissenschaften zwischen Kaiserreich und Republik: Zur Entwicklung von Nationalkonomie,
Rechtswissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaft im . Jahrhundert, ed. Kurt Wolfgang Nrr, Bertram
Schefold, and Friedrich Tenbruck (Stuttgart: Steiner, :,,), ,;,c:.

Weber and historical sociology :o,
are we going, and what is our place in the present crisis? Tese are the questions
that are latent in Webers empirical investigations. He was one of the rst to see
the dangers inherent in our social tendencies and in the Kulturkrise or crisis of
culture.
,
Te pleasures and diculties that Webers work presented for histor-
ically minded sociologists can be appreciated by comparing the reactions
of two exemplary gures, Hans Freyer and Siegfried Landshut. In many
respects Freyer and Landshut could not have cut more dissimilar gures.
Freyer was one of Weimar Germanys leading historical sociologists and
the recipient of its rst academic chair in sociology. A radical conserva-
tive who prophesized a revolution from the right during the Weimar
Republic, Freyer supported National Socialism after :,,,, although he
never became a party member, and he eventually served as director of the
Nazied Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie.
,c
Landshut studied under
Max Scheler, Alfred Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger
before joining the Institute for Foreign Policy in Hamburg, where his
Habilitation thesis was rejected. A socialist in his political sympathies,
Landshut co-edited an important collection of Marxs early writings in
:,,:.
,:
On account of his Jewish parentage he was forced to seek refuge
in France, Palestine, and Egypt after the Nazis came to power. When
the war ended he returned to the Federal Republic of Germany and
subsequently received the countrys rst chair in political science at the
University of Hamburg.
,:
Despite the obvious dierences in career paths and ideological ali-
ations, Freyer and Landshut arrived at strikingly similar evaluations
of Webers sociology. Both took Webers Objectivity essay as the
denitive statement of social-scientic method. In that essay Weber
called for a social science that would be a science of empirical reality
(Wirklichkeitswissenschaft) tasked with explaining the reality of social life
in its uniqueness. With this call to arms, Weber contended that social
science should not aim to produce abstract laws; rather, it should eluci-
date on the one hand, the relationships and the cultural signicance of
individual phenomena in their contemporary manifestations, and on the

,
Karl Mannheim, German Sociology (:,::,,,) (:,,), in Essays on Sociology and Social
Psychology, ed. Paul Kecskemeti, Vol. vi of Collected Works (London: Routledge, :,,,), ::.

,c
Jerry Z. Muller, Te Other God that Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German
Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, :,;).

,:
Karl Marx, Der historische Materialismus: Die Frhschriften, ed. S. Landshut and J. P. Mayer
with F. Salomon, : vols. (Leipzig: Krner, :,,:).

,:
Wilhelm Hennis, Zu Siegfried Landshuts wissenschaftlichem Werk, in Politik und praktische
Philosophie: Schriften zur politischen Teorie (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, :,;;), :;,,,.




Max Webers sociologies :o
other hand, the reasons for their historically being so and not otherwise.
,,

In his rejected Habilitation thesis Landshut criticized his contemporaries
for failing to adhere to the program Weber outlined:
In the twenty-ve years that have elapsed since the publication of Max Webers
seminal work [the Objectivity essay (:,c)], sociology has failed to engage
positively in any way with the insights present there, and the research ambitions
of the sociological works that are best known today tacitly aim in a direction
that Weber, once and for all, demonstrated in this work as inappropriate for the
real meaning of knowledge in the social sciences.
,
Landshut went on to criticize many leading German sociologists
Paul Barth, Franz Oppenheimer, Simmel, Othmar Spann, Ferdinand
Tnnies, and Vierkandt for failing to adhere to Webers mission
statement. Instead of interrogating concrete reality, they misguidedly
focused their attentions on formal properties of social groups or on the
universal laws of historical development.
,,
Freyer also identied with
Webers vision of a science of empirical reality to such an extent
that he adopted it as the title of his treatise Sociology as a Science of
Empirical Reality. He considered Webers work the greatest and, among
the modern academic systems the only example of a sociology
that is entirely directed toward a system, but at the same time entirely
directed toward knowledge of contemporary reality, its historical pre-
conditions and its developmental tendencies in a word, toward con-
crete sociology.
,o
For Freyer and Landshut, the dening features of Webers sociology
were its eorts to understand the unique reality of modern life and explain
how it had come into being. Freyer believed that a thesis in the philoso-
phy of history lay at the heart of Webers sociology: the thesis of the
inexorably progressing rationalization of all areas of culture. Social and
intellectual development leads from nonrational, emotionally determined
forms toward continually more rational congurations of social life and
culture. Webers sociology sought to comprehend this process of ration-
alization; its goal was to answer the questions, What is the immanent
law of the modern European social order? Trough which historical chain
of events has it been enabled and compelled? What is the tendency of its

,,
Weber, Die Objektivitt, :;c: (MSS, ;:).

,
Siegfried Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie (:,:,), in Kritik der Soziologie und andere Schriften
zur Politik, ed. Wilhelm Hennis and Hans Maier (Neuwied am Rhein: Luchterhand, :,o,), :.

,,
Ibid., :,.

,o
Hans Freyer, Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft: Logische Grundlegung des Systems der
Soziologie (Leipzig: Teubner, :,,c), :,.




Weber and historical sociology :o,
development?
,;
Weber revealed that the distinctive institutions and atti-
tudes of modern life were contingent outcomes of historical developments.
His sociology constituted an encyclopedic demonstration that the pre-
sent order of society is not generally necessary, but is rather an historical
category. Tis demonstration is performed by asking the question: How
can it be otherwise, and under which conditions has it been otherwise?
,

Landshut came away with much the same impression from reading Te
Protestant Ethic and Te Economic Ethics of the World Religions. Weber
failed to follow Marx in challenging the capitalist order, but he nonethe-
less demonstrated that it rested on superannuated foundations.
,,
Webers
investigations revealed modern life conduct to be the empty remains of
a life context that was once founded in belief, and uncovered the histor-
ical basis from which the coerciveness of social relations today take hold
of the individual as an apparently independent and anonymous force.
:cc

Weber showed how the modern world had been demagied, its public
values divested of any universally binding sanction. Te central concern
of his work amounted to the question, How should the individual abide
in a public world that no longer oers him a binding standard?
:c:
In light
of Freyer and Landshuts opposition to bourgeois society (from the right
and the left, respectively), it is not dicult to understand why they were
attracted to a sociological program that underscored the contingency of
the modern social order.
While Landshut and Freyer admired Webers vision of a sociology capable
of diagnosing the current condition of humankind, neither endorsed his
methodological approach. Tey fundamentally rejected Webers core belief
that sociology should restrict itself to forming selective, ideal-typical models
of a reality too manifold to grasp directly. Instead, they insisted, sociology
should capture the essence of particular historical epochs. In arming soci-
ology as a science of empirical reality, Landshut asserted that modern
bourgeois society, the reality in question, was not a selective construction
based on ideal types, but a truly objective state of aairs:
From this concrete starting situation, that is to say, from the circumstance that
the researcher nds himself in a world where things behave in such and such a
way in a world, where e.g. certain animosities and demands arise from the fact

,;
Hans Freyer, Einleitung in die Soziologie (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, :,,:), ::,:c.

,
Freyer, Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft, :,o.

,,
Mommsen, Political and Social Teory, :;:.

:cc
Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie, ,o.

:c:
Siegfried Landshut, Max Webers geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung (:,,c), in Kritik der
Soziologie, ::, ::,.





Max Webers sociologies :oo
that the propertyless are dependent on the propertied for employment from this
starting situation emerge the value perspectives, or better yet, the questions that
lead to the clarication of such contexts of meanings and their motivations.
Landshut believed that sociologys questions were not determined by sub-
jective interests but rather by the problematic of reality itself.
:c:
As a con-
sequence, he had little interest in the general rules of Part i of Economy
and Society. Landshut perceived a fundamental contradiction in Webers
sociological oeuvre: the same person who placed empirical reality at the
heart of the social sciences, who insisted that no ossied system of con-
cepts could truly do justice to the changing signicance of cultural phe-
nomena, had also created the most comprehensive conceptual apparatus
of a sociological science, whose casuistry is intended to register completely
all sociohistorical reality.
:c,
After surveying Webers work, Landshut con-
cluded that the task that he himself emphasized and realized in his works,
the knowledge of empirical reality in its uniqueness, lost its way in the pro-
cess of constructing a casuistry of ideal-typical concepts.
:c
Like Landshut, Freyer believed that the true meaning of Webers soci-
ology was clouded by its methodological inconsistency. Webers typology
of ideal types threatened to trap his precious historical material in a
schema of ordering concepts that are brilliantly tied together, but which
time and again gives the impression of being imposed from outside on the
abundance of facts.
:c,
Freyer did not attach much importance to Webers
project of developing ideal types of social forms common to dierent
historical epochs and cultures. In this respect Freyer revealed his deeper
loyalties to the German Historical School and its intellectual legacy.
Systematically ordering the abundance of component social phenom-
ena, as if they were detached from their historical origin, can at most be
preparatory work [for sociology], he argued. Any deeper analysis must
notice that social phenomena, even the simplest and apparently ubiqui-
tous, are bound to a particular epoch and are embedded in a particular
historical total situation. Te abstract conceptual schemata of Part i of
Economy and Society oered only the rst level of analysis, whereas the
more profound task of Webers sociology was to understand the typical
forms of concrete society and the graduated course of their development.
It was the latter task that Freyer considered sociologys principal goal.
:co

:c:
Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie, c.

:c,
Ibid., ,.
:c
Ibid., ;.

:c,
Hans Freyer, Gesellschaft und Geschichte (Leipzig: Teubner, :,,;), :.

:co
Hans Freyer, Typen und Stufen der Kultur, in Handwrterbuch der Soziologie, ed. Alfred
Vierkandt (Stuttgart: Enke, :,,:), ,c;.




Talcott Parsons and the prospects for sociology :o;
raicorr iaisoxs axo rui iiosiicrs ioi soci oioc\
Te inability of Webers oeuvre to t cleanly into one accepted category of
sociology militated against the formation of a Weber school in German
sociology, but the fact that his work contained elements of both formal
and historical methodologies encouraged a wide audience to engage with
his ideas. It required work to make a sociologist out of Weber in a way
that would be acceptable to his contemporaries. One aspect of his work
would have to be rejected in favor of another, as Walther, Freyer, and
Landshut had done; or Webers oeuvre would have to be interpreted from
a perspective where the dichotomy of formal and historical sociology no
longer mattered. In :,: the German migr Eric Voegelin, now teaching
at the University of Alabama, alluded to this latter possibility in a letter to
a younger American colleague:
Te prerequisite for having a school in science seems to me the development of a
method, of an approach on the part of the man who functions as the head
of the school Webers work is grandiose in its results, but the approach is
precisely its weak point. Anybody who wishes to follow on the path of Weber,
has rst of all to create a new instrument for dealing with his materials. And
the man who can do that is no disciple but inevitably a head in his own
right.
:c;
Voegelins addressee was Talcott Parsons, the scholar most responsible for
canonizing Weber as a founding father of modern sociology. Parsonss
:,,; opus, Te Structure of Social Action, had indeed created a new
instrument for dealing with Webers sociological writings, and although
Voegelin could not have predicted it at the time, the book would place
Parsons at the head of the American sociological profession. To present
Weber successfully as a progenitor of modern sociology, Parsons had to
neglect much that was in Webers writings, and distort the meaning of
some of it as well. But he also had to create an entirely new conception
of sociology in the process one that went entirely beyond the formal
historical dichotomy that characterized interwar German sociology.
Te elective anity Parsons felt for Webers work had much to do with
their common intellectual starting points. When Parsons began his aca-
demic career as an economist in the late :,:cs, he found his colleagues
embroiled in a Methodenstreit that bore similarities to the one Weber had

:c;
Eric Voegelin to Talcott Parsons, September :, :,:, in Eric Voegelin, Selected Correspondence
, trans. William Petropulos, ed. Jrgen Gebhardt, Vol. xxix of Te Collected Works of
Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, :cc,), :,,.


Max Webers sociologies :o
experienced in Germany a generation earlier. Although the battle lines
were drawn dierently, the struggle between Menger and Schmoller over
the proper approach for economics was paralleled by the rivalry between
neoclassical and institutionalist economists in the United States. Te
dominant neoclassical school emphasized the importance of the deduct-
ive theory of marginal utility as a starting point for economic research,
while the institutionalists judged marginal theory inadequate for explain-
ing modern economic society, preferring instead to formulate develop-
mental laws based on copious empirical and statistical data. As one recent
historian has characterized the dierence between the two schools,
For institutionalists, attempts to comprehend the special structure of the
American economy, in contrast to other capitalist societies, or trials to concep-
tualize recent changes in capitalism, in governmental policies, in the structure
of corporations, and so forth are the daily bread-and-butter of economic theory.
Tis is in contrast to orthodox [neoclassical] theory, which preferred rigorous
analysis of abstract relationships, which were mathematically solid and, in prin-
ciple, universally applicable.
:c
During his time as an economics student at Amherst, Parsons was
encouraged by his institutionalist professors to question whether main-
stream neoclassical economics could fully account for the dynamics of
modern industrial capitalism.
:c,
Sombarts and Webers writings, which
Parsons rst encountered at the University of Heidelberg in :,:,, con-
rmed his growing sense that neoclassical economics tended to neglect
the economic problems connected with the growth and development of
types of economic society, and in particular with the working out of the
dierences between, and the specic characteristics of, the dierent cul-
tural epochs.
::c
Parsons was impressed by how Sombart and Weber had
made the historical peculiarity of modern capitalism their explanandum.
He was particularly inspired by Webers suggestion that modern capital-
ism could not wholly be explained in terms of individuals self-interested
maximization of utility. Te Protestant Ethic demonstrated that even in
the economic aspect of modern life the existence of a noneconomic,

:c
Yuval P. Yonay, Te Struggle over the Soul of Economics: Institutionalist and Neoclassical Economists
in America between the Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, :,,), ;::, c,,, quota-
tion on ,,.

:c,
Charles Camic, Introduction: Talcott Parsons before Te Structure of Social Action, in Te
Early Essays, by Talcott Parsons, ed. Charles Camic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
:,,:), xivxxv.

::c
Talcott Parsons, Capitalism in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber (:,:/,), in
Te Early Essays, ,. See also Talcott Parsons, On De-Parsonizing Weber, American Sociological
Review c, no. , (:,;,): ooo.



Talcott Parsons and the prospects for sociology :o,
ethical element, the idea of seless, disinterested devotion to a calling
was active.
:::
Parsons was not alone in appreciating the ability of innova-
tive economists like Sombart and Weber to suggest a path through the
American Methodenstreit. Frank Knight, the Chicago neoclassical econo-
mist and translator of Webers Wirtschaftsgeschichte, had come to appre-
ciate Weber for similar reasons at roughly the same time, if not earlier.
:::

But what made Parsonss appropriation of Weber unique was that he used
him to justify a departure from the discipline of economics altogether.
Following his return from Heidelberg and a brief teaching stint at
Amherst College, Parsons set o for Harvard as a nonfaculty instructor
with the intention of deepening his knowledge of the relation of socio-
logical and economic theory and the relationship between this and the
interpretation of the modern industrial economic order.
::,
At Harvard he
had the opportunity to take classes with the leading neoclassical econo-
mists Frank W. Taussig and Joseph Schumpeter, and he soon learned to
appreciate the explanatory power that neoclassical theory derived from its
abstract approach to economic behavior.
::
Tis experience led him to the
conclusion that the institutionalists had been wrong to criticize neoclas-
sical theory for being too parsimonious in its theorization of economic
behavior. In attempting to create a theory that captured even more aspects
of human behavior, institutionalists would only undo the achievements of
neoclassical economics the ability rigorously to model a restricted num-
ber of economic situations without oering anything satisfactory to
take its place. Parsons concluded that the unproductive tension between
neoclassical and institutional economics arose from a misunderstanding
over the status of economic theory and its relationship to the real world.
Parsons argued that it was a mistake to believe in the existence of a class
of economic phenomena that could be captured by a single economic
theory. Any legitimate scientic theory had to be partial with respect to
actual phenomena in the world. Te concepts in its frame of reference
could only refer to abstract properties or analytical elements of phe-
nomena, such as mass or velocity, and not whole objects in themselves.
Tis reasoning led him to insist that the general laws of any scientic
theory pertained only to analytical elements of phenomena. Instead of

:::
Talcott Parsons, Sociological Elements in Economic Tought (:,,,), in Te Early Essays, ::,.

:::
See Ross Emmett, Frank Knight, Max Weber, Chicago Economics and Institutionalism, Max
Weber Studies Beiheft i (:cco): :c::,.

::,
Talcott Parsons, A Short Account of My Intellectual Development, Alpha Kappa Deltan :,
(:,,,): ,.

::
Camic, Introduction, xxiixxiii, xxxixxxii.




Max Webers sociologies :;c
aspiring to form laws that explained everything about how the economy
worked, economic theory would have to isolate specically economic
elements in human action and seek to theorize only the relationships
among them. Parsons argued that this was what neoclassical economic
theory already did, even if some of its leading American practitioners
would have hesitated to articulate it in those terms.
::,
Parsons claimed
that the major inspiration behind his interpretation of the status of eco-
nomic theory came from the work of the Swiss economist and sociologist
Vilfredo Pareto.
::o
But it is also important to note that Parsonss interpret-
ation was essentially the same as the one put forward by Menger in the
Methodenstreit and thus contradictory to the interpretation of economic
theory Weber developed in his own methodological writings.
::;
Weber
had argued that the laws of the social sciences were based on ideal
types, plausible ctions but ctions nonetheless, capable of being changed
and reconstructed to suit the interests of the investigator. Parsonss under-
standing of economic theory was far more rigid. As he conceived it, the
laws of economic theory isolated a constant set of variables that might not
be capable of existing independently, but that still referred to fundamen-
tal elements of reality.
Parsonss rst book, Te Structure of Social Action, pursued three
main aims. Te rst and most general was to demonstrate that a com-
plete understanding of any concrete social phenomenon, such as modern
cap italism, could only be achieved by bringing a plurality of analytical
theories to bear on the same subject matter. Parsons made this point by
suggesting that a concrete social phenomenon, such as a set of mar-
ket transactions, should be understood as a complex web of individual
eorts connecting means with ends. Using analytical abstraction, each
means-end chain could be traced all the way back to its ultimate
means, the nonsubjective factor that conditioned further social action.
Te chain could also be followed all the way toward its ultimate end,
an outcome that constituted an end in itself. Finally, the intermediate
segment of the means-end chain could be dierentiated into three seg-
ments, constituting what Parsons called the structure of social action.
Dierent analytical theories, corresponding to dierent disciplines, could

::,
Parsons, Sociological Elements, in Te Early Essays, :o, ::,, ::, ::; Talcott Parsons, Te
Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Teory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent
European Writers (New York: Free Press, :,o [:,,;]), :c, ,o.

::o
Parsons, Structure of Social Action, ;;:.

::;
Tomas Burger, Talcott Parsons, the Problem of Order in Society, and the Program of an
Analytical Sociology, American Journal of Sociology ,, no. : (:,;;): , ::.



Talcott Parsons and the prospects for sociology :;:
be distinguished from each other based on which segment of the means-
end chain they analyzed. Biology, psychology, and geography focused on
ultimate means such as heredity or environment, while technology, eco-
nomics, and politics investigated the three intermediate subsegments
of the chain where suitable ends were chosen for given means. It was the
task of sociology to analyze ultimate ends and their relation to other
aspects of social action.
::
Te second goal of Te Structure of Social Action was to demon-
strate the need for an analytical science of sociology concerned with the
normative aspect of social action. Sociology should attend to the reality
that men not only respond to stimuli but in some sense try to conform
their action to patterns which are, by the actor and other members of
the same collectivity, deemed desirable.
::,
Here Parsons took aim not so
much at vulgar Marxism as at the behaviorism popular among his gener-
ation of social scientists. Parsons saw human action as not merely reactive
but also proactive. People did not simply respond to conditions and stim-
uli; they also strove to create order and meaning in the world on their
own initiative.
::c
Tey made an eort to act in alignment with values, the
creative element in action in general, that element which is causally inde-
pendent of the positivistic factors of heredity and environment.
:::
Tese
values could manifest themselves explicitly in stated ideals or principles,
but also implicitly in the norms of institutions or ritual actions associated
with religious life.
:::
Parsons contended that many features of complex
social interactions could only be explained by studying the integration
of individuals with reference to a common value system, manifested in
the legitimacy of institutional norms, in the common ultimate ends of
action, in ritual and in various modes of expression. In the nal chap-
ter of Te Structure of Social Action he dened sociology as the science
which attempts to develop an analytical theory of social action systems
in so far as these systems can be understood in terms of the property of
common-value integration.
::,
Parsons envisaged sociology not as a his-
torical science concerned with the causes and consequences of concrete
phenomena, but as an analytical science concerned primarily with

::
Parsons, Structure of Social Action, ::,:, ;::,; Parsons, Some Reections on Te Nature
and Signicance of Economics (:,,), in Te Early Essays, :o:o. See Charles Camic, Structure
after ,c Years: Te Anatomy of a Charter, American Journal of Sociology ,,, no. : (:,,): ;c,.

::,
Parsons, Structure of Social Action, ;o.

::c
Camic, Anatomy, :, , c, ,,.

:::
Talcott Parsons, Te Place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Teory (:,,,), in Te Early
Essays, :,cn:,.

:::
Ibid., :, :,.
::,
Parsons, Structure of Social Action, ;o.





Max Webers sociologies :;:
building up systems of general theory veriable in terms of and applicable
to a wide range of concrete phenomena, analogous to neoclassical eco-
nomic theory in its methodology.
::
Te third goal of Te Structure of Social Action was to demonstrate that
Parsonss views were not those of an idiosyncratic outsider, but the expres-
sion of a consensus emerging among four major European social thinkers:
Alfred Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. In
spite of the impression of disunity there has been going on a deeply sig-
nicant coordinated movement of theoretical development in the social
eld, really comparable to the movement of unication in physical sci-
ence in the seventeenth century, he told an audience at the University of
Chicago.
::,
Parsons wished to show that Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim, and
Weber had unwittingly and independently converged on a similar social
theory, by which he meant a conceptual framework for thinking about
the social sciences as a whole, rather than any one particular discipline.
Tese European thinkers did not identify common value integration
as the proper subject matter of sociology. Indeed, much if not all of what
Durkheim and Weber had published under the title sociology did not
satisfy Parsonss strict criteria for inclusion in the discipline. What mat-
tered most to Parsons was that their voluntaristic theory of social action
implied the necessity of multiple analytical schemes for understanding
social phenomena, and that their empirical scholarship emphasized the
autonomous role of normative factors in social action. Teir work sug-
gested a place for the kind of sociology that Parsons wished to pursue.
Parsons did not have diculty in demonstrating that Weber was cen-
trally concerned with normative elements in his sociological writings. Te
Protestant Ethic and the sections on the sociology of religion in Economy
and Society testied amply to that fact. It was another matter to prove
that the conceptual distinctions in Economy and Society corresponded to
the structure of social action. An entire chapter of Te Structure of Social
Action was devoted to the Procrustean exercise of demonstrating that
Webers concept of purposive rationality (Zweckrationalitt) mapped onto
the intermediate sector of the means-end chain; that his concepts of eco-
nomic action (Wirtschaften), technology, and political power (Herrschaft)
corresponded to the intermediate subsectors of economics, technology,
and politics; and that Weber regarded religious ideas and legitimate orders

::
Ibid., ,,, ;;:.

::,
Talcott Parsons, Te Unity of Contemporary Social Teory (August :,, :,,;), :c, Talcott
Parsons Papers, HUGFP :.:, box :, folder Lectures at the University of Chicago, Aug ,;,
Harvard University Archives.


Talcott Parsons and the prospects for sociology :;,
as normative elements analogous to ultimate ends.
::o
Tese were the key
ingredients of Economy and Society that Parsons wanted to claim for his
voluntaristic theory of social action. At the same time, he rejected the
two most basic elements of Webers sociological methodology his use of
ideal types and his interest in the relationship between social forms, per-
sonality, and cultural values for their lack of scientic generalizability.
Parsons wanted to create a sociology capable of generating laws that
were methodologically analogous to those of the natural sciences, a task
Weber rejected from the outset.
::;
Parsons could not accept that soci-
ologys theoretical concepts were merely useful ctions: As opposed to
the ction view [of theoretical concepts, i.e. Webers ideal types] it is
maintained that at least some of the general concepts of science are not
ctional but adequately grasp aspects of the objective external world.
::

Webers ideal types did not conform to Parsonss vision of an analytical
theory of social action. Tey exaggerated or oversimplied actors motiv-
ations to create models of individual actions or types of associations that
arose from their repetition. Tere were as many dierent kinds of ideal
types as there were plausible maxims for social actions. Parsonss analyt-
ical elements, by way of contrast, were nite and fundamental categories
for conceptualizing social action. Tey were analytical abstractions from
the perspective of a single sector of the means-end chain and referred only
to aspects of actions, not entire actions as one might witness them in
daily life. Parsons believed that the illimitability of Webers ideal types
precluded the possibility of creating anything resembling a general sci-
entic theory.
::,
A complete scientic theory is not attained until all
possible concrete types of a class of historical individuals (or concretely
thinkable type-parts of them) can be thought of as exemplifying dier-
ent combinations according to laws, of the same analytical and structural
elements, he insisted.
:,c
Since Part i of Economy and Society attempted
to construct ideal types for the most basic and universal forms of social
action, Parsons thought it came closest to a general theory in Webers

::o
Parsons, Structure of Social Action, o,,;c, ;:o:; see also Talcott Parsons, Max Webers
Sociological Analysis of Capitalism and Modern Institutions, in An Introduction to the History
of Sociology, ed. Harry Elmer Barnes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,), ,c:. For a
critique of Parsonss attempt to assimilate Weber to his own theory of social action, see Jere
Cohen, Lawrence E. Hazelrigg, and Whitney Pope, De-Parsonizing Weber: A Critique of
Parsons Interpretation of Webers Sociology, American Sociological Review c, no. : (:,;,):
::,:.

::;
Charles Camic, Te Making of a Method: A Historical Reinterpretation of the Early Parsons,
American Sociological Review ,:, no. (:,;): ,,.

::
Parsons, Structure of Social Action, ;,c.

::,
Ibid., oc,, o:,, o:o.
:,c
Ibid., o:.




Max Webers sociologies :;
oeuvre. But because ideal types represented hypothetical actions, rather
than analytical elements of actions, Webers fundamental concepts of
sociology (soziologische Grundbegrie) could never constitute the kind of
general theory Parsons desired.
:,:
It was for much the same reasons that Parsons rejected Webers cen-
tral idea that sociology should focus on the study of associational forms.
Parsons explained this position in two posthumously published manu-
scripts about Georg Simmel, the rst sociologist to dene the discip-
line in terms of an exclusive interest in social forms.
:,:
Form, as far as
Parsons was concerned, referred to the structure of social relationships
between individuals, to the relations between the units of a system of
concrete phenomena. As such it was a descriptive aspect of phenom-
ena and not an explanatory category.
:,,
Structure was a provisional cat-
egory; it assumed that the conguration of units remained constant over
time, which they rarely did. Once change occurred, a deeper underlying
structure had to be adduced for purposes of explanation, and so on, until
basic and universal elements were found.
:,
Formal sociology discouraged
the researcher from establishing causal relationships, or laws in the
usual analytical scientic sense.
:,,
Since Webers fundamental concepts
of sociology attempted to capture types of social forms, they likewise
counted as formal sociology in Parsonss eyes, and thus rendered them-
selves unsuitable for any kind of general theory:
For this scheme [of Webers ideal types] is, I think, in all essentials, formal soci-
ology in Simmels sense. Its starting point is essentially the same, as we have
seen, the concept social relationship. Te predominant unit out of which the
types are built is that of form it is the structural aspect of the concrete social
relationship In almost all cases these forms admit of widely diering con-
tent in Simmels sense. Tus a Verein [association] may involve economic
ends in the case of a joint-stock company, religious ends in the case of a sect,
and scientic ends (we hope) in the case of the American Sociological Society.
:,o

:,:
Ibid., oc.

:,:
Talcott Parsons, Te Fragment on Simmel (from Draft Chapter xviii, Structure of Social
Action). Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tnnies: Social Relationships and the Elements
of Action, American Sociologist :,, no. : (:,,): ::,c; Talcott Parsons, Simmel and the
Methodological Problems of Formal Sociology, ed. William J. Buxton, American Sociologist :,,
no. : (:,,): ,:,c. Fragment was written for Te Structure of Social Action but not included in
the nal version of the book. Simmel and the Methodological Problems of Formal Sociology
was written c. :,,,.

:,,
Parsons, Methodological Problems, ,,; Fragment, :o.

:,
Parsons, Fragment, :; Methodological Problems, ,o, ,.

:,,
Parsons, Methodological Problems, ,.

:,o
Parsons, Fragment, :;.






Talcott Parsons and the prospects for sociology :;,
Parsons thought that such formal typologies were indispensable tools for
sociological research, but that they could not constitute the aim of sys-
tematic sociological theory.
:,;
Of all the European thinkers whose work he surveyed in Te Structure
of Social Action, Parsons admired Weber most. I will say at-footedly that
there is no single gure in Economics, at least since Smith and Ricardo
who is the equal in scientic genius of Max Weber, under which I include
analytical acuteness, insight into the signicance of problems, and a sheer
hard-headed judgment of empirical facts, he told his Harvard colleague
Crane Brinton, a historian and noted critic of academic sociology. He went
on to assert that there is every reason to believe that Weber is fully equal
to the really great gures of natural science. Perhaps it would be sheer sac-
rilege to mention Newton, but I do not hesitate at all to compare him with
Darwin.
:,
But what exactly was Webers major accomplishment? What
had he done to merit being ranked alongside Newton and Darwin in the
pantheon of science? On this point Parsons was curiously silent.
When we consider what Parsons actually took from Webers sociological
writings in his attempt to set the discipline on solid foundations, we nd
few of Webers distinctive features present. Parsons did not share Webers
interest in formal associations and their impact on personality and values,
primarily because he believed that it stood in the way of generating a gen-
eral theory modeled on economics or the natural sciences. He rejected
Webers distinctive methodological approach the use of ideal types and
his guiding interest in questions of universal-historical development for
much the same reason. What remained from Webers sociological cor-
pus was the insight that the impact of religious ideas could be isolated
and treated as an independent variable in the study of human action, an
approach Weber pioneered in Te Protestant Ethic and Te Economic Ethics
of the World Religions.
:,,
In doing so, Weber demonstrated to Parsons that
the relationship between ultimate ends and other elements of human
action constituted a legitimate eld of study in its own right. Tis was
what it meant for Parsons to be a sociologist rather than a biologist or
economist. But it was not an understanding of the discipline that Weber,
who was capable of simultaneously articulating the tasks of sociology in a
variety of dierent ways, would have recognized as his own.

:,;
Ibid., :,.

:,
Talcott Parsons to Crane Brinton, July ::, :,,,, Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP :..:, box :,
folder Correspondence :,,,.

:,,
See Talcott Parsons, Te Role of Ideas in Social Action, American Sociological Review ,, no. ,
(:,,): o,:o.



:;o
cuairii o
Charismatic rulership
Some concepts in the modern social sciences are so ubiquitous that it is
dicult to imagine a time when they did not exist. Tis is undoubtedly
true of charisma, a buzzword beloved by sociologists, political scientists,
psychologists, self-help gurus, and scholars of celebrity. But charisma in
its modern secular usage, connoting an individuals claim to leadership
on the basis of his or her exceptional gifts, is a concept of very recent
origin. Between :,:, and :,:: Max Weber introduced it into the social
sciences, rst in a series of articles on the economic ethics of the world
religions for the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, then in the
famous lecture Politics as a Vocation, and nally in his posthumously
published Economy and Society. Until the eve of World War ii charisma in
this sense of the word was almost unknown among American social sci-
entists. When the migr historian Hans Kohn observed in :,,, that the
dictatorship of Fascism is charismatic, nationalistic, and permanent; the
dictatorship of Communism is rational, international, and temporary, a
reviewer for the American Political Science Review complained about hav-
ing to look up the meaning of charismatic in the dictionary.
:
It would take
at least until the late :,ocs for the concept to become part of the American
vernacular. In the spring of :,o the New York Times columnist Russell
Baker declared that the big thing in politics these days is charisma, pro-
nounced karizma, noting, for example, that all the Kennedys possessed
it, whereas Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon did not. Tat Baker
went so far as to spell charisma phonetically suggests that many of his
readers were still unfamiliar with it.
:

:
Robert C. Brooks, review of Dictatorship in the Modern World, ed. Guy Stanton Ford, American
Political Science Review :,, no. o (:,,,): :c,,. Te passage in question came from the contribution
by Hans Kohn, Communist and Fascist Dictatorship: A Comparative Study, in Dictatorship
in the Modern World, ed. Guy Stanton Ford (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, :,,,),
:,.

:
Russell Baker, Observer: Te Age of Charismatics, Te New York Times, April :, :,o.




Charismatic rulership :;;
Why did it take so long for charisma to become a xture of modern
social science? How did it percolate through German intellectual life in
the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism, and then cross the
Atlantic to the United States? What did it mean to German and American
intellectuals, and why did they embrace or reject the concept? In light of
the vast literature scholars have devoted to Webers concept of charisma,
it is surprising that no concerted eort has been made to understand its
transatlantic history in the decades following his death in :,:c.
,
A grow-
ing body of recent scholarly work has extended the modern history of
concepts into an international and increasingly global framework. Te
history of Webers concept of charisma a concept that was introduced
in Germany during World War i but was rst enthusiastically embraced
in the United States during the late :,,cs must necessarily be told from
such a transnational perspective.

A concept acquires traction in intellectual communities when it proves

itself useful for thinking with: when it helps intellectuals understand or
articulate issues that matter to them, solve problems that they nd par-
ticularly urgent. If a concept conicts with traditional ways of think-
ing about a given topic, intellectuals may nd it uncongenial to think
with. Such was the case with charisma in the Weimar Republic and Nazi
Germany. For most scholars who engaged with the concept, charisma
connoted an understanding of leadership that was too individualistic,
liberal, frivolous, foreign, or chaotic to suit their tastes. Te sociologist
Teodor Geiger articulated the organicist bias so prevalent in German
social thought when he declared that the leader represents and embodies
the group as a whole.
,
Webers vision of leadership, which presented the
charismatic individual as introducing new norms from beyond (or in
opposition to) the communitys traditional or sacred values, simply did
not square with the holistic approach articulated by Geiger and others.
Tese considerations militated against the assimilation of charisma into
German social science before :,,.

,
John Potts, Te History of Charisma (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, :cc,) is a brief account that
cites no German-language sources.

For other recent approaches to the international or global historiography of concepts, see
Douglas Howland, Personal Liberty and Public Good: Te Introduction of John Stuart Mill to Japan
and China (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, :cc,); and Andrew Sartori, Bengal in Global
Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :cc).

,
Teodor Geiger, Fhren und Folgen (Berlin: Weltgeist-Bcher, :,:), :. On the way in which
organicism hindered the reception of Webers sociology in Germany, see Wolfgang J. Mommsen,
Te Political and Social Teory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, :,,), :;,,.



Charismatic rulership :;
Some concepts become useful for thinking with only when a conducive
issue or problem presents itself. Charisma in the Weberian sense is a con-
cept whose initial popularity did not derive from theoretical or purely
academic concerns. Instead, from the very beginning its ascription went
hand in hand with the observation and analysis of current political
events. Although a handful of German writers had employed charisma to
describe Benito Mussolini since the mid :,:cs, the concept would only
resonate after the Nazi Party made its entrance onto the political stage
in :,,c. Today it has become commonplace for scholarship on National
Socialism to interpret Adolf Hitlers place in the Nazi system in terms
of charismatic rulership.
o
Scholars have not appreciated, however, that
National Socialism was largely responsible for creating interest in cha-
risma in the rst place. Had it not been for the looming signicance of
National Socialism in American intellectual life in the mid :,,cs, this
chapter argues, neither Webers concept of charisma nor perhaps Weber
himself would have attracted as much attention. National Socialism pro-
vided a context necessary for charisma to gain traction in the United
States. During the :,,cs the concepts utility for American social science
was further extended through attempts to apply it to popular anticolonial
movements in Africa and Asia. By the early :,ocs charisma had become a
concept associated almost exclusively with the leaders of nationalist par-
ties in the new states created by decolonization.
Why did American social scientists nd charisma a useful concept to
think with? Like totalitarianism, another concept introduced primarily
by German migrs, charisma enabled social scientists to draw compari-
sons and contrasts between the eras major political movements.
;
Analysts
used it to underscore the role played by individual personalities in mass
political movements, and to demonstrate how loyalty to an individual
leader facilitated mass mobilization while restraining the centrifugal
forces generated by the mobilization itself. Tey also used it to articulate

o
See M. Rainer Lepsius, Charismatic Leadership: Max Webers Model and Its Applicability to
the Rule of Hitler, in Changing Conceptions of Leadership, ed. C. F. Graumann and S. Moscovici
(New York: Springer, :,o), ,,oo; Ian Kershaw, Te Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the
Tird Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, :,;); Ian Kershaw, Hitler (Harlow: Longman,
:,,:); Stefan Breuer, Max Webers Parteisoziologie und das Problem des Faschismus, in Das
Weber-Paradigma: Studien zur Weiterentwicklung von Max Webers Forschungsprogramm, ed. Gert
Albert, Agathe Bienfait, Steen Sigmund, and Claus Wendt (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :cc,),
,,:;c; and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges bis zur Grndung der beiden
deutschen Staaten :):,:),), Vol. iv of Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte (Munich: Beck, :cc,).

;
See Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: Te Inner History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford
University Press, :,,,); and Anson Rabinbach, Moments of Totalitarianism, History and Teory
,, no. : (:cco): ;::cc.


Weber and charismatic rulership :;,
the homologies between leadership in religious and political movements.
In a single word, charisma captured the argument increasingly popular
in the :,,cs that mass dictatorship represented a form of secularized
religion. Finally, as Peter Baehr has noted, social scientists invoked the
concept of charisma to express their conviction that modern dictator-
ships, despite their apparent radicalism, would inevitably be subject to
routinization. To call a leader charismatic was to suggest that his move-
ment, while unusual and exceptional, could not indenitely maintain its
revolutionary fervor. In the case of National Socialism, a political move-
ment characterized by cumulative radicalization (Hans Mommsen),
such predictions of routinization proved unwarranted.

In thinking with a concept, intellectuals frequently change its meaning

or combine it with other concepts to make it more serviceable for their
ends. Charisma became a congenial concept for thinking about leader-
ship in the new states, in large part because Talcott Parsons inscribed
it within an idiosyncratic modernization theory of his own creation. Te
fact that Webers concept lent itself to so many dierent modications
helps account for its enduring appeal. If we dismiss them as simply erro-
neous interpretations, we lose sight of what Weber has meant for twenti-
eth-century readers and writers. Who in :,:c would have believed that
Max Webers technical sociological terminology would someday be the
everyday language of the United States, the land of the Philistines, itself
in the meantime become the most powerful nation in the world?, the
American philosopher Allan Bloom once mused.
,
Very few would have
believed it, just as very few would have believed that Weber would some-
day rank among the founding fathers of modern social science. Te story
of charisma in German and American intellectual life is all the more fas-
cinating for that reason.
winii axo cuaii sxari c iui iisui i
In the last ten years of his life, as part of his ongoing work for the
Outline of Social Economics, Weber sought to identify patterns of

Peter Baehr, Identifying the Unprecedented: Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Critique
of Sociology, American Sociological Review o;, no. o (:cc:): c,:. On cumulative radical-
ization, see Hans Mommsen, Cumulative Radicalisation and Progressive Self-Destruction as
Structural Determinants of the Nazi Dictatorship, in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in
Comparison, ed. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,;),
;,;.

,
Allan Bloom, Te Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and
Impoverished the Souls of Todays Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, :,), :;.



Charismatic rulership :c
rulership (Herrschaft) in religious, economic, and political associations.
:c

In particular, he sought to understand how individual leaders or insti-
tutions ensured that their commands were obeyed. Obedience could be
based partly on conscious calculations of punishment and reward, or
simply on mindless habituation. But Weber believed that these kinds of
motivations were not sucient to maintain rulership. It was also necessary
that subordinates view the system as legitimate. Tey must feel obliged to
obey out of some kind of ethical duty or compunction; obedience must
seem to them the right thing to do. What kinds of legitimacy were avail-
able to justify the domination of rulers over the ruled? In a famous typ-
ology, Weber enumerated three pure types of legitimacy, each of which
he associated with a particular style of rulership (though he cautioned
that most actual forms of rulership consisted of combinations of these
pure types).
::
Te rst kind of legitimacy rested on a belief in the legality of enacted
rules and the right of those elevated under such rules to issue commands.
Weber associated this legitimacy with legal rulership. Under this struc-
ture, subordinates owed their obedience to an impersonal order, a set of
norms and rules ultimately grounded in a constitution. While individ-
ual persons could wield authority, they could do so only because the sys-
tem specied their authority and competencies. A prime example of legal
rulership was bureaucracy, such as the civil service of the modern state or
the administration of the Catholic Church.
::
Webers second kind of legit-
imacy was based on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial
traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them.
Individual leaders possessed traditional legitimacy if they occupied the
traditionally sanctioned position of authority, and enjoyed obedience
if their subjects felt the weight of custom to be binding. Examples of
such forms of traditional rulership included patriarchy and patrimonial
monarchy.
:,
Weber distinguished legal and traditional rulership from the kind
based on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exem-
plary character of an individual person, and the normative patterns or

:c
I have chosen to translate Herrschaft as rulership, since this English word is broad enough to
capture the variety of contexts in which Weber applied it. For a discussion of the various ways
in which the concept has been interpreted, see Melvin Richter, Te History of Political and Social
Concepts: A Critical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, :,,,), Chapter ,.

::
WuG, :o:;, :::, ::, :,,, (EaS, ,:, ::,, ::,, :o:); MWG i/:,, ::, (FMW, :,).

::
WuG, ::, ::,,c (EaS, ::,, ::;:o); MWG i/:,, ::,:c (FMW, :,,).

:,
WuG, ::, :,cc (EaS, ::,, ::o, ::o:); MWG i/:,, :::: (FMW, :,o).




Weber and charismatic rulership ::
order revealed or ordained by him.
:
Tis kind of rulership derived its
legitimacy from an exceptional individuals personal claim to be followed.
In the face of such heroism, people would feel ethically compelled to
follow and help fulll the leaders goals. Shamans, prophets, berserkers,
warlords, plebiscitary rulers, and leaders of contemporary political par-
ties wielded this type of rulership. As modern examples, Weber named
the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, the Bavarian socialist Kurt Eisner,
and the poet Stefan George. Weber called this type of rulership charis-
matic.
:,
In the New Testament, Paul used the Greek word charisma (lit.
gift of grace) to refer to the special talents bestowed on select individ-
uals by the Holy Spirit. In Webers own lifetime, the German church
historian Rudolf Sohm argued that the authority of the early Christian
church had been based on the charisma of its leaders rather than on any
legal or institutional organization.
:o
Inspired by Sohms work, Weber
took the conceptual leap of using charisma outside its usual theological
and historical context. In principle, these phenomena are universal,
Weber argued, even though they are often most evident in the reli-
gious realm.
:;
He dened the concept as an extraordinary personal
quality (originally seen as magical, as in the case of prophets, people
with therapeutic or legal wisdom, leaders in the hunt, or heroes in war)
by virtue of which the person is considered endowed with supernatural
or superhuman or at least specically extraordinary powers or qualities
not accessible to others, or seen as god-sent or exemplary and thus a
leader [Fhrer].
:
Weber spoke of charisma as if it were at once a real existing thing and
a purely subjective impression. Charisma was supposed to be something
that leaders had, and yet its presence was determined entirely by the eye
of the beholder: so long as he or she was regarded as an extraordinary or
supernaturally gifted individual, the leader had charisma, but once this
impression wore o, the charisma was gone. Weber refused to dene cha-
risma in terms of specic character traits. In premodern times, he sug-
gested, charisma was particularly associated with sorcerers, shamans, and
prophets individuals who claimed to work miracles, slip into trance-like

:
WuG, :: (EaS, ::,).

:,
WuG, :c: (EaS, ::,). See also MWG i/:,, ::c:; and Weber, Politik als Beruf (:,:,), in
MWG i/:;, :oc: (VL, ,,). It was in a letter of June ,, :,:c, discussing the poet Stefan George,
that Weber rst used the concept of charisma outside an explictly religious context. See Joachim
Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity, :cc,), ,,.

:o
David Norman Smith, Faith, Reason, and Charisma: Rudolf Sohm, Max Weber, and the
Teology of Grace, Sociological Inquiry o, no. : (:,,): ,:oc.

:;
MWG i/::, o: (EaS, ::::).
:
WuG, :c (EaS, ::).




Charismatic rulership ::
states, or channel the voice of God. In the ancient Greek city-states and
in modern democracies, leaders with demagogic skills of the spoken word
were frequently treated as charismatic. But there was no single trait that
qualied a leader as charismatic.
:,
In light of Webers ruthless criticism of
colleagues for imputing entelechies to human personalities or societies,
it was a peculiar move for him to base his sociology of rulership on an
unempirical and metaphysical substance like charisma.
:c
Weber believed that charisma represented the specically creative
revolutionary force of history.
::
A leader whose legitimacy rested on cha-
risma was capable of changing others subjective values and creating new
attitudes toward the world. But despite its transformative power, charis-
matic rulership was an unstable and evanescent phenomenon. If charis-
matic leaders could no longer demonstrate special powers, their authority
would disappear; thus charismatic rulership required constant demon-
strations of wondrous deeds. Charismatic leaders avoided formal organ-
ization or hierarchy, relying instead on purely personal bonds of loyalty
from disciples chosen on the basis of their own charismatic qualications.
Instead of receiving salaries or beneces, the followers shared in the booty
and donations received by their leaders. As a result, charismatic rulership
had diculty providing for its own long-term stability, the livelihood of
its followers families, or an orderly succession of leadership. All these
needs encouraged the followers of a charismatic leader to promote the
routinization (Veralltglichung) of charisma, its decoupling from individ-
ual leaders and association with ruling dynasties (hereditary charisma)
or institutional positions (charisma of oce). Legitimate rulership
would eventually come to rest on traditional or legal norms rather than
on extraordinary individuals.
::
Weber insisted that charisma was a value-free concept, applicable to
great moral heroes as well as evildoers and charlatans.
:,
Toward the end of
his life, however, he made it clear that charisma was a quality he person-
ally prized in politicians. During World War i Weber vocally supported
the introduction of parliamentary democracy with a Caesarist element
into Imperial Germany not because he felt personally committed to

:,
MWG i/:::, :::, (EaS, cc:); Weber, Politik als Beruf, ::: (VL, o;).

:c
See Max Weber, Roscher und Knies und die logischen Probleme der historischen
Nationalkonomie (:,c,o), in Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes
Winckelmann (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,), ::, (RK).

::
MWG i/::, : (EaS, :::;).

::
WuG, :c; MWG i/::, oo;, ,,,, (EaS, ::,, ::::,, ::::).

:,
WuG, :c; MWG i/::, oc: (EaS, ::, ::::).





Weber and charismatic rulership :,
democratic ideals, but because he believed that parliamentary democracy
with strong party leaders would best provide for creative foreign policy.
Weber supported the Weimar Republic, but within a year he had grown
disillusioned with how its parliamentary government functioned.
:
He
concluded that proportional representation, ideological polarization, and
patronage had created a parliament of philistines incapable in any sense of
constituting a place for the selection of political leaders.
:,
Te greatest hin-
drance to visionary political leadership was the mediocre level of parliamen-
tary representatives and the local notables (Honoratioren) who ensured their
own places on electoral lists.
:o
Tis dim view no doubt reected Webers
own frustration over his failure to win a spot on the electoral list of the
German Democratic Party. What were missing from German politics, he
now declared, were leaders who pursued their political careers not merely as
a remunerated profession but rather as a vocation (Beruf ) to which they felt
personally called. Germany was in grave danger of being ruled by profes-
sional politicians [Berufspolitiker] without a vocation, without the inner,
charismatic qualities that make a leader.
:;
Weber, by way of contrast, was
a compelling orator, a magnetic rabble-rouser who came from outside the
political establishment. As Webers friend Karl Loewenstein later declared,
He himself was the charismatic man he described.
:
Weber believed that a strong charismatic element lay at the heart of
modern mass democracy. In selecting a single leader on the basis of a
mass ballot, the electorate armed the candidates charismatic appeal:
Plebiscitary democracy, the most important type of leadership democracy
[Fhrer-Demokratie], is in its genuine sense a variant of charismatic authority,

:
Wolfgang Mommsen, Max Weber: Gesellschaft, Politik und Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, :,;), ;:. On the conceptual transition from Caesarism to charisma in Webers
work, see Peter Baehr, Max Weber and the Avatars of Caesarism, in Dictatorship in History
and Teory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism, ed. Peter Baehr and Melvin Richter
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :cc), :,,;; and Caesarism and Charisma: From
German Politics to Universal Sociology, in Caesarism, Charisma and Fate: Historical Sources and
Modern Resonances in the Work of Max Weber (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, :cc), ,,::.

:,
Max Weber, Der Reichsprsident (:,:,), in MWG i/:o, ::: (PW, ,co).

:o
Weber, Politik als Beruf, :c,, :::, (VL, o,, ;:,).
:;
Weber, Politik als Beruf, :: (VL, ;,).

:
Karl Loewenstein, Max Webers Political Ideas in the Perspective of Our Time, trans. Richard
and Clara Winston (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, :,oo), ;. After studying in
Heidelberg, Loewenstein completed his doctorate at the University of Munich, and taught there
as a lecturer prior to his emigration to the United States in :,,,. He briey held a position at Yale
University before settling into a permanent professorship in political science at Amherst College.
In the postwar decades he came to be regarded as one of the leading migr political scientists in
the United States. See Markus Lang, Karl Loewenstein: From Public Law to Political Science,
in German Scholars in Exile: New Studies in Intellectual History, ed. Axel Fair-Schulz and Mario
Kessler (Lanham, MD: Lexington, :c::), :,,c.





Charismatic rulership :
which hides behind the form of a legitimacy that is derived from and only
continues to exist through the will of the governed. In actuality, the leader
(demagogue) rules by virtue of his political followings devotion and trust in his
person as such.
:,
Weber increasingly endorsed this aspect of modern mass democracy in
the last two years of his life. In a democracy, the people choose the leader
in whom they place their trust, he explained in a :,:, conversation with
General Erich Ludendor. Ten the chosen person says: Now keep
your mouth shut and do what youre told. Te people and parties may no
longer interfere with him Afterward the people can judge him if the
leader has made mistakes, then o to the gallows with him!
,c
As a consultant to the committee that drafted the Weimar constitu-
tion, Weber pushed for the creation of a popularly elected Reich presi-
dency that would allow independent leaders to come to the fore and, if
necessary, go over the heads of feuding parliamentarians to win a fol-
lowing among the population at large. Weber wanted a Reich president
who would serve as head of the executive and control ocial patronage,
and who would possess the power to wield a delaying veto, call for refer-
enda, and dissolve parliament.
,:
At the same time, he made it clear that
the Reich president must respect the laws of the land and not attempt to
exert executive powers beyond their limits. Weber did not want to see the
pure charismatic rulership of a warlord or prophet realized in Germany.
Te president must view the prospect of the gallows as the reward await-
ing any attempt to interfere with the laws or to govern autocratically,
with parliament doing its part to remove those who had overstepped their
bounds.
,:
Parliament should also function as a kind of school for training
and disciplining future leaders in the sober business of committee work.
Nevertheless, it was clear that Weber saw parliament as fullling only
a secondary, controlling function; the real leadership would come from
party leaders capable of commanding a mass following. Webers con-
tribution to the constitutional committee did not prove decisive. In the
end, the framers did not endow the Reich presidency with the degree of
independence vis--vis the chancellor and parliament that Weber wanted.
Nonetheless, Weber was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the
guiding spirit behind the creation of the Reich presidency.
,,

:,
WuG, :,o (EaS, :o).

,c
I could get to like such a democracy! Ludendor replied. Lebensbild, oo, (Biography, o,,).

,:
Weber, Der Reichsprsident, :: (PW, ,c).

,:
Weber, Der Reichsprsident, ::: (PW, ,c,).

,,
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, :)o:):o, trans. Michael S. Steinberg
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,), ,,::.





Charisma and German politics :,
Weber, who died in :,:c, did not live to witness the rise of the mass
dictatorships that swept across Europe during the interwar period. Still,
in light of his enthusiasm for charismatic leaders, it is tempting to ask
whether he would have approved of Hitler and National Socialism. Much
in Webers political writings suggests that he would have welcomed the
rise of a political gure who was a gifted orator, an outsider to the polit-
ical party system, and an extreme nationalist. Nevertheless, the content
and style of National Socialism would have been anathema to Webers
personality. Although he proclaimed the need for a strong leader with an
authoritarian style, Weber was personally allergic to any kind of authority
gure, whether in academic or political life. He never missed the oppor-
tunity to defend the socially or politically marginalized such as Jews,
socialists, anarchists, and feminists at signicant cost to his own repu-
tation. We should not seek excuses for Webers political views: he was
foolish to dismiss the importance of dissent in a democracy, and his fas-
cination with authoritarian personalities and visionary leadership at the
expense of safeguarding political rights and freedoms did nothing to
strengthen the cause of liberal democracy. But it would be a mistake to
view him as a Nazi in the making.
,
cuaii sxa axo cii xax ioii ri cs
Webers concept of charisma was certainly not forgotten by German
scholars during the Weimar Republic. Historians and sociologists
acknowledged charisma as an important contribution to the theor-
etical literature on leadership, even though they were not inclined to
incorporate it into their own research programs.
,,
However, it was not
in the context of academic history or sociology that charisma found its
most interested audience. Te rst discussions of charisma after Webers
death were tied to current aairs. Starting in the mid :,:cs, the earliest
German analysts of Italian Fascism the economist Jakob Marschak,

,
For a fair assessment, see Radkau, Biography, c:.

,,
See Leopold von Wiese, Beziehungslehre, Vol. i of Allgemeine Soziologie als Lehre von den
Beziehungen und Beziehungsgebilden der Menschen (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, :,:),
::,,c; Otto Hintze, Max Webers Soziologie (:,:o), in Soziologie und Geschichte: Gesammelte
Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, Politik und Teorie der Geschichte, ed. Gerhard Oestreich, Vol.
ii of Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, :,o), :,; Albert
Salomon, Max Weber, Die Gesellschaft ,, Part i (:,:o): :,:,,; Franz W. Jerusalem, Grundzge
der Soziologie (Berlin: Industrieverlag Spaeth & Linde, :,,c), ;,, c:; Wilhelm Vleugels, Die
Masse: Ein Beitrag zur Lehre von den sozialen Gebilden (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, :,,c),
:o, :; and Teodor Geiger, Fhrung, in Handwrterbuch der Soziologie, ed. Alfred Vierkandt
(Stuttgart: Enke, :,,:), :,o:.



Charismatic rulership :o
the political geographer Johann Wilhelm Mannhardt, and the jurist
Gerhard Leibholz referred to charisma in their surveys of this new
political movement. All three had studied at Heidelberg, which may
explain why they were among the rst German scholars to avail them-
selves of Webers concept.
,o
Tey identied Mussolinis charisma as the
quality that prevented the constituencies in the Fascist movement from
going their separate ways. Tey noted that Mussolini and the Fascists
paid lip service to the rational legitimacy of the constitution and the
rule of law to maintain the support of bourgeois elites and the Catholic
Church, and they predicted that Mussolini would have to routin-
ize his charismatic rulership into a legal form if he wanted Fascism to
survive.
,;
Starting in the mid :,:cs, a small but signicant political movement
in Germany used the concept of charisma to articulate its leadership
goals. Known as the Junge Rechte (the Young Right) because they stood
on the right wing of the Social Democratic Party, this group of young
intellectuals believed that German socialism had failed to cultivate the
latent energies of the youth movement in particular, its antimaterialism,
irrationalism, and nationalism. Intellectuals associated with the Junge
Rechte stressed the indispensability of strong leadership for socialism, a
quality they believed had been ignored by Social Democratic theorists. A
number of intellectuals in the orbit of the Junge Rechte looked to Webers
political writings to conrm that democracy and strong leadership were

,o
Te Russian-born Marschak studied with Karl Jaspers and Alfred Weber, contributed an art-
icle to the Outline of Social Economics and later helped collect Max Webers political journalism
for posthumous publication. Leibholz received his doctorate under the supervision of Richard
Toma, a close friend and admirer of Webers. Mannhardt studied law and classical philology for
a period of time at Heidelberg. See Edith Hanke, Max Webers desk is now my altar: Marianne
Weber and the Intellectual Heritage of Her Husband, History of European Ideas ,,, no. , (:cc,):
,,; Lewis A. Coser, Refugee Scholars in America: Teir Impact and Teir Experiences (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, :,), :,:; Manfred H. Wiegandt, Antiliberal Foundations,
Democratic Convictions: Te Methodological and Political Position of Gerhard Leibholz in
the Weimar Republic, in From Liberal Democracy to Fascism: Legal and Political Tought in the
Weimar Republic, ed. Peter C. Caldwell and William E. Scheuerman (Boston, MA: Humanities,
:ccc), ::c; and David Tomas Murphy, Te Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Tought in Weimar
Germany, :)::),, (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, :,,;), :,,;.

,;
Jakob Marschak, Der korporative und der hierarchische Gedanke im Fascismus i, Archiv fr
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik ,: (:,:): ;:;, ;:;; Jakob Marschak, Der korporative und
der hierarchische Gedanke im Fascismus ii, Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik ,,
(:,:,): ::::,, ::,:o; J. W. Mannhardt, Der Faschismus (Munich: Beck, :,:,), :,,, :o:; Gerhard
Leibholz, Zu den Problemen des fascistischen Verfassungsrechts (Berlin: de Gruyter, :,:), ::,.
I am indebted to Dirk Ksler and Tomas Steiner, Academic Discussion or Political Guidance?
Social-Scientic Analyses of Fascism and National Socialism in Germany before :,,,, in
Sociology Responds to Fascism, ed. Stephen P. Turner and Dirk Ksler (London: Routledge, :,,:),
,c, for referring me to Marschaks discussion of charisma in conjunction with Fascism.


Charisma and German politics :;
compatible principles.
,
One of the movements founding gures, Franz
Osterroth, was particularly enthusiastic about the way that charisma cap-
tured these ideals. Reading Max Weber had made a strong impression
on him, recalled his erstwhile collaborator Ernst Niekisch. It was in
particular the concept of charisma around which his thoughts circled.
,,
Te theologian Paul Tillich, later famous as an migr in the United
States, was a spiritual beacon to many in the Junge Rechte. In Te Socialist
Decision, published in :,,, just before his ight from Nazi Germany,
Tillich argued that socialism could revitalize itself by appropriating the
rights existential critique of bourgeois values without accepting its pol-
itical ideology. Tillich believed that German socialism had inherited a
bourgeois conception of human nature that denigrated the middle stra-
tum of the human spirit between pure reason and mere subservient
matter.
c
In basing itself on eighteenth-century Enlightenment principles,
German socialism had rendered itself incapable of producing a leader to
rival Hitler:
Socialisms adoption of the bourgeois conception of human nature, and thereby
its separation of the middle stratum from the evaluation of human beings, has
e.g. eected a disregard for the charismatic personality, i.e. for that kind of per-
son who convinces through his Being, his spiritual-vital core, entirely regardless
of his rational formation and classication. Tis is the reason for the absence
in German socialism of people vital in symbol and Being who can create Eros
and devotion, and for the fact that, in sharp reaction, a personality weak in
strength of Being could become the symbol and leader of revolutionary political
Romanticism.
:
A year later, writing in English as a refugee in New York City, Tillich
had still not fundamentally changed his opinion of charisma. In charis-
matic leadership there is something unique and non-institutional; there is
a sort of dependence upon the free inner as well as the external recogni-
tion of those who are led, he observed in the journal Social Research. But
as soon as the leader transfers his personal authority to the authority of
his oce the interrelationship between the leader and his following is lost

,
Stefan Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus und Soziale Demokratie: Die sozialdemokratische Junge Rechte
:)::),, (Bonn: Dietz, :cco), ::;.

,,
Ernst Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben: Begegnungen und Begebnisse (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch,
:,,), :,. On Osterroths career, see Franz Osterroth, Der Hofgeismarkreis der Jungsozialisten,
Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte (:,o): ,:,o,.

c
Paul Tillich, Die sozialistische Entscheidung (:,,,), in Sozialphilosophische und ethische Schriften,
ed. Erdmann Sturm, Vol. iii of Hauptwerke (Berlin: de GruyterEvangelisches Verlagswerk,
:,,), ,c.

:
Ibid., ,:.




Charismatic rulership :
even if there is an attempt to maintain it. Te original restricted power
of personal authority becomes transformed into a derived but unlimited
power of the authority of oce. For Tillich, charismatic rulership in its
pure form was consensual and liberatory. What had gone wrong under
totalitarianism, he suggested, was that the original restricted power of
personal authority had become ossied into a charisma of oce whose
institutional power over the individual knew no bounds.
:
We might expect to nd many other Weimar intellectuals who shared
Osterroth and Tillichs favorable attitude toward charismatic rulership.
Intellectuals in n-de-sicle Europe and Germany in particular were
accustomed to thinking about leadership in terms of great, creative indi-
viduals (such as those apotheosized by Tomas Carlyle and Friedrich
Nietzsche). A voluntaristic ethos of political action became popular on
both the radical right and the left of the political spectrum.
,
When the
Weimar Republic struggled to resolve burning issues of economic redis-
tribution and renegotiate the punitive burdens of the Treaty of Versailles,
parliamentary democracy appeared increasingly unattractive in com-
parison with more authoritarian forms of rule. As is well known, many
German conservatives rejected parliamentarism from the outset, but even
liberal supporters of the Weimar Republic came to advocate increasing
the powers of the Reich president at the expense of a fractious parlia-
ment.

Tomas Mergel has observed that enthusiasm for a plebiscitarily

legitimated, but authoritative, if not always authoritarian conception of
rulership could be found across the ideological spectrum in Weimar
Germany.
,
It is thus all the more surprising to discover how many
German intellectuals deliberately rejected the concept of charisma or
refused to take it seriously during the :,:cs and early :,,cs. Webers con-
ception of leadership seemed too unrealistic, frivolous, liberal, or indi-
vidualistic to do justice to their visions of Fhrertum.

:
Paul Tillich, Te Totalitarian State and the Claims of the Church, Social Research :, no. :
(:,,): :,.

,
Introduction, in FMW, ,:; Georg Kamphausen, Charisma und Heroismus: Die Generation
von :,c und der Begri des Politischen, in Charisma: Teorie Religion Politik, ed. Winfried
Gebhardt, Arnold Zingerle, and Michael N. Ebertz (Berlin: de Gruyter, :,,,), :::o.

Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen Ideen
des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen :): und :),, (Munich: Nymphenburger, :,o:); Herbert
Dring, Der Weimarer Kreis: Studien zum politischen Bewutsein verfassungstreuer Hochschullehrer
in der Weimarer Republik (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, :,;,).

,
Tomas Mergel, Fhrer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine: Politische Erwartungsstrukturen in
der Weimarer Republik und dem Nationalsozialismus :,::,,o, in Politische Kulturgeschichte
der Zwischenkriegszeit :)::),), ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
:cc,), :co, :c,.




Charisma and German politics :,
Curt Geyer, an editor at the Socialist newspaper Forward, warned
that the concept of charisma set an unrealistic standard for leadership.
Te demand that the leader should accomplish the superhuman, that he
should with one stroke change mens institutions and the fundamental
attitude and orientation of their action, is silly because it is unrealizable,
he declared. In the whole history of mankind there has been no prece-
dent for such leaders. Te charismatic leader was nothing more than an
extra-human ideal type, the projection of a deeply felt inadequacy. It
could serve as a plausible ideal only for those whose own lack of self-con-
dence made them demand [from a leader] what he cannot perform.
o

Karl Kautsky, the pre-eminent theorist of German Social Democracy,
argued that the concept was incoherent. Te religious overtones of cha-
risma caused unnecessary confusion by suggesting that such leaders pos-
sessed the capacity to prophesize and work wonders. By using charisma
instead of the simple, generally understood word gift [Begabung], he
objected, Weber brings a mystical element into the subconscious dur-
ing this whole discussion, which does not promote clarity.
;
Te kind of
magical aura that Weber imputed to charismatic leaders typied a few
extraordinary dictators who are either demigods or impostors, but cer-
tainly not the mainstream leaders of modern politics. Neither Napolon,
Otto von Bismarck, August Bebel, Vladimir Lenin, nor Mussolini based
their reputation on supposed supernatural powers.

Kautsky was particu-

larly oended that Weber had enlisted Kurt Eisner, the martyred socialist
revolutionary, as a prototypical charismatic leader alongside such color-
ful historical gures as berserkers and epileptic shamans. Eisner had won
the condence of the masses through his selessness and intelligence,
Kautsky insisted, and not through magic, seizures, or fraud.
,
In light of the challenges that Weimar democracy faced from the
right wing of the political spectrum, did Webers concept of charisma
awaken more enthusiasm among conservative intellectuals? Te consti-
tutional jurist Carl Schmitt, arguably the most important conservative
political thinker in Weimar Germany, would be a plausible candidate.
Schmitt had taken classes with Weber at the University of Munich after
World War i, and throughout his career referred to Webers writings

o
Curt Geyer, Fhrer und Masse in der Demokratie (Berlin: Dietz, :,:o), ::,. I am indebted to
Mergel, Fhrer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine, :c,, for referring me to Geyer. Mergel,
however, interprets Geyers text as ultimately an armation of charismatic rulership.

;
Karl Kautsky, Der Staat und die Entwicklung der Menschheit, Vol. ii of Die materialistische
Geschichtsauassung, :nd edn. (Berlin: Dietz, :,:,), c.

Ibid., :, o.
,
Ibid., ::.



Charismatic rulership :,c
and ideas.
,c
In the waning years of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt
gained political attention thanks to his radical interpretation of the
constitution, which endowed the Reich president with quasi-dictato-
rial powers. In May, :,,, he joined the Nazi Party and briey served
as an important legal advisor to the regime. Political theorists and his-
torians, Wolfgang Mommsen most famously among them, have long
maintained that Schmitts political thought should be understood as
a radicalization of Webers concept of charismatic rulership.
,:
Despite
its almost canonical acceptance, this interpretation is substantiated by
none of Schmitts writings. While Schmitt doubtless regarded Weber as
a prescient diagnostician of the crisis of legal positivism, a closer exam-
ination of Schmitts work shows that he rejected charisma as a concept
for articulating his own vision of political legitimacy.
During the early :,:cs Schmitt looked to the Catholic Church as a
model for the kind of political sovereignty he wished to see realized in
Germany. Schmitt believed that the popes authority derived from his
capacity for representation, his ability to make an invisible entity the
person of Christ publicly present.
,:
In his essay Roman Catholicism and
Political Form, Schmitt explained that
Te pope is not the prophet but rather the Vicar of Christ. Such a formation
keeps all the fanatical wildness of an unbridled prophetic class at bay. By virtue
of the fact that his oce is made independent of charisma, the priest receives a
dignity that appears entirely abstracted from his concrete person. Nevertheless
he is not the functionary and commissar of republican thought, and his dignity
is not impersonal like that of the modern ocial. Instead, his oce goes all the
way back, in an unbroken chain, to the personal mission and person of Christ.
Tat is indeed the most amazing complexio oppositorum.
,,

,c
In :,:; Schmitt took a position in the oce of the wartime military censor in Munich, which
gave him the opportunity to attend Webers political speech Germanys New Order as well
as the famous lectures Scholarship as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation. Schmitt also
attended Webers course oerings at the University of Munich in the winter semester of :,:,:c,
in addition to conducting several private conversations with him about Oswald Spengler, polit-
ics, and the state. See G. L. Ulmen, Politischer Mehrwert: Eine Studie ber Max Weber und Carl
Schmitt (Weinheim: VCH, :,,:), :c:.

,:
See Karl Lwith, Max Weber und seine Nachfolger (:,,,/c), in Hegel und die Aufhebung der
Philosophie im :). Jahrhundert Max Weber, Vol. v of Smtliche Schriften (Stuttgart: Metzler,
:,), c:; Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, ,:,; and William E. Scheuerman,
Carl Schmitt: Te End of Law (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, :,,,), :,.

,:
John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,;), :o:.

,,
Carl Schmitt, Rmischer Katholizismus und politische Form, :nd edn. (Stuttgart: KlettCotta,
:cc: [:,:,]), :,.




Charisma and German politics :,:
According to Schmitt, the Catholic priesthood successfully navigated
a middle course between the Scylla of irrational prophecy and the
Charybdis of impersonal bureaucracy. It could do so because it was cap-
able of publicly representing Christ and his dignity on earth. In his polit-
ical writings of the late :,:cs and early :,,cs, Schmitt criticized Weimar
parliamentarism for yielding a quantitative calculus of special interests
rather than a representation of the nation (Volk) as a whole. Tis latter
task, he argued, could be accomplished much more eectively by the
popularly elected Reich president.
,
Nonetheless, as is clear from his deni-
gration of charismas role in the Catholic Church, Schmitt attached lit-
tle importance to the personality and demagogic talents of the religious
or political leader, qualities that had been of such central importance to
Weber. As Andreas Kalyvas has noted, Schmitt believed that the sover-
eigns legitimacy derived from something entirely impersonal, namely, the
power to represent the people or state as a whole.
,,
Schmitts disregard
for the concept of charisma was evident even to his contemporaries. As
early as :,,:, Erich Voegelin suggested that Schmitts constitutional the-
ory would have gained conceptual clarity by distinguishing between the
personal charisma of a ruler, the charisma of oce, and what Voegelin
called the pathos of the people.
,o
Te reaction of the young conservative historian Christoph Steding to
charisma suggests that Schmitts aversion was not purely idiosyncratic.
On the eve of Weimars collapse, Steding, a future darling of the Nazi aca-
demic establishment, published a dissertation titled Max Webers Politics
and Scholarship.
,;
Tis short and incisive monograph, which attracted
positive attention from Schmitt among others, sought to show that
Webers scholarly theses and political views were in fact objectications
of one and the same self, and thus identical with each other.
,
At the core

,
McCormick, Carl Schmitts Critique, :o,, :o,, :,.

,,
Andreas Kalyvas, Whos Afraid of Carl Schmitt?, Philosophy & Social Criticism :,, no. , (:,,,):
,:.

,o
Erich Voegelin, Die Verfassungslehre von Carl Schmitt: Versuch einer konstruktiven Analyse
ihrer staatstheoretischen Prinzipien, Zeitschrift fr entliches Recht :: (:,,:): :c:.

,;
Christoph Steding, Politik und Wissenschaft bei Max Weber (Breslau: Korn, :,,:). On Stedings
promising career, cut short by his untimely death in :,,, see Walter Frank, Christoph Steding:
Ein Denkmal, in Das Reich und die Krankheit der europischen Kultur, by Christoph Steding
(Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, :,,), xiiixlviii; and Helmut Heiber, Walter Frank und
sein Reichsinstitut fr Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,
:,oo), ,c:,:.

,
Steding, Politik und Wissenschaft bei Max Weber, ::. Schmitt later praised Stedings outstand-
ing, gripping, always concrete and yet always penetrating scholarly analysis of Max Weber.
Carl Schmitt, Neutralitt und Neutralisierungen: Zu Christoph Stedings Das Reich und die





Charismatic rulership :,:
of Webers life, Steding argued, was an ethos of radical individualism,
which opposed all institutions or movements that bound the individual
within a totality. Even though Weber claimed to abide by the principle
of value freedom in scholarship, his entire oeuvre could be read as an act
of self-interpretation and self-realization, an attempt to project his own
bourgeois ego onto the canvas of world history to make up for his lack of
real-world opportunities for action. Webers studies of Hebrew prophets
and Puritans were disguised self-knowledge in that they purported to
identify the qualities Weber most admired in himself as decisive forces in
the development of western civilization.
,,
For great charismatics such as
the ancient Hebrew prophets or modern demagogues, Steding observed,
the most important thing is inner independence and freedom from every
regulation. Te tone of agitation so palpable in Webers political writ-
ings, and the invective he launched at German ocialdom, evinced the
personal charisma of this radical individualist who rebels against every
authority.
oc
Steding believed that sympathetic engagement with lib-
eral thought was necessary for Germany to complete its passage into a
new conservative era, for only by coming to terms with liberalism could
Germans reconcile themselves to their political past and at the same
time transcend it. As the embodiment of the greatness and the foibles of
n-de-sicle liberalism, Steding argued, Weber provided the perfect sub-
ject for a case study. Stedings book implied that charisma represented
liberalisms noble longing in the hour of its demise, rather than an ideal
for future leadership.
In the nal years of the Weimar Republic, the conservative Gttingen
law professor Julius Binder voiced similar reservations about the individu-
alism embodied in Webers vision of leadership, even though he did not
refer to charisma explicitly. Binder expressed his admiration for Weber,
whom he described as an astute and original scholar who towers over
the other [German democrats] in his clarity of judgment and strength
of political will.
o:
In his view, Weber could not be compared with the
opportunistic democrats (Konjukturdemokraten) of the German
Revolution, since Weber was much too skeptical of the parliamentary
Krankheit der europischen Kultur (:,,,), in Positionen und Begrie im Kampf mit Weimar
GenfVersailles :):,:),) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :, [:,c]), :;:.

,,
Steding, Politik und Wissenschaft bei Max Weber, ,o.

oc
Ibid., ,, o;.

o:
Julius Binder, Fhrerauslese in der Demokratie (Langensalza: Beyer, :,:,), ,, ,;. On Binders
career, see Ralf Dreier, Julius Binder (:;c:,,,): Ein Rechtsphilosoph zwischen Kaiserreich
und Nationalsozialismus, in Rechtswissenschaft in Gttingen: Gttinger Juristen aus :,o Jahre, ed.
Fritz Loos (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, :,;), ,,,,.



Charisma and German politics :,,
republic of :,: for them to claim him as one of their own.
o:
Nonetheless,
he was bothered that Weber expected the leader to follow his own faith
(Glaube). Tis element of individualism only accentuated the pluralism
of the parliamentary system and minimized decisive political action.
Politicians ought to follow objective norms rather than subjective
beliefs, Binder argued. Te leader was supposed to embody the spirit of
the Volk, as an organic outgrowth of the group, not as a detached individ-
ual standing outside it.
o,
Te Nazi Party was a minor political phenomenon until the national
elections of :,,c, when nancial crisis and parliamentary deadlock cata-
pulted it to :., percent of the national vote a vast improvement over
the :.o percent it had received two years earlier. In Te German Political
Parties, published two years after the Nazis electoral breakthrough, the
young sociologist Sigmund Neumann observed that
in Germany, and especially in times of crisis, political leadership of a charismatic
nature receives outstanding recognition: the hero and miracle worker of super-
human grace, who nds believers on the basis of enthusiasm, or desperation and
hope; who appeals to a transformation of fundamental convictions over know-
ledge of correct objectives; whose leadership is a mission and inner task of a
specically extraordinary nature.
Paraphrasing Weber, Neumann noted that charismatic leadership must
undergo routinization or rationalization to satisfy its followers material
needs. Neumann also identied a specically charismatic character in
the Nazi conception of leadership and the faith of its followers, and pre-
dicted that National Socialism, too, would experience routinization and
rationalization to secure its survival and daily eectiveness.
o
Te sudden rise of National Socialism inspired at least one German
intellectual, the Frankfurt sociologist Heinz Marr, to reconsider his earl-
ier negative attitude toward charismatic rulership. In :,:; Marr had
published an article lamenting the absence of gifted political leaders in
Germany. Tere he declared, I am not Italian enough to place my hope
for the political future of my German people on the charisma, on the

o:
Binder, Fhrerauslese in der Demokratie, ,.
o,
Ibid., :,, ,c:.

o
Sigmund Neumann, Die deutschen Parteien: Wesen und Wandel nach dem Kriege (Berlin: Junker
und Dnnhaupt, :,,:), :c,. Neumann had studied at Heidelberg with Alfred Weber and then
written his Ph.D. dissertation at Leipzig under Hans Freyer. Already distinguished by the
end of the Weimar Republic, Neumann rose to prominence as an migr in England and the
United States. On his career, see Alfons Sllner, Sigmund Neumanns Permanent Revolution:
Ein vergessener Klassiker der vergleichenden Diktaturforschung, in Totalitarismus: Eine
Ideengeschichte des :o. Jahrhunderts, ed. Alfons Sllner, Ralf Walkenhaus, and Karin Wieland
(Berlin: Akademie, :,,;), ,,;,.


Charismatic rulership :,
magic of an adventurous person; I nd such sensational, such big-city
and cinematic longings completely beneath the dignity of our past and
the gravity of our current situation.
o,
For Marr, charisma was clearly
redolent of Italian Fascism and therefore inappropriate for the seriousness
of German politics. During the Weimar Republic Marrs political views
tended toward the nationally oriented socialism espoused by Friedrich
Naumann. Nonetheless, after the Nazi government came to power in
:,,,, Marr was oered the University of Frankfurts chair in sociology,
which had been vacated by the dismissal of Karl Mannheim.
oo
To ingrati-
ate himself with the new regime, Marr published a collection of articles
that he revised so as to make his earlier political views seem continu-
ous with his belated support for National Socialism. Marr altered and
amended the text of his :,:; article so that it would project a more posi-
tive disposition toward charisma:
I am not romantic enough to place my hope for the political future of my
German people on the magic of an adventurous person; I nd such sensational,
such big-city and cinematic longings completely beneath the dignity of our past
and the gravity of our current situation. But I will admit that our people needs
exemplary unpolitical leaders to awaken its democratic powers (and here I
mean democratic in the Prussian sense), probably [wohl auch] a charismatic
person, who presents exemplary qualities of leadership in the sense of German
virtues, and not with the entitlement of Mussolini, the late Caesar!
o;
Marr pretended as if these sentences had appeared in the original text
from :,:;, claiming elsewhere in the book that his longing for a charis-
matic leader had been fullled by Hitlers arrival:
Our benecent God has obtained for us in the exalted form of our dear Reich
leader the exemplary unpolitical leader; he has also bestowed on us the
charismatic person that I then pointed to. And in that regard, it was div-
ine providence that Hitler could not take the short and comfortable path of
Mussolini, but rather that he felt himself compelled to shoulder the hardship of
winning popular support through the disagreeable counting of votes.
o

o,
Heinz Marr, Grostadt und politische Lebensform (Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des heutigen
deutschen Parteiensystems), in Grostadt und Volkstum, by Friedrich Muckermann, Siegfried
Passarge, Friedrich Knkel, and Heinz Marr (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, :,:;), :,:.

oo
Heinz Marr was the son of Wilhelm Marr, the writer who popularized the term Antisemitismus
in Germany. On Heinz Marrs career, see Notker Hammerstein, Von der Stiftungsuniversitt zur
staatlichen Hochschule :):,:),o, Vol. i of Die Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt am
Main (Neuwied: Metzner, :,,), ::o; and Carsten Klingemann, Soziologie im Dritten Reich
(Baden-Baden: Nomos, :,,o), :c,:,.

o;
Heinz Marr, Die Massenwelt im Kampf um ihre Form: Zur Soziologie der deutschen Gegenwart
(Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, :,,), ,.

o
Ibid., ,::.




Charisma and German politics :,,
For Marr, Hitlers great innovation had been to take the sociological form
of the Bund (league) an association of individuals bound together not
by traditional or contractual obligations but by their highly emotional
attachment to an extraordinary leader and to turn it into a powerful
alternative to the typical parliamentary party.
o,
Why did Marr suddenly
change his mind about charisma? It is dicult to account for this pecu-
liar about-face. Marr was an admirer of Webers sociology, referring to
him in his book as my teacher and master.
;c
Perhaps the best explan-
ation is that Marr believed Hitlers legitimacy was truly charismatic in
Webers sense of the term. If Marr wanted to express his loyalty to the
Nazi regime, intellectual if not personal consistency would require him to
amend his earlier views on the importance and value of charisma.
Although Webers equation of real leadership with charismatic rulership
remained still perceptible in Germany after the Nazis came to power,
as one contemporary noted, it received relatively little attention from
scholars.
;:
Two noteworthy exceptions were the jurists Heinrich Triepel
and Arnold Kttgen. Triepel was an international lawyer and national-
conservative emeritus who was removed from National Socialism.
;:
In
a :,, treatise on Germanys status in the new world order, he took the
occasion to assert that the true leader was one who possessed original
authority. So long as one understood charisma simply to mean a persons
energy of volition, he argued, it was entirely correct to characterize the
leader simply as the man endowed with charismatic power.
;,
It is dicult
to detect the larger political or intellectual motivations driving Triepels
use of charisma. However, in the case of Kttgen, a young professor at the
University of Greifswald who was a leading scholar of administrative law
under National Socialism, we can discern a specic strategy behind his
use of the concept. According to a prominent historian of German law,
Kttgen attempted to defend rationality, the adherence of administration

o,
Ibid., ,:. Marr derived his model of the Bund from the sociologist Herman Schmalenbach,
who was himself partially inspired by Webers concept of charisma. See Herman Schmalenbach,
Die soziologische Kategorie des Bundes, Die Dioskuren : (:,::): ,,:c,. Marrs analysis of
National Socialism in terms of charisma and Bund was subsequently endorsed by the sociologist
Alfred von Martin, Zur Soziologie der Gegenwart, Archiv fr Kulturgeschichte :o, no. : (:,,;):
:::,.

;c
Marr, Die Massenwelt, ;.

;:
Hans Bernhard Braue, Die Fhrungsordnung des deutschen Volkes: Grundlegung einer
Fhrungslehre (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, :,c), .

;:
Michael Stolleis, A History of Public Law in Germany, :):,:),,, trans. Tomas Dunlap (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, :cc), :.

;,
Heinrich Triepel, Die Hegemonie: Ein Buch von fhrenden Staaten (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
:,,), ,.





Charismatic rulership :,o
to the law, and administrative law as a system of order against the chaos
of the unregulated exercise of power, even while he rejected the posi-
tivist jurisprudence of Weimar Germany.
;
Kttgen used the concept of
charisma to distinguish between the nature of public administration and
political leadership under National Socialism. Paraphrasing Webers typ-
ology of legitimate rulership, he insisted that administration was based on
the legality of a rational order.
;,
Political leadership, on the other hand,
was in its essence charismatic. It is not the objective institution of the
head of state that stands at the apex of a state and its people, Kttgen
stipulated, but rather a concrete person, who as such bases his author-
ity not so much on an abstract norm as on a personal charisma.
;o
Tis
dichotomy enabled Kttgen to assert the need for rational administrative
law to co-exist alongside irrational charismatic leadership: It is precisely
in the Fhrerstaat that the charismatic character of the political leader-
ship cannot be dispensed with, while on the other hand, in contrast to
primitive forms of administration, the current administration responsible
for satisfying modern mass needs is with the same necessity depend-
ent on extensive rational orders.
;;
With the exception of Marr, Triepel, and Kttgen, German schol-
ars under National Socialism did not nd charisma a useful concept to
think with. We may infer one major reason for this disregard from a :,,,
book titled Leaders and Leadership, written by the constitutional jurist
Herbert Krger. If the charismatic leader was an ahistorical category
that included shamans, prophets, and berserkers, Krger argued, then the
uniqueness of a leader who inaugurated a new age could not be appre-
ciated. For how could the grandeur of such a leader be comprehended
through odious comparisons with these defunct and less worthy forms of
leadership?
;
Te implication was that Webers ideal-typical understand-
ing of leadership demeaned the epochal signicance of Germanys politi-
cal revolution after :,,,. In an age of messianic leadership, the suggestion
that Hitlers place could be historicized or generalized through social-
scientic terminology was considered demeaning to the Fhrer.
Te most prominent Nazi appropriation of charisma occurred only in
the immediate aftermath of World War ii. Te writer in question was

;
Stolleis, History of Public Law, ,.

;,
Arnold Kttgen, Die Gesetzmigkeit der Verwaltung im Fhrerstaat, Reichsverwaltungsblatt
,;, no. :: (:,,o): oc.

;o
Arnold Kttgen, Deutsche Verwaltung (Berlin: Weidmann, :,,;), :,.

;;
Kttgen, Die Gesetzmigkeit der Verwaltung, oc.

;
Herbert Krger, Fhrer und Fhrung (Breslau: Korn, :,,,), ,.





Charisma and German politics :,;
Hans Frank, Hitlers erstwhile personal lawyer, President of the Academy
of German Law, and Gauleiter of the General Government. During his
imprisonment at Nuremberg in :,,o, Frank wrote down his recollec-
tions of Hitler and the rise and fall of National Socialism, and in several
passages invoked charismatic rulership to characterize the Fhrer.
;,
On
the day of his appointment as Reich chancellor in January, :,,,, Frank
recalled, Hitler represented
a great prototype of the charismatic form of rulership, and Max Weber would
have pointed to him if he wanted to illustrate his sociological typology of pol-
itical leadership with a striking personality who exemplied the belief in reve-
lation. Te people believed in him, as if he were a savior sent to them by God
himself to relieve them from urgent distress and earthly misery, insofar as it
concerned earthly possibilities.
c
Despite the passages fervent tone, it would be a mistake to assume that
Frank personally endorsed charismatic rulership or that he associated it
with those features of the Nazi regime he admired. During World War
ii Frank tried to cultivate the reputation of a serious jurist and advocate
of the rule of law a role he appears to have found perfectly compat-
ible with ordering the mass murder of Poles and Jews and he increas-
ingly objected to the SSs prerogatives and Hitlers erratic style of personal
rule.
:
In a :,c address at the Munich Technical College, he intimated
that the Nazi regime was in danger of spinning out of control without
strong state institutions to guide it. A permanently continued revolution
leads to anarchy, just as an eternally continued tradition leads to lethargy,
he warned. Without an orderly system for implementing the will of the
state, neither great policies nor the regulation of the life of a peoples com-
munity is possible.
:
Frank emphasized the importance of rening the
technique of the state and hailed Weber as a thinker who deemed pub-
lic administration worthy of scholarly attention.
,
Nowhere did he men-
tion that Weber had been a sharp critic of the enervating machinery of
public administration. Instead, he praised Weber as a theorist whose acu-
men was indispensable for building a more ecient and powerful state.

;,
Klingemann, Soziologie im Dritten Reich, :;,o.

c
Hans Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens: Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit auf Grund eigener Erlebnisse
und Erkenntnisse (MunichGrfelng: Beck, :,,,), ::.

:
Mark Mazower, Hitlers Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Penguin, :cc), :,:,.

:
Hans Frank, Technik des Staates: Akademische Jahresfeier :),o der Technischen Hochschule
Mnchen (Munich, :,c), . I am indebted to Klingemann, Soziologie im Dritten Reich, :;,,
for referring me to Franks address.

,
Frank, Technik des Staates, ,.





Charismatic rulership :,
By the end of the war Frank had fallen out of favor with the inner circle
of the Nazi regime. He was no longer permitted to speak publicly and lost
all Party oces with the exception of Gauleiter.

Tis disgrace clearly ran-

kled him as he composed his memoirs at Nuremberg. On the same page
where he identied Hitler as a charismatic gure, he noted the germ of
degeneracy that was already present in National Socialism in :,,,. Hitler
had been called to lead the state, to renew the state. But he did not love
the state Whoever does not lovingly and caringly attend to the state as
a communal aair with all its irreplaceable guarantees of order and life,
whoever does not consecrate and protect it, cannot truly be a statesman.
Hitlers attainment of the Reich chancellorship constitued a victory for the
Nazi Party but at the same time a threat to the state.
,
At the end of
the Weimar Republic, Germans expected some kind of miracle from him
[Hitler], [and] the German predicament seemed so forsaken, that every-
one knew that only something totally extraordinary and extra-normal was
capable of mastering the situation. Hitler was well aware of these high
expectations, and he knew that they gave him high authority and ena-
bled him to wager a great deal. But therein lay the fatal aw of the Nazi
Regime: the popular belief that Hitler could work wonders was partially
responsible for his downfall, as it legitimized much that would nor-
mally have been incomprehensible about his actions. It became his weak-
ness always to want to be proven right, and therefore never to have to give
up [the opportunity of] a quasi-miraculous step forward.
o
It is fair to
assume that much of what Frank wrote in his memoirs was intended to be
self-exculpatory. In blaming Hitlers personal charisma for the collapse of
National Socialism, Frank shifted responsibility from his own shoulders.
Nonetheless, judging from his advocacy of a robust German state during
the years of National Socialist rule, we can infer that it was not charisma
but rather bureaucracy that Frank freighted with positive connotations.
He acknowledged that Hitlers charisma was a reality, but he regarded it
with ambivalence if not outright mistrust.
iiox iuioii ro rui uxi rio s raris
By the end of World War ii, it was in the United States, and not in
Germany, that charisma had become a foundational concept in the

Klingemann, Soziologie im Dritten Reich, :;; Mazower, Hitlers Empire, :,,.

,
Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens, ::.
o
Ibid., ::,.




From Europe to the United States :,,
modern social sciences. Since Webers own writings on charisma remained
untranslated into English until :,o;, the interpretations of migr
and American scholars mediated the introduction of the concept into
American social science.
;
Te initiator of this process was Webers close
friend Robert Michels, a German sociologist who had emigrated to Italy
well before World War i. Michelss study of oligarchic tendencies in mass
politics, Toward a Sociology of Political Parties in Modern Democracies
(:,::), brought him international prominence and was quickly translated
into English. Te University of Chicago invited him to be a guest lec-
turer in :,:;, and his English-language article, Some Reections on the
Sociological Character of Political Parties, appeared that same year in the
American Political Science Review. Tere he explained that if the leader
exercises his inuence over his followers by qualities so striking that they
seem to them supernatural, one can call him a charismatic chief, naming
as examples Ferdinand Lassalle, August Bebel, Jean Jaurs (all socialists),
and Mussolini. Michelss article was the rst to refer to Webers con-
cept of charisma in the United States, but it made no reference to Weber
himself.

Michels began his career at the turn of the twentieth century as syndic-
alist critic of German socialism. He rst came to Webers attention when
he published articles in the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik
attacking the German Social Democratic Party for seeking votes at the
expense of promoting revolutionary consciousness. When Michels was
barred from university employment in Germany on account of his social-
ist aliations, Weber helped him nd a teaching position in Italy and
continued to support his career despite their great dierences in tem-
perament and political views. In Italy Michels became acquainted with
the elitist theories of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Teir socio-
logical thesis, that mass movements invariably come to be dominated by
a small coterie of leaders, led him to conclude that social democracys
decadence was symptomatic of a more general tendency toward oligarchy
and conservatism in democratic organizations. Now alienated from both

;
Webers writings on charisma rst appeared in English translation in Max Weber, From Max
Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University
Press, :,o); and Te Teory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons, trans.
A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Free Press, :,o [:,;]).

Roberto Michels, Some Reections on the Sociological Character of Political Parties, American
Political Science Review ::, no. (:,:;): ;,, ;,,;. See also Roberto Michels, Authority, in
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R. A. Seligman (New York: Macmillan, :,,c),
Vol. ii, ,:,. Following his emigration to Italy, Michels often published under the name Roberto
rather than Robert.


Charismatic rulership :cc
socialism and democracy, Michels came to see Mussolini and the Fascists
as the bearers of a new elite that could rejuvenate Italys enervated polit-
ical culture.
,
After Mussolinis shift toward outright dictatorship in :,:,,
Michels began using the concept of charisma to describe and endorse the
new regime in his German and Italian writings. As he wrote in a survey of
Italian culture and politics, Mussolini is the modern paradigm of what
Weber understood as a charismatic leader: free and wild, he has derived
his charisma not from any inheritance or overgrown tradition, but from
the masses faith in him and from his own self-developed dynamism, from
a faith that for many borders on the transcendental.
,c
Michels believed
that parliamentary democracy operated on the spurious principle that
voters could actually delegate their individual wills to their elected repre-
sentatives. Charismatic rulership, on the other hand, suered from none
of these hypocrisies. When faced with an individual who possessed out-
standing qualities, and whose successes were perceived to derive from
his supernatural powers, the masses voluntarily made a sacrice of their
will to the leader.
,:
Te political relevance of charisma was not immediately apparent to
sociologists in the United States. When American and migr German
scholars provided their rst brief glosses on the concept in the late :,:cs
and early :,,cs, they emphasized its relevance to economics, the soci-
ology of religion, and the anthropology of primitive communities.
,:
Like
Weber at that time, charisma still stood on the periphery of American

,
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and Roberto Michels: An Asymmetrical Partnership,
Archives europennes de sociologie ::, no. : (:,:): :c:, :c;; David Beetham, From Socialism
to Fascism: Te Relation between Teory and Practice in the Work of Robert Michels, Political
Studies :, (:,;;): ,:o, :o::, :o; Wilfried Rhrich, Robert Michels: Vom sozialistisch-syndikalis-
tischen zum faschistischen Credo (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, :,;:), :,:o;.

,c
Robert Michels, Italien von heute: Politische und wirtschaftliche Kulturgeschichte von :o bis :),o
(Zurich: Orell Fssli, :,,c), :o;. See also Michels, Corso di sociologia politica (:,:;), published
in English translation as Roberto Michels, First Lectures in Political Sociology, ed. Alfred de
Grazia (New York: Harper Torchbooks, :,o,), ::,,:.

,:
Robert Michels, Grundstzliches zum Problem der Demokratie, Zeitschrift fr Politik :;, no.
(:,:;): :,c:; Robert Michels, ber die Kriterien der Bildung und Entwicklung politischer
Parteien, Schmollers Jahrbuch ,: (:,:;): ,:c; Beetham, From Socialism to Fascism, :;.

,:
Teodore Abel, Systematic Sociology in Germany: A Critical Analysis of Some Attempts to Establish
Sociology as an Independent Science (New York: Octagon Books, :,o, [:,:,]), :,c; Talcott
Parsons, Capitalism in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber (:,:/,), in Te Early
Essays, ed. Charles Camic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,,:), ,:,; Max Weber, Te
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London: Allen & Unwin,
:,;o [:,,c]), :;, ::n:c,; Albert Salomon, Max Webers Sociology, Social Research :, no. :
(:,,,): o, ;:,. An exception was Howard Beckers translation and elaboration of Leopold von
Wieses sociological writings, in which the political signicance of Webers concept of charisma
was clearly stated. See Leopold von Wiese, Systematic Sociology on the Basis of the Beziehungslehre
and Gebildelehre, ed. Howard Becker (New York: Wiley, :,,:), ,c,,.




From Europe to the United States :c:
social science. But starting in the mid :,,cs, and accelerating markedly
throughout the decade that followed, German migrs and American
social scientists embraced charisma for analyzing the eras political trans-
formations. Tis period witnessed the rise of National Socialism and the
consolidation of Joseph Stalins dictatorship in the Soviet Union. In the
eyes of many observers, the rise of Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, and above
all Hitler, augured an age of charismatic leaders, and Webers sociology
appeared to hold the key to understanding these profound developments.
Social scientists came to appreciate that charisma was a concept not only
of historical or academic interest but also of great relevance for under-
standing the modern world.
Michelss English-language writings oered one source of inspiration
for American scholars who wished to characterize Mussolini, Hitler, and
Lenin in charismatic terms.
,,
Of greater consequence was the arrival in
the United States after :,,, of German-speaking refugee scholars, many of
whom were already admirers of Webers work. Seeking employment and
professional visibility, they saw the opportunity to popularize a relatively
unknown German thinker whose concepts had become eerily relevant
after the rise of National Socialism. Te concept of charisma was invoked
by many of the leading gures in the German intellectual emigration,
such as Hans Gerth, Waldemar Gurian, Hans Kohn, Emil Lederer, Franz
Neumann, Hermann Rauschning, and Paul Tillich. Tey were joined
by a handful of American scholars who read German and were familiar
with Webers sociological writings, in particular Teodore Abel, Howard
Becker, and Parsons. Since Webers writings on charisma were not yet
available in translation, these migrs and American specialists wielded
great power when it came to determining the context and interpretive
framework in which Americans would understand charisma.
What made charisma such a good concept to think with? Te rst attrac-
tion was only partly related to Webers own work. Since the early :,:cs
various European writers had sought to understand Fascism, Bolshevism,
and National Socialism as essentially secularized religious movements.
On the eve of World War ii this tendency to interpret modern mass dic-
tatorships in terms of political religion reached an important conjunc-
ture in the works of the migr scholars Voegelin, Gurian, Tillich, and
others. Tese authors argued that totalitarian political movements not

,,
See Carl A. Dawson and Warner E. Gettys, An Introduction to Sociology (New York: Ronald,
:,,,), ,;:; and Francis Graham Wilson, Te Elements of Modern Politics: An Introduction to
Political Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, :,,o), ,,n:. Both cited Michels as their source for
the concept of charisma.

Charismatic rulership :c:
only looked and felt like organized religions, as evident in their embrace
of ritual, mysteries, and mass celebrations, but that they also competed
with religions by oering holistic interpretations of the world replete with
dogmas, catechisms, and theodicy.
,
In light of its status as a religious
concept transplanted into the sphere of politics, charisma could serve as
shorthand for encapsulating or articulating the theory of political reli-
gion, and it was used in this sense by migr and American writers, often
without any explicit acknowledgment of Weber or his works. Lederer, a
former Heidelberg professor teaching at the University in Exile in the New
School for Social Research, contended that any mass party which does
not stand for a special group or interest or idea, which claims the dignity
of a religion, depends upon the charisma of the leader, noting that this
charisma is one of the greatest secrets of social psychology and of history.
Robert MacIver of Columbia University believed that Europeans were
experiencing a profound spiritual crisis and seeking salvation by resort
to a new form of authority, no more the authority of king or emperor or
pope but the authority of the prophet arising from the people, the cha-
rismatic leader, the man of destiny. In particular, it was Hitlers leader-
ship style that drew comparisons through the concept of charisma to a
religious revival movement. Unbelievers may smile at the religious zeal
and devotion of his followers, wrote the migr Czech economist Frank
Munk, but to millions of Germans Hitlers charisma is as real as that
of any founder of a new church was in his time. Te Austrian econo-
mist and future management guru Peter Drucker explained that the
main function of the fascist dictator is to save society by his personal
demonic charism [sic]. It is no accident that German Protestant farmers
generally put Hitlers picture where the picture of Christ used to hang.
In Behemoth the migr jurist Franz Neumann argued that Hitlers lead-
ership represented a recrudescence of medieval thaumaturgic kingship, a
topic that he treated in a chapter titled Te Charismatic Leader in the
Leadership State.
,,

,
See Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion, trans. George Staunton (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, :cco); and Hans Maier, Concepts for the Comparison of Dictatorships: Totalitarianism
and Political Religions, in Totalitarianism and Political Religions: Concepts for the Comparison
of Dictatorships, ed. Hans Maier, trans. Jodi Bruhn (London: Routledge, :,,o), Vol. i, :,,::,.

,,
Emil Lederer, State of the Masses: Te Treat of the Classless Society (New York: Fertig, :,o;
[:,c]), :,c; R. M. MacIver, Leviathan and the People (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, :,,,), :; Frank Munk, Te Legacy of Nazism: Te Economic and Social Consequences of
Totalitarianism (New York: Macmillan, :,,), o; Peter F. Drucker, Te End of Economic Man: A
Study of the New Totalitarianism (London: Heinemann, :,,,), ::;; Franz Neumann, Behemoth:
Te Structure and Practice of National Socialism, :),,:),, (New York: Octagon Books, :,o,
[:,]), ,,;.


From Europe to the United States :c,
Beyond the somewhat supercial treatment it was accorded by
proponents of the theory of political religion, Webers concept of cha-
risma proved useful for analyzing the sociology and institutional dynam-
ics of National Socialism. In one of the earliest such studies, Why Hitler
Came into Power, the sociologist Abel employed the concept of charisma
to explain the attraction of National Socialism to party members and its
ability to remain coherent as a movement in the face of centrifugal politi-
cal forces.
,o
In :,, he traveled to Germany to interview members of the
Nazi Party, oering prizes for the best autobiographical accounts of their
political trajectories, which he then used as source material for his socio-
logical analysis of the movement. Abel concluded that National Socialism
appealed to its followers for four major reasons: popular discontent with
the existing social order, its ideology and program for social transfor-
mation, its organizational and promotional technique, and, last but
not least, the presence of charismatic leadership.
,;
As Abel explained,
To them he [Hitler] was a prophet whose pronouncements were taken as ora-
cles. In their eyes he was a hero whom they navely trusted to perform the
impossible if it were necessary. He was endowed by them with that highest
degree of prestige which emanates not merely from the recognition of ones
own inability to imitate or compete with such a person, but from the belief that
he possesses an out-of-the-ordinary, superhuman power, that a special star is
guiding his destiny. In all cases of mass leadership, this belief has been present
to a greater or lesser degree. It is the basis of what Max Weber has called charis-
matic leadership.
,
Abel concluded that Webers concept of charisma proved extremely useful
for explaining Hitlers attraction to his supporters. He then went beyond
this observation to use Webers concept of charismatic rulership to model
the political dynamics of Hitlers regime: Personal allegiance to Hitler
was the common bond which united the supporters of National Socialism
and counteracted the disruptive eects of divergent opinions and aims.
Charismatic leadership may be said, therefore, to be an integrating fac-
tor of great importance.
,,
For Abel, charismatic rulership helped explain
how Hitlers style of leadership bound the divergent ideological tenden-
cies of the Nazi movement to a common core.

,o
Teodore Abel, Why Hitler Came into Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, :,o
[:,,]). His ndings were published in an earlier version as Teodore Abel, Te Pattern of a
Successful Political Movement, American Sociological Review :, no. , (:,,;): ,;,:. For an
insightful discussion of Abels approach to understanding National Socialism, evaluated within
the context of his time, see Baehr, Identifying the Unprecedented, :,:,.

,;
Abel, Why Hitler Came into Power, :oo.

,
Ibid., ::.
,,
Ibid., ::.



Charismatic rulership :c
Te migr sociologist Gerth used Webers model of charismatic
rulership to explain the Nazi Partys inherent tensions rather than its cohe-
sive power. Shortly after arriving in the United States, Gerth scrambled to
publish an English-language article that would open the doors to employ-
ment at American universities. Te result of these eorts, an article in the
American Journal of Sociology titled Te Nazi Party: Its Leadership and
Composition, argued that the Nazi Party could best be understood as an
amalgam of charismatic and bureaucratic forms of rulership.
:cc
Hitler was
the paradigm of the charismatic leader who disdained specialists, raised
money through gifts and bribes rather than through systematic economic
activity, gave special commissions to followers in his inner circle instead
of delegating precise domains of responsibility, and resisted circumscrib-
ing his own power by refusing to claim any one particular oce. As a
consequence of the Fhrerprinzip, this model of charismatic rule was
replicated at lower levels of the party administration, with each leaders
legitimacy dependent on personality rather than qualications. Te race
for power within the inner circle of a charismatic leader generated an
endless proliferation of competing and overlapping bureaucratic organi-
zations. In the long run, especially under the pressure of military mobi-
lization and competition with state bureaucracies, Gerth expected that
many of the charismatic elements of National Socialism would become
routinized into a more bureaucratic structure.
Te new European dictatorships also appeared unique to migr
social scientists on account of their violent dynamism. Unlike traditional
dictatorships, which prized social order and stability, charismatic lead-
ers required perpetual mobilization to maintain themselves in power.
In National Socialism, as in Fascism and Communism, the economist
Wilhelm Roepke observed, there is the same reckless, violent usurp-
ation of the functions of the state by a minority rising from the masses
and leaning upon them while attering and at the same time intimidat-
ing them. Tis minority is headed by what Max Weber has termed the
charismatic leader and, in contrast with genuine dictatorship, consid-
ers its rule by force as the normal, permanent form of state organization,
and not as a temporary mandate to be restored to the legitimate author-
ity once the emergency for the state has passed.
:c:
Te unique social

:cc
Hans Gerth, Te Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition, American Journal of Sociology
,, no. (:,c): ,:;:.

:c:
Wilhelm Roepke, Te German Dust-Bowl, Review of Politics , no. (:,o): ,::,; see also
Wilhelm Roepke, Die deutsche Frage (ErlenbachZurich: Rentsch, :,,), ,:.


From Europe to the United States :c,
cohesion characteristic of charismatic rulership could be maintained only
so long as the leader could demonstrate his gift of grace to his followers.
Once he could no longer do so, more conventional methods of repres-
sion were required. Te terror policies of the Gestapo and the SS made
opposition against Hitler very dicult, almost impossible, explained
Waldemar Gurian, the migr founder of the Review of Politics at the
University of Notre Dame. But this pressure became decisive only after
Hitlers position as a charismatic leader (Max Weber) had been weak-
ened by defeats. Until these last months of the regime Hitler was such a
charismatic leader who was accepted because of unquestioned belief in
his extraordinary personality and qualities.
:c:
In :,:, Weber had complained about the absence of charismatic
leaders in German parliamentary politics. Just over twenty years later
German migrs and American social scientists apotheosized him as a
Cassandra-like prophet of the age of charismatic dictators. For the Nazi
apostate Rauschning, writing in exile, mass democracys transformation
into mass dictatorship conrmed the trajectory Weber had predicted
so long ago as :,:, in his remarkable essay, Politik als Beruf.
:c,
Parsons
was even more straightforward in his assessment. In his introduction
to the English translation of Part i of Economy and Society, he noted
that Weber did not predict Hitler or the Nazi movement, but he quite
clearly saw that a large-scale charismatic movement in reaction against
modern liberal institutions but with certain democratic elements
was a very real possibility.
:c
Weber, of course, had foreseen no such
development. But the peculiar anity between his concept of charisma
and the political phenomena under way in Europe led many scholars to
believe he had.
Parsons, who helped introduce the concept of charisma to American
audiences at the end of the :,:cs, was not among the rst sociologists to
make charisma relevant for the study of current events.
:c,
Nonetheless, the
concepts applicability to contemporary politics was clearly on his mind.
In his personal copies of Webers books, the passages on charismatic

:c:
Waldemar Gurian, Hitler: Te Simplier of German Nationalism, Review of Politics ;, no. ,
(:,,): ,:c. Gurian was well aware that Weber had become popular among migr social scien-
tists seeking to explain National Socialism. See Waldemar Gurian, On National Socialism,
Review of Politics , no. , (:,:): ,n.

:c,
Hermann Rauschning, Te Conservative Revolution (New York: Putnam, :,:), .

:c
Talcott Parsons, introduction to Max Weber, Te Teory of Social and Economic Organization, ,.

:c,
Parsons discussed charisma within a religious and economic context in Talcott Parsons, Te
Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Teory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent
European Writers (New York: Free Press, :,o [:,,;]), ,o;,, oo:;:.




Charismatic rulership :co
rulership are heavily underlined and frequently annotated with phrases
such as Hitler, also NSDAP, Nazis, and Hitler Danger.
:co
At a
meeting of his Harvard sociological colloquium in :,,;, Parsons spoke
of the Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy and Hitler as g-
ures who closely approach the type of charismatic authority.
:c;
It was
only after Gurian had invited him to write a study on the political ideas
of Max Weber that Parsons published his thoughts on charisma and
current events, rst in the article Max Weber and the Contemporary
Political Crisis for Gurians Review of Politics, and later in the introduc-
tion to Part i of Economy and Society. Parsons praised Weber not simply as
a great sociologist, but also as an analyst who could provide orientation in
the midst of an epochal social and political crisis.
:c
For Parsons, Communism, National Socialism, and Fascism along
with American religious and political movements such as Christian Science
and Huey Longs Share the Wealth represented charismatic phenom-
ena in the Weberian sense.
:c,
Moving beyond this descriptive identica-
tion, Parsons sought to explain why charismatic leaders tended to arise in
particular times and places and what accounted for their specic appeal.
Here Webers theory of charisma, taken on its own, could be of only lim-
ited service. Weber devoted little space in Economy and Society to account-
ing for the appeal or success of charismatic leaders, noting only that they
tended to arise in unusual external, especially political or economic situ-
ations, or from extraordinary inner psychic, particularly religious states,
or from both together.
::c
To explain the appeal of charismatic leadership,
Parsons chose to reach beyond the bounds of Webers own sociology. In
keeping with the synthetic approach to European social thought he pio-
neered in Te Structure of Social Action, Parsons attempted to expand the
explanatory reach of Webers concept of charisma by combining it with
the French sociologist Emile Durkheims concept of anomie.
:::

:co
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Part iii of Grundriss der Sozialkonomik (Tbingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], :,::), ::, ::;, o,;, ;o; Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, Vol. i
(Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,:c), :o,. I consulted copies of both volumes in the Talcott
Parsons Papers, HUGFP :.,,, boxes :,, Harvard University Archives.

:c;
Parsons Sociological Group: Reports of Meetings, Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP :.o:,
box :, folder Discussion Group Notes: :,,o:,,;.

:c
Waldemar Gurian to Talcott Parsons, August ::, :,,, Talcott Parsons Papers, HUGFP :..:,
box ,; Talcott Parsons, Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis, Review of Politics
(:,:): o:;o, :,,;:; Parsons, introduction to Weber, Te Teory of Social and Economic
Organization.

:c,
Parsons, Contemporary Political Crisis, ;o.

::c
MWG i/::, , (EaS, ::::).

:::
Parsons, Contemporary Political Crisis, ;,; Parsons, introduction to Weber, Te Teory of
Social and Economic Organization, ;:.






Charisma and the new states :c;
As elucidated in Durkheims classic :,; study On Suicide, anomie
referred to a state of disorganization characterized by the absence of the
normal regulatory force that xes with relative precision the maximum
of ease that every class of society can legitimately aspire to achieve.
:::

Parsons believed that the rational-legal order of western society was par-
ticularly prone to generating such anomie. Te variety of social process
that Weber addressed under the rubric of rationalization such as the
rise of modern scientic culture, industrialization, and the dissolution of
traditional social and religious values had created a situation in which
many people felt that the regulating bonds of society were no longer oper-
ative. Moreover, the uneven character of these rationalization processes
created added strain between emancipated and traditional sectors of
society.
::,
Under such conditions, charismatic movements of various sorts
seem to function in this situation as mechanisms of reintegration which
give large numbers of disorganized, insecure people, a denite orienta-
tion, give meaning to their lives.
::
Over time, the charismatic element
of National Socialism would become routinized into a feudal variant of
traditional rule based on separate administrative efdoms. Tat the most
distinctive cultural features of our civilization could not long survive such
a change, would scarcely seem to need to be pointed out, he warned.
::,
cuaii sxa axo rui xiw s raris
Parsons believed that modern Western society provides particularly
fruitful soil for charismatic movements.
::o
During the :,,cs and :,cs,
the rst wave of American scholarship on charisma focused almost exclu-
sively on contemporary European dictators, with Hitler receiving most
of the attention.
::;
However, Parsonss association of charismatic leader-
ship with modernization processes pregured and helped inspire a

:::
Emile Durkheim, On Suicide, trans. Robin Buss (London: Penguin, :cco), :;;, :;:, :;,.

::,
Parsons, Contemporary Political Crisis, ;,o, :,,o:; Parsons, introduction to Weber, Te
Teory of Social and Economic Organization, ;:; Talcott Parsons, Some Sociological Aspects of
the Fascist Movements, Social Forces ::, no. : (:,:): :,:.

::
Parsons, Contemporary Political Crisis, ;o.

::,
Ibid., :oo.

::o
Ibid., ;,.

::;
A noteworthy exception to this trend was Krishnalal Shridharani, War without Violence: A Study
of Gandhis Method and Its Accomplishments (London: Gollancz, :,,,), :cc:, which drew on
Webers sociology to characterize Gandhi as a charismatic leader. After serving three months
in jail for his political activities on behalf of Gandhis movement, Shridharani left India for
Columbia University, where he studied for his Ph.D. under Robert Lynd, Robert MacIver, and
the resident Weber experts Teodore Abel and Alexander von Schelting.







Charismatic rulership :c
profound shift in the way that American social scientists understood
the concept. Henceforth charisma was increasingly seen as symptomatic
of political development in transitional societies. Starting in the mid
:,,cs, as a wave of popular anticolonial movements swept across Africa
and Asia, American social scientists prominently employed charisma
in their analyses of emergent nationalist movements centered on popu-
lar individual leaders. Te success of such leaders as Kwame Nkrumah
in Ghana, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Mao Tse-tung in China, and Kemal
Atatrk in Turkey was explained by reference to their charismatic
qualities.
::
By the mid :,ocs the social-scientic discussion of charisma
focused almost exclusively on political life in the new states created
through decolonization.
::,
Te investigation of charismas role in decolonization was pioneered by
David Apter in his :,,, study Te Gold Coast in Transition. As the Gold
Coast (later Ghana) gradually transitioned from British colonial rule to
self-government, traditional tribal chieftains could no longer retain polit-
ical authority, since their legitimacy had been compromised through col-
laboration with British indirect rule.
::c
Te result had not been anomie,
Apter pointed out, echoing Parsons, since a charismatic leader in the
form of Nkrumah had crystallized popular support outside these trad-
itional institutions and won personal loyalty for himself and his party.
:::

In addition to Apter, leading social scientists such as George Kahin, Guy
Pauker, Lucian Pye, Gabriel Almond, and Dankwart Rustow argued that
charismatic leadership was symptomatic of societies undergoing transi-
tions to political modernity. In societies where colonialism had eroded
traditional, tribal forms of authority, but where modern, rational forms
of legitimacy were not yet present, irrational and emotional appeals could

::
See, e.g., David E. Apter, Te Gold Coast in Transition (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, :,,,); Richard Fagan, Charismatic Authority and the Leadership of Fidel Castro,
Western Political Quarterly : (:,o,): :;,; Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung as a Charismatic
Leader, Asian Survey : (:,o;): ,,; and Dankwart A. Rustow, Atatrk as Founder of a
State, Ddalus ,; (:,o): ;,,:. See also Reinhard Bendix, Charismatic Leadership, in
Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber, by Reinhard Bendix and Guenther Roth
(Berkeley: University of California Press, :,;:), :;c;.

::,
Tis trend was already observed by such contemporaries as William Friedland, For a
Sociological Concept of Charisma, Social Forces ,, no. : (:,o): :n,; Ann Ruth Willner and
Dorothy Willner, Te Rise and Role of Charismatic Leaders, Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science ,, (:,o,): c; Dankwart A. Rustow, A World of Nations: Problems
of Political Modernization (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, :,o;), :,c; and Robert C.
Tucker, Te Teory of Charismatic Leadership, Ddalus ,;, no. , (:,o): ;,.

::c
Apter, Gold Coast in Transition, :o:.

:::
Ibid., :,, :;.




Charisma and the new states :c,
be particularly successful if made by extraordinary individuals who
claimed to embody the spirit of the nation.
:::
Te rise of anticolonial movements similarly inspired the sociologist
Edward Shils to make charisma the subject of empirical study. In :,,;,
while delivering a conference paper on the role of new ruling elites in
Africa and Asia, Shils experienced a ash of insight: one reason why
postcolonial elites believed that they and not the ordinary people were
uniquely suited for leadership had to do with the charismatic qualities
they ascribed to themselves.
::,
In the article that resulted from this epiph-
any, Shils sought to show how postcolonial elites legitimized their status
by asserting their special attunement to sources of cultural sacrality. Even
though these elites had left behind their tribal leaders, kinship groups,
and magical rituals, they retain the unitary response to charismatic
things regardless of whether they are traditional or newly emergent
which is a feature of traditional societies or enthusiastic cultic associ-
ations.
::
For Shils, charisma signied a general receptivity to societys
most fundamental values; it could be embodied in institutions and orders
as well as in people.
::,
Since postcolonial elites had convinced the masses
that the nation was the source of everything sacred, their own proximity
to the institutions of nationhood legitimated their claims to personify the
nation.
::o
Teir success demonstrated that the religious sensitivity which
is common in traditional societies and in the traditional sectors of under-
developed countries lives on in a transformed way in these societies as
they move toward modernity.
::;
American social scientists looked on charisma with suspicion and fore-
boding during World War ii, and to an extent their attitudes persisted into

:::
For dierent formulations of this thesis, see George McT. Kahin, Guy J. Pauker, and Lucian
W. Pye, Comparative Politics of Non-Western Countries, American Political Science Review
,, no. (:,,,): :c:,; Gabriel A. Almond, Comparative Political Systems, Journal of Politics
:, no. , (:,,o): c:; Lucian W. Pye, Te Non-Western Political Process, Journal of Politics :c,
no. , (:,,): ; and Rustow, World of Nations, :,:. On the origins of modernization theory in
the United States, see Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Teory in Cold War
America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, :cc,).

::,
Edward Shils, Te Constitution of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, :,:), xvii. See
also Edward Shils, Max Weber and the World since :,:c, in Te Virtue of Civility: Selected
Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society, ed. Steven Grosby (Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund, :,,;), :,:,.

::
Edward Shils, Te Concentration and Dispersion of Charisma: Teir Bearing on Economic
Policy in Underdeveloped Countries, World Politics ::, no. : (:,,): .

::,
Tis point had been made by his colleague Parsons, who likened Webers notion of routinized
charisma to Durkheims concept of the sacred. See Parsons, Structure of Social Action, o;,,;
Parsons, introduction to Weber, Te Teory of Social and Economic Organization, ;,o.

::o
Shils, Concentration and Dispersion of Charisma, .
::;
Ibid., ,.





Charismatic rulership ::c
the early :,,cs. In his study of voter perceptions in the :,,: presidential
campaign, the sociologist James C. Davies worked from the assumption
that followers of a charismatic leader constituted an undierentiated,
cancerous cell in the body politic.
::
After :,;,, respondents were asked
why they would vote for Dwight Eisenhower or Adlai Stevenson for presi-
dent, a board of judges concluded that charisma was a decisive factor in
only ,: cases, all of which favored Eisenhower. Davies ascertained with
relief that charisma was not now epidemic in our society.
::,
But in the
context of politics in the decolonizing world, American political scientists
soon ascribed a more positive connotation to charismatic leadership: it
was increasingly viewed as a productive force that, at least in the short
term, could assist in politically integrating the new nations of the devel-
oping world. In his book on the Gold Coast, Apter made the case that
Nkrumahs charismatic leadership fullled the same functional require-
ments as traditional chieftaincy, but did so within modern institutional
structures. In addition, Nkrumah endowed the transplanted British insti-
tutions of parliamentary democracy with his own personal prestige, thus
making them more attractive to his followers than they might otherwise
appear.
:,c
Immanuel Wallerstein argued that the charismatic authority
of a national hero could aid in overcoming regional and ethnic divi-
sions, transferring loyalty from traditional institutions to the rationally
constituted nation-state: Te charismatic justication for authority (do
it because I, your leader, say so) can be seen as a way of transition, an
interim measure which gets people to observe the requirements of the
nation out of loyalty to the leader while they (or their children) learn to
do it for its own sake.
:,:
Drawing a parallel between the early United
States and the new states of the developing world, Seymour Martin Lipset
noted that George Washington had fullled the role of the charismatic
leader under whose guidance democratic political institutions could
grow.
:,:
Fortunately, Washington appreciated that his charismatic ruler-
ship was only a temporary phenomenon that would pave the way for a
more enduring form of legal rulership. In contrast, Lipset argued, charis-
matic leaders in modern developing states rarely provided more than an

::
James C. Davies, Charisma in the :,,: Campaign, American Political Science Review , no.
(:,,): :c,.

::,
Ibid., :c;,, :c,,.

:,c
Apter, Gold Coast in Transition, :,o;, ,co.

:,:
Immanuel Wallerstein, Africa: Te Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage, :,o:), ,, ,,.

:,:
Seymour Martin Lipset, Te First New Nation: Te United States in Historical and Comparative
Perspective (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, :,o; [:,o,]), ::.





Charisma and the new states :::
initial sense of national unity. Unlike Washington, they did not lend their
personal prestige to constitutional institutions or provide for the orderly
election of a successor.
:,,
Not all scholars in the United States were happy with the inroads that
charisma had made into political science. Carl J. Friedrich, the leading
migr political scientist at Harvard University, argued that charisma
applied only to those kinds of leadership based upon a transcendent call
by a divine being, believed in by both the person called and those with
whom he has to deal in exercising his calling.
:,
It was fair to call Moses,
Buddha, and Muhammad charismatic leaders, but men like Hitler and
Mussolini, who did not make religious inspiration the foundation of
their claim to rule, could not be brought under the same category.
:,,
In
the hands of other scholars, this line of reasoning only associated cha-
rismatic leadership all the more exclusively with the new states. If cha-
risma were truly peculiar to the sphere of religion, the migr political
scientist Karl Loewenstein argued, then charisma would apply chiey to
the pre-Cartesian West and, nowadays, to many parts of Asia and Africa
which in spite of advancing rationalization only slowly are beginning to
break away from the magico-religious ambiance. Te charisma of leaders
like Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyere, and Kenneth Kaunda could
only persist because it was sustained essentially by the mystical and
magical climate of the non-western environment.
:,o
Te historian Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. likewise insisted that the magical and mystical connota-
tions of the concept of charisma further emphasise its irrelevance to the
modern technical world. Among modern political gures, only Hitler
deserved to be called charismatic, with the exception of leaders in parts
of Africa and Asia, where Webers strict denition still applies.
:,;
Tat
Schlesinger, a key supporter and advisor to the then presidential candi-
date John F. Kennedy, ruled out the relevance of charisma in western
democratic politics seems ironic indeed.
:,

:,,
Ibid., :,o.

:,
Carl J. Friedrich, Political Leadership and the Problem of the Charismatic Power, Journal of
Politics :,, no. : (:,o:): :.

:,,
Ibid., :o, ::,; see also Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship
and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, :,,o), :.

:,o
Loewenstein, Max Webers Political Ideas, ;,.

:,;
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., On Heroic Leadership and the Dilemma of Strong Men and Weak
Peoples, Encounter :, (:,oc): o;.

:,
As one contemporary noted, the absence of a vital cleavage between Nixons and Kennedys
proposed policies meant that Kennedys major appeal lay primarily in his charismatic aura,
his ability to win a popular following on the basis of his growing talents. C. L. Sulzberger,
Its Charisma that Counts in the End, Te New York Times, November ;, :,oc.






Charismatic rulership :::
By the mid :,ocs American social scientists had relegated charismatic
rulership almost exclusively to the new states of Africa and Asia. Te
Sinologist Lucian Pye went so far as to declare that charismatic leaders
tend to prevail in non-Western politics.
:,,
Tis kind of Orientalism, however,
was never part of the concept of charisma as Weber originally intended it.
According to Weber, premodern forms of rulership tended to be either trad-
itional or charismatic, while modern forms tended to be legal.
:c
But at the
same time, he emphasized that charismatic rulership is by no means lim-
ited to primitive stages of development, and the three basic types of ruler-
ship cannot be placed into a simple evolutionary line behind one another,
but appear combined together in the most diverse ways.
::
Nor did Weber
believe that charismatic rulership was in any way peculiar to nonwestern
societies. On the contrary, he underlined two forms of charismatic ruler-
ship that he considered unique to the West: the demagogue of the Greek
polis and the modern parliamentary party leader.
::
Contrary to what Shils
suggested, charismatic rulership was supposed to create new social orders
precisely by breaking with sacred traditions and institutions, not by per-
petuating them in new institutional forms. As Martin Riesenbrodt has
observed, Shils in eect superimposes a Weberian terminology on his
own idiosyncratic theory of the sacred in modern life, which itself had
been derived from Parsonss Structure of Social Action, Durkheims Elements
of Religious Life, and Rudolf Ottos Idea of the Holy.
:,
cuaii sxa i x rui viixacui ai
As charisma became part of the language of American social science, schol-
ars began to wonder whether the concept had lost its empirical basis. Did
charisma possess any explanatory value, or did it only serve as an admis-
sion that there was something one could not explain? When we talk of
charisma, we are in a way saying that while we know why such and such a
person was popular, we cannot explain why he was that popular and why
people had that much faith in him, wrote K. J. Ratnam of the University
of Singapore in :,o.
:
American writers were using charisma to signify

:,,
Pye, Non-Western Political Process, .

:c
MWG i/:,, ::,:, (FMW, :,,).

::
MWG i/::, ,:, (EaS, ::,,).

::
Weber, Politik als Beruf, :o:, :c:: (VL, ,,, o:;:).

:,
MWG i/::, : (EaS, :::;); Martin Riesenbrodt, Charisma in Max Webers Sociology of
Religion, Religion :, (:,,,): .

:
K. J. Ratnam, Charisma and Political Leadership, Political Studies ::, no. , (:,o): ,;.







Charisma in the vernacular ::,
merely an emotional bond between a leader and his followers, or a
leader possessed of a mystical rapport with his nation and thus, it seems,
with destiny.
:,
Schlesinger complained that the word has become a chic
synonym for heroic or for demagogic or even just for popular.
:o
It appears that the popular press in the United States rst picked up
charisma at the same time that social scientists did on the eve of World
War ii. When Time magazine selected Hitler as its man of the year for
:,,, its cover story noted how the Nazi Party had cultivated the picture
of a mystic, abstemious, charismatic Fhrer during Hitlers rise from
obscurity.
:;
In :,o the Wisconsin sociologist Howard Becker published
a study of the German youth movement under National Socialism, in
which he emphasized the importance of the charismatic leader, a term
which has won a secure place in the vocabulary of the modern social scien-
tist. Te New York Times Book Review admired how Becker thoroughly
analyzes the peculiar German conception of a leaders charisma, that
strange combination of virility, recklessness and intellectual force which
magically attracts followers. Tis marked the rst appearance of charisma
in Webers sense in the pages of Te New York Times.
:
Until the early
:,ocs charisma remained a peculiar German notion for many. When
the sociologist Daniel Bell tried to slip charisma into a :,, Fortune maga-
zine article about the labor leader John L. Lewis, his editor, an avowed foe
of social-scientic jargon, refused to allow the unfamiliar word to appear.
Asked by his editor to dene the word in plain English, Bell could only
reply, Well, its like the word Robert Penn Warren used to describe Huey
Long, when he said that he had kindlin power. Or one can say it is a
magnetic presence. Tis failed to satisfy the editor, who struck the word
from the copy.
:,
By the end of the :,ocs charisma was well on its way to entering everyday
American speech. In :,o Richard Lingeman observed in Te New York

:,
Lewis A. Froman, Jr., People and Politics: An Analysis of the American Political System (Englewood
Clis, NJ: Prentice-Hall, :,o:), ;,; Willard A. Hanna, Eight Nation Makers: Southeast Asias
Charismatic Statesmen (New York: St. Martins, :,o), :,c.

:o
Schlesinger, On Heroic Leadership, ;.

:;
Germany: Man of the Year, Time, January :, :,,,, :,.

:
Howard Becker, German Youth: Bond or Free (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner, :,o),
,; Richard Plant, Hitlers Jugend: An Unsolved Problem, Te New York Times Book Review,
February :,, :,;.

:,
Daniel Bell, Te Day Fortune Lost Charisma, in Writing for Fortune: Nineteen Authors
Remember Life on the Sta of a Remarkable Magazine (New York: Time, :,c), :o,. For other
tellings of the story, see Bell, Sociodicy: A Guide to Modern Usage, American Scholar ,,
(:,oo): ;c; and Richard R. Lingeman, Te Greeks Had a Word for It But What Does It
Mean?, Te New York Times Sunday Magazine, August , :,o.





Charismatic rulership ::
Times that attributions of charisma in the public prints are so abundant
that the charismologist is hard-pressed to keep track of them all, listing
among them Charles de Gaulle, Martin Luther King, George Wallace,
Ronald Reagan, Gamal Nasser, and Mao. A year later Time magazine
would identify charisma as one of the dominant clichs of the ocs.
:,c
At
the beginning of the :,ocs American social scientists had assumed that
charisma was peculiar to the Tird World; by the end of the decade it was
a term safely ensconced in American popular culture. At the same time,
charisma was no longer being used in the theoretical framework estab-
lished by Weber, Parsons, Shils, and others. It was now the nebulous je ne
sais quoi that made a celebrity out of an ordinary American.
What was it about charisma that made it such an apposite concept to
think with during the :,ocs? In his observations on charisma, Russell
Baker noted that the word has been debased to mean something much
closer to what used to be called, back in the days of the big Hollywood
studios, star quality. As star quality became a desideratum of
American politics during the :,ocs, presidential candidates were increas-
ingly expected to attract voters to the polls in the same way that mar-
quee names attracted moviegoers to the cinema. With politics becoming
a business transacted extensively on television, the half-pint son of the
silver screen, Baker pointed out that it would not be surprising if we
secretly yearned for stars to lead us.
:,:
Te televised presidential debates
between Kennedy and Nixon in :,oc helped usher in an era in which
millions of viewers could appreciate a candidates stage presence.
:,:
One
might conjecture that nonpolitical developments also played an impor-
tant role in creating a cultural framework in which charisma could be
domesticated. Te notion of an ineable spiritual quality, striving against
existing institutions to create revolutionary change, may have seemed
particularly appealing in the context of the :,ocs counter-cultures gospel
of self- actualization and New Age spirituality.
:,,
Max Weber found a place in American intellectual life because he
proved himself useful for thinking with. He helped Americans articulate

:,c
Lingeman, Te Greeks Had a Word for It; What Ever Happened to Charisma?, Time,
October :;, :,o,, c.

:,:
Baker, Age of Charismatics.

:,:
Potts, History of Charisma, ::;.

:,,
Starting in the early :,ocs, American Protestants began using the term charismatic renewal
to describe the growing popularity of Pentacostal-style worship, such as ecstatic dancing and
speaking in tongues. While this movement undoubtedly helped popularize the older, explicitly
religious understanding of charisma, it may have also brought the concept itself to greater atten-
tion. On charismatic renewal in the twentieth century, see ibid., :,;,.




Charisma in the vernacular ::,
issues that mattered to them and address developments that loomed on
their own social and political horizons. And these, of course, were not
always the issues or developments that he himself had envisaged. Weber
became a classic of modern political and social thought not because he
correctly predicted the future, but because the world changed so as to
make his concerns and thus his concepts particularly timely ones, and
also because enterprising intellectuals took the initiative to synthesize his
concepts with others, such as political religion, anomie, and star qual-
ity, as the history of charisma shows.
::o
Conclusion
Guenther Roth, one of the leading scholars and editors of Webers work,
once likened the history of Webers reception to a series of creative mis-
interpretations.
:
Tis phrase captures much that was characteristic of
Webers relationship with readers. In life as in death, he was frequently
identied with theses he never espoused, and mobilized for causes he
would not have sanctioned. At the same time, so many of the appropria-
tions of what he said were carried out in the service of pathbreaking
intellectual projects, by writers who were at the time or would later
become some of the leading intellectual gures in German-speaking
Europe and the United States. Rather than reduce Webers reception to
a single theme, this book has sought to uncover the manifold polemics
and academic debates in which readers engaged with his concepts. But
that does not preclude inquiring into the general features of the work that
elicited such divergent and productive mobilizations, and of the readers
who produced them. I wish to conclude this study by considering what it
was about Webers writings that made them so conducive to a wide range
of interpretations and uses; why these interpretations and uses were them-
selves so fecund; and nally, what sort of readers best understood what
Weber himself was trying to do.
Tat Webers writings were subject to so many dierent interpretations
was in part a consequence of his erratic compositional process. He was
able to write with furious energy during the manic episodes of his mental
illness, but his euphoria made him too impatient to polish and edit his
own writings carefully, and the subsequent bouts of depression enervated
him of the desire to return to them. He once boasted to Karl Jaspers that
I couldnt care less about style; I just cough up my thoughts.
:
We would

:
Guenther Roth, Value-Neutrality in Germany and the United States, in Scholarship and
Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber, by Reinhard Bendix and Guenther Roth (Berkeley: University
of California Press, :,;:), ,,.

:
Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge: Polity, :cc,), :c:.




Conclusion ::;
do well not to take this remark at face value, for many of his writings,
especially Scholarship as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation, are
stylistic masterpieces. Te eloquence of his speaking and writing were
undoubtedly important to him. Nonetheless, it is evident that Weber
lacked the temperament for careful revision of his own work. Te mental
connections that linked his chains of argument were not always visible on
the page, making it dicult for readers to divine his intentions a fact
that clearly frustrated him during his own lifetime, as his responses to the
early controversy over Te Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
attest.
Webers infelicities of expression often clouded ideas that were more
compelling than his readers appreciated. On other occasions, the con-
cepts he formulated were themselves incoherent or ambiguous. Such was
the case with his concept of sociology. Over the last ten years of his life
Weber oered two dierent interpretations of what this discipline should
be tasked with accomplishing: developing ideal-typical generalizations
about the relationship between social action in dierent spheres of life,
and engaging in longue dure historical comparisons using ideal types to
discern dierence and frame causal hypotheses. Why did Weber fail to
delineate between the two consistently? Te most persuasive explanation
is that he was still experimenting with the capabilities of ideal-typical
models at the time of his death, and had not yet settled on disciplinary
titles for distinguishing between the production of ideal-typical models
and their deployment in historical comparison and hypothesis formation.
Since Economy and Society was published posthumously from a collection
of disparate manuscripts, written at dierent points over the course of the
projects evolution, it inevitably contained material that could be adduced
for very dierent understandings of the sociological enterprise.
While careless writing and conceptual inconsistency are commonplace
among canonical political thinkers, Weber was distinctive to the degree
he made apparent contradiction a hallmark of his rhetoric. Wolfgang
Mommsen identied an antinomical structure in Webers political
thought, the product of an underlying conviction that the best chance
for securing an open society with a maximum degree of freedom and an
optimum degree of individual self-determination for all was to be found
not so much in the mixture of alternative political principles of organiza-
tion as in their dialectical combination.
,
By simultaneously embracing

,
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Te Political and Social Teory of Max Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, :,,), ,o.

Conclusion ::
liberalism and nationalism, charismatic rulership and parliamentary
governance, individual freedoms and a strong state, Weber suggested that
the challenges of modern life could only be met through agonism, rather
than through the elimination of struggle. Tere were few German or
American intellectuals in the early twentieth century who could swallow
these antinomies whole. Nevertheless, Webers arguments were capable of
being selectively mobilized by readers who found one side of the dialectic
more ideologically congenial than the other. Tere were many potentially
conicting tendencies inherent in Webers political thought, and each
could form the basis of a political argument in its own right.
Webers anti-utopianism was also fraught with inner contradictions.
With passionate language, he advocated proportion and responsibility
an attitude that many radical intellectuals nonetheless interpreted, rst
and foremost, as a skeptical ethos. Te most attentive readers of Webers
texts, such as Erich Voegelin and Karl Lwith, came away with an appre-
ciation of his tempered anti-utopianism: Weber wanted to disabuse his
readers of a nave belief in progress, while at the same time emphasiz-
ing that the conditions of modern life were indispensable for promoting
individual autonomy. Tose who knew Weber well and admired his per-
sonality saw him in a dierent light. In their eyes he was not a man who
balanced skepticism and faith, passion and resignation, but rather a re-
brand who pursued his own subjective, nonuniversalizable ideals in the
face of a hostile world. His personal commitment to quixotic causes and
his faith in Germanys rebirth after World War i made him an existential-
ist hero avant la lettre. For these interpreters there existed a real contradic-
tion between what Weber wrote and the way he lived. On the page, he
appeared cold or even tempered in his skepticism, whereas in real life he
resembled a knight of faith. Tese fundamental tensions in his persona
account for some of the most striking divergences in the way contempo-
raries construed his philosophical signicance.
Misinterpretations of Webers authorial intentions, as well as disputes
over incommensurable sources of evidence, account in part for the range
of his mobilizations. In many cases, however, this range did not reect
a lack of consensus over the meaning of his texts, so much as an aware-
ness that his concepts could be appropriated for a variety of ideological
purposes. One reason why Webers concepts could be incorporated into
such divergent arguments was because of their diagnostic power: they
articulated the predicament of modern life in a way that a wide variety
of German intellectuals could accept. When Weber declared that modern
scholarship could only be value-free, incapable of yielding world views,
Conclusion ::,
most German intellectuals agreed, even though many believed that a
radically new kind of scholarship would have to be created to remedy this
deciency. When he likened the modern state to an industrial Betrieb,
those who greeted this development as well as those who abhorred it could
assent to his characterization. His vision of modern capitalism as a shell
as hard as steel (stahlhartes Gehuse) was armed by conservatives, pessi-
mistic liberals, and radical socialists alike.

As Norbert Bolz has observed,

even those intellectuals who did not agree with Webers prescriptions
could assent to his diagnosis of the time.
,
Tis was in large part because
the broader terms of Webers diagnosis were not particularly original. Like
Marx, he portrayed capitalism as a coercive system that threatened the
ability of individuals to achieve an autonomous existence; like Nietzsche,
he depicted a modern society whose institutions and practices rested on
superannuated ideological foundations. What distinguished Weber from
other contemporaries operating within a similar paradigm was that he
sought to make these perspectives the starting point of rigorous historical
inquiry. How, he asked, had a modern world come into being that readers
of Marx, Nietzsche, Simmel, or other n-de-sicle cultural critics could
recognize as their own?
o
At the same time, Weber represented more for his contemporaries than
just a diagnostician and genealogist of a demagied modernity. What is
surprising about the history of his reception is how often German intel-
lectuals sought to legitimate their own projects by claiming him as a
predecessor. Tey not only accepted Webers diagnosis but also armed
his intentions as standing in continuity with their own. Karl Jaspers and
Gustav Radbruch were among the few prominent German intellectu-
als who presented themselves as continuing Webers project in terms he
would have recognized. Nonetheless, there were numerous other intel-
lectuals who saw themselves as following Weber a considerable distance
in his scholarly or political campaigns before departing on paths that led
beyond him. To understand why this was the case, we must consider how
the broader contours of his philosophical project were amenable to the
radical temper of the time.

On the shell as hard as steel, see PE, :,, (BW, :::).

,
Norbert Bolz, Auszug aus der entzauberten Welt: Philosophischer Extremismus zwischen den
Weltkriegen (Munich: Fink, :,,), ;. See also Charles Turner, Weberian Social Tought, History
of, in International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil Smelser and Paul
Baltes (Amsterdam: Elsevier, :cc:), Vol. xxiv, :oc.

o
Wilhelm Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung: Studien zur Biographie des Werks (Tbingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], :,;), no.



Conclusion ::c
Webers scholarly polemics were motivated by a desire to reveal the
evaluative presuppositions and metaphysical residues that contaminated
German social science a crusade for value freedom that was paralleled by
a campaign to unmask the political ideologies of n-de-sicle Germany as
vehicles for vested interests. While Marxs analysis of the socio- economic
structure achieved above all the demagication of the bourgeois social
order, the sociologist Albert Salomon observed, Weber went further and
stripped the state-political sphere of its ideological magic, and exposed
the drives and motives of socio-political action in their unadorned con-
stellations of interests.
;
At the same time, Weber suggested that many of
the institutions and practices characteristic of western modernity the
capitalist economy, the specialization of the modern sciences, the voca-
tional ethic of the bourgeoisie had come into being with the assist-
ance of religious convictions whose force had long since attenuated. One
optimistic conclusion that could be drawn from Webers work was that
these modern institutions were contingent: that they had been shaped
by historical constellations of values and ideals, and thus were capable of
being transformed or adapted as the values of their participants changed
over time. Talcott Parsons, who in the :,:cs and :,,cs was searching for
more benign alternatives to capitalism as a social system, took heart from
Webers writings because they suggested to him that the institutions of
modern capitalism were responsive to changing social values. Parsonss
project represented the progressive or reformist interpretation of Webers
project of Entzauberung.

But his German contemporaries were equally

capable of construing the meaning of Webers project in a much more
radical way. As Hans Freyer and Siegfried Landshut understood him,
Weber had shown that modern western society rested on ideological
foundations it was no longer capable of justifying or defending.
,
Was that
not an enticement to clear away the detritus and build anew?
To many German intellectuals whose own received values had been
discredited by military defeat, revolution, and hyperination, Weber
appeared as a latter-day Nietzsche promoting active nihilism, a radi-
cal sweeping away of tottering idols in the service of new forms of

;
Albert Salomon, Max Weber, Die Gesellschaft ,, Part i (:,:o): ::.

See Howard Brick, Te Reformist Dimension of Talcott Parsonss Early Social Teory, in Te
Culture of the Market: Historical Essays, ed. Tomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, :,,,), ,,c.

,
Here I adapt a phrase of Wolfgang Bckenfrdes: Te liberal, secularized state is nourished by
presuppositions that it cannot itself guarantee. Ernst-Wolfgang Bckenfrde, Te Rise of the
State as a Process of Secularisation, in State, Society and Liberty: Studies in Political Teory and
Constitutional Law, trans. J. A. Underwood (New York: Berg, :,,:), ,.



Conclusion :::
commitment.
:c
Weber made it clear what kind of commitments he
hoped to nd at the end of the historical process of demagication. Tey
were ultimately profoundly individualistic ones: the demagication of
the world would enable each individual to nd the daemon that holds
the threads of his life. Some, like Radbruch and Jaspers, endorsed the
emphasis Weber placed on radical individualism. At the same time, there
were intellectuals who applauded Webers devaluation of reigning values
in the hopes that it would clear a path for their collectivist ideals. Tat is
why even proponents of political scholarship in Nazi Germany could
be grateful to Weber for sweeping away the partisanship of Wilhelmine
and Weimar scholarship, for they did not see his campaign as incompat-
ible with a future scholarship promulgating new and objective values. For
a committed National Socialist like Karl Wilhelm Rath, Webers con-
viction that the highest values did not necessarily harmonize, but rather
waged war against each other, could be mobilized for an even more radi-
cal claim, namely, that only homogenous racial identity could serve as the
basis for Germanys social community.
If Webers appeal had derived only from his active nihilism, his recep-
tion would not have been as powerful or broad. For it was not only the
destructive impulse of his Entzauberung, but also the synthetic impulse of
his sociological writings that attracted intellectuals of diverse sensibilities.
Edward Shils recalled that, as a rst-time reader of Economy and Society,
I was overpowered when the perspectives opened up by Webers concepts brought
together things which hitherto had never seemed to me to have any anity with
each other. I could not assimilate it all or bring it into a satisfying order. But
reading Max Weber was literally breathtaking. Sometimes, in the midst of read-
ing him I had to stand up and walk around for a minute or two until my exhila-
ration died down.
::
Te sensation of watching the disparate spheres of human culture tting
into place was so profound that one German reader was moved to draw
a comparison to Oswald Spengler, a writer whom Weber detested: Tat
is indeed what makes Webers work so vivid and advantageously distin-
guishes his speeches and lectures from those of other learned colleagues:

:c
On active nihilism, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Te Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann
and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, :,o), especially ::,. See also Alan D. Schrift,
Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (New
York: Routledge, :,,c), ,o;; and Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, :,,,), :;:.

::
Quoted in Lawrence A. Sca, Max Weber in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
:c::), :c,:c.


Conclusion :::
the synopsis, the synthesis of related events and problems, which are
then collected into particular one might say artistic, intuitively appre-
hended connections. Te comparison to Spengler is obvious.
::
Weber spent much of his career inveighing against the holistic and
organological approaches popular in early-twentieth-century German
scholarship.
:,
Yet he also demonstrated through his empirical writings
that activities in seemingly unrelated spheres of human life such as
politics, economy, and religion could be profoundly connected. His
terminology reected a desire to conceptualize each sphere of human
life through concepts taken from another. He employed Betrieb, a term
customary in economics, to describe the workings of the modern state;
Brokratie, typically at home in the sphere of politics, to characterize the
nature of modern economic life; and Charisma, derived from the schol-
arly literature on early Christianity, to model forms of rulership through-
out history. Tere was nothing a priori contradictory in Webers decision
to reject methodological holism while simultaneously developing com-
parative ideal-typical models of social action. Nonetheless, his contem-
poraries were far more fascinated by the existence of the connections
he posited than by their epistemological status or the nature of causal
relationships between them. Teir own predelictions inclined them to
privilege those aspects of Webers thought that addressed the whole of
modern life rather than its parts. In the early decades of the twentieth
century, radical German intellectuals on both the right and the left of
the political spectrum were captivated by the notion that the various
component parts of bourgeois society, as disparate and unconnected as
they appear, are inextricable elements in a larger complex whole.
:
Tey
were thrilled by the anities Weber perceived between academic schol-
arship and the specialization of modern vocational life, between modern
capitalism and forms of Protestant religiosity, and between the modern
state and industrial organization. By enabling them to see interconnec-
tions between dierent spheres of society, Weber bolstered their con-
viction that a systemic crisis was sweeping through all the precincts of

::
Annemarie Nossen, Ein Gelehrtenleben unserer Tage, Mdchenbildung auf christlicher
Grundlage :o, no. , (:,,c): :o. On Webers encounters with Spengler in postwar Munich, see
Lebensbild, o,; (Biography, o;,); and Eduard Baumgarten, Max Weber: Werk und Person
(Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], :,o), ,,n:.

:,
On n-de-sicle German holism more generally, see Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science:
Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
:,,o).

:
Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: Te Adventures of a Concept from Lukcs to Habermas (Berkeley:
University of California Press, :,), :.



Conclusion ::,
modern bourgeois life, and that a concerted attack in one location might
help bring the entire structure down.
After surveying the literature published in the quarter century after
his death, there is a strong case to be made that, in many respects, it
was Webers German contemporaries who best understood what he meant
by his concepts and claims. As Wilhelm Hennis has persuasively argued,
the training German scholars received in the humanistic tradition of
political economy enabled them to perceive the anthropological-char-
acterological interest guiding Webers empirical investigations. Unlike
many of their American colleagues, they understood that Weber was
not merely attempting to advance a social-scientic agenda through his
scholarship, but also seeking to explore one of the central problematics in
the European tradition of moral and political thought: die Entwicklung
des Menschentums (the development of the human), or how values and
social orders shape individual personalities and capacities.
:,
Tis book
has argued that Webers early German interpreters possessed two further
unrivaled insights into his thought. Tose closest to him realized that his
personality often stood in striking contradiction to his written work, and
they drew the justiable conclusion that in his own heart he was not a
skeptic but rather a knight of faith. More keenly than later interpret-
ers, Webers German contemporaries also understood that his attempts
to dene sociology did not amount to a coherent vision for the discipline.
It was not merely, as Hennis has suggested, that they interpreted his pri-
mary signicance as lying outside the discipline of sociology. More to the
point, they saw that Webers writings did not yield an unambiguous pro-
gram for sociology at all.
While interpreters in the United States sometimes failed to understand
Weber, they distinguished themselves by nding uses for concepts that
his German contemporaries neglected. As we associate Durkheim with
the concept of anomie, the American historian H. Stuart Hughes noted
in :,,, so we think of Weber in connection with the linked notions of
bureaucracy and charisma.
:o
Webers concepts of bureaucracy and cha-
risma have become inseparable from his name, yet they elicited compara-
tively little interest in Germany. Teir relative neglect was not the result
of any disinterest in interrogating Webers concepts or ascribing them to
referents in the real world. German contemporaries were fascinated by
his concepts of value freedom and Betrieb, but they did not respond to

:,
Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung.

:o
H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, :cc: [:,,]),
:.


Conclusion ::
bureaucracy or charisma with anything approaching the eagerness of their
counterparts in the United States. It was in part the change in cultural
and political context, the freedom to transcend local academic contro-
versies and preoccupations, that enabled migr and American intellectu-
als to unlock the utility of Webers concepts. More specically, this book
has argued that the rise of National Socialism and decolonization pro-
vided necessary contexts for charisma to become popular in the United
States. In the eyes of a variety of migr and American intellectuals, the
world appeared to be entering a new age of charismatic leadership from
the mid :,,cs onward, and Webers sociology oered a skeleton key for
understanding it. In the absence of these kinds of political and social
transformations, it is hard to imagine that charisma would have found
such cultural resonance. Last, but certainly not least, we must not under-
estimate the central role played by individual intellectual entrepreneurs in
the process of transnational intellectual reception.
:;
While Parsons may
be justly accused of distorting the intended meaning of Webers concepts
of sociology and charisma, he deserves credit for being the rst to call
attention to the importance of bureaucracy as a comparative concept in
Webers empirical studies.
In the early :,:cs the Freiburg political economist Carl Diehl expressed
doubt as to whether Webers research agenda could possibly be contin-
ued after his death, given the demands it made on the individual scholar.
In comparison to Gustav Schmoller and Georg Friedrich Knapp, two
German political economists who trained a generation of students to con-
tinue their own work, Weber was a much too universal spirit to serve
as the founder of a school. I might say that one would have had to be a
second Max Weber in order to be Webers pupil, Diehl concluded.
:
It is
worth considering the possibility that Webers inimitability was itself a
stimulus to interdisciplinarity in new institutional forms.
:,
Tirty years
after his death, his nephew and postwar German popularizer, the phil-
osopher Eduard Baumgarten, took note of how American social scientists

:;
For an insightful discussion of intellectual entrepreneurship, see Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen,
Dionysian Enlightenment: Walter Kaufmanns Nietzsche in Historical Perspective, Modern
Intellectual History ,, no. : (:cco): :,,o,.

:
Carl Diehl, Te Life and Work of Max Weber, Quarterly Journal of Economics ,, no. : (:,:,):
:co.

:,
For another example of the way in which fruitful institutional divergences between the site of
origin and that of reception shape reception history, see Franois Cusset, French Teory: How
Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States, trans. Je
Fort with Josephine Berganza and Marlon Jones (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
:cc), ::.



Conclusion ::,
were attempting to reconstitute Webers polymathic abilities through
institutionalized cooperation rather than imitation.
:c
As part of a delib-
erate attempt to promote interdisciplinarity in the social sciences, the
Harvard sociology department was dissolved in :,o and its faculty, along
with colleagues in social psychology, clinical psychology, and cultural
anthropology, were reassigned to the newly created Department of Social
Relations. Under the aegis of Parsons, the Department of Social Relations
committed itself to training students collectively and promoting an over-
arching vision of integrated social science, while at the same time grant-
ing graduate degrees in its constitutive disciplines. In its twenty-four years
of existence the department employed such luminaries as Alex Inkeles,
Clyde Kluckhohn, Seymour Martin Lipset, Barrington Moore, Jr., and
David Riesman, and trained some of the leading American social scien-
tists of the second half of the twentieth century, including Robert Bellah,
Cliord Geertz, Neil Smelser, Charles Tilly, and Ezra Vogel.
::
Neither the
Department of Social Relations, nor the structural-functionalist socio-
logical theory Parsons promoted within it, were Weberian in the strict
sense of recapitulating his questions and research methodologies. Yet the
interest in empirically exploring such Weberian topoi as the interrelation
between religious values, economic action, and political power was clearly
evident in the work of Parsonss students. For Baumgarten, the establish-
ment of the Department of Social Relations signaled that any attempt
to continue Max Webers investigations in their original dimensions, or
fully to understand them in their originally intended meaning, must rely
on cooperation.
::
Tis was an insight into the potentialities of Webers
project that American social scientists exploited more eectively than
their German contemporaries.

:c
Eduard Baumgarten, Die Bedeutung Max Webers fr die Gegenwart, Die Sammlung , (:,,c):
,,;.

::
On the history of the Department of Social Relations, see Barry V. Johnston, Te Contemporary
Crisis and the Social Relations Department at Harvard: A Case Study in Hegemony and
Disintegration, American Sociologist :,, no. , (:,,): :o:. For personal recollections, see
Benton Johnson and Miriam M. Johnson, Te Integrating of the Social Sciences: Teoretical
and Empirical Research and Training in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, in Te
Nationalization of the Social Sciences, ed. Samuel Z. Klausner and Victor M. Lidz (Philadephia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, :,o), :,:,; Richard Handler, An Interview with Cliord
Geertz, Current Anthropology ,:, no. , (:,,:): oc,:,; Cliord Geertz, After the Fact: Two
Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, :,,,),
,,:c; and Arthur J. Vidich, Te Department of Social Relations and Systems Teory
at Harvard: :,,c, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society :,, no. (:ccc):
oc;.

::
Baumgarten, Die Bedeutung Max Webers, ,,;.



Conclusion ::o
Having explored the history of Webers transatlantic reception, what
predictions can we make of his future place in the social sciences? Will he
remain a canonical gure to think with? In many respects the world in
which he came of age bears a striking resemblance to our own, perhaps
more so than at any other point in the past half century. Te revolution-
ary consequences of economic globalization, the precarious nature of mass
politics in an age of resurgent nationalism and geopolitical multipolarity,
and the dwindling supply of natural resources trouble the imagination of
scholars and policy-makers as they did :cc years ago. Tough the location
and conguration of these issues may have shifted, their cultural signi-
cance looms once more. In this uncertain climate Weber may well prove
a more productive intellectual to think with than many of his equally
famous contemporaries not because his historical theses have proven
true, nor because his personal ethos deserves emulation, but because the
problems that moved him, and thus the concepts he framed to interrogate
them, continue to resonate with us.
::;
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Abel, Teodore, ,;, :c:, :c,, :c;n::;
academic freedom, ;
Adler, Max, ,o,;
administration, public, :;, ,c, :c;, :,;
and bureaucracy, ::,:, :,c, :c
and modern capitalism, :, :c,, :::, :::, :,,
:,,
and National Socialism, :,,,o, :,;
Webers critique of, :;, ,:, ::,, ::, :,;
alienation, ,,, ::o, ::
Almond, Gabriel, :c
Amherst College, ,,, ,,, :o, :o,
anarchism, ::, :,
Andreas, Willy, ,o
anomie, :co;, :c, ::,, ::,
anticapitalism, ,,,, :cc,
anticolonialism, see decolonization
antinomies, ooo;, o,, ;c, ::;:
anti-Semitism, ,, c, ;:, ;;,, ,,, :,;,
see also Jews
anti-utopianism, ::, ::
cold, ::,, ::c:, ::, :,o
hot, ::,:c, ::,o, :,;,
temperate, ::,, :::,, :,o,;, :,
Webers attitude toward, ::;:
Apter, David, :c, ::c
Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik,
:;, :c,n,,, ::o, :,,, :;o, :,,
Arco-Valley, Count, :,:, :,on;,
Arendt, Hannah, :,,,o
asceticism, ,, ;c, , ,
Catholic, :c:
as component of bourgeois lifestyle,
;
innerworldly, , ,c, ,:, ,, ,,, :c:,
:c,
Protestant, , ,, ,c, ,:, ,,, ,on;c, :c:
Webers habitus of, :::, ::,, :,:
Ascona, ::
associations (Vereine), :c, :,:, :,,, :,, :,;,
:,, :o:, :;,, :;, :;,, :c
Atatrk, Kemal, :c
Aubin, Gustav, ,:
Bab, Julius, :,
Baehr, Peter, :;,
Baker, Russell, :;o, ::
Baptists, :cc
Barth, Paul, :o
Baumgarten, Eduard, :::,
Bebel, August, :,, :,,
Becker, Howard, ,o,;, :ccn,:, :c:, ::,
Beetham, David, :,:o
Beins, Ernst, ,
Bell, Daniel, ,, ::,
Bellah, Robert, ::,
Below, Georg von, ::,, c, ,:,,, :,o, :,;
Bendix, Reinhard, ,
Bennion, Lowell, ,;
Bergstraesser, Arnold, :o, ,,, ,,, ,
Beruf, see vocation
Betrieb, :c, ::o, :,c, :,:, ::,, ::,
Betriebskapitalismus, :c
and bureaucracy, :c,, :co, :c;, :::, :::, ::
and the modern state, :c::, :::
Webers concept of, :, :c,o, :::
Beziehungslehre, :,,oc
Bierstedt, Robert, ,,
Bildung, ,,
Binder, Julius, :,:,,
Bismarck, Otto von, :c,, :,
Blau, Peter, ::o
Bloch, Ernst, :o, ,,
Bloom, Allan, :;,
Boehmer, Heinrich, :cc:
Bolshevism, :c:, see also Communism; Lenin,
Vladimir; Soviet Union; Stalin, Joseph
Bolz, Norbert, ::,
Bonaparte, Napolon, :,
Bonhoeer, Dietrich, :,,,
Bourdieu, Pierre, o
Braus, Hermann, :,
Index
:o:

Index :o,
Brentano, Lujo, ,:, ,,
Brick, Howard, ::,
Brinton, Crane, :;,
Britain, , ,,, ;, ,c,:, :cc
Brod, Max, :c,
Bcher, Karl, :,c
Buddha, :::, see also Buddhism
Buddhism, :,o
Bukharin, Nikolai, ,;, ,o
Bund, :,,
bureaucracy, :, ::, , ,c, ,:,:, :,:, ::,, ::
and federalism, :c;
Georg Lukcs on, :::
and National Socialism, :,,,o, :,;,, :c
and parliamentarism, :co
Talcott Parsons on, ,,, :, ::,:o, ::
Webers concept of, ;, :, :c,, :::, ::::,,
::n;, :,;, :, :,c, :,, :c
see also administration, public; Betrieb
Burg Lauenstein, :::,
Caesar, Julius, ,,, ::, :,
calculation, ,,, ::;
and modern capitalist enterprise, o, :c,,
::c, :,,, :,,
and the modern state, :::
and the spirit of capitalism, ,,
Webers sensibility, ::,
calling, see vocation
Calvinism, c, , ,,c, ,:, ,:,, ,ono,,
:cc, :c:
Webers sympathy for, :c:, :c:, ::,
See also Puritanism
Cambridge University, ,
capitalism, o, :c, :,, ,o, c, :, , ,:, ,, ,o,
,;, ,,, :c, :c, ::c, :::, ::,, ::, :o:, :o,
::c
and bureaucracy, :::o
and Jews, ,, ,,, :cc, :c,
Webers concept of, n:;
Werner Sombarts concept of, :,
see also anticapitalism; enterprise, capitalist;
entrepreneurs, capitalist; modern
capitalism; spirit of capitalism
capitalists, see entrepreneurs, capitalist
Carlyle, Tomas, :
Castro, Fidel, :c
Catholicism, :, :c:,, :,, :c, :o, :,c,:
charisma, :, ;, ::, ,,, , :;o;,, :,, :,
:,,,, :cc:, ::,:
in American popular culture, :;o, ::::,
and German conservatism, :,,,
and German socialism, :o, :,
and Italian Fascism, :;o, :;, :,o,
:,,,, :,,:cc, :c:, :c, :co, :::
and National Socialism, , ,, ::, :;o,
:;;;,, :,, :,,,, :c:, :c:;, :::, ::,
in the new states, ::, :;, :;,, :c;::
and political religion, :c:,
and Robert Michels, :,,:cc, :c:
in the Soviet Union, :;o, :,, :c:, :c, :co
Webers concept of, ::, :,, :;o, :;,,, ::,
:::
Webers personality, ::, :,, :,
China, ,, ,, :c,, :,o, :o:, :c,
see also Confucianism; Taoism
Columbia University, , ,;, ,, :c:, :c;n::;
Communism, :;o, :c, :co,
see also Bolshevism; Lenin, Vladimir;
Stalin, Joseph; Soviet Union
Comte, Auguste, oc, :o, :;
concepts, o;, o
history of, o, :;;
role in natural and cultural sciences, ;, :c,
::,, :oo
thinking with Webers, :, , o;, ,::, ,,
;,, :;;, :;, :;,, ::,, ::o, :::,, ::::
Webers innovative use of, :, ;, :co, :::,
:::, ::o
see also ideal types; pure types
concrete orders, ;:;
Condren, Conal, ,
Confucianism, :,o
conservatism, ,:, :::, :o, :, :,,
Talcott Parsonss attitude toward, ::,
Webers attitude toward, ::, :,, ,, oc, o:
and Webers reception, :o, :,, :, ;, ;o, :c:,
::, :,,, :o,, :,,,, :,,, ::,
creative misinterpretation, ::o
Crusius, Friedrich, :,:n,o
Cuba, :c
cultural sciences, ;, ::,, :,,
daemon, ,,, ::,, ::,, :::
Darwin, Charles, :;,
Davies, James C., ::c
Davis, Kingsley, ,,
decolonization, ::, :;, :c;::, ::,
see also new states
demagication, ,,, ,, ::,, :::, :::, ::,, ::,
::,, ::, :o,, ::,, ::c, :::
democracy, o, :, :,, :,,, :cc
associated with Webers value freedom, ;;,
and charismatic rulership, ::, :,,
:o;, :,, :cc, :c,, ::c, :::
Fhrerdemokratie, , :,
Webers attitude toward, , :, :,, ::,,
:, :,, :,:
Dempf, Alois, :c:
Department of Social Relations, ::,
Index :o
Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Soziologie, :;, ,:, ,,,
:,, :,c, :,,, :o:, :o,
Deutsche Hochschule fr Politik, :n::,
Devereux, Edward, ,,
Diederichs, Eugen, ::
Diehl, Carl, ::
Dilthey, Wilhelm, ;,
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, ,
Drei Masken, ,:
Drill, Robert, ,,:cc
Drucker, Peter, :c:
Duncker & Humblot, ,:
Durkheim, Emile, :,,, :;:, :co;, :c,n::,,
:::, ::,
Ebert, Friedrich, :,
Economic Ethics of the World Religions,
Te (Weber), :,,,;, :,,, :o,, :;,,
:;o, see also Gesammelte Aufstze zur
Religionssoziologie; sociology of religion
economics
classical, ::
Historical School of, ::, :,, :oo
institutionalist and neoclassical, :oo,,
:;c, :;:
theory of, ,o, ,,, ,,, ::, :,, :o, :o,;c,
:;:, :;,
Economy and Society (Weber)
Betrieb dened in, :c
charisma, :;o, :co
composition of, :,o, :,
impact on readers, :::
legal rationalization, :::
publication history, ,:, ,:, :,,,, ::;
reputation of, :,,
sociological methods of, :,:,o, :,, :o:, :oo,
:;:;,
translations of, ,, :,, :c,, :co
University of Chicago seminar on, :
Eddy, Mary Baker, :co
Eisenhower, Dwight, ::c
Eisner, Kurt, :,, ::, :,
Elias, Norbert, ,,
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, ,,, c
Engels, Friedrich, ,o, ,;
England, see Britain
Enlightenment, ;, , :c,, :;
enterprise, capitalist
analogous to modern state, :, :c,::
calculation as essential feature of, o, :c,,
::c, :,:,,, :,,
concept of, :, n:;
and modern capitalism, ,, ,:,,, :,
modern institutional structure of, :, :c,,,
::,, :,c, :,:,,, :,,
origins of, :, ;
see also Betrieb
entrepreneurs, capitalist
analogous to parliamentary politicians, :co
mentality of, :, ,, o, ,:, ,,, ,o,;, :c,
modern predicament of, o, ::,
see also spirit of capitalism
Entzauberung, see demagication
ethic of conviction, ::, ,o,;, oo, ::
ethic of responsibility, ::, ;, ,o, oo, ::,
::,, ::c, ::, ::,, ::;:, :,;,
::
existential philosophy, :c, ,, ,, o,,
o;:, :,:,o, ::, see also Jaspers, Karl;
philosophy
Factor, Regis, ;,
faith, ;, ::, ::;, ::,, ::c, :::, :::, ::,, ::,, ::,
::,, :,c, :,:, :,:, :,,, :,, :,o, :,;, :,,,
:cc, ::, see also knight of faith
Fallenstein House, :, ,,
fascism, , ,, :;o
Italian, :,o, :,, :c:, :c, :co
see also Hitler, Adolf; Mussolini, Benito;
National Socialism
Faust, , ,
Federation of German Womens Associations,
:;, :
fetishism of the commodity, ::c
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, :;, oc
Fischer, H. Karl, ,:,,, ,,
Fortune, ::,
Frank, Hans, :,;,
Franklin, Benjamin, ;, ,, ,:
Franzen, Erich, ::
French Revolution, :
Freyer, Hans, ,, :o,, :oo,, :oo, :o;, :,,no,
::c
Friedrich, Carl J., :::
From Max Weber (Gerth and Mills), ,
Fhrerdemokratie, , :,
Gandhi, Mohandas, :c;n::;
Gaulle, Charles de, ::
Geertz, Cliord, ::,
Gehuse, see shell
Geiger, Teodor, :;;
George, Stefan, ::, ::, , ,:,,, ,, oc, o:, o:,
:c:, ::
German Democratic Party (DDP), :, :,, :,
German Social Democratic Party (SPD), ,c,
:, :o, :;, :,, :,,, see also socialism
Gerth, Hans, ,, , ,,, :c:, :c
Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie
(Weber), ,:, ,;, :, , :,o,
see also Economic Ethics of the World
Religions, Te; sociology of religion
Index :o,
Gesammelte Aufstze zur Wissenschaftslehre
(Weber), ,:, :
Geyer, Curt, :,
Ghana, :c, ::c
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, ::, ,,, o:, ;
Gold Coast, see Ghana
Goldmann, Nahum, :,
Gothein, Eberhard, :n:;, :,, c, ::,,c, :,;
Gothein, Marie Luise, :;n:;
Gouldner, Alvin, ::o
Gournay, Vincent de, :::
Gradenwitz, Otto, ,,
Greece, ::, o:, ::, ::, :::
Greek philosophy, o:
Grenzsituationen, see limit situations
Gruhle, Hans, o
Gumplowicz, Ludwig, :o
Gundolf, Friedrich, :,, ::, ,,, ,, oc, o:, :c:
Gurian, Waldemar, :c:, :c,, :co
Halbwachs, Maurice, ,;
Hammacher, Emil, ,o
Hartshorne, Edward, ,,
Harvard University, ,,, :, :o,, :co, :::, ::,
Hasenfu, Josef, :c:
Hayek, Friedrich, ,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, oc, ;,, :c,, :c,
Heidegger, Martin, ::o, :o,
Heidelberg
intellectual life, :,:, :;:c, ::, ,,,o,
,,c, ,, ,,, o:, o;o, :,:, :o
student body, :c::, ,c
Webers academic career in, ::,
Webers memorial service, ,c, ,
see also Myth of Heidelberg
Heidelberg Association for a Policy of Justice, :,
Heidelberg Institute for Social and Political
Sciences, ,,, ,,, cn::c
Heimann, Eduard, c
Hellmann, Siegmund, ,:
Henderson, Alexander, ,
Hennis, Wilhelm, ;;n::,, :,c, ::,
heroism, :, :,:, :,;, :c,, ::c
and charisma, :c, ::, ::, :,,, ::,
Webers, ;, :::,, ::c, :::, :::, ::,, ::,, ::,
:,c, :,;, ::
Herrschaft, see rulership
Heuss, Teodor, ,, :,, ,c, :,
Heuss-Knapp, Elly, :,
Hinduism, :,o
Hintze, Otto, :, ,:,:, :co;, ::
historical materialism, :c, ,;, :, ,,;
Historical School, German, ::, :,, :oo
history, ,:, :, :c, :,, :, :o, ::, :,, :,:,
:,o, ::c
crisis of historicism, o,
philosophy of, o,o,, ::;, :oo,
and sociology, :,, :o, :;, :,:, :,:, :,,,,
:,o, :,, :,,, :o:o,, :o, :o,, :;:
Weber as practitioner of, :c, ::, :, c, ,:,
:::, ::;, :,c, :,, :,,,, :oco:, :oo, :;,,
::;, ::,, :::, ::o
see also historical materialism
Hitler, Adolf, :,, :;
charismatic rulership of, :;, :,, :,o, :,;,
:c:, :c:, :c,, :co, :c;, :::, ::,
and value freedom, ;o, ;;
see also National Socialism
Hodge, William, ,
Hhn, Reinhard, ;,n:co
holism, ,,, ,, o:, :,;, :,,, :;;, :c:, ::::,
Honigsheim, Paul, ,;, :,:, :,;
Horkheimer, Max, oc
Hughes, H. Stuart, ::,
Huguenots, :c::, :,c
Hula, Erich, :
Humphrey, Hubert, :;o
Husserl, Edmund, :o,
ideal types, oc
critique of, :c, :o:, :o:, :o,oo, :;c, :;,;,,
:,
Webers concept of, ,, :c, :,,, :,:,;,
:,, :o:, ::;
see also pure types
idealism
German, ;,, ,;
historical, ,,,o
imperialism, ,, :,, :o, ,,:cc, :c
India, :o, ,,, :c,, :o:, :c;n::;, see also Buddha;
Buddhism; Hinduism
individualism
and capitalism, :cc
and charisma, ::, :;;, :, :,:, :,,
Georg Lukcss antipathy to, :c,
and Puritanism, ,:
and value freedom, polytheism, ,, ;:;:, ;,
Webers ethos, ::;:, ::,, :,;, :,:, ::,
:::
inuence, see reception
Inkeles, Alex, ::,
International Sociological Association, :,,
irrationality, ,c
and charisma, , :o, :,:, :,o, :c
and Lutheranism, :cc
sociology and, :,,, :,:
and the spirit of capitalism, o, ,
Islam, :,o, :::
Ja, Edgar, :;, ::nc, :n:,
Ja, Else, ,,
Japan, :n:
Index :oo
Jaspers, Gertrud, ,:
Jaspers, Karl, ,, :,, ,o, ,, :,:, :on,o, ::o
and existential philosophy, ,, o,, o;:,
:,:,
on value freedom and polytheism, ,, o,,
o;;:, ;,, ;,, ::,, :::
on Webers anti-utopianism, ::,, :,:,o, :,;
on Webers political leadership, ,c
Jaurs, Jean, :,,
Jews, c, , ,, oc, ;:, :,o, :,o, :o,, :,;
and capitalism, ,, ,,, :cc, :c,
in the Weber Circle, :,, :c, ::, :,
see also anti-Semitism
Johnson, Alvin, ,,c
jours, see salon, Webers
Junge Rechte, :o;
Kahin, George, :c
Kahler, Erich von, oco:, o, o,, ;
Kalyvas, Andreas, :,:
Kant, Immanuel, oonc, ;:, :::, see also neo-
Kantianism
Kap-herr, Jrg von, oc, :,:,:, :,;
Kaunda, Kenneth, :::
Kautsky, Karl, ,,, :,
Kennedy, John F., :;o, :::, ::
Kennedy, Robert F., :;o
Kenyatta, Jomo, :::
Kierkegaard, Sren, ::, ::c, :,,,,
see also knight of faith
King, Martin Luther, ::
Klingemann, Carsten, ,
Kluckhohn, Clyde, ::,
Knapp, Georg Friedrich, ::
knight of faith, ::, ::c, :,,,, ::, ::,
Knight, Frank, ,o, ,, :, :o,
Koch, Paul, ,
Koellreutter, Otto, :co
Kohn, Hans, :;o, :c:
Kttgen, Arnold, :,,,o
Kracauer, Siegfried, ,, oo,, ::,, :::, :::
Kroyer, Teodor, ,:
Krger, Herbert, :,o
Kuczynski, Jrgen,
Kulturkritik, ,;:c,, ::;, ::,, :,,, ::,
Kulturwissenschaften, see cultural sciences
Landshut, Siegfried, :o,o, :o,oo, :o;, ::c
Lask, Emil, :,
Lassalle, Ferdinand, :,,
law
administrative, :,,,o
constitutional, :c;, :c
developmental, o:, ::;, ::, :o, :o, :o
economic, ::, ::, :;c
formal legality, :c
legal positivism, oo, :c;, :,c
legal relativism, o,, ;,
and modern capitalism, :::, :,, :,,
National Socialist, ;,n:co
natural, o,, :c;
philosophy of, o,o;, ;,
rule of, :o, :,;
scientic, o,, o;, ::c, ::, :, :o,, :o,, :;,,
:;
sociology of, :o, :, :cn::;, :::n:,:, :,, :,,
leadership, see charisma
Lebensfhrung, see life conduct
Lederer, Emil, :;, ,,, ,,c, :c:, :c:
legitimacy, :, ::o, :,;, :,, :;:, :;:
and rulership, ::, oo, :,, :o:, :c:, ::,
:,, :o, :, :,c, :,:, :,,, :,o, :c, :c,
:c,
Leibholz, Gerhard, :o
Lenin, Vladimir, :,, :c:, see also Bolshevism;
Communism; Soviet Union
Lethen, Helmuth, ::,
Lewis, John L., ::,
liberalism, ::, ::, ::,
Carl Schmitts critique of, :c;,
and charisma, ::, :;;, :,, :, :,:, :c,
Georg Lukcss antipathy to, :c,
and Protestantism, :c:
and value freedom, polytheism, ,c, ;,,
;;,, ;o
and Webers conception of freedom, :,,
life conduct, ;, ;, , ::c, :,c, :,, :,,, :,o,
:o:, :o,
limit situations, o,, ;:
Lingeman, Richard, ::,:
Linhardt, Robert, ,,
Lipset, Seymour Martin, ::c::, ::,
Loewenstein, Karl, ,:, :,, :::
London School of Economics, ,n,o, ,,, ,
Long, Huey, :co, ::,
Lwith, Karl, ,, , :o, ::,, ::o:, ::,, :,;,
::
Ludendor, Erich, :
Lukcs, Georg, ,, :,, ,, ,,,
and Scholarship as a Vocation, ,, ,,
on the modern state, :, :co, :c,::, ::
Luther, Martin, ,
Lutheranism, :, :cc:, :c,
Lynd, Robert, :c;n::;
Macdonald, Dwight,
Machiavelli, Niccol, ,;nc
MacIver, Robert, :c:, :c;n::;
Mannhardt, Johann Wilhelm, :o
Mannheim, Karl, ,, :,, ,,, ,,,, ,o, ,, :,
Index :o;
and historical sociology, :o:o,
on Webers anti-utopianism, ::,, ::::,
Mao Tse-tung, :c, ::
marginal utility, ::, :,, :o
Marr, Heinz, :,,,,, :,o
Marschak, Jakob, c, :,o
Marshall, Alfred, :;:
Martin, Alfred von, :,,no,
Marx, Karl, ,o, :, ,, :c,, :o,
and commodity fetishism, ::c
compared with Weber, ::, ::o:, :o,,
::,, ::c
and the spirit of capitalism, ,o,;
see also Marxism
Marxism, , :c, ;,, ,,;, :c,, :;:
see also Marx, Karl
masculinity, :::
masochism, o;, :,
Mayer, Carl, c
Meinecke, Friedrich, :
Menger, Carl, ::, :,, :o, :;c
Mergel, Tomas, :
Merton, Robert, ,,, ::o
Methodenstreit, :::, :o;o, :o,, :;c
Methodism, ,, :cc
Methodology of the Social Sciences, Te (Shils
and Finch), ,
Michels, Robert, :;, :,,:cc, :c:
Mills, C. Wright, ,, , ,
modern capitalism, ;, :c, c, o, , :cc,
:c:, ::, :;c, ::,, ::c, :::
bureaucracy and, :::o, ::
as compared with socialism, :::o
distinctiveness of, :, ,, ,:,,, :c,,
:c,, :::, :,, :,:,,, :,o, :o
as economic form, :,:,, :,,, :,;
institutional preconditions for, :c,,
::c::, :,
monstrous cosmos of, o, ;, ,, :cc, ::,
::,
specialization and, ;
see also capitalism; enterprise, capitalist;
spirit of capitalism
modernization theory, :;,, :c;::
Mohr (Siebeck), ,:, :,, :,,n,
Mommsen, Hans, :;,
Mommsen, Wolfgang, ,, :,c, ::;
Moore, Barrington, Jr., ::,
Mosca, Gaetano, :,,
Muhammad, :::
Munich Revolution, :::,, see also Eisner,
Kurt; Ja, Edgar; Toller, Ernst
Mussolini, Benito, :;, :o, :,, :,, :,,, :cc,
:c:, :::, see also fascism
myth of Heidelberg, :;:c, ,,
Nasser, Gamal, ::
National Social Association, :,
National Socialism, ,,, c, , , :co, ::, :,,
:o,, :;, :,c, :,:
and charisma, ::, :;o, :;;, :;;,, :,,,,
:c:;, :::, ::,, ::
Webers anity to, ,, ;,, :,
Webers reception under, :, ,, :c, ::, ,,c,
;:;, ;,;,, :o,, :;;, :,,, :::
nationalism, ::o
anticolonial, :;, :c::
and the Junge Rechte, :o
and Karl Jaspers, :,,o
Webers, ,, :,, :,:o, :,, ::
Naumann, Friedrich, :,, :, :,
neo-Kantianism, ,, oonc, ;:, ,o, ::,
see also Kant, Immanuel
Neumann, Franz, :, :c:, :c:
Neumann, Sigmund, :,,
Neurath, Otto, ,,
New School for Social Research, ,,, c:, :,
:c:, see also University in Exile
new states, :;, :;,, :c;::
New York Times, :;o, ::,:
Newton, Isaac, :;,
Niekisch, Ernst, :;
Nietzsche, Friedrich, ,:, oc, ;, ,, :, ::,,
::c
nihilism, o,, ::, ::c, :::
Nixon, Richard, :;o, :::n:,, ::
Nkrumah, Kwame, :c, ::c, :::,
see also Ghana
Nyere, Julius, :::
Objektivitt sozialwissenschaftlicher
und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis, Die
(Weber), ,, :, :o,o
Oppenheimer, Franz, :o
organicism, o:, o:, :c:, :;, :;;, :,,
Orientalism, :::
Osterroth, Franz, :;, :
Otto, Rudolf, :::
Outline of Social Economics (Weber), :,, :,c,
:,,, :,,n,, :;,, :on,o
pacism, ::, :,, ,;, ;,, ::;, :,;
Palyi, Melchior, ,:
Pareto, Vilfredo, :,,, :;c, :;:, :,,
Paris Peace Conference, :,
Parliament and Government in Germany
under a New Political Order (Weber), :,
:c, :co, :::
parliamentarism
associated with value freedom and
polytheism, ;,
Index :o
critiques of, ;,, :co, :, :,:, :,,, :cc
Georg Lukcss antipathy to, :c,
in the new states, ::c
Weber on, ::, :;, :,, ;n:c, :co, ::, :,,,
:c,, :::, ::
Parsons, Talcott, ,,,o, ,,
and the Department of Social Relations, ::,
as interpreter of Webers sociology, ::, :,,,
::, :o;;,, ::
as popularizer of bureaucracy, ::, ::,
::,:o, ::
as popularizer of charisma, :;,, :c:, :c,,
:c,n::,, :::, ::, ::
social and political views of, ::,:o, ::c
as Webers translator, ,, ,o, ,, :,
Pauker, Guy, :c
Paul, Saint, ::
Pentacostalism, ::n:,,
phenomenology, ;, :,,
philosophy, ,
Ernst Troeltschs conception of, o,o,
Gustav Radbruchs conception of, o,o;
of history, o,o,, ::;, :oo,
Karl Jasperss conception of, ,, o;:,
:,,,
Lebensphilosophie, :c,
Max Schelers conception of, o,
Webers conception of, ,, o, ,;, o, ::;
Webers signicance for, ::;, ::
see also existential philosophy
Pietism, ,
plebiscitary rulership, ::, :,, :
Plenge, Johann, ::,n::
pluralism, ,c, ;;,, :,,
Poles, :c, ::, :,, :, :,, :on,, :,;
political ethics, ,o,;
political religion, :;;,, :c:,, ::,
political scholarship, :c, ,, ,c, ;,;,, :::
Politics as a Vocation (Weber), :o, ,, :, ,,
o,, oo, ::, ::c, :::, ::, ::,, :,c, :;o,
:,cn,c, :c,, ::;
Politik als Beruf , see Politics as a Vocation
polytheism
as goal of scholarship, ,, o,;:
and individualism, ,, ;:, ;,
and pluralism, ;;,
and racism, ;:;
and radicalism, ,
Webers concept of, :c, , ,;,,
see also warring gods
predestination, ,,c, ,ono,
president, Reich, :,, :, :, :,c, :,:
Preuss, Hugo, :, :,
profession, see Beruf
prophets
charismatic rulership of, ::, :, :,c, :,:, :,o
as legislators of values, o, ,, ,;, ,, o, ;o,
,, ::c
as rationalizers of religious ethics, :,, :,,
Webers sympathy for, :,:
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
Te (Weber), :c, c, ::;
academic reception of, ,:,;
and historical materialism, ,,;
and Kulturkritik, ,;:c,
methodology of, ,, :,, :,;, :;:, :;,
reputation of, c, :,,n:
Talcott Parsonss translation of, ,,, ,o, ,
thesis of, o,o,, ,:, :c,, :,, :,o, :o,,
:oo,
Protestantism, ,:, :c:, ::n:,,, :::,
see also Calvinism; Lutheranism;
Methodism; Puritanism; Quakers
psychopathology, o;o
pure types, :, :, :::, :,, :c, see also ideal
types
Puritanism, , ,c,:, ,, ,,:cc, :c:, ::,
:,:, see also Calvinism
Pye, Lucian, :c, :::
Quakers, , :cc
Rabinbach, Anson, ::o
Rachfahl, Felix, ,:, ,,
racism, , ,, :c, :,:o, , ,, ;:;, :::,
see also anti-Semitism
Radbruch, Gustav, ,, :,, ::,, :::
conception of philosophy, o;, o
on value freedom and polytheism, ,, o,o;,
o,, ;:;:, ;,, ;,
Radkau, Joachim,
Rath, Klaus Wilhelm, ,, ;:;, ;;,, :::
Rathenau, Walther, :, ,,
rationalism, o,, :c:, :,;
bourgeois, ,:
characteristic of Betrieb, :, :c, :c,, :co, :c;
economic, ,, , ,, o, :,:,,
labor, ,c, :c:, :c, ::,
life conduct, ;, , ,c, ,, :c:, :,
state, :::
Western, ::, :,;, :c;
see also irrationality; rationality;
rationalization
rationality
as constitutive of personality, ::;:
formal, :c, :,:, :,, :,,
formation of ideal types, :,:
Max Weber as embodiment of, :,,, :,o
Nazi administration, :,,,o
parliamentarism (cont.)
Index :o,
orientations of social action, :,
purposive, :c, ::;:, :,:, :,, :;:
revolution in scholarship, ;
value choice, o,, ;c, ;:, ::,
see also irrationality; rationalism;
rationalization
rationalization, ,,, ::,, ::, ::o:, :,,, :,,,
:o:, :o, :c;
administrative, :::, :,
legal, :c, :::, :,
of Nazi government, :,,
in the new states, :c, ::c, :::
of religious ethics, :,
of world views, o,
see also irrationality; rationalism; rationality
Ratnam, K. J., :::
Ratzenhofer, Gustav, :o
Rauschning, Hermann, :c:, :c,
Reagan, Ronald, ::
reception, ;, ::, ::, :,, ::o, ::
reication, ::c::, ::
Rheinstein, Max, :o, :
Ricardo, David, :;,
Rickert, Heinrich, ,, ::, :,
Riesenbrodt, Martin, :::
Riesman, David, ,, ::,
Roepke, Wilhelm, :c
romanticism, oc, ;,, ,,, :cc, :c:, ::;, :,:, :,
political, ::, :;
Roscher and Knies (Weber), :;
Ross, E. A., :,,
Roth, Guenther, ::o
Rothacker, Erich, :,,
routinization, :;,, ::, :o, :,,, :c, :c;
rulership (Herrschaft), ::, :, :, :c, :, :,c,
:,:, :,, :,,, :;,, :c, :,o, :::
legal, :c, :c, :c;, ::c
traditional, :c
see also charisma
Russia, :c, ::, :o, :;, ,, oc, :o
:,c, Revolution, :on,
see also Soviet Union
Rustow, Dankwart, :c
Salin, Edgar, ,o
Salomon, Albert, c, ::, ;, ::;, ::c
salon, Webers, , :, ::c, :,, :o, ,,, ,o
Salz, Arthur, ::nc, ,,n::, o:o:, o,, ;;,
Sca, Lawrence, ,,,
Sche, Albert, :o
Schapiro, Meyer, ,
Scheler, Max, ,, ,;, o:o,, o, o,, o, ;,, :o,
Schelting, Alexander von, ,o, ,, :c;n::;
Schiller, Friedrich, ::
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., :::, ::,
Schluchter, Wolfgang, ,
Schmalenbach, Herman, :,,no,
Schmidt, Conrad, ,;
Schmidt, Ferdinand Jakob, :cc
Schmidt, Franz, ::,:
Schmitt, Carl, ,, :o, :,:
appropriation of Te Protestant Ethic, :c::
on charismatic rulership, :,,:
and Christoph Steding, :,:
on Webers concept of Betrieb, :, :co,
:c;,, ::
Schmoller, Gustav, ,c,:, ,,, :::, :o, ::
scholarship (Wissenschaft), :c, o, ,,,, ::o,
::;, ::, :,, :::,, :::
existential value of, ;, , ,, ,:,,, ,,,o,
,, oc, o:, o:, o, o,o;, ;c;:, ::;
revolution in, , ,, ;, see also political
scholarship; polytheism; value freedom
Scholarship as a Vocation (Weber), :o, ,,
:, ,,,, o:, o,, ;c, ;, :::, ::,, ::o,
:,cn,c, ::;
Schubert, Hans von, ,:
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerhart von, ,:, ,,,o,
,,,, :cc, ::,
Schumacher, Hermann, :co
Schumann, Friedrich, :,
Schumpeter, Joseph, :;, :o,
Schtz, Alfred, :
Schwede-Coburg, Franz, ;:
Scientic Revolution,
secular religion, see political religion
Selznick, Philip, ::o
Sermon on the Mount, ,o, ,;
shell (Gehuse), o,, o, ,, ::n;, ::,
Shils, Edward, ,;,,, , :::
on charisma, :c,, :::, ::
as translator of Weber, ,, ,, ::, ,, ,
,
on value freedom, ;
Shridharani, Krishnalal, :c;n::;
Simmel, Georg, :,, ,, ,,, ,, o,n,c, ::,, ::,
concept of sociology, :;, :,, :,c, :,:
and formal sociology, :,, :,,, :o, :;
Simmel, Gertrud, :,
Sinn der Wertfreiheit der soziologischen
und konomischen Wissenschaften, Der
(Weber), ,, :
skepticism, ;, ::, o,, ::,, ::c, :::, :::, :,, :,o,
:,;, ::, ::,
Skinner, Quentin, ,
Smelser, Neil, ::,
Smith, Adam, ::,, :;,
Smith, Joseph, ::
Social Research, :, :;
Social Science Survey, ,,,, ;
Index :;c
socialism, :;, :,, ;, :c,, :,, :cc
and bureaucracy, ::,, :::o, ::
and charisma, :o, :,, :,,
Georg Lukcs on, :c,
Kathedersozialisten, ,c,:
and the reception of Te Protestant Ethic,
,o,;, ::,
and sociology, :o
Weber Circle and, ::, :, ,c
Weber on, ::, ::,, ::, :::, :,;, :,
Webers Munich lectures on, oc
see also German Social Democratic Party
sociology, :, ;, ,:, , :c,, :,, :cc
analysis of National Socialism, :,,,,, :c:,
:c,, :co;, ::
of associations, :
early studies devoted to Webers, ,,n,;, ,;,
::,, :oco:
formal, :c, :,;o:, :o:, :o;, :;;,
at Harvard University, ,,, ::,
historical or concrete, :c, :o:oo, :o;
industrial and organizational, ::o
of knowledge, ;,
of law, :, :cn::;, :::n:,:, :,, :,,
and Marxism, ,;
of music, ,:
philosophy and Webers, ::;
of the press, :
of religion, ,:n:, ,:, ,;, :, :, ,,, c,
:c,n,,, :,c, :,, :,,, :,o, :,;, :,,,, :oc,
:;:, :cc
of rulership, :, :, :,c, :,, :,,, ::, :,;
synthetic appeal of Webers, :::::
at the University of Chicago, :
Weber as canonical gure, :, ::, ::, c,
:,,:, :o;;,
Webers concept of, :, :c, :,,;, :,, :o:,
:;, ::;, ::,, ::
see also Deutsche Gesellschaft
fr Soziologie
Sohm, Rudolf, ::
Sombart, Werner, :;, ,o
and capitalism, :,, o, , ,:, ,,, ,o, :o:,
:o, :o,
and value freedom, ,:, ,,, ;
Soviet Union, oc, ,o, :c:, see also Russia
Spann, Othmar, ,, :o
specialization, ;, ,:, ,, ,,, ,,, oc, o:, ;,
:, , ,c, ,, :::, ::,, ::, :o:, :c, ::c,
:::
Speier, Hans, c,
Spencer, Herbert, :o, :;
Spengler, Oswald, :,cn,c, :::::
spirit of capitalism, :,:, ,:, ,,, ,, ,,,
,o,;, :c,, :c
Spranger, Eduard, ,,, :,,n:
SS (Schutzstael ), :,;, :c,
Stalin, Joseph, :c:, see also Bolshevism;
Communism; Soviet Union
state, :,, :,, :,c, :,:, :c, :,:, :,o, ::c, ::
analogous to modern capitalist enterprise,
:, :c,::, :::, ::, ::o, ::,, ::c, :::
National Socialist, , :,;,, :c:, :c
Staudinger, Hans, c
Steding, Christoph, :::,, :,:,:
Stevenson, Adlai, ::c
stoicism, ::, :::, :,;
Structure of Social Action, Te (Parsons), :,,,
:o;, :;c;, :;,, :co, :::
Taoism, :,o
Taussig, Frank W., :o,
Tawney, R. H., ,;
Teory of Social and Economic Organization,
Te (Parsons), ,, ,
Toma, Richard, ;c, :on,o
Tillich, Paul, :;, :c:
Tilly, Charles, ::,
Time, ::,, ::
Toller, Ernst, ::, :,
Tolstoy, Leo, ,, ,,,o, ,,, o;, o, o,
Tnnies, Ferdinand, :o
totalitarianism, :;, :, :c:
translations, :n:, ,, , :o, ,o, ,, :,, ;,
:o,, :,,, :ccn,:, :c:, :c,, :co
Triepel, Heinrich, :,,, :,o
Troeltsch, Ernst, ,, :
conception of philosophy, oo,, o
and the sociology of religion, :,:
on Te Protestant Ethic, ,:
on value freedom and polytheism, o,o,, ;
on Webers anti-utopianism, ::,, :::::
Turkey, :c
Turner, Stephen, ;,
University in Exile, c:, :c:, see also New
School for Social Research
University of Chicago, :o, ,o, ,,,, :, ;,
:o,, :;:, :,,
University of Frankfurt, ,n,o, ,, :,,, :,
University of Freiburg, :, :,, ,:, ::,, ::
University of Heidelberg, see Heidelberg
University of Munich, :, :o, :,:, ,, oc, o:,
::o, :,:, :,n:, :o, :,, :,cn,c
University of Pennsylvania, ,;
University of Vienna, :, :,, ,c, ,;, ::
University of Wisconsin-Madison, ,;, , ::,
value freedom, ;, , :n:,
and academic freedom, ;
Index :;:
and existential philosophy, :c, ,, o,;:
and National Socialism, , :c, ,,c, ;:;,
;,;,
and pluralism, ;;,
and the revolution in scholarship, ,,
,,o,, ;;,, ;,
Webers concept of, :, :c, o;, , ,, ,c,,
see also polytheism; warring gods
Velvet Underground, Te, ,no
Verein fr Sozialpolitik, :, :, ,c, ,:,:, ,,
;, :,, :n:,
Versailles, Treaty of, :
Verstehen, ;
Vierkandt, Alfred, :,, :o
Vleugels, Wilhelm, ,c, ;o;;, ;, ;,
vocation (Beruf ), ,,, ;, ,,:, ,,, ,, :c:,
:c,, ::, ::,, :,, :o,, :,, :::, ::c, :::
Voegelin, Erich (Eric), ,, ,;, ::, :o;, :,:, :c:
on Webers anti-utopianism, ::,, :::,,
::o, ::,, :,;, ::
on Webers nationalism, :o
Vogel, Ezra, ::,
Wallace, George, ::
Wallerstein, Immanuel, ::c
Walther, Andreas, ,c, ;o, ;, ;,, :oco:, :o;
Warren, Robert Penn, ::,
warring gods, ,;,,, o,, ;,, ;o, ::,
see also polytheism
Washington, George, ::c::
Waxweiler, Emile, :,,
Weber, Alfred, ,,, ,,, ,o, ,:, ,,, :c,, :o,, :on,o,
:,,no
Weber, Marianne, ,, ,o, ,;n:c, ,, o,, :,:,
:,,
and the George Circle, ::
as her husbands editor and biographer,
,c,,, :,, :,
reputation, :;, ::
salon, , ::c, ,,, ,o
Weber, Max
academic career, ::,, ::;
anity for radical youth, :,, :c:, ,,,,
:,:, :,
death, :,
and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fr
Soziologie, :;, ,:, ,,, :,, :,c, :o:
education, :, ::;
family history, ,
feuds with colleagues and adversaries,
:,c,:
and the George Circle, ::, ::, ,,, oco:,
:c:, ::
as guru, :o:;
Heidelberg memorial service, ,c, ,, :,,
mental illness, ::,, ::o
Munich memorial service, :, oc, :,:,:
personal impact, ::, ::, :, ,, oc, o:, ;;,,
::c, ::,,, :,;,, :,, ::, ::,
political career, :,c, ::,
as private scholar, :;
publications, ,c,:
salon, ::c
students, :, :,:o, :,:, ,c, ,, oc, ::,
:,c, :,:,:, :,cn,c
talents as lecturer, :o
and the Verein fr Sozialpolitik, :, :,
,:,:, ,, ;, :,, :n:,
Weippert, Georg, ,c, ;o, ;;;, ;,
Weltanschauungen, see world views
Wertfreiheit, see value freedom
Wiese, Leopold von, ,;, :,,oc,
:ccn,:
Wilbrandt, Robert, :,c
Winckelmann, Johannes, :o
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, see Economy and
Society
Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Weber), ,:, ,, :o,
Wissenschaft, see scholarship
Wolf, Erik, ::on,,
world views, , ,, ,o, ,,, oc, o:, o:, o,, o,,
;c, ;,, :::, ::,, :,,, :, ::
World War i, ::, :o:;, ,o, o:, :c;, :,:, :,,
:,, ::
World War ii, :,;, :c,
youth movement, :::,, :, :o, ::,
Znaniecki, Florian, ,;
Zwischenbetrachtung (Weber), :,onoc
i oi as i x coxrixr
Edited by David Armitage, Jennifer Pitts, Quentin Skinner and James Tully
: ii cuaio ioir\, ;. n. scuxiiwi xo, and quixri x sxi xxii (ios.)
Philosophy in History
Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy
pb ,; c ,:: :;,,c ,
: ; . c. a. iococx
Virtue, Commerce and History
Essays on Political Tought and History, Chiey in the Eighteenth Century
pb ,; c ,:: :;ooc ,
, x. x. coiosxi ru
Private Vices, Public Benets
Bernard Mandevilles Social and Political Tought
hb ,; c ,:: ,cc,o c
axruox\ iacoix (io.)
Te Languages of Political Teory in Early Modern Europe
pb ,; c ,:: ,ooo :
, oavi o suxxiis
Te Judgment of Sense
Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics
pb ,; c ,:: ,o,: ,
o iauiixci oi cxi\
Hegel: Religion, Economics and the Politics of Spirit, :;;c:c;
pb ,; c ,:: ,,:: ,
; xaico rooo
Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order
pb ,; c ,:: ,:: ,
i\xx suxi oa ; o\
Gassendi the Atomist
Advocate of History in an Age of Science
pb ,; c ,:: ,::,, ;
, ioxuxo iii ris (io.)
Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe
pb ,; c ,:: ,:c:c :

:c woii iiiixi is
Between Literature and Science: Te Rise of Sociology
pb ,; c ,:: ,,:c ,
:: riiixci naii, ; axis iaii, and iussiii i. uaxsox (ios.)
Political Innovation and Conceptual Change
pb ,; c ,:: ,,,;
:: ciio ci ciiixzii et al.
Te Empire of Chance
How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life
pb ,; c ,:: ,,, :
:, iirii xovi cx
Tat Noble Dream
Te Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession
hb ,; c ,:: ,,: :; pb ,; c ,:: ,,;, o
: oavi o ii iniixax
Te Province of Legislation Determined
Legal Teory in Eighteenth-Century Britain
pb ,; c ,:: ,:, :
:, oaxi ii ii cx
Faces of Degeneration
A European Disorder, c. :,c. :):
pb ,; c ,:: ,;,,
:o xii ru naxii
Inventing the French Revolution
Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century
pb ,; c ,:: ,,; ;
:; i ax uacxi xc
Te Taming of Chance
hb ,; c ,:: ,c: c; pb ,; c ,:: , ,
: ci siia nocx, quixri x sxi xxii, and xauii zi o vi ioii (ios.)
Machiavelli and Republicanism
pb ,; c ,:: ,,, ,
:, ooioru\ ioss
Te Origins of American Social Science
pb ,; c ,:: :,o :
:c xiaus cuii sri ax xouxxi
Te Rise of Neo-Kantianism
German Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism
hb ,; c ,:: ,;,,o
:: i ax xaciiax
Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance
Te Case of Law
hb ,; c ,:: :,o c; pb ,; c ,:: c:c:; ,
:: xauii zi o vi ioii
From Politics to Reason of State
Te Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics ::,o:oo
hb ,; c ,:: :,, ;; pb ,; c ,:: o;,, ,
:, xairi x vax ciioiiix
Te Political Tought of the Dutch Revolt :,,,:,,c
hb ,; c ,:: ,,:c ; pb ,; c ,:: ,:o, ,
: xi cuoias iui iii isox and quixri x sxi xxii (ios.)
Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain
hb ,; c ,:: ,,:: o
:, ; axis ruii\
An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts
hb ,; c ,:: ,coc ,; pb ,; c ,:: ,o, c
:o ii cuaio rucx
Philosophy and Government :,;::o,:
pb ,; c ,:: ,,
:; ii cuaio \io
Dening Science
William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian
Britain
hb ,; c ,:: ,:: ; pb ,; c ,:: ,::o ,
: xairi x waixxi
Te Court Artist
On the Ancestry of the Modern Artist
hb ,; c ,:: ,o,;,
:, iirii x. xi iiii
Dening the Common Good
Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain
hb ,; c ,:: :,, o; pb ,; c ,:: o:;:: ,
,c cuii sroiuii ; . niii\
Te Idea of Luxury
A Conceptual and Historical Investigation
pb ,; c ,:: oo,: :
,: i. ; . uuxoiir
Te Enlightenments Fable
Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society
hb ,; c ,:: oc: ; pb ,; c ,:: o:,:
,: ; uii a sraiiirox
Englishness and the Study of Politics
Te Social and Political Tought of Ernest Barker
hb ,; c ,:: o::, :; pb ,; c ,:: c: c
,, xii ru rii ni
Strategies of Economic Order
German Economic Discourse, :;,o:),o
hb ,; c ,:: o:,: ; pb ,; c ,:: o:,, :
, sacui xo xusuxawa
Te Transformation of Natural Philosophy
Te Case of Philip Melanchthon
hb ,; c ,:: ;,; ;; pb ,; c ,:: c,co ,
,, oavi o aixi raci, aixaxo ui x\, and quixri x sxi xxii (ios.)
Milton and Republicanism
hb ,; ,:: ,,:; o; pb ,; c ,:: oo :
,o xaixxu iiiroxix
Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English
Political Tought :,;c:oc
hb ,; c ,:: ,o,, ;; pb ,; c ,:: o:;:o :
,; iui ii i i ioxsi oi
Te Social and Political Tought of Bertrand Russell
Te Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism
hb ,; c ,:: ;,, ,; pb ,; c ,:: c:;o :
, xaxc\ cairwii cur, ; oioi car, ioia iiicx, and
ruoxas i. uinii
Otto Neurath: Philosophy between Science and Politics
hb ,; c ,:: ,:; :
,, ooxaio wi xcu
Riches and Poverty
An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, :;,o:,,
pb ,; c ,:: ,,,:c :
c ; ixxi iii iiarr
A History of Sociological Research Methods in America
hb ,; c ,:: :;, ,; pb ,; c ,:: oo, ,
: xxuo uaaxoxssix (io.)
Enlightenment and Religion
Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain
hb ,; c ,:: ,ococ ,; pb ,; c ,:: c:,; :
: c. i. i. iio\o
Adversaries and Authorities
Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science
hb ,; c ,:: ,,,,: ,; pb ,; c ,:: ,,o,,
, ioii ii xoxii
Te Reportage of Urban Culture
Robert Park and the Chicago School
hb ,; c ,:: c,: ,; pb ,; c ,:: c:o,, o
axxanii niirr
Liberty, Right and Nature
Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Tought
hb ,; c ,:: ,o:,, ,; pb ,; c ,:: ,,c
, sriwair ; . niowx (io.)
William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire
hb ,; c ,:: ,;c, :
o uiiixa iosixniarr
Rousseau and Geneva
From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, :;,):;:
hb ,; c ,:: ,;cc o; pb ,; c ,:: c,,,,
; oavi o iuxci xax
Pluralism and the Personality of the State
hb ,; c ,:: ,,:,: ,; pb ,; c ,:: c::o, ;
axxanii iarriisox
Early Modern Liberalism
hb ,; c ,:: ,,:oc ; pb ,; c ,:: c:o,:
, oavi o wii xsrii x
Equal Freedom and Utility
Herbert Spencers Liberal Utilitarianism
hb ,; c ,:: o::o o; pb ,; c ,:: c:oo
,c \ux iii roo and xi aii ii vi xcsroxi (ios.)
Pedagogy and Power
Rhetorics of Classical Learning
hb ,; c ,:: ,,,, o; pb ,; c ,:: c,c: c
,: iivi ii xirz
Te Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics
A Study in Cognitive History
hb ,; c ,:: o::;, c; pb ,; c ,:: ,::c o
,: xai\ s. xoicax and xaicaiir xoiii sox (ios)
Models as Mediators
Perspectives in Natural and Social Science
hb ,; c ,:: o,c,; ;; pb ,; c ,:: o,,;: :
,, ; oii xi cuiii
Measurement in Psychology
A Critical History of a Methodological Concept
hb ,; c ,:: o:::c ,; pb ,; c ,:: c::,: ;
, ii cuaio a. iii xus
Te American Language of Rights
hb ,; c ,:: o,:,c o; pb ,; c ,:: o:o::
,, ioniir aiux ; oxis
Te Development of Durkheims Social Realism
hb ,; c ,:: o,c, ; pb ,; c ,:: c:::c :
,o axxi xciaiix
Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I
Queen and Commonwealth :,,:,,
hb ,; c ,:: o,: ; pb ,; c ,:: c:, ,
,; ; axis uaxxi xs (io.)
Renaissance Civic Humanism
Reappraisals and Reections
hb ,; c ,:: ;c,c :; pb ,; c ,:: ,c; o
, r. ; . uocusriassii
Natural Law Teories in the Early Enlightenment
hb ,; c ,:: oo:,, ,; pb ,; c ,:: c:;;
,, oavi o aixi raci
Te Ideological Origins of the British Empire
hb ,; c ,:: ,,c: ,; pb ,; c ,:: ;,; ,
oc i ax uuxrii
Rival Enlightenments
Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany
hb ,; c ,:: ;,:o, ,; pb ,; c ,:: c:,, :
o: oaii o casri cii oxi and i ai x uaxisuii- xoxx (ios.)
Te History of Political Tought in National Context
hb ,; c ,:: ;:, c
o: i ax xaciiax
Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance
Te Case of Learned Medicine
hb ,; c ,:: co c
o, iirii xacx
Elizabethan Rhetoric
Teory and Practice
hb ,; c ,:: ::,:; pb ,; c ,:: c:c,, :
o cioiiii\ iio\o
Te Ambitions of Curiosity
Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China
hb ,; c ,:: :,: c; pb ,; c ,:: ,o: o
o, xaixxu iiiroxix
Te Duel in Early Modern England
Civility, Politeness and Honour
hb ,; c ,:: :co: :; pb ,; c ,:: c:,:c :
oo aoax surcii iii
Judaism and Enlightenment
hb ,; c ,:: :c:, ; pb ,; c ,:: o;:,: c
o; axoiiw ii rzxauii ci
Humanism and America
An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, :,oo::,
hb ,; c ,:: :::, :
o ii iiii ioici
Self-Interest before Adam Smith
A Genealogy of Economic Science
hb ,; c ,:: ,coc ;; pb ,; c ,:: c,o:, :
o, iii c xiisox
Te Greek Tradition in Republican Tought
hb ,; c ,:: ,,, ,; pb ,; c ,:: c:: c
;c uaiio uoiii
Jesuit Political Tought
Te Society of Jesus and the State, c. :,,o:,o
hb ,; c ,:: ,;;,
;: xi xaii uoixqvi sr
Machiavelli and Empire
hb ,; c ,:: ,,, ;
;: oavi o coicioucu
Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England
hb ,; c ,:: ; ,
;, ; oux ioniirsox
Te Case for the Enlightenment
Scotland and Naples :o:;o
hb ,; c ,:: ;; :; pb ,; c ,:: c,,;: ,
; oaxi ii caii\
Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson
Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond
hb ,; c ,:: ,c: :
;, aiax cioxairi i
Te Constitutionalist Revolution
An Essay on the History of England, :,,o:,:
hb ,; c ,:: ;:o, :
;o uaxxau oawsox
Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy
hb ,; c ,:: ,:;: ,
;; coxai coxoiix, sriiuix cauxiocii, and i ax uuxrii (ios.)
Te Philosopher in Early Modern Europe
Te Nature of a Contested Identity
hb ,; c ,:: ooo c
; axcus cowiaxo
Te Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy
Robert Burton in Context
hb ,; c ,:: o;o ,
;, iirii sraci\
Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince
hb ,; c ,:: o,,
c iuooii iiwi s
Language, Mind and Nature
Articial Languages in England from Bacon to Locke
hb ,; c ,:: ;;,c
: oavi o iioioio
Te Young Karl Marx
German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing
hb ,; c ,:: ;;; ,
: ; ox iaixi x
Taming the Leviathan
Te Reception of the Political and Religious Ideas of Tomas Hobbes in
England :,o:;oo
hb ,; c ,:: ;;,, c
, o. wii xsrii x
Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism
hb ,; c ,:: ;,:
iuc\ oiiai
Te Feminist Avant-Garde
Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century
hb ,; c ,:: ;o,: ,
, noii s wi sixax
Lvi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics
hb ,; c ,:: ;,:, ,
o ouxcax niii (io.)
Victorian Visions of Global Order
Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Tought
hb ,; c ,:: :,: ;
; i ax uuxrii
Te Secularisation of the Confessional State
Te Political Tought of Christian Tomasius
hb ,; c ,:: c,,
cuii sri ax ; . ixoix
Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History
hb ,; c ,:: c,o ,
, axxiii ix oi oi ; x
French Political thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville
Liberty in a Levelled Society?
hb ,; c ,:: ;; o
,c iirii caixsi\
Tinking about Property
From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution
hb ,; c ,:: ;o;; ,; pb ,; c ,:: ;cc:,
,: iixiioii oiurscuii
Te Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir
Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance
hb ,; c ,:: ,:c :
,: uiiixa iosixniarr
Liberal Values
Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion
hb ,; c ,:: ,:, o
,, ; axis ruii\
Public Philosophy in a New Key
Volume :: Democracy and Civic Freedom
hb ,; c ,:: ,o: ; pb ,; c ,:: ;:;, ,
, ; axis ruii\
Public Philosophy in a New Key
Volume :: Imperialism and Civic Freedom
hb ,; c ,:: ,oo ,; pb ,; c ,:: ;:c ,
,, ooxaio wi xcu
Wealth and Life
Essays on the Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, :,:):,
hb ,; c ,:: ;,, ,; pb ,; c ,:: ;:,,, ,
,o ioxxa ioixax- naizi iai
Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy
Cosmopolitanism and Moral Teory
hb ,; c ,:: ;o::: ,
,; ciicoi\ ciai\s
Imperial Sceptics
British Critics of Empire :,o:):o
hb ,; c ,:: :,,,
, iowaio naii xc
Te Young Derrida and French Philosophy, :,,:,o
hb ,; : :c; cc,o; ;
,, caioi iai
Republic of Women
Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century
hb ,; : :c; c::: :
:cc c. a. na\i\
Recovering Liberties
Indian Tought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire
hb ,; : :c; c:,, ; pb ,; : :c; oc:; ,
:c: iiii ci r\ ciiix
Montaigne and the Life of Freedom
hb ,; : :c; c:,, ;