{"title":"Ab-reactive Ethics: The (Un)faithful's Psychic Constellation in The Protestant Ethic","authors":"Carlos H. Pissardo","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article seeks to understand how four concepts introduced by Max Weber to the second edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism are employed to identify and describe what can be called the psychic constellation of the ideal-typical Reformed Protestant. As will be demonstrated, two of these concepts, taken in their rigorous sense, were first developed by Freudian psychoanalysis (ab-reaction and anxiety), while the other two (disenchantment of the world and psychological premiums) are originally Weberian. The aim is both to propose an alternative understanding of Weber's thesis (different from today's predominant Kantian interpretation of it) and to investigate the still poorly explored affinity between Weberian sociology and Freudian psychoanalysis.","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116433935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Max Weber and the ‘Prussian “Geist”’","authors":"C. Adair‐Toteff","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In ‘Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland’ (1917) Max Weber suddenly shifted from discussing voting rights in a democratic Germany to identifying four generals who he claimed embodied the genuine 'Prussian “Geist”': Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Boyen, and Moltke. The first three were actively involved in making the reforms to the Prussian military during the early decades of the nineteenth century, but Helmuth Moltke was heavily involved in military matters and political issues from 1864 until his death in 1891. Hence, he made major impressions on the young Max Weber during the first three decades of Weber's life. In this essay, I argue that Weber considered Moltke an 'ideal type' of leader: a modest man who possessed a sense of judgment and who acted according to the ‘ethics of responsibility’. In contrast, another German general, Erich Ludendorff, embodied those traits that Weber warned against in his later lecture Politik als Beruf: vanity, the lack of judgment, and the lack of any sense of responsibility. By contrasting Moltke with Ludendorff we not only get a sense of what Max Weber meant by the genuine 'Prussian “Geist”', but we also get an idea of Max Weber's notion of the true political leader. There is no question that to understand what Weber meant by 'Prussian “Geist”' would mean investigating a full range of topics, including his opinions on the agrarian question, his view of Bismarck and his successors, and many more. However, by focusing on his opinions of Moltke and Ludendorff, we get a good sense of why Weber believed the 'Prussian “Geist”' was so important for Germany's future.","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134213117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Max Weber and the Idea of Progress","authors":"J. Torpey","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper examines Max Weber's understanding of progress and his evaluation of how much of it there has been in human history. Weber largely dismissed the idea of progress, arguing that modern Kulturmenschen die ‘tired of life’ — beset by meaninglessness — rather than, like the peasant, ‘satiated with life’ — that is, filled with the meaningfulness of a life lived with and for others. Weber's perspective, which imputes a sort of generic meaninglessness to modern life, is argued to be too pessimistic; improvements in health, life expectancy, and wellbeing suggest that many people might well feel that there has been considerable progress, even if Weber thinks that their lives lack meaning for them. A fairer accounting of developments in the past century suggest that there is plenty of meaning to go around, and that especially those who contributed to the improvements in modern life are likely to have had fulfilling, meaningful lives in the course of making those contributions.","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122866355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Max Weber on the Market's Impersonality and Ethic","authors":"V. Storr, Solomon Stein","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Market exchange is often depicted as devoid of traditional feelings of community, and perhaps as being destructive of those feelings. Max Weber's ideal typification of the market is one particularly clear exposition of this perspective on market activity. In the context of Weber's broader contributions to an understanding of social life, however, this impersonal ideal type seems inconsistently applied. This paper examines this internal tension regarding how to conceptualize the market throughout Economy and Society. We argue that Weber's picture of actual market activity reflects a distinct ideal typification, one where economic relationships have both personal and impersonal orientations.","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"53 3-4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114046751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Political Style of Thinking: Essay on Max Weber by Kari Palonen (review)","authors":"Peter Breiner","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122959333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Weber as a Reader of Rudolph Sohm, and the Incomplete Concept of ‘Office Charisma'","authors":"J. Heurtin","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The purpose of this article is to revisit the concept of ‘office charisma', as Max Weber introduced it in his Sociology of Religions. Weber's conceptualization of it seems unfinished, and used only to characterize a form of degeneration of personal charisma, and more precisely, as the form that the charisma takes when it becomes quotidian. The discussion of this hypothesis requires a re-examination of the sources used by Weber, namely Rudoph Sohm's Kirchenrecht, published in 1892. It was from Sohm that Weber drew the opposite pair of personal charisma and office charisma. Kirchenrecht was published in a Lutheran context, and it seems that Weber, in his interpretation and secularization of the notion of charisma, remained a prisoner of Lutheran precepts; in particular, they prevented him from achieving a genuinely autonomous characterization of ‘office charisma'. But Sohm's book has also continued to stimulate reflection on the question of charisma among Catholics; it has led them, in particular, to rediscover the pneumatic dimension in their theology of the Church and ministries. The question that arises, then, is whether Catholic theology, and more precisely its ecclesiology, might allow us to think differently about charisma, especially in its relationship to the institution — so that this ecclesiology would be a possible lateral path for the sociology of charisma. How, in the light of this Catholic reflection, could an alternative concept of office charism can be reconstructed?","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131239783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Work and Personality in Flexible Capitalism","authors":"V. Mele","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The focus of this article is the relation between work and personality in flexible capitalism. The concept of work still represents one of the major factors determining modern individuals’ ability (or inability) to formulate personal, stable identities that enable them to become fully socialized. Both Georg Simmel and Max Weber among the classics of German sociology make reference to a common theoretical background that views the human being as a creature with originally rational potential, who is faced with the task of becoming a personality by means of consciously chosen life behaviour. Drawing from classic as well as contemporary sociological theory, the article explores the two spheres of identity and work in flexible capitalism. Despite the complexity of modern subjectivity and the great number of its affiliations, the sphere of work still remains the de facto decisive sphere for recognition, socialization, self-esteem, and self-definition. It remains the field in which the ‘decisive plays’ for definition of subjectivity take place — and the struggle for its possible emancipation.","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129672450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Weber's Critical Evaluation of Tarde: An Assessment","authors":"Sandro Segre","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article presents and discusses Weber's critical evaluation of Tarde's notion of imitation. While Weber does not object to the potential sociological relevance of this notion, he finds it ill-defined and difficult to investigate. He does not concur, moreover, with Tarde's fundamental thesis that all social action rests on imitation. A textual examination of Tarde's writings indicate that — aside from the notion of imitation, on which Tarde has laid exclusive focus - there are several points of agreement between Weber and Tarde. However, Tarde has preferred merely to mention these points, rather than investigating them, as Weber has done in his sociological writings. This may open the way to further investigation of common ground and differences between the two authors.","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132432104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Max Weber's Economic Ethic of the World Religions by Thomas C. Ertman (review)","authors":"A. Buss","doi":"10.1353/max.2019.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/max.2019.0014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":103306,"journal":{"name":"Max Weber Studies","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116606556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}