Max Weber: Politics And The Spirit Of Tragedy

By John Patrick Diggins

Book Overview

Max Weber is a fresh look at the life and work of one of the greatest social and political thinkers of the modern era, and the first book to focus on Weber from an American perspective.Ever since World War II, Max Weber has been regarded as a monument to the most conservative and conventional orthodoxies of the social science establishment. Despite the fact that many of Weber's books, foremost among them, Economy and Society and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, are classics and continue to be read, there has never been a single-volume treatment of Weber's life and thought in English.In reversing this critical neglect, John Patrick Diggins challenges Weber's iconic status and in the process uncovers another side of Weber: one influenced by Nietzche, one whose deep belief in individualism bound him close to the Emersonian tradition in America, one with a Lincoln-like sense of history as tragedy, and one with a sober sense of the responsibilities of the state.Diggins brilliantly connects the critical moments of Weber's life--and in particular, his experience of America--to his most enduring ideas on power, capitalism, bureaucracy, and science. He argues that Weber's emphasis on such topics as rapaciousness, hypocrisy, and deception makes his work timelier than ever in helping to illuminate the dilemmas of modern American politics.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465017517
• ISBN13: 9780465017515
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Correction

I certainly agree with the earlier reviewer from Portugal as to the high quality of Diggins' book. However, the reviewer is wrong about the term "iron cage." Weber very clearly refers to capitalism as an "iron cage" in the powerful concluding pages of his book "The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism." Weber both admired and feared the economic system that he saw as our fate. In a world in which values inevitably conflict and unintended consequences are the rule, every social system and every social initiative will be tinged with irony and tragedy. Capitalism is no exception; it is a mixed bag, both beneficial and costly. For Weber, only by both responsibly safeguarding ourselves from its more dehumanizing features and at the same time measuring up to its demands upon individual initiative can the human spirit survive and in some measure determine its future. We are suspended, with no relief other than our own individual and collective will to act, between these perennial and contradictory demands. Weber harbored both hopes and doubts that human beings were up to the task. Diggins' book brings out this message very well.

Great Introduction to Weberian Thought!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Max Weber was a modern thinker who defied categorization. Was he a philosopher, an historian, a political theorist or a sociologist? This leads to some confusion as to his message. For instance, contrary to what one of the reviews mentions, Weber didn't view Capitalism as an "iron cage", but it's modern derivative, bureaucracy as that cage. Few people will argue with that comment. Strangely enough too, as Professor Diggins indicates, the questions that Weber struggled with one hundred years ago are still very much with us today. Could that be because the situation of pre-World War I Germany burdened as it was with a dysfunctional political system and weak leaders, yet possessing a strong, vigorous economy and formidable military, is very similar to the that of America today? I found the author's discussion of Weber's problems of reconciling the "ethic of principled convictions" with the "ethic of responsibility" particularly timely. After finishing the book I found myself wanting to know more about Max Weber's insights into the modern condition.