Max Weber and 'The Protestant Ethic': Twin Histories

ISBN-13: 9780198807667 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 424 str.

Peter Ghosh

Opis

Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic Twin Histories presents an entirely new portrait of Max Weber, one of the most prestigious social theorists in recent history, using his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, as its central point of reference. It offers an intellectual biography of Weber framed along historical lines - something which has never been done before. It re-evaluates The Protestant Ethic--a text surprisingly neglected by scholars - supplying a missing intellectual and chronological centre to Weber's life and work.

Peter Ghosh suggests that The Protestant Ethic is the link which unites the earlier (pre-1900) and later (post-1910) phases of his career. He offers a series of fresh perspectives on Weber's thought in various areas - charisma, capitalism, law, politics, rationality, bourgeois life, and (not least) Weber's unusual religious thinking, which was 'remote from god' yet based on close dialogue with Christian theology. This approach produces a convincing view of Max Weber as a whole; while previously the sheer breadth of his intellectual interests has caused him to be read in a fragmentary way according to a series of specialized viewpoints, this volume seeks to put him back together again as a real individual.

Recenzje

Peter Ghosh stands alone in the Anglophone world as the most knowledgeable expert on Max Weber's work and person in the context of Anglo and Continental intellectual history. He has succeeded in writing an intellectual biography of Max Weber which has never been attempted before in this depth and breadth. As an intellectual history which comprises the wider cultural context of the early twentieth century, it will be of interest to historians and social scientists beyond the circle of Weberian specialists

O autorze

Peter Ghosh was a Junior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford (1980-1), and has been a Fellow in History at St. Anne's College, Oxford since 1981.