Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society

by Sung Ho Kim

• ISBN13: 9780521036566
• ISBN10: 0521036569
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book is an in-depth interpretation of Max Weber as a political theorist of civil society. On the one hand, it reads Weber's ideas from the perspective of modern political thought, rather than the modern social sciences; on the other, it offers a liberal assessment of this complex political thinker without attempting to apologize for his shortcomings. Through an alternative reading of Weber's religious, epistemological and political writings, the book shows Weber's concern with public citizenship in a modern mass democracy and civil society as its cultivating ground. Kim argues Weber's political thought, thus recast, was deeply informed by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and other German political thinkers and also reveals an affinity to the liberal-republican tradition best represented by Mill and Tocqueville. Kim has effectively resuscitated Weber as a political thinker for our time in which civic virtues and civil society have once again become one of the dominant issues.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Of -Sect Man-: The Modern Self and Civil Society in Max Weber

Agency, citizenship and civil society

Reading Weber: between politics and science

In search of the Protestant ethic thesis

Outline of the argument

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Individualism

Introduction: -the last of our heroisms-

-A rationalization toward an irrational conduct of life-

Calling: sanctification and regimentation of everyday life

Predestination: objectification of the world and disempowerment of the self

Empowering the individual agency: self-mastery and discipline

Conclusion: value, rationality and freedom

The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Civil Society

Introduction: sociability of the Puritan Berufsmensch

Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft and Amerikanismus

Modes of sociability: America versus Europe

Sect contra church: particularism and voluntarism

Secularization of charisma: from sect to status group and bureaucracy

Conclusion: The public and the private

Politics, Science, Ethics

Introduction: G+ tterd+ñmmerung

Disenchantment and reenchantment

Conviction, responsibility and decision

Practice of the self I: realpolitik

Practice of the self II: ideal type

Conclusion: modernity, conscience and duty

Liberalism, Nationalism and Civil Society

Introduction: liberalism and nationalism

National identities, nation-states and the political

Nationalism, citizenship and personality

Politics of the classes: refeudalization and embourgeoisement

Politics of checks and balances: corporatism and parliamentarianism

Conclusion: -the school of men-

Max Weber-s Politics of Civil Society

Statecraft and soulcraft in Max Weber

Purpose, contestation and the political

Bowling alone

References

Index

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