Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society

by Sung Ho Kim

• ISBN13: 9780521820578
• ISBN10: 052182057X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-06-07
• 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

Part I. Of 'Sect Man': The Modern Self and Civil Society in Max Weber: 1. Agency, citizenship, and civil society

2. Reading Weber: between politics and science

3. In search of the Protestant ethic thesis

4. Outline of the argument

Part II. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Individualism: 5. Introduction: 'The last of our heroisms'

6. A rationalization toward an irrational mode of life

7. Calling: sanctification and regimentation of everyday life

8. Predestination: objectification of the world and disempowerment of the Self

9. Conclusion: Value, rationality, and freedom

Part III. The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Civil Society: 10. Introduction: sociability of the Puritan Berufsmensch

11. Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft, and Amerikanismus

12. Modes of sociability: America versus Europe

13. Sect contra Church

14. Secularization of Charisma: from sect to status groups and bureaucracy

15. Conclusion: The public and the private

Part IV. Politics, Science, Ethics: 16. Introduction: Gotterdammerung

17. Disenchantment and reenchantment

18. Conviction, responsibility, and decision

19. Practice of the Self I: Realpolitik

20. Practice of the Self II: ideal type

21. Conclusion: Modernity, conscience and duty

Part V. Liberalism, Nationalism, and Civil Society: 22. Introduction: liberalism and nationalism

23. National identities, nation-states, and the political

24. Nationalism, citizenship, and personality

25. Politics of the classes: refeudalization and embourgeoisement

26. Politics of the checks and balances: corporatism contra parliamentarianism

27. Conclusion: 'the school of Man'

Part VI. Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society: 28. Statecraft and soulcraft in Max Weber

29. Purpose, contestation, and the political

30. 'Bowling alone'.