Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society
Cambridge University Press, 7/29/2004
EAN 9780521820578, ISBN10: 052182057X
Hardcover, 228 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
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.
Acknowledgements
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 conduct of life'
7. Calling
sanctification and regimentation of everyday life
8. Predestination
objectification of the world and disempowerment of the self
9. Empowering the individual agency
self-mastery and discipline
10. Conclusion
value, rationality and freedom
Part III. The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Civil Society
11. Introduction
sociability of the Puritan Berufsmensch
12. Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft and Amerikanismus
13. Modes of sociability
America versus Europe
14. Sect contra church
particularism and voluntarism
15. Secularization of charisma
from sect to status group and bureaucracy
16. Conclusion
The public and the private
Part IV. Politics, Science, Ethics
17. Introduction
Götterdämmerung
18. Disenchantment and reenchantment
19. Conviction, responsibility and decision
20. Practice of the self I
realpolitik
21. Practice of the self II
ideal type
22. Conclusion
modernity, conscience and duty
Part V. Liberalism, Nationalism and Civil Society
23. Introduction
liberalism and nationalism
24. National identities, nation-states and the political
25. Nationalism, citizenship and personality
26. Politics of the classes
refeudalization and embourgeoisement
27. Politics of checks and balances
corporatism and parliamentarianism
28. Conclusion
'the school of men'
Part VI. Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society
29. Statecraft and soulcraft in Max Weber
30. Purpose, contestation and the political
31. Bowling alone
References
Index.
"Kim's book is an erudite, thoroughly researched, and insightful rereading of Weber. It is also highly relevant to contemporary democratic theory." Perspectives on Political Theory "Sung Ho Kim has produced an outstanding revision of Max Weber's political thought within the context of Weber's work on the sociology of religion." Leonard Seabrooke, The Review of Politics