Max Weber: A Biography (By: Joachim Radkau 2009)；Max Weber AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY (FRITZ RINGER 2004)

邱振瑞新增了 2 張相片。十四歲的我

德國思想家赫尼斯（Wilhelm Hennis）在〈韋伯與修昔底德〉（朱雁冰 譯）一文中，提及馬克斯．韋伯在少年時期開始大量閱讀古典著作，很早即聰慧勤奮地展現超凡之人的特質。在韋伯十四歲那年的耶誕節，他終於如願以償得到波西埃（G．Boissier）贈予的《西塞羅和他的朋友們》的德文改寫本，這讓他閱讀思考數月之久，儘管這篇論文並沒能改變他對西塞羅的負面評價。他說，之所以閱讀西塞羅，是為了「對此人有個較清晰的印象」。之後，他又得到當時德高望重的歷史學家庫秋斯（Ernst Curtius）的《希臘史》，這三卷本巨著，總計2511頁，他卻孜孜不倦地閱讀，享受著求知欲的好奇以及自然相續的「學習的快樂」。他試圖與同輩們交流自己的思想經歷，把自己所寫的德文作文和優美的希臘文作文寄給了表兄，只可惜他的表兄根本無法及時回覆其「厚厚的、寫得密密的信文」。此外，根據專家考證，馬克斯．韋伯在少年時期還通讀過《黑格爾全集》，光是這種氣度與閱歷，不得不令人深深折服。

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• Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild ("Max Weber: A Biography", 1926)

• Weber, Marianne. 1975. Max Weber: a biography. New York: Wiley. H. Zohn翻譯； 2008年北京商務依照此版翻譯：馬克思 韋伯傳

Max Weber: A Biography

By: Joachim Radkau 

Description

Max Weber (1864-1920) is recognized throughout the world as the most important classic thinker in the social sciences – there is simply no one in the history of the social sciences who has been more influential. The affinity between capitalism and protestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, the force of charisma in religion as well as in politics, the all-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic price of progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offsprings of leadership, the ‘disenchantment’ of the modern world together with the never-ending power of religion, the antagonistic relation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these are key concepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber’s thinking. 

The tremendous influence exerted by Max Weber was due not only to the power of his ideas but also to the fact that behind his theories one perceived a man with a marked character and a tragic destiny. However, for nearly 80 years, our understanding of the life of Max Weber was dominated by the biography published in 1926 by his widow, Marianne Weber. The lack of a great Weber biography was one of the strangest and most glaring gaps in the literature of the social sciences. For various reasons the task was difficult; time and again, attempts to write a new biography of Max Weber ended in failure.

When Joachim Radkau’s biography appeared in Germany in 2005 it caused a sensation. Based on an abundance of previously unknown sources and richly embedded in the German history of the time, this is the first fully comprehensive biography of Max Weber ever to appear. Radkau brings out, in a way that no one has ever done before, the intimate interrelations between Weber’s thought and his life experience. He presents detailed revelations about the great enigmas of Weber’s life: his suffering and erotic experiences, his fears and his desires, his creative power and his methods of work as well as his religious experience and his relation to nature and to death. By understanding the great drama of his life, we discover a new Max Weber, until now unknown in many respects, and, at the same time, we gain a new appreciation of his work.

Joachim Radkau, born in 1943, is Professor of Modern History at the Bielefeld University, Germany. His interest in Max Weber dates back nearly forty years when he worked together with the German-American historian George W. F. Hallgarten (Washington), a refugee who left Germany in 1933 and who, as a student, listened to Weber’s last lecture in summer 1920. Radkau’s main works include Die deutsche Emigration in den USA (1971); Deutsche Industrie und Politik (together with G. W. F. Hallgarten, 1974), Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft (1983), Technik in Deutschland (1989), Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (1998), Natur und Macht: Eine Weltgeschichte der Umwelt (2000).

2009

http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641478

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xii

Preface to the English Edition xiii

Abbreviations xviii

At the Den of the Sick Lion 1

Part I The Violation of Nature

1 Great Mother and Harsh Nature: A Precocious Youth on the Margins of Berlin 7

2 Max and Minimax: Blood Brothers and Drinking Companions – Surly Fraternity as a Primary Social Experience 25

3 From Father’s Boy to Mother’s Boy: A Comradely Marriage and the Day of Judgement for the Father 39

4 Antaeus, Antiquity and Agrarians: The Unshackling of Creativity through the Earthing of Culture 70

5 Eruptions from the Ice: Creativity as Natural Catastrophe 96

6 A ‘Gospel of Struggle’ and Old German Corpulence: From Lifestyle Crisis through Creativity Crisis to Existential Crisis 117

Part II Nature’s Revenge

7 The Demons: The Wildness of Nature and the Riddle of Sexuality 145

8 ‘A Sort of Spiritualistic Construction of the Modern Economy’: The Protestant Ethic and the Vain Quest for Redemption through the Spirit 179

9 South – North – West – East: Changing Attempts at Spiritual Conquest of the World 208

10 From the ‘Essay of Sighs’ to ‘Psychophysics’: the Seven-Year Fight with Naturalism against Naturalism 250

11 From the Eranos Circle to the ‘Erotic Movement’: New Roots and New Milieux 275

12 Max Weber’s Love–Hate for the Germans 316

Part III Salvation and Illumination

13 Value-Free Science, Love and Music 345

14 Charisma 390

15 The Naturalness of Community – The Disguised Naturalism in Economy and Society 405

16 From Deborah’s Song of Triumph to the ‘Titans of the Holy Curse’: Pacifist Herdsmen, Prophets and Pariahs – the Israelites 427

17 World War and Flight from the World 450

18 Great Speeches, the Great Love and Death 481

19 Epilogue: Powerplay and the Wrangling over Max Weber’s Spirit 551

Notes 572

Index 667

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Max Weber

AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY

FRITZ RINGER

264 pages | 1 line drawing | 6 x 9 | © 2004

Max Weber was one of the most influential and creative intellectual forces of the twentieth century. In his methodology of the social sciences, he both exposed the flaws and solidified the foundations of the German historical tradition. Throughout his life, he saw bureaucracy as a serious obstacle to cultural vitality but as an inescapable part of organizational rationality. And in his most famous essay, on the Protestant ethic, he uncovered the psychological underpinnings of capitalism and modern occupational life.

This searching work offers the first comprehensive introduction to Weber's thought for students and newcomers. Fritz Ringer locates Weber in his historical context, relating his ideas to the controversies and politics of his day. Ringer also considers the importance of Weber to contemporary life, discussing his insights into the limits of scholarly research and the future of Western capitalist societies. Weber, Ringer reminds us, believed in democracy, liberalism, and fundamental human rights; his ethic of responsibility remains as vital to our historical moment as it was to his own.

A concise and incisive look at the man and personality behind the thought, Max Weber is a masterful outing in intellectual biography and social theory.

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Acknowledgments 
Introduction 
1. A Man in His Time 
2. Weber's Politics 
3. Weber's Methodology 
4. The Protestant Ethic 
5. Weber's Comparative Sociology of Religion 
6. From History to Sociology 
7. The City, Capitalism, Socialism, and Bureaucracy 
8. Education, Knowledge, and Vocation 
Conclusion: A Man for Our Time 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index