Description
Book Synopsis* * This is the first major biography of Max Weber to appear in more than 80 years. * Radkau was able to make use of previously unavailable source material, including the extensive correspondence of Max Weber and that of his wife, Marianne Weber.
Trade Review"
Max Weber: A Biography is studded with sparkling observations on topics ranging from German academia to zoology, and the references to primary and secondary literature are truly encyclopedic."
The Journal of The Review of Politics "No serious sociologist can be without a copy of this heavy tome. Artfully translated by Patrick Camiller, the study is hypnotic reading, beautifully written, lively, stimulating, and wonderfully well organized. No review could do justice to the plethora of new insights into Weber that emerge in this study, which will keep specialists happy in controversy for years to come."
Canadian Journal of Sociology
"Radkau has provided a comprehensive, authoritative, balanced and nuanced view of the man we have come to know as the conflicted, driven, enigmatic genius of 10th-century modernity."
Sociology
"This absorbing and meticulously researched biography ... recounts a complex, moving story."
Book of the week in the Times Higher Education
"Radkau's exceptional book brings out the relations between Weber's thought and his life experience. There are sensational revelations about Weber's suffering and eroticism, his fears and desires, and his great creative power."
Lancashire Evening Post
"The reader is in for an exciting time, but also an agreeable one, since Radkau has an easy, relaxed style, and has been fluently and serviceably translated."
Times Literary Supplement
"Radkau's biography takes great advantage of the archive documentation and of the family correspondence made available by Guenther Roth's enormous 2001 effort."
The Philosophers' Magazine
"Joachim Radkau is the first biographer to bring the great social thinker Max Weber to life. He reveals what others tried to conceal: the emotional turmoil suffered by the champion of rationality."
Lord Dahrendorf
"In this remarkable and engaging study, Joachim Radkau investigates the life, loves, and intellectual passions of one of the early twentieth century’s most engaging thinkers. Capturing both the tumultuous times and the singular accomplishments of Max Weber, the author has written a spirited and penetrating account of the creative life that is perhaps unrivaled in its provocative originality. Based on impeccable documentation, the result is a striking portrait of the eros of the intellect, of scientific work in relation to personality. Radkau's impressive achievement is certain to provoke a passionate response of its own."
Lawrence A. Scaff, Wayne State University
"A minor social-scientific scoop ... By any standards, this is an important work."
Peter Thomas, New Left Review
"Despite the immense Weber industry, until now we had no biographical account of this quality."
Hans Joas, Merkur
"An amazing, breath-taking book."
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"A brilliant achievement."
Süddeutsche Zeitung
"I read every sentence of Radkau’s Weber ... A must-read."
Michael Greven, Neue Politische Literatur
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 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
