Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy

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Summary: Correction
Review: I certainly agree with the earlier reviewer from Portugal as to the high quality of Diggins' book. However, the reviewer is wrong about the term "iron cage." Weber very clearly refers to capitalism as an "iron cage" in the powerful concluding pages of his book "The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism." Weber both admired and feared the economic system that he saw as our fate. In a world in which values inevitably conflict and unintended consequences are the rule, every social system and every social initiative will be tinged with irony and tragedy. Capitalism is no exception; it is a mixed bag, both beneficial and costly. For Weber, only by both responsibly safeguarding ourselves from its more dehumanizing features and at the same time measuring up to its demands upon individual initiative can the human spirit survive and in some measure determine its future. We are suspended, with no relief other than our own individual and collective will to act, between these perennial and contradictory demands. Weber harbored both hopes and doubts that human beings were up to the task. Diggins' book brings out this message very well.

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Summary: Great Introduction to Weberian Thought!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Max Weber was a modern thinker who defied categorization. Was he a philosopher, an historian, a political theorist or a sociologist? This leads to some confusion as to his message. For instance, contrary to what one of the reviews mentions, Weber didn't view Capitalism as an "iron cage", but it's modern derivative, bureaucracy as that cage. Few people will argue with that comment. Strangely enough too, as Professor Diggins indicates, the questions that Weber struggled with one hundred years ago are still very much with us today. Could that be because the situation of pre-World War I Germany burdened as it was with a dysfunctional political system and weak leaders, yet possessing a strong, vigorous economy and formidable military, is very similar to the that of America today? I found the author's discussion of Weber's problems of reconciling the "ethic of principled convictions" with the "ethic of responsibility" particularly timely. After finishing the book I found myself wanting to know more about Max Weber's insights into the modern condition.

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Summary: Flaws in Diggins 'Max Weber"
Review: While the treatment of Weber's life and thoughts is quite useful and rather well written, the text contains over thirty (30)errors of German and Latin expressions. These are orthographical,
wrong gender endings, word distortions beyond recognition, etc.
Even historical names, like Leibknecht (for Karl Liebknecht) and Sombardt(for Werner Sombart) have been mangled.
For a work with "academic" pretensions -- the author is a professor at CCNY -- this is regrettable. One wonders what the numerous editors, proofreaders, and so on have done other than
base their "imprimatur" on self-attested expertise.