The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber.

1971 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Mazlish ◽  
Arthur Mitzman
1970 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 1399
Author(s):  
Fred Weinstein ◽  
Arthur Mitzman

1971 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 529
Author(s):  
Pat N. Lackey ◽  
Arthur Mitzman

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 869-881
Author(s):  
CHARLY COLEMAN

In the lecture “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber gave a reckoning not only of his own scholarly life, but also of our fate in a world bereft of wonder. Self-possessed intellectuals command knowledge with authority. Yet their technical prowess also points up intractable limits. Calculation falters in securing value, whether in its moral or economic guises. If “we live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons,” Weber mused, we nonetheless do so “in a different sense.” Once-knowing entities have shed their skins, to assume the mien of “impersonal forces.” These remarks assemble elements of Weber's religious sociology within a single frame, from the “this-worldly asceticism” of the Protestant ethic to portrayals of rationality as an “iron cage,” where spirits—much less the Spirit—dare not tread.


1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 737-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Scaff

The problem of politics and culture emerged in European thought from Kierkegaard to Freud the encounter with modernity. In this paper I examine a major instance of that encounter in Weber's “science of culture” and his analysis of the cultural significance of capitalism. In Weber's work the most important and politically relevant responses to modern, subjectivist culture lie in attempts from within the ethical, aesthetic, erotic, and intellectualist life orders or value spheres to escape from the “iron cage” constructed by Western rationalism. I investigate the relative autonomy and paradoxical nature of these different attempts, and conclude with an explanation of Weber's choices with respect to the sphere of knowledge, or “science.”


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