How Have You Found Reading Max Weber?

[RonPrice]

I post here a prose-poem I wrote this evening about the great thinker Max Weber and my association with his writings since the 1960s. You will have your work cut out for you in reading Weber and in making whatever intellectual links you try to make with his ideas.-Ron Price, Australia

------------------------------------MAX WEBER AND ME--------------

 

In 1959 the image of the great sociologist Max Weber was decisively challenged by the monumental study Max Weber and German Politics written by Wolfgang Mommsen(1930-2004). This work led to Mommsen’s rise to fame. Mommsen meticulously reconstructed the then held view of Weber and politics. Mommsen continued his study of Weber until his death in 2004. I write this for the small number of readers who might be interested in sociology and for myself: to place Weber in the context of my life, my nearly 70 years.

 

The counter-attack—and, to some extent, successful recapture of the old image of Weber was led by Talcott Parsons who introduced Max Weber to American sociology. Wolfgang J. Mommsen was one of the foremost Weberian scholars writing in the late 1950s and he remained at the front of studies of Weber all his life. Mommsen has written an average of 9 articles or books each year from 1964 to 2004. –Ron Price with thanks to Max Weber Studies 2005, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University.

 

I knew nothing of you, Max, back

in ’59 when I was 15, in grade 10,

in love with at least two girls & a

member of a new Faith that had just(1)

come into town..…I came to know a

little about you--and Parsons---while

studying at the university in my home-

town in the 60s, and I came to know(2)

even more while I taught sociology in

those 1970s to the 2000s...Now that I

have retired I am finally focusing on

your life’s work, well a little-bit,a

century after your death. Max, you(3)

were a wonder, a miracle & a wonder,

arguably our age's greatest thinker!

 

1 the Baha’i Faith

2 At McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario Talcott Parsons was the focus of my study of sociology in the years 1963-66. Students got ‘into’ Weber via Parsons.

3 Weber died in 1920 at the age of 56.

 

Ron Price

4 February 2012