Ancient Athens and Modern Ideology: Value, Theory and Evidence in Historical Sciences. Max Weber, Karl Polanyi and Moses Finley (Supplement 80; Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2005) by Mohammad Nafissi (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 275 opening essay of the Grundriss der Sozialoekonomik, and how eventually the second chapter of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft compensated for Bücher7 s failure to deliver. But in turn the methodical way in which Takebayashi reconstructs the debates of the later 1880s and the 1890s, debates contemporary with Weber's early intellectual for mation, makes sense for the first time of Weber as member of the 'Younger' German school of historical economists. Keith Tribe The King's School, Worcester Mohammad Nafissi, Ancient A thens and Modern Ideology: Value, Theory and Evidence in Historical Sciences. Max Weber, Karl Polanyi and Moses Finley (Supplement 80; London: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2005), pp. xi + 325. ISBN 0-90058-791-1.£ 50.00. Apart from Moses Finley (1912-1986), only a handful of ancient historians (above all, Wilfried Nippel)10 has tried to make anything of Max Weber, among the most his torical of historical sociologists. Weber happened also to have a special interest in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. One of his earliest book-length publications was Die römische Agrargeschichte in ihrer Bedeutungßr das Staats- und Privatrecht (1891 = Gesamtausgabe [ed. W.J. Mommsen; vol. 2, ed. J. Deininger; 1986]); and one of his ear liest and best essays (originally a lecture delivered in 1895) was Die sozialen Gründe des Untergangs der antiken Kultur,n Indeed, only a small handful of historians of ancient Greece and Rome has ever tried to make much of theory of any sort, despite the occasional fervent plea (e.g., Keith Hopkins, Neville Morley, Walter Scheidel) and the occasional practical appli cation (e.g., Geoffrey de Ste Croix, Brent Shaw, David Tandy, Ian Monis, Sitta von Reden, Niall McKeown). It is no accident, as they say, that, like Randall Collins (Weberian Sociological Theory, 1986) and Joseph Bryant (Moral Codes and Social Struc ture in ancient Greece: A Sociology of Greek Ethics from Homer to the Epicureanas and Stoics, 19%), Mohammad Nafissi (now of the Department of Law, Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University) should be a sociologist cum-intellectual historiographer rather than an ancient historian. I began with Weber and Finley because, though Karl Polanyi decisively rejected 10. Nafissi cites hardly any recent scholarship in German, so it is not surprising that he omits to cite Nippel's many fine articles and reviews in his native language. What is surprising is that he does not cite The Cambridge Companion to Weber, ed. S. Turner (2000), which contains Nippel's exemplary 'From Agrarian History to Cross-cultural Comparisons: Weber on Greco-Roman Antiquity' (pp. 240-55); nor, even more germane, Nippel's 'Finley and Weber. Some Comments and Theses', OPUS 6-8 (1987-89, publ. 1991), pp. 43-50. 11. This is best read in the 1950 translation by Christian Mackauer, reprinted in J.E.T. Eldridge (ed.), Max Weber (London: Michael Joseph, 1971), pp. 254-75-not as translated by R.I. Frank as an appendix to The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civi lizations (1976, German original 1909), which attracted a scathing review from none other than A.D. Momigliano, TES (April 8,1977), pp. 435-36.© Max Weber Studies 2008. 276 Max Weber Studies Marx for Weber and arguably got Finley back on track as a historian of ancient Greece in the 1950s and clearly continued to influence him thereafter at least in a neg ative sense, Polanyi is surely the least interesting and impressive (making the least impression) member of Nafissi's holy trinity. Equally clearly, as Nafissi's very title makes plain,12 it is Finley who is the focal point and centre of gravity of this remark able monograph, which has its origins in a 1994 UCL doctoral thesis—'The Oikos Controversy and Modern Social Thought: The Contributions of Weber, Polanyi and Finley'—jointly supervized by Paul Hirst (historical sociologist, d. 2003) and John North (ancient historian, specialist in Rome). However, as the author notes in an Acknowledgements section that doubles as an intellectual autobiography, his origi nal doctoral project had been on contemporary Iran, from where he moved back via ancient Iran to the study of the historiography and theorization of ancient Athens. His choice...