'Hellenic Intellectual Culture' and the Origins of Weber's Political Thinking

Abstract

This essay explores what Thucydides in particular, and classical studies in general, meant to Max Weber. Of course, only a handful of Weber's writings make use of directly classical material; but judging his work quantitatively in this way tells us relatively little about his perspective on the world, and the stance he adopted to it. Hennis finds a way into this problem through consideration of Roscher's own Habilitation dissertation, Leben, Werk und Zeitalter des Thukydides (1842). Taking up Weber's comment in the methodological essay on Roscher, that it is directed to Roscher's early writings, Hennis shows how this can illuminate our understanding both of Weber's classical background and his 'historical methodology'.