Max Weber at Home and in Japan: On the Troubled Genesis and Successful Reception of His Work

Abstract

The literature on Max Weber diverges drastically in the assessment of his beliefs and actions and the evaluation of his oeuvre. Much depends on whether one sees him mainly as a man of his times, his generation, academic status group, and bourgeois class affiliation, or perceives him in more individual terms. Along the latter dimension there are again two perspectives: the person struggling against severe mental and physical hand icaps1 or the person who time and again transcends his personal limitations and the social and political majority views. In Germany the controversies have recently been renewed in the two leading daily newspapers. The "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" in Munich published a full-page article by the historian Gregor Schoellgen under the caption: "Titanic Efforts Leading Nowhere. Max Weber's Failure. What Remains of the 'Greatest German' of this Century?" (Aug. 22,1998).2 Taking equal space, the battle-hardened political theorist Wilhelm Hennis vigorously counterattacked in the "Frank furter Allgemeine Zeitung" of Oct. 6, 1998 under the heading "He Was the Living One Among the Shadows. But Among His Interpreters are Grave-Diggers and Necrophiles." Such exuberant polemics provide good intellectual entertainment but make it difficult for general readers to gain a sense of balance. Two recent