Max Weber und die Rationale Soziologie. by Wilhelm E. MühlmannReview by: Won Moo HurhSocial Forces, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Jun., 1968), p. 553Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2575401 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 12:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:07:30 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS 553

MAX WEBER UND DIE RATIO(NALE SOZIOLOGIE. By Wilhelm E. Miihlmann. Tiibingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 1966. 60 pp. Paper.

The core of Miihlmann's 12 essays in this book was originally designed for the opening address at the fifteenth German Sociological Congress at Heidelberg, April 20-30, 1964. The main thesis is to reflect Max Weber's thoughts on the levels which Weber himself exposed: (1) on the dif- ferential cultural sociology; (2) on the level of the theoretical foundation of sociology; (3) and from the above two dimensions, a confrontation of Weber with the present situation of German sociology.

The first six essays reinterpret Weber's sociology of religion and its contributions to Volkersoziolo- gie. The author's analysis of the pariah-motive and charisma with reference to chiliasm and na- tivism is most intrusive. The second three essays analyze Weber's well-known verstehende Soziolo- gie, and most of all, Wertfreiheit through phe- nomenological reflection. The last three wissens- soziologische essays are culminated under the head- ing, "Possibility of Sociology as Science Today." The bibliography refers to more than 40 inter- nationally known scholars.

Miihlmann's essays are not exegeses on Weber's works, but a concrete expose of (1) our contem- porary problems in epistemology in general and (2) rational objectivity of sociology as a strenge Wissenschaft (strict science) in particular. The author implies the needs of Entzauberung or de- masking of the contemporary "orgies of objectiv- ism" through phenomenological sociology.

In short, this book is one of the most remarkable contributions to the modern sociology of knowledge (cf. "Wertfreiheit und phanomenologische Reduk- tion im Hinblick auf die Soziologie" in Dieter Stolte und Richard Wisser, eds., Geistige Wanzd- lung und mnenschliche Wirklichkeit, Tiibingen: R. Wunderlich, 1966, pp. 457-66).

WON Moo HURH Monmouth College

MAX SCHELER, 1874-1928: AN INTELLECTUAL POR-

TRAIT. By John Raphael Staude. New York: The Free Press, 1967. 298 pp. $6.95.

The sociology of knowledge seems to attract in- tellectuals whose nervous brilliance is precariously balanced on the instantaneity of the razor-edge present. The startling iridescence of their work reflects dissatisfaction with the solidified and a peculiar attraction to cerebral self-torment. The discipline has a stalwart anti-hero who hanged himself with the detachment of scientific experi- mentation: Alfred Seidel chose this exit to con- summate his compelling desire to nihilize nihilism which had been instilled by the enchanting perils of psychoanalysis and Max Weber's vast disen- chantment of the world. Durkheim's explorations of totemism and Granet's, oscillations between yin and yang move in a luminous, but uncanny, glow

of deeper significance. In the Marxist storm center of Wissenssoziologie we encounter the gift for penetrating social analysis which surrounds leading intellects such as Luk'acs with the sulphurous halo of the Lubyanka.

Professor Staude's very readable book offers English-speaking readers the first comprehensive portrait of a man who is the incarnation of Mann- heim's "gliding of standpoints," the embodiment of the fascination and confusion that were the Weimar Republic. The author's anti-hero is Max Scheler: son of a Jewish mother, ardent Catholic, Germanic militarist, peaceful European, democrat, slanderer of religion; Scheler who tore through three mar- riages, who had his affairs in hotel rooms and his flashes of insight in the no man's land of night clubs; Scheler, the chain-smoking exile from the bourgeois repectability of academe whose first son went from petty criminality to the Brownshirts to be killed in a streetfight.

This book, which began as a dissertation at the University of California in Berkeley, skillfully combines biography and intellectual history. Illu- minating references to social and political circum- stances complete the convincing portrait of a philosopher who was driven to sociology because of the violent tremors upsetting both his private and public worlds.

Aside from biography this work fulfills a double function. First, it describes the maj or stages of Scheler's philosophical career ranging from his early study of logic and ethics to his phenomenolog- ical involvement, and the final formulation of metaphysical anthropology. Second, the book traces the emergence of the sociology of knowledge in the larger philosophical framework.

The author successfully reveals the early roots of Wissenssoziologie in Scheler's phenomenological writings. With equal success he documents the metatheoretical role of this sociology in Scheler's intellectual universe: it was supposed to provide the antidote to the disruptive plurality of world views and the lack of communication among mod- ern men.

Scheler's central weakness stems from his at- tempt to establish the dynamic intentions of the sociology of knowledge within the static context of a philosophy of timelessness. Professor Staude's work may have gained by references to Mannheim's consequential arguments which revealed and, at least temporarily, resolved this contradiction in the theoretical structure of Wissenssoziologie.

GUNTER W. REMMLING Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

LUXURY AND CAPITALISM. By Werner Sombart. Translated by W. R. Dittmar with an Introduc- tion by Philip Siegelman. Ann Arbor: Univer- sity of Michigan Press, 1967. 200 pp. $6.50.

Sombart's Luxury and Capitalism first published in 1913 and a by-product of the author's larger work on Der moderne Kapitalisnms (1902) is now

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 12:07:30 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions