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Frasi di Max Weber

Karl Emil Maximilian Weber è stato un sociologo, filosofo, economista e storico tedesco.

È considerato uno dei padri fondatori dello studio moderno della sociologia e della pubblica amministrazione. Cominciò la sua carriera accademica all'Università Humboldt di Berlino; successivamente lavorò all'Università Albert Ludwigs di Friburgo, all'Università di Heidelberg, all'Università di Vienna e all'Università di Monaco di Baviera. Personaggio influente nella politica tedesca del suo tempo, fu consigliere dei negoziatori tedeschi durante il trattato di Versailles e della commissione incaricata di redigere la Costituzione di Weimar.

Larga parte del suo lavoro di pensatore e studioso riguardò la razionalizzazione nell'ambito della sociologia della religione e della sociologia politica, ma i suoi studi diedero un contributo importante anche nel campo dell'economia. La sua opera più famosa è il saggio L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo, con il quale cominciò le sue riflessioni sulla sociologia della religione. Weber sosteneva che la religione fosse una delle ragioni non esclusive per cui le culture dell'Occidente e dell'Oriente si sono sviluppate in maniera diversa, e sottolineava l'importanza di alcune particolari caratteristiche del Protestantesimo ascetico che portarono alla nascita del capitalismo, della burocrazia e dello Stato razionale e legale nei paesi occidentali.

In un'altra sua importante opera, La politica come professione , Weber definì lo Stato come "un'entità che reclama il monopolio sull'uso legittimo della forza fisica": una definizione divenuta centrale nello studio delle moderne scienze politiche in Occidente.



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✵ 21. Aprile 1864 – 14. Giugno 1920
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L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo
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Max Weber frasi celebri

“Sono gli interessi (materiali e ideali), e non le idee, a dominare immediatamente l'agire dell'uomo. Ma le «concezioni del mondo», create dalle «idee», hanno spesso determinato – come chi aziona uno scambio ferroviario – i binari lungo i quali la dinamica degli interessi ha mosso tale attività.”

Max Weber

Origine: Da Sociologia delle religioni.

“[…] la cattedra non è per i profeti e i demagoghi. Al profeta e al demagogo è stato detto: "Esci per le strade e parla pubblicamente". Parla, cioè, dov'è possibile la critica.”

Max Weber

Origine: Il lavoro intellettuale come professione, p. 29

“Un uomo incivilito, il quale partecipa all'arricchimento della civiltà in idee, conoscenze, problemi, può diventare "stanco della vita" ma non sazio […] dunque la sua morte è per lui un accadimento assurdo. Ed essendo la morte priva di senso, lo è anche la vita civile come tale, in quanto, appunto con la sua assurda "progressività", fa della morte un assurdo.”

Max Weber

Origine: Il lavoro intellettuale come professione, p. 20

“Chi vive nel 'mondo' non può esperire in sé nient'altro che la lotta tra una moltitudine di valori. Egli deve scegliere quale di questi dei vuole o deve servire.”

Max Weber

“Per quale concatenamento di circostanze è avvenuto che proprio sul suolo occidentale, e qui soltanto, la civiltà si è espressa con manifestazioni, le quali – almeno secondo quanto noi amiamo immaginarci – si sono inserite in uno svolgimento, che ha valore e significato universale?”

Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

“Il guadagno è considerato come scopo della vita dell'uomo, e non più come mezzo per soddisfare i suoi bisogni materiali. Questa inversione del rapporto naturale, che è addirittura priva di senso per il modo di sentire comune, è manifestamente un motivo fondamentale del capitalismo così come è estranea all'uomo non tocco dal suo soffio.”

Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Frasi sulla vita di Max Weber

“Il capitalismo odierno, giunto all'egemonia nella vita economica, si crea e educa, per via della selezione economica, i soggetti economici, imprenditori ed operai, di cui abbisogna.”

Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

“Gli dei di una volta, perso l'incanto e assunte le sembianze di potenze impersonali, escono dai loro sepolcri, aspirano a dominare sulla nostra vita e riprendono la loro lotta eterna.”

Max Weber

Origine: Citato in Ulla Berkéwicz, Forse stiamo diventando pazzi.

“Per assecondare il vostro desiderio, dovrò parlare della "scienza come professione". Ebbene, è una specie di pedanteria di noi altri economisti, alla quale non voglio fare eccezione, quella di prender sempre le mosse dalla situazione esteriore, e quindi, nel caso nostro, dalla domanda: come si configura la scienza come professione nel senso materiale della parola? E questo, in sostanza, oggi praticamente significa: qual è la situazione di un laureato che abbia deciso di dedicarsi per professione alla scienza, nell'ambito della vita universitaria?”

Max Weber

Il lavoro intellettuale come professione, Incipit

“[…] anelare ed attendere non basta, e ci comporteremo in altra maniera: ci metteremo al nostro lavoro ed adempiremo al "compito quotidiano", nella nostra qualità di uomini e nella nostra attività professionale. Ciò è semplice e facile, quando ognuno abbia trovato e segua il demone che tiene i fili della sua vita.”

Max Weber

Il lavoro intellettuale come professione

Max Weber Frasi e Citazioni

“L'odierno ordinamento capitalistico è un enorme cosmo, in cui il singolo viene immerso nascendo, e che è a lui dato, per lo meno in quanto singolo, come un ambiente praticamente non mutabile, nel quale è costretto a vivere.”

Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

“La sete di lucro, l'aspirazione a guadagnare denaro più che sia possibile, non ha di per sé stessa nulla in comune col capitalismo. Questa aspirazione si ritrova preso camerieri, medici, cocchieri, artisti, cocottes, impiegati corruttibili, soldati, banditi, presso i crociati, i frequentatori di bische, i mendicanti; si può dire relativamente a tutti i tipi di uomini, di qualsiasi ceto sociale, in tutte le epoche di tutti i paesi della terra, dove c'era e c'è la possibilità oggettiva.”

Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Sugli uomini , Sul denaro , Dire bugie

“La burocrazia è tra le strutture sociali più difficili da distruggere.”

Max Weber

Origine: Citato in Focus, n. 114, p. 151.

“La democrazia sta bene, ma al suo posto. L'insegnamento scientifico […] è però una faccenda di aristocrazia dello spirito.”

Max Weber

Origine: Da La scienza come professione, Einaudi, Torino, 2004, p. 12.

Democrazia , Scienza

“Solo gli operai reali, organizzati nei sindacati (Gewerkschaften), possono creare la nuova società. Via, dunque, questi politici di professione che vivono per la – e ciò, in verità, significa della – politica, e non per la creazione della nuova società economica.”

Max Weber

Origine: Da Il socialismo, in Scritti politici, traduzione di A. Cariolato ed E. Fongaro, Donzelli Editore, 1998.

Sull'età , Sulla verità

“Esser superati sul piano scientifico è – giova ripeterlo – non solo il nostro destino, di noi tutti, ma anche il nostro scopo.”

Max Weber

Origine: Il lavoro intellettuale come professione, p. 18

Sul destino

“Orbene, come si effettua la selezione di questo capo? E anzitutto, in base a quale attitudine? Naturalmente quel che soprattutto è essenziale […] è la potenza della parola demagogica. Questa è andata mutando natura dai tempi in cui, come col Cobden, ci si rivolgeva all'intelletto, per giungere poi al Gladstone, il quale era un maestro della tecnica – apparentemente spassionata – del «lasciar parlare i fatti», e fino all'epoca presente, in cui per eccitare le masse si mettono in opera mezzi puramente sentimentali, del genere di quelli adoperati anche dall'esercito della Salvezza.”

Max Weber

Origine: Il lavoro intellettuale come professione, p. 89

Natura

“È destino del nostro tempo… soprattutto… il disincanto del mondo.”

Max Weber

Origine: Citato in AA.VV., Il libro della sociologia, traduzione di Martina Dominici, Gribaudo, 2018, p. 41. ISBN 9788858015827

Tempo , Sul destino , Sul mondo

Max Weber: Frasi in inglese

“The ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion.”

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Max Weber

Origine: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 152 (in 2009 edition)

“This striving becomes understood completely as an end in itself—to such an extent that it appears as fully outside the normal course of affairs and simply irrational, at least when viewed from the perspective of the "happiness" or "utility" of the single individual. Here, people are oriented to acquisition as the purpose of life; acquisition is no longer viewed as a means to the end of satisfying the substantive needs of life. Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-loving dispositions experience this situation as an absolutely meaningless reversal of a "natural" condition (as we would say today). Yet this reversal constitutes just as surely a guiding principle of [modern] capitalism as incomprehension of this new situation characterizes all who remain untouched by [modern] capitalism's tentacles.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

“Ordinarily, the propagation of Hinduism occurs in approximately the following way. … Native deities are rebaptized with the names of Hindu gods and goddesses. … Some Brahman is requested to provide and take charge of ritual concerns and thereby also to convince himself and provide testimony to the fact that they—the rulers of the tribe—were of ancient, only temporarily forgotten, knightly (Kshatriya) blood.”

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Max Weber

Origine: Religion of India (1916), pp. 9-10

“Mysticism intends a state of "possession," not action, and the individual is not a tool but a "vessel" of the divine.”

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Max Weber

Max Weber, , 1916.
Contesto: Mysticism intends a state of "possession," not action, and the individual is not a tool but a "vessel" of the divine. Action in the world must thus appear as endangering the absolutely irrational and other-worldly religious state. Active asceticism operates within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world, seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly "vocation" (inner-worldly asceticism). Such asceticism contrasts radically with mysticism, if the latter draws the full conclusion of fleeing from the world (contemplative flight from the world). The contrast is tempered, however, if active asceticism confines itself to keeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actor's own nature. For then it enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed and active redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the orders of the world (asceticist flight from the world). Thereby active asceticism in external bearing comes close to contemplative flight from the world. The contrast between asceticism and mysticism is also tempered if the contemplative mystic does not draw the conclusion that he should flee from the world, but, like the inner-worldly asceticist, remain in the orders of the world (inner-worldly mysticism).
In both cases the contrast can actually disappear in practice and some combination of both forms of the quest for salvation may occur. But the contrast may continue to exist even under the veil of external similarity. For the true mystic the principle continues to hold: the creature must be silent so that God may speak.

“The contrast between asceticism and mysticism is also tempered if the contemplative mystic does not draw the conclusion that he should flee from the world, but, like the inner-worldly asceticist, remain in the orders of the world (inner-worldly mysticism).”

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Max Weber

Max Weber, , 1916.
Contesto: Mysticism intends a state of "possession," not action, and the individual is not a tool but a "vessel" of the divine. Action in the world must thus appear as endangering the absolutely irrational and other-worldly religious state. Active asceticism operates within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world, seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly "vocation" (inner-worldly asceticism). Such asceticism contrasts radically with mysticism, if the latter draws the full conclusion of fleeing from the world (contemplative flight from the world). The contrast is tempered, however, if active asceticism confines itself to keeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actor's own nature. For then it enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed and active redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the orders of the world (asceticist flight from the world). Thereby active asceticism in external bearing comes close to contemplative flight from the world. The contrast between asceticism and mysticism is also tempered if the contemplative mystic does not draw the conclusion that he should flee from the world, but, like the inner-worldly asceticist, remain in the orders of the world (inner-worldly mysticism).
In both cases the contrast can actually disappear in practice and some combination of both forms of the quest for salvation may occur. But the contrast may continue to exist even under the veil of external similarity. For the true mystic the principle continues to hold: the creature must be silent so that God may speak.

“In this regard too I consider myself a cripple, a stunted man whose fate it is to admit honestly that he must put up with this state of affairs (so as not to fall for some romantic swindle)… For you a theologian of liberal persuasion (whether Catholic or Protestant) is necessarily most abhorrent as the typical representative of a halfway position;”

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Max Weber

Max Weber, letter to Ferdinand Tönnies, Feb. 19, 1909; As cited in: . Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920. Oxford University Press, 24 mrt. 1988. p. 498
Contesto: When I studied modern Catholic literature in Rome a few years ago, I became convinced how hopeless is to think that there are any scientific results this church cannot digest... I could not honestly participate in such anti-clericalism. It is true that I am absolutely unmusical in matters religious and that I have neither the need nor the ability to erect any religious edifices within me — that is simply impossible for me, and I reject it. But after examining myself carefully I must say that I am neither anti-religious nor irreligious. In this regard too I consider myself a cripple, a stunted man whose fate it is to admit honestly that he must put up with this state of affairs (so as not to fall for some romantic swindle)... For you a theologian of liberal persuasion (whether Catholic or Protestant) is necessarily most abhorrent as the typical representative of a halfway position; for me he is in human terms infinitely more valuable and interesting... than the intellectual (and basically cheap) pharisaism of naturalism, which is intolerably fashionable and in which there is much less life than in the religious position (again, depending on the case, of course!)

“For the true mystic the principle continues to hold: the creature must be silent so that God may speak.”

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Max Weber

Max Weber, , 1916.
Contesto: Mysticism intends a state of "possession," not action, and the individual is not a tool but a "vessel" of the divine. Action in the world must thus appear as endangering the absolutely irrational and other-worldly religious state. Active asceticism operates within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world, seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly "vocation" (inner-worldly asceticism). Such asceticism contrasts radically with mysticism, if the latter draws the full conclusion of fleeing from the world (contemplative flight from the world). The contrast is tempered, however, if active asceticism confines itself to keeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actor's own nature. For then it enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed and active redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the orders of the world (asceticist flight from the world). Thereby active asceticism in external bearing comes close to contemplative flight from the world. The contrast between asceticism and mysticism is also tempered if the contemplative mystic does not draw the conclusion that he should flee from the world, but, like the inner-worldly asceticist, remain in the orders of the world (inner-worldly mysticism).
In both cases the contrast can actually disappear in practice and some combination of both forms of the quest for salvation may occur. But the contrast may continue to exist even under the veil of external similarity. For the true mystic the principle continues to hold: the creature must be silent so that God may speak.

“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

“it istrue that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.”

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Max Weber

Origine: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Origine: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 124; Essay "Politics as a vocation"
Contesto: The problem — the experience of the irrationality of the world — has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.

“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

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Max Weber

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

“No sociologist, for instance, should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time”

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Max Weber

Origine: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 135 (in 2009 edition)

“Persecutions of these heterodoxies … do not account for the unusually quick victory of Hinduism. Favorable political circumstances contributed to the victory. Decisive, however, was the fact that Hinduism could provide an incomparable religious support for the legitimation interest of the ruling strata.”

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Max Weber

Origine: Religion of India (1916), p. 18

“It is above all the impersonal and economically rationalized (but for this very reason ethically irrational) character of purely commercial relationships that evokes the suspicion, never clearly expressed but all the more strongly felt, of ethical religions. For every purely personal relationship of man to man, of whatever sort and even including complete enslavement, may be subjected to ethical requirements and ethically regulated. This is true because the structures of these relationships depend upon the individual wills of the participants, leaving room in such relations for manifestations of the virtue of charity. But this is not the situation in the realm of economically rationalised relationships, where personal control is exercised in inverse ratio to the degree of rational differentiation of the economic structure.”

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Max Weber

Origine: Sociology of Religion (1922), pp. 216-217

“For sure, even with the best will, the modern person seems generally unable to imagine how large a significance those components of our consciousness rooted in religious beliefs have actually had upon culture, national character, and the organization of life. Nevertheless, it can not be, of course, the intention here to set a one-sided spiritualistic analysis of the causes of culture and history in place of an equally one-sided “materialistic” analysis. Both are equally possible. Historical truth, however, is served equally little if either of these analyses claims to be the conclusion of an investigation rather than its preparatory stage.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

“For the Confucian, the specialistic expert could not be raised to truly positive dignity, no mater what his social usefulness. The decisive factor was that the "cultured man" (gentleman) was "not a tool"; that is, in his adjustment to the world and in his self-perfection he was an end unto himself, not a means for any functional end. This core of Confucian ethics rejected professional specialization, modern expert bureaucracy, and special training; above all, it rejected training in economics for the pursuit of profit.”

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Max Weber

Origine: Religion of China (1915), p. 246

“Modern capitalism has as little use for liberum arbitrium [undisciplined] persons as laborers as it has for the businessman fully without scruples in the running of his company.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

“Legitimation by a recognized religion has always been decisive for an alliance between politically and socially dominant classes and the priesthood. Integration into the Hindu community provided such religious legitimation for the ruling stratum. It not only endowed the ruling stratum of the barbarians with recognized rank in the cultural world of Hinduism, but, through their transformation into castes, secured their superiority over the subject classes with an efficiency unsurpassed by any other religion.”

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Max Weber

Origine: Religion of India (1916), p. 16

“Owing to the incapacity of the higher price-rate to appeal to the "acquisitive sense," it would appear altogether plausible to attempt to do so by utilizing the opposite strategy: by decreasing piece-rates, to force workers to produce more in order to maintain their accustomed earnings. Moreover, two simple observations seem to have held true in the past, as they do today: a lower wage and higher profit are directly related, and all that is paid out in higher wages must imply a corresponding reduction of profits.
Capitalism has been guided by this axiom repeatedly, and even from its beginning, and it has been an article of faith for centuries that lower wages are "productive."”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

In other words, lower wages were believed to enhance worker productivity.
Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

“The ascetic, when he wishes to act within the world … must become afflicted with a sort of happy closure of the mind regarding any question about the meaning of the world, for he must not worry about such questions. Hence, it is no accident that inner-worldly asceticism reached its most consistent development on the foundation of the Calvinist god's absolute inexplicability, utter remoteness from every human criterion, and unsearchableness as to his motives. Thus, the inner-worldly ascetic is the recognized "man of a vocation," who neither inquires about nor finds it necessary to inquire about the meaning of his actual practice of a vocation within the whole world, the total framework of which is not his responsibility but his god's.”

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Max Weber libro Economy and Society

Origine: Economy and Society (1922), pp. 547-548

“Since Judaism made Christianity possible and gave it the character of a religion essentially free from magic, it rendered an important service from the point of view of economic history. For the dominance of magic outside the sphere in which Christianity has prevailed in one of the most serious obstructions to the rationalization of economic life. Magic involves a stereotyping of technology and economic relations. When attempts were made in China to inaugurate the building of railroads and factories a conflict with geomancy ensued … Similar is the relation to capitalism of the castes in India. Every new technical process which an Indian employs signifies for him first of all that he leaves his caste and falls into another, necessarily lower … An additional fact is that every caste makes every other caste impure. In consequence, workmen who dare not accept a vessel filled with water from each other's hands, cannot be employed together in the same factory room. Obviously, capitalism could not develop in an economic group thus bound hand and foot by magical means.”

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Max Weber

Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. by Frank Knight, 1961. p 265

“The capacity to distinguish between empirical knowledge and value-judgments, and the fulfillment of the scientific duty to see the factual truth as well as the practical duty to stand up for our own ideals constitute the program to which we wish to adhere with ever increasing firmness.”

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Max Weber

Max Weber, “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy” (1904)

“No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the saying might be true for the “last humans” in this long civilizational development:narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

“Only on the assumption of belief in the validity of values is the attempt to espouse value-judgments meaningful. However, to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith.”

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Max Weber

Max Weber (1949/2011), Methodology of Social Sciences, Edward E. Shils & Henry A. Finch (transl. & ed.). p. 55

“"Rationalism" is a historical concept that contains within itself a world of contradictions.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

“Both as ruling and ruled strata and both as a majority and minority, Protestants… have demonstrated a specific tendency toward economic rationalism. This tendency has not been observed in the same way in the present or the past among Catholics, regardless of whether they were the dominant or dominated stratum or constituted a majority or minority. Therefore the cause of the different behavior must be mainly sought in the enduring inner quality of these religions and not only in their respective historical-political external situations.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 1 : Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification

“A true prophecy creates and systematically orients conduct toward one internal measure of value. In the face of this the "world" is viewed as material to be fashioned ethically according to the norm. Confucianism in contrast meant adjustment to the outside, to the conditions of the "world." A well-adjusted man, rationalizing his conduct only to the degree requisite for adjustment, does not constitute a systematic unity but rather a complex of useful and particular traits.”

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Max Weber

Origine: Religion of China (1915), p. 235

“Finally, and of central importance, the special life of the saint—fully separate from the "natural" life of wants and desires—could no longer play itself out in monastic communities set apart from the world. Rather, the devoutly religious must now live saintly lives in the world and amid its mundane affairs. This rationalization of the conduct of life—now in the world yet still oriented to the supernatural—was the effect of ascetic Protestantism’s concept of the calling.”

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Max Weber libro L'etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo

Origine: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 4 : The Religious Foundations of This-Wordly Asceticism

“In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.”

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Max Weber

Origine: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 42;

“After Nietzsche’s devastating criticism of those “last men” who “invented happiness,” there is probably no need for me to remind you of the naïve optimism with which we once celebrated science, or the technology for the mastery of life based on it, as the path to happiness. Who believes this, apart from a few overgrown children occupying university chairs or editorial offices?”

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Max Weber

"Science as a Vocation" (1917)

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.”

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Max Weber

"Science as a Vocation" (1917)

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filosofa, storica e scrittrice tedesca
Martin Heidegger photo
Martin Heidegger 39
filosofo tedesco
Walter Benjamin photo
Walter Benjamin 33
filosofo e scrittore tedesco
Ernst Jünger photo
Ernst Jünger 277
filosofo e scrittore tedesco
Umberto Galimberti photo
Umberto Galimberti 99
filosofo e psicoanalista italiano
Michel Foucault photo
Michel Foucault 25
sociologo, filosofo e psicologo francese
Erich Fromm photo
Erich Fromm 100
psicoanalista e sociologo tedesco
Ludwig von Mises photo
Ludwig von Mises 21
filosofo, economista
Theodor W. Adorno photo
Theodor W. Adorno 31
filosofo, musicologo e aforista tedesco