Human Realm Practice Ground: Max Weber's Enlightenment of the Rational World

Author: (German) Weber
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-04-01
Features: Max Weber was a renowned German sociologist, a towering figure and one of the founders of sociology. Against the backdrop of China's reform and opening-up in the 1980s, his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism caused a great sensation. In the following two decades, Weber's reputation grew both domestically and internationally. The concepts he proposed, such as the Protestant ethic, bureaucracy, the disenchantment of the world, and value neutrality, profoundly influenced the life paths of the younger generation. This book includes two of Weber's famous speeches on the calling of academia and the calling of politics, as well as his discussions on the spirit of capitalism. In these two speeches, Weber, as a serious scholar and statesman, scientifically and meticulously elaborates on the moral qualities a righteous scholar must possess and the professional ethics an honest, passionate politician must uphold. The entire book is filled with rationalist teachings, fully showcasing Weber's worldly attitude and rigorous, pragmatic academic style. These works are now listed as essential reading for Western university students and have once influenced a large number of European scholars and statesmen. The two speeches were translated by Wang Rongfen, while the section on the spirit of capitalism was translated by Chen Weigang and others. Wang Rongfen is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, currently residing in Germany. Chen Weigang is a researcher at Harvard Divinity School. Both translators have rendered accurate, meticulous, and nuanced translations, which have played an extremely important role in promoting and popularizing Western scholarship in China.