Hennis has been a leading critic of German political life and thought for the last 50 years. In this selection from his writings on government and constitutionality he shows how the postwar reconstruction of democratic politics in Germany highlighted general problems of party politics and democratic order that have only recently been recognized.
A Re-Assessment of the work of max weber (1864-1920) in its context - weber beware a founding father of sociowork In his first book to appear in English, Wilhelm Hennis argues that Weber's ideas have been distorted by both German- and English-speaking sociologists. In his view the 'Weber revival' of recent years has a textual basis that is narrow and partial, imputes modern concerns to Weber and treats the position of Weber as a 'founding father' of sociology as unproblematic. Ranging across the work of Weber and skilfully employing familiar, unfamiliar and previously unknown sources, Hennis brings to our understanding of Weber the arguments and methods of a scholar trained in law and familiar with a German tradition of political thought largely unknown to contemporary social scientists. He places Weber in a tradition of political thought that includes Rousseau, de Tocqueville and Nietzsche, a tradition that embraces contemplation of Man and human personality as well as a new discourse on modernity. Viewed in this light, Weber addresses modern cultural and political issues much more directly than he can as the sociological theorist of bureaucracy, social mobility and interpretative
In this work, the author continues his argument against received wisdom in the understanding of Max Weber. He seeks to rescue the work of this important thinker from sociologists and systems-theorists, demonstrating an essential continuity throughout Weber's work in his concern with the pervasive force of economic calculation and material rationality in the shaping of man. Weber's unpublished papers and correspondence, the author provides an elegant account of the motive of Weber's scholarship. He demonstrates how a better understanding of Weber in his own context can present us with a figure who can still teach us, as he sought to teach his own contemporaries.