On Max Weber

What Sigmund Freud is to psychoanalysis, Max Weber is to sociology: the founding father, the primary source of idea, invention, and organization upon which the modern practice of the science is based. Karl Jaspers occupies an equally high place in the existentialist movement in philosophy. For many years, these two intellectual giants were close associates. These brilliant and eminently readable essays were written between 1920 and 1962, originally in German. Here they are available in English. Jaspers divides Weber's work into three broad categories--philosophical, scientific, and political. He examines Weber's passionate devotion to the goal of purifying science of all passion, and specifically of making the social sciences an objective, value-free inquiry. He explores Weber's notion of the role of political leadership, and of the crisis of contemporary civilization as experienced in Germany. When one towering intellect writes about another, we enjoy insights into the minds of both. On Max Weber speaks to the philosopher, the sociologist, the political scientist, and the scholar, while it broadens the intellectual horizons of everyone concerned with deeper questions of mind, society, and the human condition.--