A Social Theory of War:Geistige Arbeit of Max Weber during and after World War I
One challenge in Max Weber study is the separation and tension between science and politics.This paper proposes a comprehensive approach to Weber's literature,to comb through his various political and academic activities.With the concept of Geistige Arbeit/spiritual labor,four aspects of Weber's contribu-tion during the war could be integrated:the establishment of wartime hospitals;participation in peace ne-gotiations,party politics,etc.;exerting public influence by lectures and newspaper articles;writing and teaching as a scholar and professor.Base on his study of Protestant ethics,Weber opposed the proposition that war would contribute to the emergence and development of modern capitalism.From Weber's politi-cal comments during the First World War,this paper extracts a dialectical relationship between war and peace,behind this relationship is a universal logic of power while power itself is amorphous.Through his spiritual labor,Weber realized the transition from being passively affected by the war to taking the initia-tive to assuming political responsibility.To sum up,this paper argues that it is necessary for sociology to further expand its research horizons by adopting war into its basic framework as a fundamental issue of the-oretical research.
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