Max Weber explored the political, epistemological and ethical problems of modernity, and understood how closely connected they were. His efforts are imaginative, sophisticated, even inspiring, but also flawed. Weber's epistemological successes and failures highlight unresolvable tensions that are just as pronounced today and from which we have much to learn. This edited collection of essays offers novel readings of Weber's politics, approach to knowledge, rationality, counterfactuals, ideal types, power, bureaucracy, the state, history, and the non-Western world. The conclusions look at how some of his prominent successors have addressed or finessed the tensions of the epistemological between subjective values and subjective knowledge; the sociological between social rationalization and irrational myths; the personal among conflicting values; the political between the kinds of leaders democracies select and the national tasks that should be performed; and the tragic between human conscience and worldly affairs.
Examines Max Weber's politics against his epistemology, encouraging readers to think more about the relationship between social science and politics
Examines Weber's Eurocentrism and the way it influenced his analysis of the West and the non-Western world, increasing the reader's sensitivity to the consequences of a Western-dominated discipline
Identifies key tensions in Weber's epistemology and the ways his successors have addressed and finessed them, demonstrating the importance for readers as these tensions still characterize the study of international relations
1. Introduction Richard Ned Lebow
2. Max Weber and international relations Richard Ned Lebow
3. Wissenschaftliche Warheit: Weber's search for knowledge Richard Ned Lebow
4. Production of facts: ideal-typification and the preservation of politics Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
5. Max Weber's power Stefano Guzzini
6. International organizations and bureaucratic modernity Jens Steffek
7. Decolonizing Weber: the Eurocentrism of Weber's IR and historical sociology John M. Hobson
8. Weber's tragic legacy David Bohmer Lebow and Richard Ned Lebow.