Michelet, Historian: Rebirth and Romanticism in Nineteenth-Century France

Mitzman, Arthur

Biographies & Memoirs

Yale Univ Pr

Arthur Mitzman's critical study of three major German sociologists - the nineteenth-century pioneers Ferdinand Tonnies, Werner Sombart, and Robert Michels - is rooted in the context of German social and intellectual history. Mitzman shows how Tbnnies's interest in community and Michels's critique of socialist bureaucracy were both intimately connected with their allegiance to an older, more communitarian and decentralized Germany that was being irreparably destroyed by Prussian domination. Sombart's analysis of modern capitalism and his evolution from supporter of revisionist socialism to bitter critic of modernity are similarly related, by the author, to his increasing estrangement from German society.With the brilliance of analysis that distinguished his study of Max Weber - The Iron Cage - Arthur Mitzman's book has revised long-held ideas about the beginnings of sociology: Far from originating as an antiseptic development of scientific objectivity, it grew out of a passionate commitment to humanist values within a social order apparently determined to destroy them.

Sociology and estrangement: three sociologists of Imperial Germany

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Knopf: distributed by Random House

This major study of the father of modern sociology explores the intimate relationship between the events of Max Weber's personal history and the development of his thought. When it was first published in 1970, Paul Roazen described The Iron Cage as "an example of the history of ideas at its very best"; while Robert A. Nisbet said that "we learn more about Weber's life in this volume than from any other in the English language."   Weber's life and work developed in reaction to the rigidities of familial and social structures in Imperial Germany. In his youth he was torn by irreconcilable tensions between the Bismarckian authoritarianism of his father and the ethical puritanism of his mother. These tensions led to a psychic crisis when, in his thirties, he expelled his father (who died soon thereafter) from his house. His reaction to the collapse of the European social order before and during World War I was no less personal and profound. It is the triumph of Professor Mitzman's approach that he convincingly demonstrates how the internalizing of these severe experiences led to Weber's pessimistic vision of the future as an "iron cage" and to such seminal ideas as the notion of charisma and the concept of the Protestant ethic and its connection with the spirit of capitalism. The author's thesis also serves as a vehicle for describing the social, political, and personal plight of the European bourgeois intellectual of Weber's generation.   In synthesizing Weber's life and thought, Arthur Mitzman has expanded and refined our understanding of this central twentieth-century figure. As Lewis Coser writes in the preface, until now "there has been little attempt to bring together the work and the man, to show the ways in which Weber's cognitive intentions, his choice of problems, were linked with the details of his personal biography. Arthur Mitzman fills this gap brilliantly."

The iron cage: An historical interpretation of Max Weber (Universal Library UL261)

Professionals & Academics

Grossett & Dunlap

Arthur Mitzman's critical study of three major German sociologists—the nineteenth-century pioneers Ferdinand Tonnies, Werner Sombart, and Robert Michels—is rooted in the context of German social and intellectual history. Mitzman shows how Tbnnies's interest in community and Michels's critique of socialist bureaucracy were both intimately connected with their allegiance to an older, more communitarian and decentralized Germany that was being irreparably destroyed by Prussian domination. Sombart's analysis of modern capitalism and his evolution from supporter of revisionist socialism to bitter critic of modernity are similarly related, by the author, to his increasing estrangement from German society.  With the brilliance of analysis that distinguished his study of Max Weber—The Iron Cage—Arthur Mitzman's book has revised long-held ideas about the beginnings of sociology: Far from originating as an antiseptic development of scientific objectivity, it grew out of a passionate commitment to humanist values within a social order apparently determined to destroy them.

Sociology and Estrangement: Three Sociologists of Imperial Germany

Routledge

Understood as a metaphor for the human mastery of nature, the myth of Prometheus has long served as a symbol of the modern world. Industrialization, individualism, the triumph of instrumental rationality and technological prowess in every aspect of life, all can be seen as expressions of the Promethean ethic. Yet as Arthur Mitzman demonstrates in this thought-provoking book, there is an alternative conception of Promethean modernity at odds with the reigning view. Elaborated in the writings of some European romantics, particularly the English poet Shelley, it emphasizes creativity over productivity, and a harmonious union with nature rather than its technocratic conquest. 
According to Mitzman, the ideologies of nationalism, socialism, and consumer capitalism all purported to be agencies of liberation and social justice. But they were traps. The mentalities of growth and power they encouraged and their institutional embodiments suffocated the original impulses of Promethean creativity while combining to construct the "double wall" of ecological unsustainability and increasing social inequality that threatens the very existence of humankind. 
Although the forces of globalization and neoliberalism dominate contemporary society and may seem irreversible, Mitzman believes in the possibility of a different kind of world. Integrating the insights of critical theory, intellectual history, and psychoanalysis, he offers a reasoned plea for a radical new vision of the future, one grounded in a politics of genuinely self-governing communities, a culture of liberated creativity, and an economics committed to the transcendence of scarcity and insecurity.

Prometheus Revisited: The Quest for Global Justice in the Twenty-first Century (Critical Perspectives on Modern Culture)

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

University of Massachusetts Press

Understood as a metaphor for the human mastery of nature, the myth of Prometheus has long served as a symbol of the modern world. Industrialization, individualism, the triumph of instrumental rationality and technological prowess in every aspect of life, all can be seen as expressions of the Promethean ethic. Yet as Arthur Mitzman demonstrates in this thought-provoking book, there is an alternative conception of Promethean modernity at odds with the reigning view. Elaborated in the writings of some European romantics, particularly the English poet Shelley, it emphasizes creativity over productivity, and a harmonious union with nature rather than its technocratic conquest. According to Mitzman, the ideologies of nationalism, socialism, and consumer capitalism all purported to be agencies of liberation and social justice. But they were traps. The mentalities of growth and power they encouraged and their institutional embodiments suffocated the original impulses of Promethean creativity while combining to construct the "double wall" of ecological unsustainability and increasing social inequality that threatens the very existence of humankind. Although the forces of globalization and neoliberalism dominate contemporary society and may seem irreversible, Mitzman believes in the possibility of a different kind of world. Integrating the insights of critical theory, intellectual history, and psychoanalysis, he offers a reasoned plea for a radical new vision of the future, one grounded in a politics of genuinely self-governing communities, a culture of liberated creativity, and an economics committed to the transcendence of scarcity and insecurity.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mitzman, Arthur. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mitzman, Arthur

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mitzman, Arthur. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Michelet, Historian: Rebirth and Romanticism in Nineteenth-Century France

Sociology and estrangement: three sociologists of Imperial Germany

The iron cage: An historical interpretation of Max Weber (Universal Library UL261)

Sociology and Estrangement: Three Sociologists of Imperial Germany

Prometheus Revisited: The Quest for Global Justice in the Twenty-first Century (Critical Perspectives on Modern Culture)

Prometheus Revisited: The Quest for Global Justice in the Twenty-first Century (Critical Perspectives on Modern Culture)