Max Weber Quotes on Time
Max Weber's reflections bearing on time, gathered here, centre on his diagnosis of the modern age. Weber's most famous verdict on his era is the claim that the fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world, the steady stripping of magic and mystery from human life by the advance of calculation and science. He insisted that rationalism is a historical rather than a timeless concept, one that contains within itself a world of contradictions. His image of politics as a slow boring of hard boards carries the same sense of patient work within historical time. Drawn from Science as a Vocation and his other works, these passages present the modern age as defined by an irreversible process of rationalization and disenchantment.
Quotes
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“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.”
Politics as a Vocation -
“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.”
Science as a Vocation -
“Max Weber, General Economic History , trans. by Frank Knight , 1961. p 265”
Since Judaism made Christianity possible and gave it the character of a religion essentially free from magic, it rendered an important service from the point of view of economic history. For the dominance of magic outside the sphere in which Christianity has prevailed in one of the most serious obstructions to the rationalization of economic life. Magic involves a stereotyping of technology and ec -
“No sociologist , for instance, should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time”
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology(1946) | p. 135 (in 2009 edition) -
“"Rationalism" is a historical concept that contains within itself a world of contradictions.”
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism(1905; 1920) | Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism -
“"Politics means a strong slow drilling of hard boards, with passion and judgment at the same time." ([ [1] ]: "Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich.")”
"Politics as a Vocation" (1919)