Zhao Yingnan commented on "The Biography of Weber"|Child, took my spear, my arm was already overwhelmed

"Weber's Biography: Thought and Will", by [de] Dirk Xsler, translated by Gao Xinglu and Huang Ziqin, reviewed by Yan Kewen, Guangxi Normal University Press|Xinmin Said, published in July 2023, 1032 pages, 198.00 yuan

June 17, 2020, was the first day after my PhD life ended. The belated morning seemed to bring the "vicious battle" life to an end temporarily. One hundred years back, on June 17, 1920, there was also a person who felt this long-lost tranquility in his life. He lay quietly in bed, listening to the final farewell of his family and best friends. Three days earlier, on the night of June 14, 1920, amid severe pneumonia and fever caused by the Spanish flu, which killed more than 20 million people, he muttered to his wife, Marianne Weber, and his former lover, Else Jaffé, "Pray that it will end!" The prayer was fulfilled, his world fell silent, and outside the house was a thunderstorm, lightning streaked across the sky, and his pale head resembled a statue of a deceased knight.

This man was the familiar and unfamiliar Max Weber (1864-1920). It's a figure who appears from time to time in classroom books, in the news media, and even in popular culture, and is a familiar name for everyone with a college education. But we also feel that he is strange. He was by no means our contemporary. In the world he lives in, the moon landing, the theory of relativity, artificial satellites, the uncertainty principle, the decoding of human genes, etc., all of which have not yet appeared; What happened in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, and Germany in Z also made him very distant from our lives; The aristocracy, the empire, the revolution, the Great War, Prussia, and the handwritten letters between relatives and friends are his real life world. But every Weber researcher, or anyone who reads Weber's work, will naturally see him as his "contemporary." This is not difficult to understand: while Weber's themes are so profound and intertwined that readers need to peel through the layers of historical material to get a glimpse of his penetrating views, his discussions of capitalism, rationalization processes, domination of power, foundations of legitimacy, bureaucracy, and belief systems are all relevant to the lifeblood of modern social life.

For Dirk Kaesler (1944-), a leading contemporary German sociologist and Weber researcher, this is, of course, Weber's crucial legacy. But he argues that only by placing Weber in the era to which he belongs, historicizing it, can he avoid the insensitivity caused by treating his writings as monuments with sincere trepidation. From this point of view, Weber's life may not be extraordinary and fascinating, but if we want to fully understand his judgment about the world in which we live, fully understand our own situation, we cannot put aside his attachment, attachment, anger, and sadness in his birth situation. Thus, on the 150th anniversary of Weber's birth, there is this biography of Weber's work and his life, which has so far been very informative and unpretentious, "Weber: Thought and Will" (the original German version is Dirk Kaesler, Max Weber. Preuße, Denker, Muttersohn. Eine Biographie, C. H. Beck, 2014, the title of the book may be translated literally as "Max Weber: Prussian, Thinker, and Oedipal Son").

"Everything is Russian", but it is not a reflection

After Weber's death, his wife Mary Anne asked someone to engrave the famous phrase from the second part of Faust's "Faust" on the left side of the tombstone: "Everything is Russian, nothing more than a mirror". However, Weber's writings and views did not fade with his departure, but provoked the interpretation and debate of countless followers. Johannes Friedrich Winckelmann is undoubtedly the most important of them. He was not only an independent scholar who worked with Mary Anne to sort out Weber's posthumous works, but also a man of fervent passion for Weber and his writings. He would pay out of his own pocket for anything that had or might have been related to Weber. In his collection, there are not only a book that Weber read or cited during his lifetime, but also Weber and Mary Anne's personal belongings, and even a mask that Webb printed when he died. In his Max Weber seminar at the Department of Sociology at the University of Munich, he invited a bust of Weber and invited students to discuss Weber under the gaze of the statue. Dirk Xler, author of Weber: Thought and Will, is one of them, and can even be said to be an uninterrupted participant.

Dirk Xler

It was 1966, the beginning of Kössler's encounter with Weber. His subsequent study of Weber with Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) during a visit to the London School of Economics and Political Science reinforced his interest in Weber and his teachings. In 1972, Xesler was invited by the publisher to edit and publish the influential Weber anthology, and in 1978 he wrote articles on Weber's life, career, and influence for the second volume of Classic Figures of Sociological Thought, which was expanded the following year into a textbook on Weber, Einführung in das Studium Max Webers. The success of these works has led one to think that Xesler was an "expert" who studied only Weber, but in fact his master's and doctoral theses, as well as his professorial dissertations, are only quite distant, if not unrelated. But in any case, Xler shouldn't have more luxuries. After all, his fame in studying Weber landed him his dream academic job.

But then things turned out to be unexpected. Xsler did not specialize in Weber research, as he or everyone envisioned. Of course, this is related to his personal choice of professional direction, but there is also a lack of academic and political factors. Due to differences of academic views and ideas, Winckelmann, although the initiator of the compilation of Weber's Complete Works, failed to influence this work in practice; The young Kössler was seen as a "clever teaching assistant" with Winckelmann and was not offered to edit. Although this is just an ordinary episode in the dark world of the white ivory tower, it has brought two important results, one unexpected and the other long-awaited.

On the one hand, unexpectedly, the differences between Winckelmann and the other editors of Weber's Complete Works became increasingly prominent, and finally reached the point of a break. Winckelmann emphasized that Weber's manuscripts on the Economy and Society must be presented as a complete work, but other editors decided to publish the manuscripts in separate volumes in the Complete Works. All Winckelmann's efforts did not stop this "break-up" operation, and in desperation, he shot himself in the head. The incident is often described as a "stroke" in which he could not afford to fall ill. On the other hand, it is long-awaited that Xler, as a recognized Weber expert, has not had the appropriate opportunity to fully outline and express his views on Weber (as Professor Wolfgang Schlucht, editor of the Complete Works of Weber, and others have done in the introduction to editing), except for many research and commentary-based articles on Weber and his writings (as Professor Wolfgang Schlucht, editor of the Complete Works of Weber). In 1995, that opportunity came. That year Xler happened to work in a laboratory with Niklas Luhmann and Hans Joas. These two important contemporary German sociologists urged Xler to make up his mind to write a biography of Weber. After nearly two decades of preparation and writing, this biography finally came out, and nine years later its Chinese edition is in front of us (for the above related background, see Xler's article "How I Met Max Weber and Can't Leave Him" [literaturkritik.de] [Wie ich zu Max Weber kam Und dann nicht mehr von ihm wegkam], thanks to Jiele and Jiele Wonderful translations of this article by three translators, Huang Ziqin and Gao Xinglu).

Printed version of the sociology section of the legal sociology section of Economy and Society

How should we understand or read this biography? From a textual point of view, perhaps Xsler will once again grieve the avid Weber "fan" just as he did in the 1972 Weber anthology without mentioning Winckelman. Referring to the compilation of Economy and Society, Ksler made it clear that "in order to understand the whole story, the reader must abandon the idea that Max Weber once wrote a book called 'Economy and Society'" and that "this hitherto so-called book was from the outset a fabrication, a fiction of words" (Weber, p. 639, all quoted in this article are from the Chinese edition, page numbers below). But he also acknowledges that one of the hallmarks of Weber's writing is "the struggle to use and organize the vast amount of material in all the subjects he has studied to date" (828). In this sense, he seems to acknowledge Winckelmann's decades-long painstaking search for the inner path and connection in Weber's manuscript. In any case, the accepted view is that Weber did not actually finish the work he had planned, and that his existing manuscript could not bear the burden of being integrated into a complete work.

Economy and Society, 1978

From a theoretical point of view, in the face of such a masterpiece of more than a thousand pages in both the original and Chinese German translations, both ordinary readers and researchers may be full of confusion: How much is such a tireless examination of the life and history of a historical figure who is not yet "immortal" for our understanding of his theory and its significance today? Beyond the carnival of Weber lovers, what value can such a work provide us? Xler thought of this question as well. In his preface to the Chinese translation, he uses Weber's discourse on the sociology of music to show that mutual learning and harmony among civilizations constitute an important reason why we read Weber today and understand ourselves. This point has become the basic consensus of Weber's research in the Chinese world today, and we may wish to extend it slightly (see Lin Duan: Chapter 1 of Weber on Traditional Chinese Law, China University of Political Science and Law, 2014; Li Rongshan: Historical Individual and Universal History, Chapter 4, Commercial Press, 2022).

Weber's comparative sociological analysis is inseparable from his sociological analysis of religion, historical sociology, and social science methodology. When comparing Western and non-Western civilizations, he often emphasizes that non-Western civilizations have many conditions that are more favorable than Western civilizations, but have failed to develop the rationalization process required by modern society, because of the differences in religious ethics between Western and non-Western societies. This line of thinking is possible only if Weber needs to identify the uniqueness of the rationalization process in modern society and prove that this uniqueness is not possessed by non-Western civilizations. This brings us to the question of comparative criteria used in comparative sociological analysis. In Weber's view, only things that have universal significance and validity in history are worth comparing, and this comparison is not a simple comparison of historical facts, but a conceptual analysis based on "ideals". In this sense, theoretical construction and historical exposition are closely integrated, and history is not only the context of theory, but also the development of theory itself.

This view is actually very different from the theoretical and historical views that prevail today. According to the popular view, we would think that theory is a universal way of thinking, a grasp of the universal factors in man and the world he constructs; History, on the other hand, focuses on the specific experiences of people and the individual circumstances of events. These two belong to different fields and are logically two rational activities that can be separated from each other. This leads to the fact that when we understand self and society through the construction of theory, the "self" and "society" that the theory gazes at are consciously or unintentionally shaped into an extremely abstract and monotonous object of knowledge. At this time, theory is either a closed system to be verified by empirical research, or a countermeasure thinking on specific practical issues, or a purely textual analysis work that has nothing to do with human survival experience (see Qu Jingdong and Sun Feiyu, ""Facing People Themselves": Re-understanding Social Theory", Peking University Journal of Sociology, No. 1, Commercial Press, 2023). In short, the separation between theory and history brings about the separation of theory and experience. This leads to the methodological dilemma: If theory is consistently unconnected to the experience of the individual, the actor in multiple social contexts, how can it understand the world that the individual constructs and the meaning it assigns?

In other words, if we take the position that theory is separate from history and experience, we may only be able to propose theories about society, but not theories of society itself. Of course, from the point of view of the philosophy of the social sciences, it is doubtful whether we can obtain a theory about society itself, and whether this distinction is appropriate. But this distinction suggests to some extent that our approach to ensuring the "objectivity", "universality" and "value neutrality" of theories by stripping them from history and experience may be nothing more than an illusion: seemingly logical theories themselves have permeated our value judgments about specific social issues and phenomena. To achieve methodological self-awareness in theoretical presuppositions and thus overcome this blind spot, whether intentional or unintentional, the perspective of history—the continuation of experience in a given time and space—is essential.

If we understand and read Weber's biography from this perspective, it is not difficult to see that Weber's life—whether it is his unchangeable final destiny, or the subtleties of his daily life—is not only related to Weber and his contemporaries, not only Weber's lovers, but also to the birth situation of each of us: it reveals a unique form of different destinies constructed by modern society by presenting the fate of a modern intellectual in a specific socio-historical context. Webb will not be resurrected, and no one will be Weber. But he embodied the entanglement with his father Oedipus complex, the intertwining of love and desire with his wife and lover, the close relationship with political life, and the explosive-like temper, the ascetic-like way of working, and the gesture of carrying the weight for his relatives, friends and family... All this is a truthful portrayal of the character of each of us in daily life. Theory is by no means a triumphant sermon, nor is it an exhaustive analysis of a text, nor is it a toolbox for dismembering or pointing to reality. Facing specific people and experiencing the problems faced by specific people may be the original meaning of the theory, and it is also the meaning of such a thick "Weber Biography" today. As Ksler puts it, at the time of Weber's death, "a thunderstorm falling over Munich heralded another violent thunderstorm that would fall on all those who had to continue to live" (p. 33). We should be prepared for this.

Weber, 1917.

"We'll never see anyone like him again"

Let's get closer to Xler's Weber. Compared with the loving and reverential biography written after her wife Marianne (first German version Marianne Weber, Max Weber—ein Lebensbild, Tübingen, 1926; Chinese translation [de] Marianne Weber: A Biography of Max Weber, translated by Yan Kewen and Yao Zhongqiu, Commercial Press, 2010), Xler's Weber appears more complex and vivid. From time to time in this biography, we will see large quotations from Xler's biography of Mary Anne, as well as the examination and analysis of the historical details therein. Therefore, even researchers who have known Weber for a long time and have a relatively comprehensive understanding of his life and writings may be able to find different inspiration in Xler's description. This inspiration generally includes the following three aspects.

(i) Prussian nationalists

First, Xler's Weber was a loyal Prussian nationalist. This image may be far from the cold, rational scholar image we conceived when we read Weber's work. At the end of his famous lecture, "Making Politics a Business," Weber spoke of the conditions of political personality, pointing out that passion, responsibility, and judgment are essential for a true politician. This means that true politicians should set realistic goals as their ideals, take actions that are in line with them, and have the courage to bear the consequences of all this. At the heart of everything, Weber emphasized, was "how can fiery enthusiasm and calm judgment be reconciled with the same person." Politics is based on the mind... The characteristic of a politician lies in the strength and self-control of his spirit", and to achieve this it is necessary to "keep a distance in all sense" for everything. This is Weber's ideal political personality (see Weber: Academia and Politics, translated by Qian Yongxiang et al., Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004, p. 252).

But according to Xler's research, Weber, who was in the First World War, was far less sober and rational. In Berlin in August 1914, enthusiastic people took to the streets and surrounded the train station, throwing flowers, streamers and slogans at young soldiers. In Heidelberg, a city full of universities where Weber lives, the atmosphere of exuberance or fanatical only increases. Weber certainly hated war, but when he wore his uniform as a military commissioner of the Heidelberg Reserve Army Hospital Committee, Xler, wrote that Webb, despite facing badly wounded and dying soldiers every day, "was largely indifferent to this humanitarian suffering, and he was simply delighted with the war," and in one letter he even wrote to a friend that "whatever the outcome, this war is great and wonderful." Weber also wrote to his mother that he was "born" with a belligerent instinct, but unfortunately could not go to the front to fight in person due to age and physical reasons. This is not his excuse. Ksler lost no time in pointing out that Weber's weak body miraculously recovered during his service in the Great War: "A man who had to struggle with insomnia, eating disorders, nightmares, guilt, irritability, and high pill consumption in his daily life was now able to put aside all complaints in this abnormal special life and carry out his military mission alive." (pages 728, 730)

Even more ironically, in "Academia as a Business", Weber once compared the difference between "learning" and "faith". In his view, engaging in academic work means never giving up our reason for some ultimate or noble value, otherwise we will no longer be scholars for the purpose of seeking truth, but believers in some religion (see Weber: Academia and Politics, translated by Qian Yongxiang et al., Guangxi Normal University Press, 2004, p. 190). But apparently, Weber also contradicts this view of his own. Ksler points out that Weber's acceptance of the chair of political economy at the University of Vienna in his later years was the drastic decline in the Webers' family fortune as a result of World War I. Weber used his wife's inheritance to buy Germany's wartime debts and urged his relatives and friends to do the same. As an expert on economics, he wrote an article on wartime public debt published in September 1917 (Germany was officially defeated in the autumn and winter of the following year) "enthusiastically praised public debt as an attractive capital investment, and its subscription meant both an economically wise move and a national obligation" (753). I don't know how many people Weber's views have affected, but at least he himself and his wife and mother have suffered so much that the scholar, who specializes in national economics, has to consider his family's economic expenses as a top priority.

(2) Thinkers

Portrait of Weber

Second, Xler's Weber is a thinker struggling to figure out the meaning of life. Anyone who knows Weber well will be impressed by the portrait he has handed down. In the portrait, Weber has a slightly sideways body, his eyebrows are locked, and his thick beard and thin cheeks seem to tell his majesty and heaviness. This image appears repeatedly in various biographies and writings about Weber, as if Weber himself. This is also in line with the image of nostalgia and hesitation that Weber presents us in his series of works: he is both rejoicing in the rational development of modern society and pessimistic and desperate about the ultimate fate that may befall modern man. In his speech "Academic Business", Weber, when discussing the process of rational development of modern society, did not carry out a comparative analysis of rational or "computable" phenomena from various perspectives such as science, art, administration, state and economy, as he later did in the "Preface" to "Economic Ethics of the World Religions", but very unexpectedly raised a Tolstoic question: When the rational development represented by academic research is a process of infinite progress, what is the meaning of death or life? Weber's answer is that for the intelligent person in modern society, because he lives in the process of continuous progress, he will not have the feeling of enjoying the whole world, he will not form an ultimate and complete answer to his life, he will only be tired of life, so death or life becomes meaningless.

The same assertion appears at the end of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Summarizing how the Protestant ascetic ethic has had a genetic impact on profit-seeking behavior in the secular world, Weber (and his translators) point out with powerful rhetorical skill that "the Puritans want to be professionals, and we must become professionals", because abstinence has changed from monastic ethics to a secular morality, which has fueled the great universe of the modern economic order, "which now determines, with overwhelming coercion, the way of life of everyone born into this mechanism." This rationalized life is a "thin cloak that can be removed at any time" on the shoulders of the saints, but "fate has turned this cloak into a cage of steel". Trapped by this way of life, we have abandoned the inquiry into the sacred meaning of rational life itself, and reason—more precisely profit—has become an end in itself (Weber: Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Kang Le and Jian Huimei, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2007, p. 187). For the above well-known statements, scholars have always had a lot of discussions. Is Weber a nihilist in the sense of value relativism, or a warrior who "revalues everything" in the sense of Nietzsche and gives meaning to the world with action? We don't know. But at least, Weber's attitude in these discussions is quite clear: meaning or value is not something that academic research should deal with.

However, in Xler's analysis of Weber's reflections on the "crisis of meaning" in his later years, we will find that Weber's actual attitude towards the meaning of life is far less decisive and resolute than that he presents in academic works. In the fall of 1919, Weber's mother died suddenly; In the spring of 1920, Weber's most beloved sister also died; This summer, he will also be awake. But the year before that, his inner world seemed to have come to an end. Xler examines a past story told by Webb's friend Baumgarten. One night, Webb was smoking a cigar in the dark, and Mary Anne stood in front of the window and heard Webb ask her: "Tell me, can you imagine yourself as a mystic?" Mary Anne replied, "This must be the last possibility I can think of." Can you imagine yourself? Webb went on to say, "I could even be a mystic. If, like me, there are more 'dreams' in life than one would otherwise be allowed to do, I wouldn't feel completely at ease anywhere. As if I could (and hope) quit everything completely" (p. 906). In his later years, Weber described himself as a "mystic" who believed in religion. Is this his instinctive escape after realizing that academic work and life as a whole are meaningless, or is it his summary statement about his subjective motives for living and working for a long time? Whatever the possibility, it's not hard to realize that Weber, as a scholar, always seems to want to say something to the "unspeakable" who need to remain silent. This may be the contradiction between Weber's personal and his writings, but it may also be the mystery of the vitality of his books and his books.

Mary Anne and Max Webb

(3) Son of the Oedipal Mother

Finally, Kersler's Weber is an Oedipal son (Muttersohn) entangled between passion and reason. Weber is a modern social thinker who shines with reason and passion. Most people have no doubt about this. People who read Weber for the first time often do not get lost in his complicated historical materials and obscure writing style, but rather indulge in his "finishing touch" at the end of his lengthy discourse. The expressions of "iron cage", "expert", "indulgent", "witchcraft garden" and "leader of Chrisma" can transcend the German language and become popular in the Chinese and English-speaking worlds. In Xler's portrayal, we will experience this more profoundly, and even feel that Weber, as a scholar and politician, often does not tame passion with reason, but, on the contrary, passion often transcends reason.

For example, according to Xler, Weber maintained only two long-term friendly/intimate relationships throughout his life with two women—his mother and wife—and apart from that, especially in relationships outside of relatives, he seemed to be a mess, "all his friendships... Most of them broke down because he rudely terminated the relationship" (p. 910). Xesler attributes this to the inherent contradiction in Weber's character: on the one hand, he is always a shy, restless and timid child who needs to be protected, but on the other hand, he apathizes with any sense of emotional dependence in order to maintain his inner and outer independence. This makes not only those around him feel that Weber is unapproachable, but Weber himself does not know how to get along with others. Weber in everyday life often presents a cold or heartless appearance: "Neither the ability to have lasting sympathy for others, nor the ability to cater to others, nor the ability to truly respond with compassion... In extreme cases it may be... Looks like an autistic person. (909 pages)

But if we think that Webb will never show his emotions, we are very wrong—don't forget that it is the beard in the portrait that leaves us with a grim impression, and the scars that Weber left after a duel with people in college. According to Xler's research, Weber's posthumous publication of three volumes of the Sociology of Religion is dedicated to three women: the first volume of essays on Protestantism and Chinese economic ethics, dedicated to Mary Anne Weber; The second volume of articles on India is dedicated to Mina Tobler, a woman with whom he fell in love after his marriage; The third volume of essays on the economic ethics of Judaism is dedicated to his lover Elze Jaffe. Interestingly, after retrieving Weber's essays on Judaism, Ksler found that this volume mentions that "the enjoyment of life with wisdom and moderation is the goal of all human endeavors, and any abstinence of the inner world is completely absent", and Elze Jaffe embodies a "natural unrestrainedness". What is even more shocking is that this inscription Weber only mentioned to Erze Jaffe before his death, and asked her to tell the publisher, without Marianne's knowledge. When Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), who admired Weber's "sincerity," learned all this in his twilight years, Xler, "his inner world collapsed" (p. 899).

Weber not only loves to express his emotions, but also enjoys using passions, emotions, and the impact emotions can have on others. His audacity in the sword fighting ring, his hard-line attitude in presenting the results of the agricultural workers' findings at the Society for Social Policy and the Protestant Social Congress, his inaugural speech in Freiburg, and his joy at seeing his "rough attitude" cause panic among his opponents in the debate are described as a heroic "warrior" figure in the biographies written by Mary Anne. But Xler, more objectively, pointed out that many of Weber's friends thought he was "neurotic." This often manifests itself in his fiery and irritable personality, as well as his unrestrained attitude toward personal desires, both monetary and emotional, at certain moments. According to Xler's account, Weber's development or revelation of this character may have appeared as early as around his third semester of college. Weber's letters to his father and mother at this time show how "the tall, thin 'suspected tuberculosis patient' grew into the 'real man' and 'burly man' that people used to talk about" (191). It was after this period that Xler's discourse gradually reduced the number of quotations to Mary Anne's biography. This may indicate that Weber's sense of self has gradually developed since then. We can no longer rely on any single material to understand this young man named Max Weber.

Webb's parents

However, Xsler believes that it is not so much that Webb has developed self-knowledge since entering college, but that Webb's self-knowledge has remained at this stage throughout his life. He pointed out that his mother's excessive expectations and his dependence on him made Weber's character vulnerable to power and violent. His life has always been under the strong constraints of his mother, who exemplified the female role of his growth as a template for his growth; But at the same time, his mother and the male-dominated social atmosphere of the time forced him to not only display but also overshow "masculine" behavior. This caused a split in Weber's personality, which, rather than healed as he grew, intensified, and even affected his writings—his texts on Protestant ethics "did not become a purely scholarly text, but a montage of science, historical news, literature, and metaphorical prose" (683).

The influence of his mother, Helenie Fallenstein (1944-1919), on Weber was nuanced. In a way, we can even say that Mary Anne appeared at Weber's side as her wife, and her mother Helenie. Although Xler does not explicitly discuss this, we can learn from the large number of intimate and even intimate letters he quotes from Mary Anne and Weber's mother. It is well known that Webb suffered some kind of indescribable mental breakdown in the prime of his thirty-three. His symptoms were physical weakness, insomnia, inner tension, guilt, exhaustion, fear, chronic anxiety, and doctors diagnosed Weber as having a "neurasthenia" (p. 463). During this period, in her correspondence with her mother-in-law Helenie, Mary Anne would report Weber's physical condition in detail, and the details or privacy of its content were shocking. In the letters cited by Xsler, Mary Anne and her mother-in-law speak unreservedly of Weber's "unconscious erections and ejaculation" and nightmares during the night, so much so that Xsler commented that "in a way she does seem to have a child, albeit in the form of her husband" (p. 464, with slight changes in translation). On the surface, this is a caring wife carefully reporting her husband's situation to her mother-in-law. But from a psychological point of view, I am afraid that the root cause of Weber's situation is his mother and his wife who appears as a mother. According to Xler, the ubiquitous influence of his mother caused Weber to "fail in forming a unified personality" and caused "the self-unhappiness of this perennially ill and aggressive man," who was unable to successfully display the masculinity he was asked to display (p. 683). This may explain his passion and hurt for his wife and lover.

"Let me not pray for relief from my suffering, but devote myself to overcoming it"

Looking back at Weber's life, Kössler might agree with Jürgen Kaube, Ein Leben zwischen den Epochen (Rowohlt Berlin, 2014) that Weber's life spanned two different eras. He was born at what Hobsbawm called the midpoint of the "long nineteenth century" and died in the "short twentieth century" after the World Wars. This enabled Weber to "perceive the vague outlines of something new before humanity" (p. 32). But where the future leads, and what his rationalization process will look like, we cannot give a convincing answer to this day. But at least through Xsler's incomparably detailed analysis, we will see that Weber may not be at the right distance from his own time, as he shows in his writings, he has been fanatical and painful, he has been confused and discouraged by the inquiry of the meaning of life and the struggle between passion and reason, and his works (except for the anthology of the sociology of religion) are almost entirely unfinished... We could even say that he experienced a total academic, political, and life failure—but of course "all this was also the key to his great success, although this success would not be apparent until after his death" (827).

Weber's tomb

But this may not in any way diminish Weber's image in the minds of his readers, but it brings him closer to each of us. He lived in the Prussian Empire of iron and blood, the crisis of general significance in Europe during the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the destruction and revolution brought about by the First World War, and the hatred and fanaticism that propelled Germany towards the Second World War. Today, of course, all of this is a relic of history, but their impact makes us more like the "remnants" of the era that Weber fought and suffered for (as many researchers call Weber's relationship with Bismarck). In this sense, Weber is certainly our contemporary, and always will be. We will always learn from him how to face the burdens of this world and how to face the deep valleys of our hearts. "Child, take my spear, my arm is overwhelmed." On August 1, 1889, Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), an expert on Roman law, after fully expressing his opposition, uttered these words to Max Weber, a twenty-five-year-old who was defending his doctorate. Today, more than a hundred years after Weber's death, we expect him to repeat the same words to us.

(The titles of each section of this article are taken from verses commemorating Weber, followed by the famous verses from the second part of Goethe's Faust engraved on the left side of Weber's tombstone, the inscription on the right side of Weber's tombstone, and the opening remarks of Weber's funeral and Tagore's poem "Eulogy", and the corresponding translations are taken from Weber's Biography: Thought and Will.) ）