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Hermann Broch as a reader of Max Weber: Protestantism, rationalization and the ‘disintegration of values’

Max Weber Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien, University of Erfurt, Germany, University of Leeds, UK, austin.harrington{at}uni-erfurt.de, a.harrington{at}leeds.ac.uk

The article explores a range of motifs in the writing of the Austrian émigré novelist and essayist Hermann Broch, that point to themes in the sociological thought of Max Weber. Although explicit citations of Weber’s name appear rarely in Broch’s writings, the thematic and stylistic contents of Broch’s first novel of 1930-1 The Sleepwalkers indicate a plethora of ways in which the Austrian author engages with ideas he can only have first assimilated by means of a more or less conscious programme of reading in texts by Weber and by other thinkers of the same milieu and generation, including Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert. Most notably in the ‘Excursus on the Disintegration of Values’, in Part III of The Sleepwalkers, Broch elaborates what might be seen as a certain poetic extension of the Weberian vision of modernity in terms of rationalization, disenchantment and the fragmentation of value-spheres.

Key Words: Hermann Broch • decadence • neo-Kantianism • Neue Sachlichkeit • Oswald Spengler • theory of values • Max Weber

References

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History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 4, 1-18 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695106069665


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This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (1) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Harrington, A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?