Max Weber

Article

Max Weber is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 08, 2021 and August 05, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “Max Weber and Roscoe Pound both seemingly endorsed the dubious propositions”; “Max Weber, the sociologist who coined the term”. It most often appears alongside acedia, ACX, Against Nature.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: April 08, 2021
  • Last seen: August 05, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

April 08, 2021 · Original source
Max Weber and Roscoe Pound both seemingly endorsed the dubious propositions that the state has, and should have, a monopoly on the use of violent force. In fact, as both those scholars recognized elsewhere in their writings, operative rules in human societies often authorize forceful private responses to provocative conduct.
August 05, 2022 · Original source
On the other hand, we have the exhortation to activity, which as we’ve seen has been a suggestion from at least the days of monks with acedia, but is now in the West explicitly linked with the co-called Protestant work ethic, with work and its resultant energy and meaning being thought of as a necessary good (Max Weber, the sociologist who coined the term, was also diagnosed with neurasthenia – it seems a wonder anything intellectual got done during this period). There’s a gender bias here; while women had the rest cure, men diagnosed in the late 19th Century might be prescribed a “West Cure” where they might, in Mitchell’s words, “engage in a sturdy contest with Nature” by spending time with cowboys and sleeping rough – something Billy Crystal also found helpful.