Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 296
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-8476-9921-6 • Paperback • December 2000 • $52.00 • (£40.00)
Richard Münch is professor of sociology at the University of Bamberg, Germany.
Chapter 1 Introduction: The Western Culture of Instrumental Activism
Part 2 Ethics and the World: A Comparative View
Chapter 3 Magic
Chapter 4 Archaic Religion
Chapter 5 Ethical Religion I: The Problem of Theodicy
Chapter 6 Ethical Religion II: The Path to Salvation
Chapter 7 Types of Relating Ethics to the World
Chapter 8 Structural Settings Shaping the Relationship between Ethics and World
Chapter 9 Different Patterns of Relating Ethics to the World within Western Culture: Britain, France, Germany, and America
Part 10 From Ancient Judaism to Ascetic Protestantism
Chapter 11 Introduction
Chapter 12 Ethical Penetration of the World: Ancient Judaism
Chapter 13 From Ethno-Religious Particularism to the Universal Church: The Teachings of Jesus Christ, the Pauline Mission, Early Catholicism, and the Gregorian Ecclesiastical Reforms
Chapter 14 From Traditionalistic Culture to Modern Culture: The Medieval City and Scholasticism
Chapter 15 The Last Attempt at Reconciling Ethics and the World: St Thomas Acquinas' Organic Social Ethics
Chapter 16 The Mutual Penetration of Religious Ethics and World: Ascetic Protestantism
Chapter 17 Modernization as Ethical Transformation
Part 18 Britain: Tradition and Reform
Chapter 19 Introduction
Chapter 20 The Position of Religion in Society: Orthodox Anglicanism and Heterodox Puritanism
Chapter 21 Agents of Modernization: Lawyers and Entrepreneurs in the Common Law Tradition
Chapter 22 Inclusion of Ethics in the Project of Modernization: Moderate Extension of Rights through Representation
Chapter 23 Social Change: The Interplay Between Tradition and Modernity
Part 24 France: Routine and Revolution
Chapter 25 Introduction
Chapter 26 The Position of Religion in Society: The Alliance between the Catholic Church and the Absolutist Rule
Chapter 27 Agents of Modernization: The Administrative Elite
Chapter 28 Inclusion of Ethics in the Project of Modernization: Radical Intellectual Criticism
Chapter 29 Social Change: The Cycle of Routine and Revolution
Part 30 Germany: Conformity and Alienation
Chapter 31 Introduction
Chapter 32 The Position of Religion in Society: The Alliance between Protestant Church and Secular Rule
Chapter 33 Agents of Modernization: The Cooperation of State and Industry
Chapter 34 Inclusion of Ethics in the Project of Modernization: The Gap between Ethics and World
Chapter 35 Social Change: Between Affirmation and Rejection
Part 36 America: Continuity and Renewal
Chapter 37 Introduction
Chapter 38 The Position of Religion in Society: The Sacred Covenant
Chapter 39 Agents of Modernization: Moral, Political, and Economic Entrepreneurs
Chapter 40 Inclusion of Ethics in the Project of Modernization: God's Envoys in the Wilderness
Chapter 41 Social Change: Continuity and Renewal
Part 42 Ethics and World: A Comparative Developmental History
Chapter 43 Introduction
Chapter 44 The Western Culture of Instrumental Activism in Comparative View
Chapter 45 From Ancient Judaism to the Reformation
Chapter 46 Modern Secularized Culture
Chapter 47 Differentiation of Cultural Traditions
Chapter 48 Concluding Remarks
An important endeavor to provide a grand narrative of the trajectory of modernity, in the vein of the sociological master of us all, Weber. This book will be useful in courses looking for recent sociological ventures in comparative-historical analysis, especially if one is looking for an informed Weberian antidote to postmodern or even antimodern nihilism, or to a narrative that priviliges the economic or the political at the expense of the religio-cultural.
— American Journal of Sociology
Richard Münch's comparative interpretation of the modern impulse in the prototypical Western nations is a remarkable intellectual product. It is an original and imaginative extension of the best of Max Weber's sociology. It is a beautiful appreciation of the simultaneity of the common impulse of the transformation to modernism and the different contexts into which this impulse was thrust. It is a work of high scholarship. But above all it is a book that is true. Münch gets it right in his interpretation of the Western experience, and has it right in his prediction of the continuity of the modernizing impulse into the globalizing world.
— Neil J. Smelser, director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California