German Cosmopolitan Social Thought and the Idea of the West
Voices from Weimar

Harrington draws on neglected sources in early twentieth-century German social thought to address core questions in current social science.

Austin Harrington (Author)

9781107110915, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 May 2016

450 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.77 kg

'It might seem as if everything about the Weimar Republic and its intellectual friends and enemies had already been written. But in the run-up to the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the first German democracy, the deck has been reshuffled. The new study by Austin Harrington, a sociologist and philosopher at the University of Leeds, is among those offering new perspectives.' Gangolf Hübinger, Max Weber Studies

There has been considerable interest in recent years in German social thinkers of the Weimar era. Generally, this has focused on reactionary and nationalist figures such as Schmitt and Heidegger. In this book, Austin Harrington offers a broader account of the German intellectual legacy of the period. He explores the ideas of a circle of left-liberal cosmopolitan thinkers (Troeltsch, Scheler, Tönnies, Max Weber, Alfred Weber, Mannheim, Jaspers, Curtius, and Simmel) who responded to Germany's crisis by rejecting the popular appeal of nationalism. Instead, they promoted pan-European reconciliation based on notions of a shared European heritage between East and West. Harrington examines their concepts of nationhood, religion, and 'civilization' in the context of their time and in their bearing on subsequent debates about European identity and the place of the modern West in global social change. The result is a groundbreaking contribution to current questions in social, cultural and historical theory.

Introduction
1. Social theory and the West
2. Europa in Weimar
3. Liberal social theorists in Germany, 1914–33
4. European nationhood after the Great War
5. A Romano-Germanic nexus
6. Universal history
7. Humanism and Europe
8. European nihilism?
9. Protesting the West: yesterday and today.

Subject Areas: Social theory [JHBA], History of ideas [JFCX], Social & political philosophy [HPS], European history [HBJD]