Chair: Andreas Gestrich
Discussants: David d’ Avray, Peter Ghosh and Joachim Radkau
Max Weber (* 21 April 1864, † 14 June 1920) is one of the most prestigious social theorists in recent history. Many of his academic works are modern classics. Even 100 years after his death, his books are still read, edited, translated and interpreted. In recent years a number of biographies have shed new light on Weber’s life and work.
In commemoration of Max Weber’s 150th anniversary, the German Historical Institute hosts a discussion with three Weber experts, British historians David d’ Avray and Peter Ghosh and German historian Joachim Radkau, on Max Weber’s work and its relation to historical writing.
Peter Ghosh is Jean Duffield Fellow in Modern History at St Anne’ College, University of Oxford. His research interests focus primarily on the history of ideas, both social and political theory and also the history of historiography. His latest publication Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories (Oxford University Press, 2014) offers an intellectual biography of Weber framed along historical lines.
David d’ Avray, Professor of Medieval History at University College London, has worked on medieval marriage, on preaching, on attitudes to kingship and death, on rationalities, and on ‘longue durée’ structures of papal history. In Rationalities in History: a Weberian Analysis (Cambridge University Press 2010), he writes a new comparative history in the spirit of Max Weber. Reassessing seminal Weberian ideas, he applies value rationality to the comparative history of religion and the philosophy of law.
Joachim Radkau is Professor for Modern History at the University of Bielefeld. His latest research interests concentrate on environmental history, the history of nature conservation, and Max Weber’s self and social perception. In his extensive biography Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des Denkens (Carl Hanser Verlag, 2005) (Max Weber: Passion for thinking), Radkau embeds Weber’s life and work in their historical context.
Thursday, 11 December 2014, 5 p.m.
at the
German Historical Institute
17 Bloomsbury Square
London WC1A 2N
