Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positions feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial question the status of "tradition."In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders an...

This book examines the nature of unmasking in social theory, in revolutionary movements and in popular culture. Unmasking is not the same as scientific refutation or principled disagreement. When people unmask, they claim to rip off a disguise, revealing the true beneath the feigned. The author distinguishes two basic types of unmasking. The first, aimed at persons or groups, exposes hypocrisy and enmity, and is a staple of revolutionary movements. The second, aimed at ideas, exposes illus...

This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It focuses on Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism was an entirely unprecedented regime and that the social sciences had integrally misconstrued it. A sociologist who is a critical admirer of Arendt, Baehr looks sympathetically at Arendt's objections to social science and shows that her complaints were in many respects justified.Avoiding broad disciplinary end...

In The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and relates the rise of the capitalist economy to the Calvinist belief in the moral value of hard work and the fulfillment of one's worldly duties.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genr...

Gerade erst aus Ohio zurückgekehrt, wartet Inspektor Bishop mit einem neuen Fall auf Professor van Dusen. Ein Serienmörder hat es offenbar auf Geistliche abgesehen. Seinen Opfern fehlen die Schuhe, während sie mit durchschnittener Kehle vor dem Altar knien und zu einer Jesusfigur hinaufstarren. Was hat es mit diesen Morden auf sich? Van Dusen und Hatch stürzen sich kopfüber in einen neuen Fall, der ihre ganze Aufmerksamkeit und ihr Geschick erfordern, denn das Leben eines Menschen hängt al...

Nackt kam ich aus dem Schoß meiner Mutter. Nackt werde ich aus dem Leben scheiden. Der Herr hat's gegeben. Der Herr hat's genommen. Gelobt sei der Herr, der mir alles gegeben hat, was ich habe, je im Leben hatte und je haben werde.

"How do writers, marginalized by the authoritarian state in which they live, intervene in the political process? They cannot do so directly because they are not politicians. Other modes of engagement are possible, however. A writer may take up arms and become a revolutionary. Or, as Max Weber did, he may try to influence politics by playing the role of constitutional advisor, or by seeking to shape the dominant language in which his contemporaries think. Weber sought to reconstitute the po...

Als er einen alten Schulfreund an Körper und Geist gebrochen vorfindet, kommt der Journalist Villiers "Vil" Wadham geheimnisvollen Ereignissen auf die Spur. Was hat es mit der Welle schockierender Freitode auf sich, welche die Londoner Oberschicht ausdünnt? Was weiß der exzentrische Dr. Clarke darüber? Und wer ist die geheimnisvolle Frau namens Helen, deren Name immer wieder in Verbindung mit all diesen Ereignissen auftaucht? - Arthur Machens skandalumwitterte Geschichte gilt als der wicht...

For many centuries, Julius Caesar was a name that evoked strong feelings among educated people. Some of these responses were complimentary, but others came from the point of view of "political republicanism"—which envisaged Caesar as a historical symbol for some of the most dangerous tendencies a polity could experience. Caesar represented everything that republicans detested—corruption, demagogy, usurpation—and as such, provided an antimodel against which genuine political virtue could be...

Da sie schon länger kein schmackhaftes Tier mehr haben zur Strecke bringen können, suchen sich zwei hungrige Wölfe ein menschliches Ziel: das herzliche, aber naive Rotkäppchen, das auf dem Weg zu seiner Großmutter ist. Die Tiere des Waldes versuchen, dem Mädchen zu helfen, aber sowohl die äußerst eigene Großmutter als auch der nicht gerade helle Jäger erschweren die Mission. - Frei nach dem Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm.

As recently as 2000, Hannah Arendt was considered an esoteric author within the fields of humanities and social science. Since that time, Arendt has moved from the fringes of intellectual discussion toward its center. A number of developments have driven this reappraisal: the renewed respectability of the concept of totalitarianism; the appearance of post-Nazi/Bolshevik genocidal movements in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East; the reemergence of stateless people; and the revival of i...

Dr. Watson erhält einen besorgniserregenden Brief von seinem alten Studienkollegen Edward Judd. Dieser hat an der Küste von Cornwall eine Leiche entdeckt, die wenige Stunden darauf spurlos verschwand. Als Judd Nachforschungen anstellt, fehlt auch von ihm plötzlich jede Spur. Holmes und Watson reisen nach St. Iwes ...