Ute Daniel is going to present a working paper on 'Marx and Weber on Doing History'

The historiography of democracy mostly tends to focus on movements and endeavours the aims of which were to foster democratic developments and political participation. These topics are extremely important. But they do not help to understand why democratic constitutions were established or universal franchise was introduced (or why both was rejected). So my project asks why monarchs and
governments, parliaments and parties in the course of the 19th and early 20th century extended the franchise (or why they refused to extend it). The underlying hypothesis is, that universal suffrage – the core of democracy as we understand it today – was brought about neither by pro-democratic movements nor by governing classes convinced of the inevitability of democratic developments before 1914, but by the First World War.

Urs Lindner presents a working paper on 'Class and Caste: What is the Scope of Ascriptive Inequality?'

The paper is a side product of my research project on affirmative action. It is written for a German volume (Marxismus und Soziologie, edited by Tine Haubner and Tilman Reitz). Motivated by the fact that class inequalities are commonly not targeted by affirmative action programs, my paper deals with the question of to what extent class relations can themselves acquire an ascriptive form. In a first step, the distinctiveness between modern class relations and ascriptive inequalities is established with respect to the work of Marx and Weber. Secondly, I discuss how three Marxo-Weberian approaches elaborate on this problem: Charles Tilly’s theory of ‚categorical inequalities’, Nancy Frasers recognition-redistribution approach and Veit Bader’s and Albert Benschop’s ‚protheory of social inequality’. I argue that Bader/Benschop’s approach is the most promising one as it complicates the distinction between class and ascriptive inequalities with that of positional and allocative inequalities. In a third step, I shortly exemplify my considerations by taking into account transformations of the Indian caste system.

Louis-Philippe Vien is presenting a working paper on 'The Kingdom of Influence - Max Weber As A “Would-Be Englishman”'

Between the hagiographies following in the wake of Marianne Weber Lebensbild, Mommsen’s Wegbereiter thesis, and the works of those, indirectly writing against the first two receptions, who see in him an insightful political scientist, Max Weber’s political thought is the object three massively different interpretations. With the help of Pocock’s theory of political language I intend to shed lights on the English influences of Weber’s conception of modern politics. In this I follow the intuitions of Günther Roth in his Work on “Weber The Would-Be Englishman”. But where his writings are based on the economic history of Weber’s extended family, I want to investigate the structure of his political thoughts as to reveal how Weber’s political ideas, if often described as unique and extraordinary in the German context of his time, is based on interrogations and themes that would appear as common for late-Victorians. In order to identify the common tensions upon which a shared political language is articulated, I compare Weber writing on politics with those of two iconic Victorian political authors, namely Walter Bagehot and John Stuart Mill. From their (I) historiography, to their conception of the parliamentary institutions, be it their roles as tools of State administration (II) or in their influence on the political education of the nation (III), or in their relation to (IV) Statesmanship, what reveal itself is a common conception of modern politics, a common view on the necessity of strong parliamentary institutions in modern states, and a common adherence to the short-lived brand of agonistic liberalism.

Bjørn Schiermer Andersen presents a working paper on 'Max Weber on Creativity: Towards an Alternative Theory of Action in Weber's Work'

The present paper aims to unearth an alternative theory of action in Weber. Centering on the three concepts of creativity, personality and Sachlichkeit in Weber's work, I argue that one finds action theoretical impulses at these instances which are principally at odds with the Kantian, subject-centered, formalistic and dualist perspectives pervading much of his work. I aim to show how so-called object-orientated attitudes surface at these instances, attitudes that rests on fundamentally different epistemological and ontological assumptions than the Kantian ones. The paper consists of two parts. In the first, critical or 'negative' part, I contour the most Kantian passages in Weber's work and demonstrate the fatal theoretical and empirical consequences they entail. In the second, "positive" part I start by investigating Weber's understanding of creativity, highlighting its object-orientated impulses. I then demonstrate how his conceptualization of personality changes in the course of his work, likewise due to the emergence of object-oriented attitudes. Thereupon, I seek to show how Weber's ideas of creativity and personality fuse in his concept of Sachlichkeit and how the latter concept leads his late methodological work in a decisively Anti-Kantian and anti-dualist direction. Concluding, I discuss in more general terms the sociological relevance of this alternative 'theory' of action found in Weber.

Louis-Philippe Vien presents a paper on 'John Stuart Mill And The Asian Parable'

Between the hagiographies following in the wake of Marianne Weber's Lebensbild, Mommsen’s Wegbereiter thesis, and the works of those who see in him an insightful political scientist, Max Weber’s political thought is the object of massively different interpretations. With the help of Pocock’s theory of political languages I intend to shed light on the English influences of Weber’s conception of modern politics. In this I follow the intuitions of Günther Roth in his Work on “Weber The Would-be-Englishman”. But where his writings are based on the economic history of Weber’s extended family, I want to investigate the structure of his political thoughts as to reveal how Weber’s political ideas, if often described as unique and extraordinary in the German context of his time, is based on interrogations and themes that would appear as common for late-Victorians. In order to identify the common tensions upon which a shared political language is articulated, I compare Weber's writing on politics with those of two iconic Victorian political authors, namely Walter Bagehot and John Stuart Mill. From their (I) historiography, to their conception of the parliamentary institutions, be it their roles as tools of state administration (II) or in their influence on the political education of the nation (III), or in their relation to (IV) Statesmanship, what reveals itself is a shared conception of modern politics, a common view of the necessity of strong parliamentary institutions in modern states, and an adherence to the short-lived brand of agonistic liberalism.

Philippe-Louis Vien: The magnificent training: Walter Bagehot and Max Weber on Parliamentary politics

Between the hagiographies following the wake of Marianne Weber’s Lebensbild, Mommsen’s Wegbereiter thesis, and the works of those, indirectly writing against the first two receptions, who see in him an insightful political scientist, Max Weber’s political thought is the object of three massively different interpretations. With the help of Pocock’s theory of political language I intend to shed lights on the English influences of Weber’s conception of modern politics. In this I follow the intuitions of Günther Roth in his Work on “Weber The Would-beEnglishman”. But where his writings are based on the economic history of Weber’s extended family, I want to investigate the structure of his political thoughts as to reveal how Weber’s political ideas, if often described as unique and extraordinary in the German context of his time, are based on interrogations and themes that would appear as common for late-Victorians. In order to identify the common tensions upon which a shared political language is articulated, I compare Weber’s writing on politics with those of two iconic Victorian political authors, namely Walter Bagehot and John Stuart Mill. From their (I) historiography, to their conception of the parliamentary institutions, be it their roles as tools of State administration (II) or in their influence on the political education of the nation (III), or in their relation to (IV) Statesmanship, what reveals itself is a common conception of modern politics, a common view on the necessity of strong parliamentary institutions in modern states, and a common adherence to the short lived brand of agonistic liberalism.
Vien's paper given at the Max-Weber-Kolleg on 2nd November 2015 is the first real attempt at outlining some of the intuitions I have about the influence of Victorian political thoughts on Weber’ own one. Build upon the specific conception of Statesmanship that derives from Victorian parlamentarianism, the content of this text will most probably find its place in what is projected as the 7th chapter of Vien's PhD thesis. In its present form, this text is no chapter yet. In the hope of publishing it as a scholarly paper, he decided to concentrate his argumentation exclusively on Bagehot and Weber, and completely leave aside John Stuart Mill from the discussion. Aside from the validity of its demonstration, the main element concerned with in this paper is the sequencing of its arguments, or, if one may say, its stratégie d’exposition. One can see two ways of writing down such a piece. The first one is a theme-by-theme approach, proposing both authors’ views on a specific theme in a joint section and presenting my different themes in succession. The second option is to brush two distinct and separate overall pictures of my authors’ thoughts and comparing these two portraits. One can see how a theme-by-theme approach allows for a more detailed analysis of the subjects at hand, but one fears it detaches the reader from the overall picture, making it hard for him to recognize the comprehensive thought system he is being presented with. Vien opted for the second option, first presenting an author’s thought and then the other’s, but he would be really interested in the reader's views on all of that.