Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 39 No. 4, 2019.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.21464/fi39404
“We, the Weary Souls” – Werner Sombart as a Critic of Modern Culture
Michael Antolović
orcid.org/0000-0003-1344-9133
; Univerzitet u Novom Sadu, Pedagoški fakultet, Podgorička 4, RS–25101 Sombor
Abstract
Although he primarily remained acknowledged as an authoritative theoretician of capitalism and one of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology as a scientific discipline in Germany, Werner Sombart (1863 – 1941) dedicated a significant amount of attention to the critique of modern culture that coincided with his withdrawal from the active participation in political life during the beginning of the twentieth century. After he failed to motivate German social democracy to carry out a social reform, and following a very negative impression he got in the encounter with modern industrial society while visiting the United States of America (1904), Sombart criticised capitalism, parliamentary-democratic system and mass culture from the standpoint of ‘cultural pessimism’. In the journal Der Morgen: Wochenschrift für deutsche Kultur (started in 1907), and in some other papers, sharply but fruitfully Sombart criticised industrial mass culture. In it, he saw a direct reflection of spiritual poverty and general decadence of the capitalistic society.
Keywords
Werner Sombart; culture; politics; capitalism; pessimism
Hrčak ID:
240426
URI
Publication date:
17.2.2020.
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