Il nesso tra problematica del Menschentum e approccio genealogico nell’opera di Max Weber: da I lavoratori agricoli tedeschi a L’etica protestante

[Autom. eng. transl.] The essay intends to show how the Weberian problematic concerning the development of the Menschentum within the orderings of mechanized capitalism emerges as a central concern already in the early writings of the so-called "youthful" Weber, but is fully defined only in the last pages of The Protestant Ethics (EP) . In EP, Weber applies to the research material the methodological approach developed in the essay on "objectivity", concerning the qualification of social science as a science of reality which, through a historical-genetic analysis, identifies the conditions of possibility of the to emerge in the past of social phenomena endowed with cultural significance (Kulturbedeutung) in the present. This approach can be qualified as genealogical because it allowed Weber to investigate in a scientifically legitimate and culturally significant way the problematic that moved his sociological question concerning the human type to which every social order offers the best chance of becoming predominant. From the interweaving of problematic and methodological approach emerges a questioning mode that was aimed at understanding whether, and to what extent, the formation of a mature personality and the possibility of a meaningful life conduct (Lebensführung) were hindered or rendered vain by the development of capitalism and bureaucracy as forces of depersonalization of social relations. Exercising this type of sociological questioning today seems to be an exercise not only possible but also actual in the light of the social transformations of the present.