Ex contingente necessarium or a philosophical analysis of the connection between Weber and Marx

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2010

Öğrenci: DENİZ KUNDAKÇI

Danışman: YASİN CEYLAN

Özet:

Max Weber and Karl Marx have been compared in various ways, especially since Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was first published in the beginning of 20th century. The general claim was that their perspectives are completely different from each other. With the analysis of Protestant Ethic, they claim, Weber came up with a negative answer to Marx in terms of his analysis of the relationship between society and economy. However, in this study it is indicated that Weber’s analyses were in close proximity with those of Marx’s and these similarities can be seen in Weber’s both early and late period works such as “The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization”, Economy and Society and General Economic History. Weber’s approach in this all corpus can be considered to be “a quasi Marxist perspective”. In these texts, he refers widely to Marx and elaborates the factors which he thought Marx had excluded from his analysis. Although he accused Marx of using a one-sided causal interpretation of history, Weber’s approach in relation to Marx has close parallels with historical materialism.