01/2018 – Werner Sombart tra spirito borghese e crisi del capitalismo. A cura di Leonardo Allodi

Abstracts

Alessandro Campi, About a Famous Image of Machiavelli: The Mystery (Partially Solved) of the ‘Testina’

The iconography of Machiavelli is a separate chapter in the history of Machiavelli’s fortune. As one of his greatest biographers, Oreste Tommasini, sensed, the historical portraits of the Florentine are essentially an expression, at the image level, of the philosophical and literary antimachiavellism. The Machiavelli that in the course of history we have seen represented in paintings, prints and engravings – starting from the most famous: the so-called ‘Testina’ – it is nothing but… Machiavellian: the visual transposition of the interpretation that sees in the author of the Prince the supporter of a vision of politics based on duplicity, cunning, deceit and craftiness.

Gianfranco Morra, Hugo von Hofmannsthal between Revolution and Restoration

In the essay on H. von Hofmannstahl, Gianfranco Morra shows that every work such as poems, dramas and pamphlets, written by this eclectic thinker and poet clearly express the consciousness of the modern crisis in which Europe, and specifically Austria, were involved. At the same time, according to Morra, in Hofmannstahl’s production it should be recognized the hope of a revival of European values (Athens, Rome, Jerusalem) by means of a “conservative revolution”. Such a “creative restoration” emerges as crucial in order to make “Europe as the basic colour of the spirit of the planet”.

Leonardo Allodi, Conservative Revolution facing the “Right Nichilism”. An Intellectual Profile of Werner Sombart

Focusing on Sombart’s conservative revolution, Leonardo Allodi aims at identifying the emerging conflict between Prussian conservatism supported by Sombart and the “revolution of nihilism” as the betrayal of the spiritual foundations of conservative revolution. Such an insight is provided not only by the reconstruction of Sombart’s intellectual and political profile, in particular his relationships with Guardini, Scheler and Schmitt on the problem of “Political”’s destiny, but also by the outline of the Europäische Revue and its founder’s K. A. Rohan eventful years.

Fabio Degli Esposti, Sombart and the “Ideas of 1914”

Werner Sombart’s main contribution to the debates on the “Ideas of 1914” is Händler und Helden, a fierce anti-British libel published in the spring of 1915. After analysing the – far from unique – reactions of politicians, intellectuals and common citizens (among which the soldiers at the front), the essay highlights some of the key themes of Sombart’s analysis of the German War, and tries to find the similarities and the differences with the writings that prominent historians, economists, sociologists and philosophers had published in the same period.

Roberta Iannone, War and Militarism. The deep Roots of the Origins of Capitalism

The essay analyzes the relationship between “war and capitalism” in light of Werner Sombart’s thought as emerging in Krieg und Kapitalismus of 1913. This contribution tries to demonstrate the originality of a reflection reversing the relationship between two phenomena: war is the mother of capitalism, and not just a daughter as stated by the Marxist tradition. For Sombart, the militarism explicates the origins of capitalism not only in economic and material terms (production and mass markets), but especially in cultural terms. This means that is the “mindset”, conceived as the universe of meaning and significance of militarism, to give shape of capitalism in its early days. A model of this mentality and of the different capabilities is the modern army. As stressed in the essay, the key point of Sombart’s thought is the centrality of the values ​​and of collective imagination that wreath capitalism starting from its militarism. War is the source of capitalism because fosters a particular way to conceive reality, to shape the experience; and without this new wave of “spirit”, no material change would have happened from a capitalist perspective.

Giacomo Miranda, Geist und Person. Anthropology and Sociology in Werner Sombart

The essay attempts a brief overview on some different kinds of criticism dealing with Sombart’s violation of Wertfreiheit as well as his unilateral reduction of particular historical facts to the Geist as a single central concept. Then the paper focuses on the role of spirit in Vom Menschen and suggests that sociology is not merely deduced from anthropology, but through the concept of “person” it plays a relevant role in the sketch of Sombart’s insight of man.

Ivo Stefano Germano, Aesthetics of the bourgeois Spirit

You can define the “aesthetic figure” of a class, apparently, “no quality”? More specifically, how you create it, and those who create it? Because the bourgeoisie is a social entity that creates something new and modern (must / should / could)? Under what conditions? The theme that I propose to deal with is indeed central for those who are fully aware of the great Werner Sombart sociology of culture, as a response to the fragmentation of social reality and beyond. A defect is to the recognition of everything contained in the acknowledgment of a continuous and incessant individualization . A myth to dispel, and a compelling news for postmodern society where technological manipulation priority is, like, the economic interests to guide consumption and the debate between the “keywords” of the new millennium less and less creative and enterprising.

Federico Trocini, The Bourgeois. Sombart’s Masterpiece?

The article focuses on one of the most important works of Werner Sombart, The Bourgeois (1913). In the first part, it follows the fortune of the book in Germany and in Italy during the 20th Century and, at the same time, it examines the reasons that make this book Sombart’s true masterpiece. In the second part, it analyzes the contents of the book more closely, paying particular attention to those conceptual topics that enabled the German sociologist to give full expression to his violent anti-capitalism.

Peter Koslowski, Economic ontology – Cultural Philosophy of the economy – Business Ethics: Sombart as a Proponent of a Philosophical Economics

Taking economic ontology into account, Koslowski emphasizes the strong relevance of Sombart’s contribution to the characterization of the relationship between philosophy and economics. Then he underlines the conceptual meaningfulness of capitalism in the self-description of a social system, the idea of historical theory and the role of theory in the social sciences, on the background of the influence which Hegel’s philosophy exerted on Sombart’s theory of economics.