Werner Stark

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Werner Stark (born December 2, 1909 in Marienbad , Austria-Hungary ; died October 4, 1985 in Salzburg ) was a British-American sociologist who was particularly concerned with the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of religion .

He studied at the Universities of Hamburg , Prague and Geneva as well as at the London School of Economics . Stark's studies and teaching included history, philosophy, political science, law, economics, literature, art, music, and sociology. After Hitler came to power , he had to emigrate to Great Britain and did not return to Austria until 1975, where he taught in Salzburg until his death.

Life

In 1928 he began studying economics and social sciences in Hamburg. He also took additional courses in history and philosophy. In 1933 he fled to Prague because of the political situation in Germany. There he worked as a business editor and bank clerk. At the same time he studied law and was a lecturer at the University of Political Sciences. In 1939 he again had to flee Prague. After an adventurous escape that took him to Bratislava, Vienna, Cologne and Holland, he arrived in England. There he received a scholarship from the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning and settled in Cambridge with his wife Kate. Shortly thereafter, he wrote an article on Jeremy Bentham that was published in the Economic Journal. It was from this article that he became acquainted with John Maynard Keynes . Through him he also received a teaching position at the University of Cambridge. Then he followed the draft into the British Army and completed military service. 1945-1951 was Stark Lecturer in Social Theory at the University of Edinburgh. 1951-1963 he was appointed as a reader in the subject of the History of Economic (and Sociological) Thought at the University of Manchester. In 1953/1954 the "Jeremy Bentham Economic Writings" appeared in three volumes, which were made possible by means of the "Royal Economic Society". In 1960/1961 he held a visiting professorship at Purdue University (USA), which later also awarded him an honorary doctorate . In 1962/1963 he spent two years in Great Britain because his visa had expired. In 1963 he received a professorship in sociology at Fordham University in New York. In 1964 he was called to the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Vienna, but did not accept the offer. He had promised at Fordham that he would stay there for at least 5 years. In 1975, after retiring from Fordham, he moved to Salzburg. October 4th, 1985 he died in Salzburg after a long illness.

Historical context

When Werner Stark began his academic life in Hamburg in 1928, Adolf Hitler had been politically active in Germany for several years. In 1930 he wrote an article for the propaganda booklet of the social democratic students, from which his political orientation can be seen. When the Reichstag fire coincided with the end of the semester in 1933, it was time for Stark to return to his homeland. It was clear that it would be difficult for socialists and communists in the future. If he hadn't had to leave Hamburg, he could have become an assistant at his university. This chance was denied to him. In 1939, Bohemia was taken over by the Germans and it would have been extremely dangerous for Stark to stay. He had to flee again and started his career in Great Britain. However, this was interrupted by the entry of Great Britain into the Second World War. He had to do military service. Back in Great Britain he took up his work again.

The Second World War had a major impact on Stark - many of his relatives and his wife died as a result of National Socialism. After his military service, he also mainly occupied himself with the connection between intellectual and social currents, from which some of his works emerged.

Scientific tradition

Werner Stark was mainly influenced by Immanuel Kant, Cooley and Sumner. His Catholicism also contributed, which he saw represented mainly in the writings of Augustine, Pascal, Bergson and Newman. He also draws on Rickert, Max Adler and Dilthey. For his works he needed a sociological basis, which he developed from the works of Tönnies, Scheler, Vico and Max Weber, among others. He is also often brought into connection with Max Scheler, as well as with Hegel, Comte, Spengler, Spann, Sorokin and Alfred Weber, who mainly contributed to Stark's holistic - coinistic functionalism.

On the other hand, he had aversions to Pareto and Nietzsche. He said of Nietzsche: "Nietzsche's case was that of a madman, but although his utterances were witty, they were not realistic and could not be." Pareto, on the other hand, was in his opinion "... full of contempt for human beings, and this prejudice is just as deadly for the truth as the admiration and deification of people ..."

The work in topics and theses

A large part of his works on the sociology of knowledge make up. He viewed this subject area as "... studying between social life on the one hand and intellectual life on the other ...". In contrast to others, he sees the teaching content of the sociology of knowledge in the fact that it is necessary to study the social circumstances of intellectual performance in order to achieve an understanding of individuals and to research cultural phenomena. The aim of his sociology of knowledge is to clarify the relationship between the social and the intellectual and to find a method that gets to the bottom of intellectual achievements and provides information about the nature, value and effect of this achievement. Stark always viewed the sociology of knowledge from a microsociological and macro-sociological side in his considerations. For Stark, “knowledge” means social knowledge in every respect. For him, this includes knowledge of other cultures, history and all kinds of intellectual and artistic achievements. However, Stark rejects natural sciences and formal knowledge in this area. Likewise, he banishes the field of ideology from the sociology of knowledge. In his opinion, ideology deals with the cause of mental misjudgments and is therefore the doctrine of false consciousness. According to his considerations, socially determined consciousness is never wrong and therefore ideologies can always only penetrate into consciousness in retrospect.

Another part of his work deals with the sociology of religion . According to Stark, religion can humiliate people (static religion) but also increase them (dynamic religion). It is up to the person what they make of it. Static religion shows that when the law is stronger than love, the highest level cannot be reached. Only through dynamic religion can the gap be overcome and the highest level reached.

Reception and effect

Werner Stark was neither widely read nor well known. Only those people who took a closer look at Parsons could find out what high opinion he thought of Stark.

Works

  • The History of Economics in its relation to social Development (1934 and 1974)
  • America: Ideal and Reality (1947, reprinted 1974)
  • Jeremy Bentham's Economics Writings (1953/54)
  • Social Theory and Christian Thought (1959)
  • The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought (1962)
  • The Sociology of Religion (1966-72)
  • The Social Bond (1976-86)

literature

Web links

Wikibooks: Sociological classics / Stark, Werner  - learning and teaching materials
personal data
SURNAME Strong, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Marienbad , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 4th October 1985
Place of death Salzburg