Werner Stark

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Werner Stark (2 December 1909 – 4 October 1985) was a sociologist and economist, who made important contributions to the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, and the history of economic thought.

Biography

Werner Stark was born in

University of Hamburg to study economics and social sciences. While there, he met his wife-to be, Kate Franck who was also a student at the University.[3] He spent the 1930-31 session at the London School of Economics. Stark's training and scholarship encompassed history, philosophy, political science, law, economics, literature, art, music, and sociology. He held doctorates both in law and in political science. The rise of Nazism resulted in his leaving Germany for Prague in 1934, where he became a lecturer at the Prague School of Political Science
.

In 1939, when the invading Nazis closed the university, Stark left for England, where he settled in

Roman Catholicism.[6] In 1944, he was called up to serve in the British Army, initially in the Pioneer Corps and afterwards in the Intelligence Corps
.

After the war, Stark taught at British universities, including Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Manchester, until his acceptance in 1963 of a professorship at Fordham University, New York. He stayed at Fordham until his mandatory retirement in 1975, when he returned to Europe, holding an honorary professorship at the University of Salzburg, Austria, until his death there in 1985.

Stark was internationally recognized for work in the sociology of religion, social theory, and sociology of knowledge. His scholarship was consistently multidisciplinary, his research constantly nourished by his teaching. After his conversion, his adopted religion became an important influence in his life. Stark was distressed by what he considered religion's erosion in the modern world, strongly believing that religion provides guidelines for individual action that neither custom nor law can give. As he saw it, excessive individualism lay at the root of Christianity's contemporary crisis. He believed that modern intellectuals had been strongly affected by post-Renaissance rationalism, resulting in "a super-rationalism which tends to blind them towards many non-rational values, for instance, those of tradition, of religion, and even of art" (The Sociology of Knowledge, Routledge, 1958).

In the sociology of religion, Stark considered Max Weber's work a challenge of great importance, although he thought Weber lacked necessary insight into "true religiosity" (The Sociology of Religion, 5 volumes, Fordham University Press, 1966-1972). His international reputation was both reflected and built by translations of many of his works into Japanese, Italian, German, and Spanish. The Social Bond (6 volumes, Fordham University Press, 1976-1987) is considered by some critics to be definitive in establishing his intellectual legacy.

Major publications

  • "Liberty and Equality, or: Jeremy Bentham as an Economist, I. Bentham's Doctrine", Economic Journal, vol. 51 (1941), pp. 56–79
  • The Ideal Foundations of Economic Thought, 1943 (1975)
  • The History of Economics in its Relation to Social Development, 1944
  • "Jeremy Bentham as an Economist, II. Bentham's Influence", Economic Journal, vol. 56 (1946), pp. 583–608
  • "Diminishing Utility Reconsidered", Kyklos, 1947
  • America: Ideal and Reality (1947)
  • "Stable Equilibrium Re-examined", Kyklos, 1947
  • (edited) Jeremy Benthams Economics Writings (3 vols.), 1952–54
  • The Sociology of Knowledge: An Essay in Aid of a Deeper Understanding of the History of Ideas. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1958.
    ISBN 9780710065544 – via Internet Archive
    .
  • "The 'Classical Situation' in Political Economy", Kyklos, 1959
  • The Fundamental Forms of Social Thought, 1963
  • The Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom (5 vols.), 1966–72
    • Vol. 1: Established Religion
    • Vol. 2: Sectarian Religion
    • Vol. 3: The Universal Church
    • Vol. 4: Types of Religious Man
    • Vol. 5: Types of Religious Culture
  • The Social Bond (6 vols.), 1976–87
  • History and Historians of Political Economy (ed. Charles M.A. Clark), 1994

References

  1. ^ Das 2008, p. 2.
  2. ^ Das 2008, p. 72.
  3. ^ Franck, R.W., Stark nephew
  4. ^ Schofield 2009.
  5. ^ Das 2008, pp. 75–78.
  6. ^ Das 2008, p. 73.

Bibliography

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Werner_Stark&oldid=1192968951"