Charis and Charisma

Max Weber and the Aesthetic-Philosophical Discourse on Grace from Winckelmann to Nietzsche

James Rasmussen

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111579481
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This project pursues a genealogical study of the concept of charisma in its Weberian form. It addresses the question of what conceptual routes led from ancient Greek and Christian understandings of charis (grace) and charisma (gift of grace) to Max Weber’s sociological treatment of charisma. On what path, and with what turns of thought, could the distance between them be traversed? This study answers that question primarily through attention to how deeply Weber’s treatment of the theme is embedded in German literary and philosophical engagements with grace in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The perspectives afforded by this project shed new light both on Weberian charisma and on Weber’s literary and philosophical precursors, and allow us to reflect in new ways on what charisma can and should mean for us today.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Contexts and Contours: A Textual History of Weberian Charisma
• 2 Winckelmann, Hamann, and the Eighteenth-Century Recuperation of Charis
• 3 Grace as Power in Schiller and Kleist
• 4 “Die Herrschaft ist am Ende”: Hölderlin’s Empedocles and Post-Authoritarian Charisma
• 5 The Juxtaposition of Grace and the Demonic: Weber’s Reception of Goethe
• 6 Kierkegaard’s Gifts of Grace and Weberian Charisma
• 7 Nietzsche and Weber on Grace and Herrschaft
• 8 Conclusion: Max Weber and a Generous Charisma
• Index