In this publication, Max Weber responds to a renewed series of critical articles by the German historian Felix Rachfahl. At the heart of their heated scholarly debate was Weber’s groundbreaking work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905). In May-June 1910, Rachfahl produced a second cycle of four articles, continuing the fierce polemic against the founding father of sociology that had begun a year earlier.Although Weber had already addressed Rachfahl’s sharp invectives at length in his First Reply, published the same year (1910) in his journal Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, he deemed it necessary to issue another substantive reply in the same publication. Weber’s text comprises the first part of his Second Reply mercilessly dismantling Rachfahl’s arguments.Weber regretfully acknowledges the excessive and ethically questionable prolongation of this heated dispute, explaining it as a duty to counter all contrived objections and unfair accusations that distort the true meaning of his pioneering work in the sociology of religion. At the same time, he deliberately uses this public conflict as an opportunity to reiterate and elaborate his own position.
This paper has significant value not only as a key document in the history of classical sociology but in intellectual history as well — particularly as an example of the agonistic culture of scholarly debate of the time.