Pathos and the human sciences: Reading Nietzsche, Weber and Mannheim (Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Karl Mannheim)

Human suffering poses a fundamental problem for the human sciences. This problematic can be traced back to Greek thought. In ancient mythology, religion and drama, the problem of suffering involved various forms of reflection on the nature of the human. However, the worldview presented in tragedy and cult religion proved antithetical to philosophical and ethical attempts to construct a rational account of human life. Like much of Greek philosophy, the modern human sciences can be conceived in terms of the relation between an interest in human well-being and the commitment to principles of rationality and scientific procedure. In contrast to this conceptualization of the human sciences in terms of a binary relation between science and ethics, this dissertation investigates the complicated relationship that exists between these two concerns and the problem of suffering itself. Focusing on the work of Nietzsche, Weber and Mannheim, the dissertation treats Nietzsche as a thinker who attempted to articulate a science of society that did not obscure the problem of human suffering. In light of Nietzsche's approach, a close reading of Weber and Mannheim reveals a certain discomfort with the forms of knowledge and the kinds of language made available to them by emerging models of social science. Such discomfort stemmed not only from an intellectual engagement with traditions of thought that ran contrary to the social sciences as they were taking shape at the time, but also from a profound investment in the question of the human and the fate of humanity. The approach I adopt hence aims to read these canonical texts as informed, and often fractured by, an intellectual, existential and spiritual concern with suffering. This concern with suffering challenged the structures of thought and modes of writing that characterized the social sciences of the time, and that continue to shape social-scientific practice today.