A new post

So for a while now I have been trying to balance a new job, write some sci-fi short stories and to think some cool new thoughts about Kant. I have been doing well with the job, have some half-written stories and achieved very little on the Kantian front. But all is not lost.
As is my usual practice when I find something to be too difficult in philosophy, I don't do it. The result is that for the last couple of days I have suspended my efforts with Kant and begun the much easier and more fruitful exercises of re-reading Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" (BGE) and Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism". Fantastic books. I'm finding Nietzsche to be a lot more accesible this time round and have been getting a great kick out of the sense of accomplishment that has come from finally being able to interpret this stuff at a decent level of competency.
While I have only just started reading Weber today, so far I am getting the impression that I will be able to read this ok too. It is definately not confusing the hell out of me (as was the case with Marx's "Capital") and from what I already know about Weber I suspect that I am not going to suddenly find myself plunged into a state of confusion after a promising start (as was the case with Schopenhauer). So my suspicion is that I will be able to strike upon some immediate results here.
And so far I am glad to be thinking about Weber and Simmel again. The little I read today has once again reinforced my opinion of these two guys. When learning sociology as an undergrad I often found that people would sometimes mention Weber when talking about the founding figures of the science and never did I hear anyone talk of Simmel (I only stumbled across Simmel by accident in my final year!). Most of the talk of classical sociology was given over to examing Marx and occasionally discussing the mistakes made by the likes of Comte and Durkheim. As I may have mentioned before I think this is a HUGE mistake. The focus should be taken off Marx and put onto Simmel and Weber. There are too many reasons to list here for why this is so but a simple one is worth mentioning here for now...
Weber's account of the cultural conditions which allowed capitalism to flourish is damn good. And it gives us an extra dimension that (so far) I haven't seen in Marx. And the best part is that it is a simple explanation: it is easy to understand, easy to psychologically digest, easy to agree with and easy to criticise. We don't need to perform the painful psychological contortions that are required to understand Marx and yet we can still account for the development of capitalism using Weber's analysis. This reason alone should put this text out in front for us (especially when trying to teach!) and I haven't even started on the other reasons like Weber and Simmel's immense value as philosophers, thier success with sociological predictions of 20th century developments and thier ability to keep pace with (or perhaps even out run?) the more sophistacated contemporary sociological texts. Not bad for a couple of guys who have been dead for near a hundred years...