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

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.