Making Sense of Christopher Dawson
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2019
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19929-6_4
Abstract
Christopher Dawson identified with sociology, wrote extensively for the original Sociological Review, was a stalwart of the Sociological Society in the interwar years, achieved international recognition as a sociologist, engaged with Karl Mannheim and the Moot, and in the postwar period defended meta-history and the sociologically oriented historical work of people like Marc Bloch. He ultimately became regarded as the greatest Catholic historian of the twentieth century, and became a Harvard Professor and a cult figure for American and European Catholics. This paper describes this remarkable trajectory, his absence from the later self-understanding of British sociology, and his key ideas, including his Bellah-like account of the axial age and his extensive response to Weber’s Protestant Ethic and to the extension of these ideas in Ernst Troetlsch.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Making Sense of Christopher Dawson, in P. Panayotova (Ed.), The History of Sociology in Britain, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 64-84
Scholar Commons Citation
Potts, Garrett and Turner, Stephen, "Making Sense of Christopher Dawson" (2019). Philosophy Faculty Publications. 339.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/phi_facpub/339
