Das „stahlharte Gehäuse“: Zwei Beobachtungen zu Max Webers berühmter Metapher

The article explores the complex origins and one repercussion of Max Weber’s renowned metaphor of the “iron cage” through two observations. In the first part, the contribution engages in a concise philological study to reconstruct Weber’s reading of the Puritan minister Richard Baxter, whom he references in the famous initial mention of the “iron cage” in The Protestant Ethic. The second part critically traces Karl Jaspers’s use of the casing metaphor in the Psychology of Worldviews from 1919, within the context of his reception of Weber’s work.