The Anxiety of Ascent

Exploring modern life's disenchantment, The Anxiety of Ascent re-evaluates cultural narratives through the lens of middle-class experiences and offers a more optimistic perspective.

This intriguing book examines Max Weber’s disenchantment thesis, engaging with the idea that modern life is experienced as a flat procession of mechanical experiences and empty consumer consolations through a study of the lifeways of the middle class. The Anxiety of Ascent re-evaluates a narrative of cultural decline that emerged following Weber’s influential work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For Weber, and the sociologists who followed, Western modernity is characterized by a growing disenchantment with beliefs and values that once provided structure and meaning to life. Despite significant material achievements, this perspective suggests that modern society grapples with a crisis of meaning, failing to answer the crucial question: 'What shall we do and how shall we live?'

This book delves into two significant responses to this existential query: the German bourgeois ideal of the late nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century American celebration of the middle class. Each period is explored through a close reading of both contemporary and retrospective texts. For Germany, Gustav Freytag’s novel Debt and Credit (1855) is analyzed alongside Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901). In the American context, the domestic comedy Father Knows Best (1954–1960) is juxtaposed with the cable television drama Mad Men (2007–2015). The Anxiety of Ascent ultimately casts Weber’s narrative in a more optimistic light, highlighting the redemptive possibilities within everyday life.

As such, this work will resonate with sociologists and cultural studies scholars interested in cultural sociology, social theory, morality, meaning, and the culture of middle-class life.