Max Weber : essays in reconstruction 9780043013014, 0043013015

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MAX WEBER ESSAYS IN RECONSTRUCTION

MAX WEBER pcciY^IW

RECONSTRUCTION

WILHELM HENNIS Universität Freiburg

Translated by Keith Tribe

London ALLEN & UNWIN Boston

Sydney

Wellington

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©W. Hennis, 1988. Translation© Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1988 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

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First published in 1988

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hennis, Wilhelm Max Weber: essays in reconstruction. 1. Weber, Max I. Title 301'.092'4 HM22.63W4 ISBN 0-04-301301-5 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hennis, Wilhelm, 1918Max Weber: essays in reconstruction. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Weber, Max, 1864-1920. 2. Sociology—Germany—History. I. Title HM22.G3W443 1987 301'.0943 87-12584 ISBN 0-04-301301-5 (alk. paper)

Set in 10 on 12 point Bembo by Fotographics (Bedford) Ltd and printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Ltd, London and Worcester

Contents

Foreword by Wilhelm Hennis

page

Translator’s Note Translator’s Introduction

Parti

Fragestellung und Thema

ix xi 1

19

1

Max Weber’s‘Central Question’

21

2

Max Weber’s Theme:‘Personality and Life Orders’

62

Partll 3 4

105

‘A Science of Man’. Max Weber and the Political Economy ofthe German Historical School

107

The Traces ofNietzsche in the Work ofMax Weber

146

Partlll 5

The Biography of the Work

The Unity ofthe Work

163

Voluntarism and Judgement. Max Weber’s Political Views in the Context ofhis Work

165

Notes

198

Index

251

Foreword by Wilhelm Hennis

In the summer of 1944 Karl Jasper’s small book on Weber - Max Weber.

Deutsches

Wesen im politischen Denken,

im Forschen und

Philosophieren - came into my hands. Hardly any book has since moved me so deeply. Weber became the great experience of my period of study in Göttingen. Teachers whom I would like to thank with this book Rudolf Smend, Hans Heinrich Schaeder, Georg Weippert - kindled my enthusiasm, while at the same time knowing how to keep it within bounds. Later, seeking to orient a newly established political science, I distanced myself from Weber. This shift away is marked by a few pages in an essay of1959.1 never had a clear conscience about that, and I was never freed of Weber. I am therefore grateful for the various circumstances that have led me once more to a thorough consideration of his work. I hope that I now understand Weber better. After the publication of the first of the essays collected here, Wolfgang Schluchter wrote that he awaited with eagerness the possibility that I might be able ‘to present a thoroughly new interpretation ofWeber, one that decisively marks an advance on the prevailing state of discussion’. My interpretation does not seek to be ‘thoroughly new’! It merely re-establishes that which was still relatively clear to the earlier interpreters: Marianne Weber, Karl Lö with, Siegfried Landshut and Albert Salomon. The reader will have to decide whether this interpretation advances on the ‘prevailing state of discussion’. Whatever this reader may conclude, I believe that a direct resumption of Weber’s work will only be possible when his ‘central

question’

(formulated

most concisely in the hitherto

unpublished‘Preliminary Report’to the survey of the press, cf. Essay 1, pp. 55-57 below) is recognized to be his central idea; perhaps then it would even be possible to begin constituting something like a ‘School’. These essays could not have been written without a grant from the Volkswagenwerk Stiftung. From the many whom I have to thank for

X

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

assistance and encouragement I would like to name here onlyjoaqum Abelian, Pasquale Pasquino and Keith Tribe. I also owe especial thanks to the staff of the Max Weber Arbeitsstelle in Munich and the custodians of the Weber papers in Merseburg. W.H. Freiburg i.Br., October 1986

Translator's Note

Only the third of the following five essays has been published in English in a form comparable to the one which appears here. The first is substantially revised from the original version, and includes material previously omitted, while the second has only appeared in a revised and shortened form. The version printed below is that of the original translation. Exact publication details of these essays are as follows: 1 ‘Max Webers Fragestellung’, Zeitschrifi Jur Politik, Jg. 29, 1982, pp.241-81. Translated as: ‘Max Weber’s “Central Question” ’, Economy and Society, vol. 12, 1983, pp. 135-80 (translated by Keith Tribe). ‘La problematica di Max Weber’, Communita, no. 185, November 1983, pp. 1—48 (translated by Fabio Fiore and Gabriella Silvestrini). “El problema central” de Max Weber’, Revista de Estudios Politicos, vol. 33, 1983, pp. 49—99 (translated by Joaquin Abelian).

2

‘Max Webers Thema’, Zeitschrifi Jur Politik, Jg. 31, 1984, pp. 11-

52. This essay, dedicated to Don Luis Diez del Corral, appeared in Spanish translation in his Festschrift, Madrid 1986.

3

‘Eine “Wissenschaft vom Menschen”. Max Weber und die

Historische Schule der deutschen Nationalökonomie.’ Conference Paper, German Historical Institute, London, September 1984; also published in W. J. Mommsen and J. Osterhammel (eds) Max Weber and his Contemporaries, London, 1987, pp. 25-58. 4

‘Die Spuren Nietzsches im Werk Max Webers.’ Public lecture

delivered to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, 22 November 1985. First published in the Jahrbuch der Akademie der Wissenschafien in

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

2

for the existence of these problems in the identification and compre¬ hension of Max Weber’s ‘problematic’. The key to this lies in the circumstances and processes governing the manner in which Weber’s work has come down to us in its present form: that is, how it has come to be propagated in the form that it is in today. Having established a more precise conception of the structure of this legacy, the necessity for the kind of reconstruction that Hennis proposes will become more evident. The ‘reception process’ is best considered as a series of literary events - events which effect a transformation upon the material that is ‘transmitted’. As is sometimes remarked, on his death Weber left no ‘school’ that could assure the institutionalized diffusion of an ‘authorized version’ ofhis thought. In this regard he failed to stamp his mark on the development of the social sciences in interwar Germany. But it must be borne in mind that it is not obvious what such a ‘school’ would have looked like, or with which discipline it would have been associated.

Professionally, Weber was an economist; his early

training and qualification was in law, in which he had written a number ofhistorical essays; he was a founding member of the German Sociology Society; he was active in a number of political issues and associations, so that his death was felt by many to have robbed Germany of one of its leading political figures. In none of these areas was his contribution that of a dilettante; it was taken seriously by leading scholars, intellectuals and politicians. Although Weber is today commonly regarded as a ‘founding father of sociological thought’, this was neither his intention nor the understanding ofhis contemporaries. This is not to say that his work did not have relevance to the development of a sociological tradition, but it was much more than simply this. Albert Salomon, writing ofWeber’s Freiburg Inaugural Address in the socialist monthly Die Gesellschaß, suggested that: it is a curious form of economics that is put forward here; its object is neither laws, nor theories, but man as a social being conditioned by the given social and historical circumstances ofhis existence.1 If this ‘curious form of economics’ fitted into any one discipline then it was into the German sociology of the 1920s. Weber did not regard his project as an essentially sociological one, but it was to this discipline that his work was principally assigned after his death. The fit,

3

Translator’s Introduction

however, was not a good one, leading to an over-emphasis on some aspects ofWeber’s programme and a total neglect of some others. It is from the question of this ‘fit’ that we can perhaps gain access to the reception process following Weber’s death. In 1920 there were no professorial chairs for sociology in Germany. Tönnies and Simmel (who died in 1918) held positions in philosophy, von Wiese in Cologne held a joint appointment in sociology and economics. During 1919 there had been a vigorous debate on this issue, Becker on one side arguing that sociology as a ‘synthesizing’ science required independent representation in all institutions of higher education, while von Below on the other dismissed this as ‘sheer dilettantism’, arguing that sociological work should always be conducted within the framework of another discipline.2 However, during the next few years new chairs in sociology were established, beginning with the installation of Hans Freyer at Leipzig (1925); this was followed by posts at the new universities: Andreas Walther at Hamburg (1927), Alfred Meusel at Aachen (1926), and Theodor Geiger at Brunswick (1928).3 Generally speaking, the sociology that was

promoted

in

this

fashion

was

formalized

and

abstract,

emphasizing problems of theory and methodology. Schad in her study of Weimar social research4 concludes that this was the outcome of an aspiration on the part of sociologists for an identifiable academic niche.

Empirical survey work,

statistical

evaluation and social policy research had all been conducted before 1914 by economists, historians, psychologists and lawyers. Weber was himself involved in several of these projects, whether on behalf of the Verein für Sozialpolitik or the Evangelisch-soziale Kongreß, and it was this kind of research that he wished to promote with the German Sociological Society, framed with the specific problems that Hennis discloses below. But if sociology was to forge a distinct academic identity in the 1920s, it had to appropriate a domain not already occupied by established academic scholarship. This imperative was lent especial force by the conservative view, represented by von Below, that sociology should always co-exist institutionally with related disciplines. Given the range of social issues and problems confronting Germany in the postwar years, there was ample scope for the development of empirical research on ‘problems of modernity’. And yet in 1930 there was not one ‘authoritative empirical study’ dealing with such problems which was written by a sociologist. The

4

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

work of Emil Lederer, for many years editorial secretary and then editor of the Archiv far Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, is one example among many of this. Having conducted research on the situation of salaried employees before the First World W ar, during the 1920s he devoted a great deal of attention to the relation ofunemployment and capitalist development, to the role of unions, the social implications of technological change and the emergent class structure of Weimar Germany.5 Yet Lederer’s appointment was as a full professor of economics in Heidelberg, and his interest in such issues by no means marginalized him in the economics profession; in 1931 he was appointed Professor of Economics at Berlin in succession to Werner Sombart. In 1909 Weber had helped to found the German Sociological Society, initially seeing in it a means of complementing the research of the Verein fur Sozialpolitik with an organization devoted to more rigorous scientific canons and which was not so dedicated to the state socialistic ideas of Schmoller and other ‘older members’ of the Historical School. Unlike the Verein’s inclination to propagate specific ideals, the Society was to embody the neutrality of‘entirely objective research aims’.6 This soon led to a vigorous debate within the Society, since the first meeting in 1910 exemplified the contem¬ porary power of Social Darwinism and perspectives on ‘racial hygiene’ that were anything other than ‘neutral’.7 At the second meeting in 1912 the situation was if anything rather worse, especially in the dis¬ cussion of‘race’ and ‘nation’. It was in the context of these discussions that Weber composed his essay on ‘value neutrality’;1"' as Käsler points out, this demand for ‘value freedom’ was in this context not merely a methodological principle, but also a strategy for the creation of academic ‘respect’.9 The Society did not meet again until 1922, by which time many of its prominent founders had died, and throughout the 1920s the membership of the Society continued to be substantially composed ofeconomists and other social scientists, hence forming no secure basis for the development of a professional identity.10 Salomon summed up the situation in his survey of interwar German sociology with the words: ‘in Germany, there is no sociology, only sociologists’.11 By the early 1930s, sociology had yet to achieve the institutional standing that the discipline had attained in France and the United States, and remained a matter of significant individuals (who were themselves professionally economists or

5

Translator’s Introduction

lawyers) and books. With the National Socialist seizure of power and the subsequent purge of the universities that began in April 1933 many of these individuals lost their positions, and it has been estimated that by 1938 about two-thirds of principal and subsidiary teachers of sociology in institutions of higher education had lost their posts.12 Many, on the other hand, had survived and adapted - it should not be assumed that German sociologists were as a body especially ‘social’ or leftist, and there is still in Germany a sociological tradition whose tenets are avowedly conservative. None the less, it was German sociology that formed the principal potential ‘recipient’ and propagator of Weber’s work in the years following his death, although those like Walther, Landshut and Lederer, who devoted major texts to the discussion of Weber’s methodology, were well aware of the range of related writings by Weber that could not be subsumed by the terms of reference German sociological work was writing for itself at this time. Although no ‘school’ was constituted around Weber’s work in the years following his death, this did not mean that his work fell into obscurity. Indeed, Lepsius has argued that the major developmental trend for German sociology in this period did not take place in universities, but rather in popular educational initiatives such as the Hochschule fur Politik in Berlin or the Volkshochschule in Cologne, of which Honigsheim (a student of Weber) was president from 1919 to 1933.13 Weber’s consequent influence on contemporary discussions of social science methodology and the nature of parliamentary democracy was marked, despite the fact that his teaching found no institutional basis. This diffuse influence was, however, fatally shattered in the early years of the National Socialist regime. Those liberal and socialist circles to which Weber’s ideas had appealed were fragmented by persecution and emigration. German sociology had failed to establish the kind of institutional base typical of other social sciences such as politics, economics and psychology; the manner in which it had developed,

as

a

methodological

and

formalized

appraisal

of

modernity - an intellectual current rather than a pedagogical enter¬ prise - meant that, under attack in the mid-1930s, it survived the period ofNational Socialist rule in a form that was not to be congenial to the reconstructors of postwar Germany, either in East or West. The Weber which we know today has not passed to us through this route.

14

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

6

Instead, as Hennis observes, he joined the emigration and returned to Germany in the late 1940s renewed, reinvigorated - and American¬ ized. The flow of economists, political scientists and sociologists to America in the early 1930s was to have a significant impact on the postwar development of the social sciences, if only because these Central European emigres henceforth addressed the academic world in English, which was to become the language of internationalism.15 Furthermore, by 1933 Max Weber was the most well-known ‘German sociologist’, for the American social sciences had themselves leant heavily upon German academic traditions in their years of foundation. True, up to about 1920 it was Simmel who, via the Chicago Department of Sociology and the work of Albion Small and Robert Park,

exercized great influence on the constitution of

problems and methods for research. Paradoxically, however, the very success of Small and Park in establishing a coherent research programme meant that their students increasingly ignored the German heritage of this programme. By the mid-1930s, it was Weber rather than Simmel who was regarded as the major German con¬ tributor to the sociological tradition: Maclver’s Society, published in 1937, dealt in some detail with the idea of the Protestant Ethic, and employed Weber in the definition of classes and castes.16 There we have the makings of a Weber we can recognize: the proponent of a ‘thesis’ concerning the relation of Protestantism to capitalism, and a theorist of stratification. The second phase of the Weber reception, then, is one that takes place in the United States, adopting a ‘sociological’ version of Weber already shaped by the German reception of the 1920s, which is then underwritten by the existence of a sociological institutional basis in the United States. It is in this phase that the existence of translations assumes such importance, both making Weber’s writings available to a growing readership and, by virtue of both the selection of texts for translation and the norms of translation applied, conveying a particular appreciation of‘Weber’s sociology’. Here we can see the initial shaping of Weber’s work into a sociological mould being hardened into a received tradition. An early appreciation of Weber published in the United States appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics,17 and it was the economist Frank Knight who translated the first text by Weber to appear in English, the General Economic History.18 Again, Parsons’s

7

Translator’s Introduction

first substantial article on Weber was published in the Journal of Political Economy, an established journal for professional economists. This economic filiation is not, however, of any great subsequent signifi¬ cance. The substance of the General Economic History did not lend itself to any obvious generalization concerning economic development and capitalism, while Parsons described the purpose of his essay on Sombart and Weber as placing their theories ‘before American readers in a more condensed and systematic form than that in which they are available in German, and to project them on to the background of their relations

to

the

general

development

of

social

thought’.19

Accordingly, Parsons first outlined Weber’s use of the concept of ‘ideal type’, before turning to Weber’s primary interest- the nature of modern capitalism conceived in ideal-typical fashion. He then states: The common characteristic of all the principal features of modern society, non-economic as well as economic, Weber sees in their peculiar type of rationality. Its principal institutions belong to his general type of‘rational organisation’, or what he calls in a special sense ‘bureaucracy’.20 On this basis Parsons then introduces the Protestant Ethic, which is placed in the frame of an antithesis between charisma and routinization - and hence in the terms already set up of capitalism, rationality and bureaucracy. This is certainly one reading of the Protestant Ethic\ but what is important here is the agenda-setting nature of this reading, reinforced by the publication in London in 1930 of Parsons’s trans¬ lation of the Protestant Ethic. Later, writing in his introduction to The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, Parsons acknowledged that Weber ‘explicitly repudiated the desire to set up a “system” of scientific theory, and never completed a systematic work’. But then he immediately went on: There are, however, exceedingly important systematic elements in his thought, and the volume herewith presented to the world of English-speaking scholarship has been selected for translation precisely because it contains the nearest approach to a comprehen¬ sive statement of those elements of all his published work.21 In this way, Part I of Economy and Society was presented to the Englishspeaking world as a summary of Max Weber’s ‘theory of social and

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

8

economic organization’. Although by all accounts Parsons’s own Structure of Social Action, originally published in 1937, at first sold very slowly, the version of Weber that it promoted gradually became widely accepted in the United States and,

by extension, was

influential in the rest of the English-speaking world. This Max Weber, the theorist of social action, rationality and sociological methodology, was in 1937 unsupported by any substantial translation of original writings. Parsons had set up the proposition that a Weberian ‘system’ existed; he then went about the substantiation of this proposition through the publication of translations that could be read in support of it, although this ‘programme’ took some time to realize. It was not until 1949 that the Methodology of the Social Sciences was published, and the Gerth and Mills selection From Max Weher was first published in 1946. The writings on religion were published during the 1950s, and the Sociology of Law (extracted from Economy and Society) was published in 1954. There appears to besomejustification for concluding that it was the ‘agenda-setting’ activities of Parsons and his associates that played the greatest role in establishing Weber as

a classical

sociologist,

an agenda which

was

then

supplemented by the teachings of emigres and the appearance of translations. Representing Weber in this way, Parsons set forth in the world a construction that was based on a set of assumptions, which were then employed in the reading of selected ‘central’ texts. This ‘agenda’ for Weber was then re-imported into Germany with the reconstruction of the postwar years. The German Sociology Society was re-introduced in April 1946 at the instigation of von Wiese: out of the thirty who attended, only ten had belonged to the Society before 1933. The chair in sociology and economics at Cologne was divided, Rene König becoming the incumbent in 1949, from which position in the 1950s he was to be extremely influential in the shaping of a new sociological discipline. Further chairs were founded in Berlin, Frankfurt, Freiburg and Göttingen. Sociology began to assume the shape of a university discipline; the idea of sociology as a ‘synthesizing science’ was discarded, and the emergent discipline did not play a significant role in the political tasks of reconstruction.22 Re¬ education and democratization were for the most part perceived to be the province of political science - the development of an institutional basis for sociology did not imply the adoption of political commit¬ ment ora ‘critical’ profile. König instead sought to lay the emphasis on

9

Translator’s Introduction

empirical research, with an international orientation. This, of course, meant an orientation to the sociological research promoted in the United States and, consequently, the promotion of Weber as a socio¬ logical theorist of a particular kind. It might be thought that the existence of Weber’s German writings would serve to modify this, recourse being made to texts that did not sit easily within the tradition that had been formed. During the 1920s ‘collected writings’ of a kind had been published: in 1920-21 the three volumes of the writings on religion; in 1921 the political writings; in 1922 the Wissenschafislehre and Economy and Society, finally, in 1924 two collections of social and economic essays. But the last have never since then been

republished,

the political

writings

were not

republished until 1958, while Economy and Society involves particular problems that will be discussed below. It is perhaps significant that it was Economy and Society, and then the Wissenschafislehre that first appeared after the war, in 1947 and 1951 respectively: texts that could most easily fit into the American version of Weber. For it is not enough to have the texts available in a library or even a bookshop; they have to be readable, that is, an intellectual, cultural or institutional framework has to exist within whose protocols this or that text has a relevance ofsome kind. This is confirmed by the relative obscurity, in academic terms, of the translations of the religious writings that were published in the course of the 1950s; since these do not fit easily with the agenda of Weber as theorist of action and value free science, they have, until a recent revival in interest, had relatively little impact on subsequent general evaluations of Weber. Or, more precisely, they have played a significant role as blocks ofwriting in the propagation of Weber

the

comparative

sociologist

and

theorist

of Western

rationalism, a version that Parsons also did much to promote in later life. The fact that, despite the destruction of the war and the postwar dislocation of archives and libraries, Weber’s writings were more or less accessible in their original form to German readers weighs but little against the selectivity imposed by that which Weber had come to mean to German students and intellectuals. We cannot altogether blame those who put together Weber as a modern sociologist.

As many have remarked,

his work was

fragmentary, and it seems logical to seek to make sense of this fragmentation by seeking a common thread. This is what Wilhelm Hennis has done, as many have before him. But, as he so graphically

10

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

argues, it does make a difference how this work is done: with what assumptions, with what material, with what evidence. As he notes in passing, it was characteristic of Weber to promise completions and clarifications that in fact never materialized. Economy and Society is generally agreed to be a torso - or as Wolfgang Mommsen has written, ‘a mixture ofseveral torsos’.23 But this fragmentary nature of Weber’s work is concealed from later readers by the format in which it is presented. Protestant Ethic in its English form consists of two linked essays without the subsequent debate; it is not a book, as so many might assume from the 1930 translation. The final essay in Method¬ ology of the Social Sciences, ‘Critical studies in the logic of the cultural sciences’, first appeared as an essay in the Archiv Jur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1906. If this issue of the journal is consulted, we find the essay included under the section ‘Surveys of literature’ and, at the end of the piece, an announcement that a further part will follow. Likewise with the critique of Stammler: this exists as a book in trans¬ lation, as an essay in the Wissenschaftslehre, and in the Archiv for 1907 it ends with the words: ‘a further part follows’. As with the ‘Critical Studies’, there never was a further part; but the fact that, at the time he completed the essay for that issue of the journal, Weber had in mind a continuation - this certainly alters our perception of the intentions represented by the texts we have before us today. Weber’s work is not only fragmentary in the sense that his efforts were spread over several fields, any one ofwhich was usually the defining province of a scholar; much of his published work was radically incomplete, hastily written, unrevised, proofed at speed, after publication the manu¬ scripts discarded. For the most part, we do not have before us carefully crafted and considered essays, the results of prolonged reflection on the part of an author who, in intention at least, sought to condense a particular idea into this particular narrative vehicle. Weber got an idea, wrote a paper on it, and before he could completely finish it got distracted by something else, and wrote on that. A notable exception to this is the Inaugural Address of 1895; read against the unpolished prose of the pieces that precede it, this speech certainly bears the marks of some thought and calculated effect. But, for such an event, this is perhaps what we would expect. Speeches at congresses, reviews of literature and books - these were the sorts of thing turned out without great regard for style or presentation. This is an important aspect of Weber’s work, one that has never

Translator’s Introduction

11

been properly explored. In fact, if we are in the business of comparing Marx and Weber, here is perhaps the most significant difference between them: as writers. Karl Marx formulated his ideas by writing, rewriting, and rewriting again. It is our misfortune that much of the material produced in this process has been preserved. Importantly, Capital as a three-volume work is the outcome of this process. It is, of course, known that Engels composed Volumes 2 and 3 of Capital out of Marx’s notes; but scant attention has been paid to the question of how he did this. Recent research indicates that Marx in fact was thinking of one further volume, not two, and that Engels simply inflated the material by combining separate drafts and rewriting material himself. Likewise with the Grundrisse: this enjoyed a vogue as a hitherto unknown ‘central work’, which in fact bore all the signs of what it was: a draft written at speed out of a variety of notebooks, the resulting text having no coherent argument or noticeable structure. Marx discarded it and started again. The work is not without value, but, if we are to draw anything of substance from it, we require a far greater degree of sophistication in philological analysis than that hitherto displayed by Marx scholarship. The difficulty with Marx, for present-day scholarship, is that we require sophisticated analytical techniques and textual knowledge of intimidating proportions for the lengthy work of sifting through repetitions, revisions, deviations and red-herrings. Hitherto such techniques and knowledge have been applied only to small sections of the work, with striking success; but there is real doubt that the considerable effort needed to extend this further could be sustained. With Weber we enter a different world. With the exception of Economy and Society, for which typescripts revised in Weber’s hand exist for those sections on the sociology of law, Weber’s ‘work’ coincides with what he published; the original manuscripts are lost. In any case, they would only serve to correct an existing text that was published in Weber’s lifetime, for there are no hidden projects, no undiscovered ‘central texts’. Even some of the notable ‘unpublished’ texts, such as his lecture outline from 1898, are set up in print. He wrote for publication, and the bibliography appears to be more or less complete. With Marx, extending our gaze beyond the published work confronts us with a mountain of material whose pertinence cannot simply be assumed. With Weber, there is only the printed page.24 The exception to this is Economy and Society, and the problems

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

12

that this text presents can serve to conclude these remarks on the reception of Weber and the problems of his writing. Wolfgang Mommsen presents a summary of the genesis of the various sections of the work and their associated problems,23 and Essay 2 below also clarifies aspects of the background to the work. A monograph could be written on the construction of the text we have before us today; here, a few observations will have to do. When Weber died in June 1920 he left behind Part 1 (pp. 3-307 of the English edition) as a corrected proof. Marianne Weber assumed editorship, publishing this Part in 1921 as a section of the Grundriß. She then added material from the early drafts dating from 1911-13, and published them separately, all four parts then appearing in 1922 as the first edition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in two volumes. The second edition of 1925 was augmented with a section on the sociology of music, and in 1947 the third edition appeared unchanged. Marianne Weber imposed a tripartite division on the material, seeking to lend the incomplete work as much coherence as possible - and the work was widely recognized to be incomplete and uncompletable. In 1949 Johannes Winckelmann published an article that threw doubt on the form in which Marianne Weber had cast the work. He argued that the first outline of the Grundriß, published in 1914, contained Weber’s ‘original plan’ for the work, from which he did not deviate. On the basis of this ‘plan’, Winckelmann proposed that the text be reorganized as a bipartite work, a form of organization that he suggested was closer to the original intention and that would permit completion of the work. This ‘genuine’ plan involved an initial formal and typological section, followed by dynamic, special sociologies.26 In 1956 the fourth edition, edited by Winckelmann appeared, followed in 1976 by the fifth, which had been reworked yet again. The English translation is based on revisions to the fourth edition, some of which were then incorporated in the fifth.27 The

procedures

adopted

by

both

Marianne

Weber

and

Winckelmann have been heavily criticized by Tenbruck - it is suggested that Marianne sought to provide Weber posthumously with a ‘proper book’ as his principal scholarly achievement, although Tenbruck does at the same time argue that, until the appearance of the 1956 edition, readers were aware that they were confronted with unrelated papers from an incomplete project. More seriously, he suggests that the result of Winckelmann’s efforts has been to lend

Translator’s Introduction

13

these papers the veneer of a complete work, a veneer imposed by the hand of Winckelmann, not that of Weber.28 He goes so far as to assert that: Foreword, index, text and supplementary notes do not diminish and hide the fact that Economy and Society is not a work of Max Weber, but rather a conjecture on the part of Winckelmann, brought into being by means of re-ordering, summary and the provision of new headings to new divisions.29 Although certain aspects of Tenbruck’s argument are certainly exaggerated, there can be little doubt that serious difficulties exist in judging the status of the text Economy and Society as an expression of the intentions of Weber at the time of his death. Furthermore, it seems doubtful if a ‘more reliable’ text could ever be assembled - those manuscripts that exist are in parts so overwritten that editorial choice is required to make any sense of it at all. And yet at issue is what many have come to regard as Max Weber’s ‘central text’. If this is the case with a work for which, unusually, manuscripts do in part exist, and in a condition that is indicative of Weber’s interest in their revision, where does this leave our appreciation of the bulk of his writing where there are no manuscripts? The project of composing a Gesamtausgabe has been dogged by this very problem: how can we exercise measured and precise editorial judgement if only published writings are available? Put another way, how far is extensive editorial effort justified when the scope of such work is limited to proof¬ reading without manuscript and adding on explanatory notes?30 At the very least, the disputes over the textual status of Economy and Society should make us more circumspect when dealing with texts whose alteration, revision and recasting has been obliterated by the printed word. More circumspect, to be sure; but all the more necessary to reconstruct a body of writing in terms of an intention that has been obliterated by the canonization of Weber as a ‘classical sociologist’. Max Weber certainly seems to need reconstructing; but do we have to learn to read Weber ‘anew’, as Hennis so forcefully argues at the beginning of Essay 1 ? And why should we regard Hennis’s reading as a novel, productive and authoritative turning point in the maze of Weberiana? As Hennis argues below, Weber’s work was not characterized by

14

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

the presence of a specific field of material proper to one particular academic discipline and which thereby lent it coherence; we rather encounter in his writings a set of questions, which remain a constant through the most diverse material. The purpose of the following essays is to seek out and expose these questions in a manner that is consistent with the intentions of the work. These ‘intentions’ are to be recovered through the examination of the work as a whole, not through the elevation of certain writings to the status of key texts in whose terms the remainder are then read. Hennis certainly believes that Weber’s work can be understood in terms of central themes and questions that were Weber’s own; but the reader of the following essays cannot help but be struck by the variety of sources upon which he draws. We do not have here the promulgation of an intention that has to be ‘constructed’ out of privileged sources or imputed on the basis of a commentator’s ‘insight’. Hennis’s contention that Weber’s central interest is fundamentally anthropological is one that can be supported by a variety of sources, and it is striking that those passages and statements that are cited in evidence are by no means single instances. This recognized, it is all the more baffling that this central interest has never before been recognized for what it is. The persistence and thoroughness with which Hennis presses his argument is also quite unusual for Weber scholarship. Quite literally, Hennis is an advocate for Weber. Hennis came to political science from an academic training in law, like so many German political scientists. The manner in which problems are posed, evidence advanced and arguments constructed in the following essays recalls the style of the courtroom: a defence is being mounted with eloquence and learning, in which simple assertion, prevarication or duplicity would merely undermine the case. Point after point is relentlessly hammered home - but with wit, tenacity and, crucially, relevant evidence. The arguments put in the following essays display an exemplary rigour. In addition to this,

as a political scientist Hennis naturally

approaches Weber through the traditions of political theory. This is not only a long tradition, one ‘as old as civilization itself; the history of political thought is perhaps the most sophisticated branch of intellectual history, in which methods and procedures are established and well-founded. This cannot be said of the history of sociological theory, a form of writing that is not only limited in extent but also in

Translator’s Introduction

15

sophistication. It is not only that much of the writing on Weber is of a low standard, in which writers feel free to make any and every association or imputation; the discipline to which Weber has been assigned is itself ill-equipped to conduct coherent discussion of its theoretical foundations. This problem could be corrected, of course, but until now sociological writers have not shown a ready command of the historical, methodological, linguistic and philological skills needed to appreciate Weber’s intentions adequately. Hennis does not claim to have written the definitive work of Weber studies; this could only be initiated after the publication of correspon¬ dence at present still in archives. What he has done is to redefine the nature of Weber’s contribution to our understanding of the modern world, and present compelling arguments against those who would have us see Weber as a theorist of universal rationalization, or as a cultural critic of capitalism, or even as a bourgeois response to the ‘challenge of Marxism’. Weber is in need of reconstruction; but not, Hennis argues, as a theorist of society, or of capitalism, or of modernism. According to Hennis, the work of Max Weber belongs in a long tradition of political thought whose focus is on ‘human natures’ - the nature ofhuman personality and that of the forces which mould it. The questions that flow from this - of ‘life orders’, Lebensfiihrung, and the nature of personality in the modern world - are questions that belong to a philosophical anthropology. Recognizing this to be an accurate assessment of Weber’s fundamental orientation by no means reduces the contribution of Weber to our consideration of culture and politics in the late twentieth century; it rather opens up a series of new questions, both about Weber and about the world in which we are placed.

Notes to Translator’s Introduction 1

A. Salomon, ‘Max Weber’, Die Gesellschaft, Jg. 3, 1926, p. 136. Salomon’s characterization here coincides with the argument put forward below by Hennis, demonstrating his contention that the version of Weber that he wishes to present is one that during the interwar years

2

was assumed by leading commentators. M. R. Lepsius, ‘Die Soziologie der Zwischenkriegszeit: Entwicklungs¬ tendenzen und Beurteilungskriterien’, Kölner Zeitschrift ßr Soziologie

16

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 23, 1981: Soziologie in Deutschland und

3

Österreich 1918-1945, pp. 11-12. G. Schroeter, ‘Max Weber as outsider: his nominal influence on German sociology in the twenties’, Journal ofthe History of the Behavioural Sciences,

4 5

vol. 16, 1980, p.318. S. P. Schad, Empirical Social Research in Weimar Germany, Paris, 1972. E. Lederer, Kapitalismus, Klassenstruktur und Probleme der Demokratie in

6

Deutschland 1910-1940, Göttingen, 1979, pp. 260 ff. Max Weber, cited in D. Käsler, Einßhrung in das Studium Max Webers,

7 8

Munich, 1979, p. 214. Käsler, Einßhrung, p. 216. Printed as a ms for the Verein in 1913, published as ‘Der Sinn der “Wertfreiheit” der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften’, Logos, Bd. 6, 1917, pp. 40-88, translated as ‘The meaning of “ethical neutrality” in sociology and economics’, in Max Weber, The Method¬

9

10

11 12 13 14

15 16

ology of the Social Sciences, New York, 1949, pp. 1-49. D. Käsler, ‘Der Streit um die Bestimmung der Soziologie auf den deutschen Soziologentagen 1910 bis 1930’, Kölner Zeitschrifi ßr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 23, 1981, p. 208. In part this was inevitable, given the absence of significant institutional opportunity for sociologists to identify themselves as such. Nevertheless, many of the most active members were not primarily ‘sociologists’, but prominent representatives of related disciplines — for example, von Bortkiewicz, Brinkmann, Pribram, Scheler andjahn. See D. Käsler, Diefrühe deutsche Soziologie 1909 bis 1934 und ihre Entstehungs¬ milieu, Cologne, 1984, pp. 33-4. A. Salomon, ‘German sociology’, in G. Gurvitch and W. E. Moore (eds) Twentieth Century Sociology, New York, 1945, p. 587. Lepsius, ‘Die Soziologie der Zwischenkriegszeit’, p. 17. Lepsius,‘Die Soziologie der Zwischenkriegszeit’, p. 15. Although it must be noted that Johannes Winckelmann, who contri¬ buted so much to the development of research on Weberin the 1950s and 1960s, remained in Germany and served the National Socialist regime. His interest in the work of Weber developed seriously after the war, however, and so in this regard he does not -epresent a figure of continuity. See L. Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants, Chicago, 1968, ch. 11. G. Roth, R. Bendix, ‘Max Webers Einfluß auf die amerikanische Soziologie’, Kölner Zeitschrififiir Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie,]g. 11, 1959, pp. 39—40. Park had been a student of Simmel and was supervised by Windelband for his doctoral thesis.

17

C. Diehl, ‘The life and work of Max Weber’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 38, 1924, pp. 87-107.

18

London, 1927. This was a translation of the Wirtschafisgeschichte, Munich, 1923, edited from notes of the 1919/20 lectures and edited by Hellmann and Palyi.

Translator’s Introduction 19 20 21 22

17

T. Parsons, ‘ “Capitalism” in recent German literature — Sombart and Weber Journal of Political Economy, vol. 36, 1928, p. 642. Parsons, ‘ “Capitalism” ’, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 37, 1929, p. 37. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, New York, 1947, p. 3. M. R. Lepsius, ‘Die Entwicklung der Soziologie nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg 1945 bis 1967’, in G. Lüschen (ed.) Deutsche Soziologie seit 1945, Sonderheft 21 in Kölner Zeitschrifi für Soziologie und Sozial¬ psychologie, 1979, pp. 29—36. Lepsius records that the American University Officer E. Y. Hartshorne, himself a sociologist, was of great assistance in the reconstruction of sociological work in postwar Germany. In 1937 Hartshorne had published The German Universities and National Socialism, London.

23 24

25 26 27

28 29 30

W.J. Mommsen, The Age of Bureaucracy, Oxford, 1974, p. 15. Except, of course, for the unpublished correspondence, which Wilhelm Hennis uses to great effect in these essays. Although Weber’s ‘writing’ was primarily for publication, there is a body of his work that takes the form of the records of congresses and meetings, in part in direct speech, but also, of course, more or less detailed reports of speeches and contri¬ butions made orally at such gatherings. Essay 2 brings this out. One of the problems in assembling a complete bibliography of Weber’s work has been in tracking down this ‘printed word’ in newspapers, proceedings of meetings, and ephemeral printed material. Mommsen, Age of Bureaucracy, pp. 16—17. J. Winckelmann, ‘Max Webers Opus Posthumum’, Zeitschrifi fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, Bd. 105, 1949, p. 380. But any translator working between the English edition and the German fifth edition of Economy and Society will note substantial differences in paragraphing, and the organization of chapter and section. The remarks of the editors of the English edition concerning their faithfulness to the German text are in this respect misleading (pp. CII-CIII). F. H. Tenbruck, ‘Abschied von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’, Zeitschrift Jur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, Bd. 133, 1977, p. 714. Tenbruck, ‘Abschied’, p. 707. This point has been elaborated by Hennis in his review of the first products of the Gesamtausgabe - ‘Im langen Schatten einer Edition’, Zeitschrift jur Politik, Jg. 32, 1985, pp. 208-17.

PARTI

Fragestellung und Thema

1

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

Each sees what is in his own heart.1 Becoming involved with the work of Max Weber is a hazardous enterprise. Any concern with Weber’s work unavoidably courts debate on the character of modern social science. Whatever might be the ‘spirit’ animating modern social science, its domination has for many years rested upon a mechanical foundation. Never before in the history of the sciences has an orthodoxy (a ‘paradigm’) been able to establish itself so powerfully and decisively and yet with a minimum of intellectual effort. Seldom today challenged, and certain of its utility, modern social science requires only occasional recourse to authority. The greatest, most venerated and silently respected figure of authority is that of Max Weber. Whoever dares to throw doubt on the legitimacy of established social science must direct himself to this figure. For thirty years professional opinion on Weber has been divided. The only significant disputes about Weber’s authority as the intellectual leader of modern social science coincided with its rise to prominence.

Whoever

found

this

emergent

and

increasingly

dominating science empty or futile — despite, or precisely because of, its socio-technical utility - had to break with Weber, turn away from him. Georg Lukäcs and Herbert Marcuse did this in their own way, while Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin did it in another. Quite clearly each case involved ‘disengagements’ of the most painful sort2 - but in both cases Weber was left the laughing victor. Since then, he has adorned modern social science’s temple of victory as a treasured ancestor and domestic idol. Is this Weber’s proper place? I would like to take up this question. In so doing I am not seeking some new and ‘original’ viewpoint. All engagement with Weber must begin with the contemporary state of

22

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

inquiry. General agreement exists in Weber scholarship on the most pressing desiderata. The wish for a suitable biography capable of replacing Marianne Weber’s Lebensbild has to be put off until we have a complete edition of the plainly enormous collection of letters. Study of Weber must for a long time also make do with the editions of his writings that are to hand. A deeper understanding than that which we have today is in any case to be expected only from the augmentation and correction - quite possibly drastic in nature - that the correspon¬ dence might offer. Nothing, however, stands in the way of an approach to the perhaps most important desideratum in a really thorough investigation of Weber. Not only does the socio-political and cultural background of his generation await study, but the Weltanschauung and the scientific problems in which Weber’s generation so passionately engaged are even further removed from us. We know far too little about these factors, or at any rate not enough for an understanding of Weber’s work in this context.3 The fixation of previous research upon Weber’s epistemological trustees, and his alleged dependency on, or even ‘determination’ by southwest German neo-Kantianism, has brought us not one step closer to an understanding of his work.4 Attempts to distinguish clearly between person and work have proved to be as questionable as the ‘derivation’ of the work from Weber’s psyche. He was a man of genius and a person sensitive to the problems of the world in which we live. Genius and sensibility were expressed, however, in a work that strove to be an academic science. This work as such grew out of the questions that determined the particular sciences with which Weber was occupied. To be able to understand Weber’s own questions and answers we must be familiar with the con¬ temporary questions of Nationalökonomie, Staatswissenschaß, law, history, philosophy, and naturally also ‘sociology’.5 A consensus exists on the point that, after protracted dissection, fragmentation and reduction of the work to a few canonical master¬ pieces and key texts, serious effort must be directed to ascertaining which leading question and intention might lie at the foundation of the work as a whole.6 Hence Weber has to be read afresh and ‘without prejudice’. And that means the entire corpus of his work. No one who becomes really involved with Weber can escape the impression that there is a question that runs through this monumental endeavour - be it in embryo or

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

23

hidden in digressions - which makes possible recognition of the work’s unity. Up to now this question has not been disclosed. If on the basis of this question the work is to be genuinely made intelligible and interpretable as a whole, then it should be quite evident that this question must be contained in the work and must be discoverable; and thus may not be introduced from elsewhere, or be the result of inter¬ pretation of an isolated fragment of the work, however significant. Tenbruck’s striking and enduringly authoritative proposition that Weber’s work must be approached as a whole had to miscarry when the theme of disenchantment was identified as this question. While the theme can perhaps be shown to be central to the Economic Ethic of World Religions (WEWR), it has no relevance for an analysis of the Protestant Ethic or even Economy and Society. Only with the assistance of a constructed ‘later work’ - in truth only WEWR — is it possible to maintain ‘rationalization’/‘disenchantment’ as a leading problem.7 Since Tenbruck categorically maintains that Weber developed an ‘anthropological theory’ set down exclusively in the ‘Einleitung’ to WEWR - for (only?) here is to be found how ‘Weber conceives of action and man’s relation to the world’, and not in ‘the more meagre Basic Concepts’relating to this8-hehas, in spite of himself, made the ‘Einleitung’ and ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’ the culmination of Weber’s work without, however, throwing as a result any light on the remaining work. ‘Max Weber’s work’ was not rendered in this fashion ‘as a whole readable and intelligible’ at all.9 I share with Tenbruck and others10 a certainty that ‘Weber’s works are dominated by the unravelling of a fundamental problem which he pursued even in his occasional writings’. But which is it? Tenbruck’s answer coincides with a general opinion that has become a conventional view, seeing Weber’s Lebensthema in the question: ‘what is the meaning of rationality?’11 But does the process of rationalization help us to under¬ stand Economy and Society, its introductory chapter or the body of the text? Does it help to explain the methodology, the planned and completed surveys, the early economic works, the political options? Certainly not. Does it make the sociology of religion intelligible? That I doubt as well. However central the problem of rationalization might have been for Weber, it must, if it is to become the key to his work, be placed in a far wider context - a context in which the reason for this question being so important to Weber will become apparent. Among the first

24

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

influential interpreters of Weber’s work, Siegfried Landshut and Karl Löwith were still aware of this context, if only in outline;12 but even they, fascinated by the relation of Weber to Marx, neglected this context in favour of a fixation on the problem of rationality, which was in fact the link between Marx and Weber. To see the process of rationalization as Weber’s fundamental theme is certainly not incorrect. But, as is quite apparent from the state of research on Weber, it is misleading to read everything in its terms and to see it everywhere. Following Bendix, Schluchter has sought to ‘impute’ to Weber’s sociology ‘an explicit decision for the cultural tradition of modern Western rationalism.’13 Why then did Weber write such a corpus? He could have saved himself the trouble and let it go at the ‘explicit decision’.

Understanding of his work is not merely

obstructed by the difficulty and ambiguity of the texts. Alongside the difficulty and misunderstanding of Weber’s work there is also unintelligibility at work. It is not so much the complexity, but rather the simplicity of Weber’s problematic - confronting us in our modernity, poised upon our intellectual heights - that is an obstacle to its comprehension.

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’: The ‘Development of Mensch en turn ’ If we want to understand Weber’s work we must first of all be able to read it. Is it in fact readable? But read it must be, if a ‘decoding of the work at the level of the texts’ - the task set so urgently by Tenbruck can be taken up. The projected Gesamtausgabe is estimated to run to thirty-three hefty volumes. But comprehension of this work is rendered difficult not only by its massive extent, but also by its curious character. In his lifetime Weber only published two ‘proper’ books, and these were the dissertation and Habilitationsschrifi indispensable for an academic career. The entirety of the remaining work consists of survey reports and essays that were, for the most part, hurriedly composed. It was only after his death that these appeared as collections in book form: the collected writings on methodology, on sociology and social policy, on the sociology of religion, on social and economic history, the economic history constructed from student’s notes, the political

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

25

writings, and finally Economy and Society. If we wish to understand adequately an important contribution to the history of learning, there is no proven alternative to an attempt at the establishment of the nature of the academic controversy unleashed among contem¬ poraries . What set of scientific problems did the author treat as given, how did he formulate new questions, how did his colleagues react? This is really nothing other than the understanding of a scholarly author in terms of his ‘historical situation’. The thought of a scholar is not directly determined by social and structural history but, at most, by the manner in which this history finds expression in thought, in the range of scientific problems forming the object of academic concern. In part, Weber’s work is so hard to understand because we are hardly aware of its controversial character.14 Economy and Society has no footnotes, WEWR hardly engaged with other approaches, and articles are usually not reviewed: Weber thus never found it necessary to defend the problematic of his writing and make it in this way more intelligible. In addition, we quite probably know less about the social sciences at the turn of the century than about the state of political theory at the time of Hobbes. For Weber, no book exists that might be compared with Robert Derathe’s Jean Jacques Rousseau et la science politique de son temps. Max Weber was a professional scholar who was in touch with his time; but we hardly know the state of social science in his time, what its central questions were and which - as can be supposed- would thereby enter into his central questions.15 If we wish to read and understand Weber’s scientific work, then we must begin with the work, and try to understand it on the basis of contemporary controversies and in terms of the context of the scientific problems of the time. This provides us with the method for our approach. We have to see whether Weber did not after all once reveal his central preoccupation, and then see if we can detect the red thread that runs from there through all his work. Max Weber always took great trouble - with whatever success - to specify his current ‘problematic’. This resulted from his fundamental view that ‘It is not the “actual” interconnections of “things” but the conceptual interconnections of problems that define the scope of the various sciences’.16 If Weber, because of the curious format of his work, never had cause in general to define his problematic more exactly, there is nevertheless one exception in his writings. The most

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

26

famous of all his works,

The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of

Capitalism, involved him, for a number of years, in a polemic conducted with great passion. Here, and only here, he saw himself forced, or grudgingly induced, to render his problematic more exact where it was misunderstood. Until recently the study of Weber has paid little attention to these supplementary essays; only through Winckelmann’s

1968

edition

of Kritiken

und Antikritiken

zur

Protestantischen Ethik have they found a wider audience.17 Just as the decoding of unfamiliar writings is possible only when at least a few syllables are legible, so we create a basis for the understanding of Weber when we might hope that we have at least properly understood one piece of the work. It is only in the case of the Protestant Ethic that Weber himself can help us, as far as is possible, to correct misunder¬ standings of his problematic. The content of this well-known study does not have to be recounted here. The ‘Weber-thesis’ has long been misunderstood as a causal hypothesis on the origin of capitalism. This no longer happens among German scholars.18 Today, the prevailing view runs as follows: Weber sought to establish the mental orientation ‘adequate’ to the rise of modern capitalism in the form of a repeatedly emphasised ‘elective affinity’ between the ‘spirit of capitalism’ and the ‘protestant ethic’ .But this also misrecognizes the stake as Weber saw it—although he often enough wrote as if this were sufficient as a research object, consequently distorting the radical nature of his ‘problematic’ through a constant emphasis on the ‘restricted nature’ ofhis object of research. This ‘problematic’ will be our sole concern in the following. The renowned investigation of the Protestant Ethic is available to us today in two versions: as the articles of 1904—5 and in the version revised for GARS I by Weber in 1920, the latter version being supplemented and in part taking note of criticism. If we take the second version, the most elaborated investigative objective of these essays is represented as: the establishment of‘the rational conduct of life (Lebensfiihrung) on the basis of the idea of calling as one of the ‘constitutive elements of the modern capitalist spirit, and not this alone, but of the spirit of modern culture’.19 Why should we stop at this sentence? Is the author really only interested - it could be read in this way - in understanding, if not capitalism, then ‘the modern capitalist spirit’? Or are we concerned with the historical origins of the ‘rational Lebensführung’ of the modem ‘professional man’, or Berufemensch?

27

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

For a more precise grasp of the sentence, let us reduce it to its essence by the use of emphasis: ‘One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism, and not only of that but of all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born - that is what this discussion has sought to demonstrate - out of the spirit of Christian asceticism.’ Read in this way, it would appear that Weber’s real concern was with the historical genesis of the ‘rational Lebens¬ führung . If we compare the version from 1920 with that of 1905 we find that, apart from a tiny editorial alteration, Weber found nothing on which he could improve. Generally speaking, no changes were made above the line to the text’s dramatic closing passages that begin with this

paragraph,

except for minor clarifications; and the

supplementary material in the notes (apart from more recent biblio¬ graphic additions) exclusively serves the purpose of making quite clear that, with regard to the 1905 edition, ‘no ground’ existed for any correction.2'1 If we may be allowed to see in the emphasized passages above the essence of Weber’s problematic, we can conclude that Weber remained true to it fifteen years later. The theme of 1905, just like that of 1920, would be the genealogy of the modern ‘rational Lebensführung’ by a ‘historical representation’. Let us see whether we cannot,

with

the

assistance

of the

‘Antikritiken’,

make

this

problematic clearer. Weber’s ‘Antikritiken’ (in fact, four pieces altogether, which took up 85 closely printed pages of the Archiv, representing then a ‘reinforcement’ a good three-quarters(l) the length of the original, normally printed 164 pages) exclusively address the criticisms of H. Karl Fischer and Felix Rachfahl. In the 1920 version, Fischer - this presumptuous ‘incompetent’, this ‘Herr Kritiker’21 - was granted not a single mention, while Rachfahl on the other hand gained one in the first note, which in effect simply dismissed him. Weber has ‘in this edition added nothing from the unavoidably rather unprofitable polemic against Rachfahl, only taking account of the (very few) additional references in his Antikritik, and by means of extra sentences or remarks sought to rule out all future conceivable misunder¬ standing’.22 We could be permitted to say: seldom has anyone had such bad fortune in the avoidance of misunderstanding. The libraries written on the ‘Weber thesis’ would otherwise never ever have been written. Close examination shows that Weber in fact takes up virtually

28

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

nothing from the debates with Rachfahl in the 1920 edition. The critical discussion is here directed towards Sombart, and above all Brentano. It therefore seems worth while to subject the Antikritiken to a thorough study, these writings which were thought so unprofitable that they were subsequently disregarded in GARS. It is worth seeing whether they might yield up something that could ‘rule out in future’, if not all, then at least ‘further misunderstanding’ of Weber’s problematic. For these anti-critical essays were exclusively concerned with the clearing up of misunderstandings of his ‘problematic’, rebutting and if possible securing freedom from such misunder¬ standings for the future. It is for this reason that these writings should in fact have been regarded for the past 75 years as the most important supplementary texts for argument on the Weber ‘thesis’! Together with the additions and clarifications included in the GARS version, Weber hoped to have permanently clarified further ‘misunder¬ standings’. We know that he failed in the most fantastic manner. But is there nothing for our questioning of Weber’s ‘problematic’ that can be found in these ‘unprofitable’ anticritical essays? We had seen that the quintessence that the ‘exposition’ of the PE essays should ‘demonstrate’ must be perceived as the birth of the ‘rational Lebensfiihrung' from the spirit of Christian asceticism. In his first reply to Fischer, Weber stated his intention of taking each point of criticism, ‘no matter how misconceived’, and using them to identify ‘at which point in the discussion misconceptions could arise, which the author, whether himself at fault or not, had insufficiently taken into account.’23 Which points had Weber ‘insufficiently taken into account’? This is what the replies are all about. ‘The points’ are made unmistakably clear in the following passage: I therefore take no responsibility for those misconceptions upon which, in my opinion, the foregoing criticism is based. I will, however, on the occasion of a separate edition of the essays (which for technical publishing reasons cannot be long postponed), try once more to remove each expression which could be understood in terms of a derivation of economic forms from religious motives - a derivation which I in fact never make - and therefore make it even clearer, if possible, that it is the spirit of a ‘methodical’ Lebens¬ führung, which should be ‘derived’ from ‘asceticism’ in its Protestant transformation, and which even then stands in a cultural-historical

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question

29

relation of ‘adequacy—equivalence’ (Adäquanz) which is very important in my opinion. For this stimulus I must thank mv ■ • 04 J critic. . The impulse to a new and separate edition relates plainly to making ‘even clearer’ the point that the issue in the PE essays was ‘the derivation of the spirit of a “methodical” Lebensfiihrung’. On the immediately following page in this first anticritical essay, Weber again emphasizes that ‘Jakob Fugger and similar economic supermen’ were precisely ‘not characteristic’ of ‘that spirit of sober methodic existence (Lebensmethodik), the analysis of which concerns me here’.25 What does concern him becomes clearer when he informs the ‘Herr Kritiker’ that it ‘would definitely be a great deal easier for the discovery of the chain of historical causality (kausalen Regressus) if we could deduce the emergence of specific characteristic styles of life simply from the abstractions ofa “psychology” \26 Weber could not help having another go at Fischer, following the first reply of July 1907 with another, in January 1908. Fischer’s brief, polite five and a halfpage contribution, which left it ‘to the thoughtful reader to decide’ whether the objections brought forward by his ‘Herr Gegenkritiker’ were valid, was met with a cannonade of more than twice the length from Weber: ‘Here specialist knowledge is lacking. He simply does not realise that the decisive sources for my treatment of the way in which the conduct oßife is influenced. . . have nothing to do with “edificatory” or “dogmatic” purposes, they are concerned rather with the problems of everyday living (Lebensgestaltung), and which they therefore illuminate. ’27 The very same ‘point’ is thus again at issue: the influences on Lebensfiihrung, the changes in ‘everyday life’. He was not trying to ‘get at motive factors in historical affairs’ in a particular epoch, nor trying to find Weal motive forces ’ - ‘such spectres in history do not exist for me’ - he has instead investigated ‘exactly according to [his] declared purpose’: ‘in what way (Richtung) the specific religious forms of the diverse Protestant ascetic tendencies (these forms themselves decisively co-determined by fundamental metaphysical presuppositions) have influenced the conduct of life, there, where such influence in fact existed. ’28 He was concerned - here is a further formulation of his views - with ‘the clarification of the “characterological” effects of specific forms of piety, in so far as such effects are here relevant’.29 ‘Evidently’ he is talking of a ‘methodical

30

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

Lebensführung' ‘in the sense in which it is analysed over several dozen pages of my articles, that is, how as a component of the modern “ethic of calling” (Berufsethik) it has influenced life’.30 Weber makes his concern more precise in his counter to the ‘Sombartian problematic’ (‘what is the origin of the modern economic significance of capitalist economic forms?’). ‘For my problematic, which addresses itself to the rise of the ethical Lebensstil spiritually adequate to the economic stage of capitalism and which signifies its triumph in the “souls” of men his terminology is appropriate, in his view.31 (It might be noted here in passing that Weber’s novel and, until today, so puzzling ‘problematic’ first becomes immediately intelligible if comparison is made with the first volume of Sombart’s monumental work Modern Capitalism-, published in 1902, this folio was entitled ‘The genesis of capitalism’, the third section, ‘The genesis of the capitalist spirit’ being of relevance here. If Weber wished to present something new then it could not be in terms of the significance of Protestantism for the rise of capitalism. That Protestantism ‘particularly in its Calvinist and Quaker varieties has materially advanced the development of capitalism’ had just been characterized by Sombart as a ‘too wellknown fact’ and one that ‘was in no need of further substantiation’.32 Weber’s own problematic has therefore to be something quite different.) We must remember: the replies to Fischer sought to clarify the ‘problematic’. At issue-and quite distinct from Sombart’s approachis the ‘influencing of Lebensfiihrung', the ‘characterological’ effects of particular kinds of piety and - somewhat more ‘emphatically’ Weber’s ‘problematic’ in its ‘portentousness’ ( - for it is ‘a segment from the path of humanity’s destiny’ -); and plainer, ultimately the triumph of the ‘ethical Lebensstil' which signified the triumph of capitalism in the ‘souls’ of men. Even such a liberal use of inverted commas cannot hide how radical the question is, whose ‘Lebens¬ führung’ is at stake here, whose ‘roots’ are being grubbed up with a ‘purely historical mode of presentation’. The dispute with Rachfahl revealed these roots completely. Two years passed after the reply to Fischer, and then injanuary 1910 it was Rachfahl’s turn. It cannot be said that Weber’s replies to queries and formulations on the part of his critics are distinguished by great lucidity. For the reader with average demands - seeking an intro¬ ductory sketch of the problem, a rough outline ofthe object ofinvesti-

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question ’

31

gation, an indication of the mode of procedure — these essays constituting the Protestant Ethic are a didactic catastrophe; this is perhaps the basis of their indestructible attraction. Nothing should have prevented Weber —friend to clear concepts —from stating clearly right at the beginning what he meant by the ‘spirit of capitalism’. All miscomprehension follows from this unholy baptismal act. Why ‘christen’ a style of regulating life, a ‘Habitus’, a particular form of conducting one’s life (Lebensfiihrung), as the ‘ “Spirit” of Capi¬ talism’33 - when it is ‘quite obvious’ that there are cases of capitalism without this Habitus and cases where the Habitus exists without capitalism?34 What sort of ‘spirit’ is that, and why the spirit of ‘capitalism’? Now, in the meantime, we know what Weber meant, but Rachfahl was quite right in pressing his request for clarification: competently, in no way ‘derisively’,35 nevertheless with ‘collegial’ though not at all unfriendly irony. Weber’s aggressive and arrogant polemic appears out of place and unprepossessing. In any case, we must be lastingly grateful to Felix Rachfahl that he, by virtue of his undiminishing insistence, forced Weber to a precise exposition of his scientific intentions. In his first reply to Rachfahl, Weber repeats the well-known positions: he ‘has hitherto sought to make intelligible only one particular phenomenon of Lebensfiihrung in its (original) religious specificity’.36 (‘Hitherto . . . only one’! - we shall see later that Weber’s ‘research programme’ at the end of PE, whose clarification we principally owe to the debate with Rachfahl, exclusively relates to further factors of Lebensfiihrung and not to some obscure ‘process of Occidental rationalism’!) He details what the ‘capitalist spirit’ is about: ‘For the development of that particular Habitus, which I (ad hoc and purely for my own purposes) called the “capitalist spirit”.’37 A small alteration to the title could have saved himself and his readers many misunderstandings: The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Capitalist’ Habitus-it sounds less mysterious and describes what is meant! That ‘Spirit’ as a motive force is (or can be) behind every human Habitus, and Habitus can in turn form the Spirit - a clarificatory footnote would have sufficed. Consequently, the whole investigation does not involve a ‘spirit’ at all, but rather a Habitus, in concrete terms the unfolding of a particular kind of Lebensfiihrung ‘within the orders of the world: family, economic life (Erwerbsleben), social community’38 for which the puritan ‘saints’ were the pacemakers. Weber’s chosen task was

32

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

‘intially to establish . . . how, through which spiritual motivational connections, specific formations of Protestant belief were enabled to function in the way that they did’.39 Whoever found ‘this entire “psychology” ’ ofno interest ‘but was only [interested in] the external forms of economic systems’ were politely requested ‘to leave these essays unread, but also do me the favour of allowing me my interest in this spiritual side of modem economic development.’40 In the continuation ofthis sentence-this is still the first Rachhhl-AntikritikWeber finally allows a glimpse of his real concern. He is interested in ‘the spiritual side of modem economic development . . . which in Puritanism displays a state of characteristic equilibrium in the great inner tensions and conflicts between “vocation”, “life” (as we freely say today), and “ethics”, an equilibrium which existed in this form neither before nor afterwards’.41 To continue: ‘and indeed in a domain where the traditions of antiquity and the Middle Ages disclose other paths, and within which we today live in the midst of renewed tensions which - far beyond the bounds of the sphere which I have stressed - develop into cultural problems of the first order known, in this form, only to our “bourgeois” world’. The ‘sphere’ that Weber ‘stressed’ was that of the ‘vocation’, of acquisitive activity (Erwerbsleben). The Puritans had brought the great ‘internal tensions’ between vocation, life and ethics into a ‘character¬ istic equilibrium’; for them there was no ‘on the one hand and on the other’, ‘theory and practice’, they rather conducted their lives ‘totally’, harnessed, consciously, ‘methodically’, at one with God and themselves - presupposing the corresponding Lebensführung. Today we live ‘within renewed tensions’ and now they reach ‘far beyond the bounds ofthe sphere which I have stressed’ and these tensions lavishly grow today into ‘cultural problems of the first order’, as they ‘in this form’

are only

‘known

to

our

“bourgeois”

world’.

Ascetic

Puritanism has helped in the creation of ‘the soul of the Berufs¬ mensch’ ,42 a specific component part of the lifestyle ‘that stood at the cradle of modern capitalism.’43 Since Weber’s investigations were never completed - ‘my constant handicap’ - only ‘an initial part of the historical development of the idea of the “vocation” and its engage¬ ment with acquisitive activity was as such properly presented’.44 ‘My essays neither sought nor claimed more than this.’45 Really? Weber resorts repeatedly, in both replies to Rachfahl, to the thesis of Adäquanz as the sole epistemological objective. But does the matter

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

33

end there? No! For: ‘Those components of capitalist “spirit” in modernity which I analysed especially: the idea of the “duty of the vocation” with all that depends upon it [W. H.]. . .reaches. . .beyond the domain of the economic into quite heterogeneous spheres of human action [W. H.].’46 Which ones? The author does not tell us, but rather creeps back into his shell, proceeding right away to state that: ‘The development of Berufsmenschentum in its significance as a component of the capitalist “spirit” - my analyses have initially limited themselves expressly and intentionally to this theme. I cannot help it if careless readers take a price in ignoring this.,47 From time to time our patience with Weber is really strained! What is the meaning of this haughtiness, these disdainful mannerisms? ‘Initially’, ‘expressly’ and ‘intentionally’, ‘limited’. But we calm down again, and can proceed. So ‘initially’: Berw/smenschentum’. Rachfahl’s criticism must have deeply wounded Weber; nothing else can account for his aggravated tone. The fact of being no further forward with the matter, that it showed no sign of completion,48 the whole undisclosed-petty jealousy with Troeltsch over priority - he could free himself from none of this; he repeatedly refers to the essay on sects, in which however he deals with the problem from a completely different direction. His repeated protestation that he has ‘intentionally’ approached the problem ‘from the aspect most difficult to grasp and “prove”, relating to the inner Habitus’,49 is not free of professorial coquetry - and he displays, by the confusion thereby created, a low level of ability in questions of ‘didactic’ sensitivity. Why did he only ‘indicate’ the ‘powerful influence of education’, ‘discipline in the sects, etc.’ instead of, if his interest was addressed to the factors most difficult to grasp and ‘prove’, at least tabulating them at the beginning and thus conceding the significance of the more transparent ‘factors’, and then turning to those ‘factors’ that were particularly hard to ‘grasp’, the ‘factors’ that were remodelling the ‘soul’ of modern man ‘from within’?50 We do not know, and leave this question to the biographers. At the end of the first reply to Rachfahl, Weber characterized the ‘sects’ as ‘archetypes’ of those formations that today mould ‘public opinion’, ‘cultural values’ and ‘individuality’. He thus lines up, not in so many words but substantially, that great complex of problems upon which his whole sociology turns, as we shall see later. But to

34

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

‘elaborate on this’, or to examine more closely the ‘array of filiations connecting the puritanical lifestyle to the present’,51 is not possible on this occasion. The ‘array offiliations connecting the puritanical lifestyle to the present’ - a closer examination of this was the purpose behind the ‘research programme’ announced at the end ofPE. But in what sense, or what the cognitive intention might be that lay behind this research programme - Weber does not betray this in 1905, and in the GARS version of 1920 he again keeps it to himself. But he allows us to take a look in the second reply to Rachfahl. This reply, which was the ‘Anticritical Last Word’ in this ‘laborious business of debate’52 was published in September 1910. It is almost double the length of the first, and is divided into two sections, the first presenting ‘a discussion which is unavoidably rather tedious’, Weber suggesting that this ‘might be passed over by the non-specialist reader’ - a suggestion that we gladly go along with. But the nerveracking polemic of the first section must be dealt with, for two reasons. Once again, Weber proclaims that he is only concerned with the Adäquanz problem. As he states: in the earlier debate with Fischer he had established that ‘my investigations concern only the analysis of the development of an ethical lifestyle adequate to emergent modern capitalism’.53 We shall soon seen whether this self-interpretation can still be maintained a few pages later in the text. Secondly: this section opens up a perspective on the deeper, human, ‘personal’ meaning of the ‘power of the ascetic Lebensmethodik which I have analysed’ - whether the Lebensstil growing out of this is still suffused with religious conditions, or whether it has emancipated itself from them. If the latter is the case, then this Lebensstil lacks ‘a decisive foundation in personal life’. For the moment, however, we will set a closer inter¬ pretation of these passages54 to one side, important as they are for understanding the whole Weber and his deepest motives. We now turn to the second section, ‘enough at last of such lengthy polemic’.55 Right at the beginning of his second reply to Rachfahl, Weber announces that in the second section he will summarize ‘his actual theses once more in a few pages’;56 this was for the sake of clarity following the confusion that had been created by Rachfahl. Leaving aside the notes, he takes all of 24 pages.57 Taking Rachfahl’s wellmeant indication of how Weber ‘should have been able to do it’ (this will not be dealt with here) Weber argued that Rachfahl had oriented the problem in a manner ‘that in no way corresponded with my

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

35

intentions’, then at last proceeding to a concise summary of his intentions: ‘for my central interest was not the promotion of the expansion of capitalism,

but rather the development of that

Menschentum, which was created by the conjunction of religious and economic components: that was clearly stated at the close of my essays’.58 Here at last we have Weber’s ‘central’ concern, and he appears to have noticed that it was he and not Rachfahl who is to blame for all the confusion, since he continues: ‘As became apparent eventually (obviously on account of the prevailing confusion, W. H.], I should moreover have placed, right at the beginning of the discussion, so that I could develop the programme as far as is possible, a definition of the complexity which can be contained in the concept “spirit of capitalism” ’. It is difficult to follow Weber at this point, and one can only admire Rachfahl’s patience, which bore so well the hideand-seek and intentional or non-intentional confusion of these ‘central’ intentions. What Max Weber now in the autumn of 1910 reveals, in all innocence - that his ‘central interest’ was the ‘develop¬ ment of Menschentum’ created by elective affinity - he could have stated this (‘as a favour’ one could say in his tones) in November 1904 at the beginning of his first essay, rather than winding his way towards it through the Baden statistics on occupation, taxation and confession. It borders on impudence now, some six years later, to state clearly for the first time that what interested him ‘centrally’ was the ‘development of Menschentum’, but that this had however been ‘clearly stated’ ‘at the close of my essays’. At the close of these essays the reader was informed that‘we are forced. . . to work in a calling’,59 that the ‘universality of man’ was a thing of the past, that a departure must be made from an age of‘full and beautiful humanity’, etc., etc. But then the author had immediately closed the curtain again: ‘But this brings us to the world ofjudgements of value and of faith, with which this purely historical discussion need not be burdened. ’60 There is nothing at the end of the 1905 edition that intimates to the reader that the‘programme’, ‘more, the task’in hand, relates to the‘development of Menschentum’. How else could we have been blind to this for 77 years, from 1905 to the present? With the sentence (‘But this brings us . . . ’) cited above, the reader is brought once again, in the familiar and forced emphasis on the ‘limited nature of the objectives’, down to the level of empirical research, of ‘historical discussion’. For directly following is the‘programme’:‘The next task would be . . .’

36

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

If words mean anything, then we might now at any rate be permitted to establish unambiguously Weber’s ‘central’ interest in the essays on the Protestant Ethic: the ‘development of Menschentum’ and how it was most deeply influenced by a particular ‘concatenation of circumstances’:61 The‘elective’conjunction of‘ascetic Protestantism’ (expressed in the idea of vocation) with early bourgeois capitalism, forming together a new mode of rational Lebensführung for Berufs- und Fachmenschen. Asceticism had assisted in ‘constructing the mighty cosmos of the modern economic order’ ‘which today determines the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism'. Out of a ‘light cloak’, ‘fate decreed’ that an ‘iron cage’ should develop. Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. T oday the spirit of religious asceticism - whether finally, who knows? - has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. . . Where the fulfilment of the calling cannot be directly related to the highest cultural and spiritual values . . . the individual generally abandons the attempt tojustify it at all.1'2 The ‘world of judgements of value and of faith’ in which Weber so ‘clearly’ at ‘the close of his essays’ became involved - is this part of his ‘person’? Or is it after all to do with his ‘works’? Menschentum is certainly the issue here: ‘all individuals’, ‘men’, ‘the individual’, and the ‘ “last beings” in this cultural development’.63 No one might know here ‘who’ (decoded into the terms of the ‘central interest’ this can only mean: which Menschentum) ‘will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals. . .’ None the less: might not these statements belong to those that Tenbruck believes the majority of sociologists will treat quite simply as nonsense? We cannot therefore declare ourselves satisfied with the assumption that these obscure closing passages ofPE refer to Weber’s ‘central’ interest, and thereby that the ‘programme’ is related to the ‘development of Menschentum’. We would like to convince every reader that this is by no means ‘nonsense’, and so we will renew our approach to the issue.

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question

37

If Weber was telling the truth at the end of the ‘Anticritical Last Word’, that in the 1904—5 essays he was really ‘centrally’ interested in the ‘development of Menschentum', the pages taken unchanged from this edition (GARS I, middle ofp. 202 to foot of p. 204) can serve the open-minded reader as a useful key to this special ‘interest’, this ‘value relation’, this scientific research interest in the ‘development of Menschentum’ which is to be ‘problematized’ and made into an ‘object’ ofinvestigation. Weber treated these questions in part in the PE essays and in the article on sects for the Christliche Welt, those ‘two older essays’ placed at the beginning of GARS I ‘which attempt, at one important point, to approach the side of the problem which is generally the most difficult to grasp: the influence of certain religious ideas on the development of an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system’.64 But this is in the ‘Introduction’ written for GARS I in 1920. However interested the author of 1904-5 was in the ‘development of Menschentum’, we know quite well that the one in 1920 who wrote the ‘Vorbemerkung’, or the one who wrote WEWR, had quite different and much more specific ‘cognitive interests’ - this much has been corroborated by more than two generations of scholarly endeavour (but I am reluctant to simply repeat this, and refer it to that which has cost so many so much shoe-leather, a footnote).65 Weber’s ‘research programme’, outlined at the end of PE, has provided the strongest inspiration for all the ‘interpretations’, reformulations’ and ‘explications’, etc.,66 of Weber’s intentions concerning the more detailed working-out of what is generally accepted as his ‘central interest’: the ‘development of Occidental rationalism’. But this ‘research programme’ from the summer of 1905 is taken over unaltered — apart from a single explicatory editorial insertion - in the 1920 text. In historical-philological terms, there¬ fore, strictly speaking Weber’s ‘central’ interest as expressed in this programme can only be that of 1905. It is conceivable that his interest was the same in 1920, it is also possible that despite variant formulations of this interest the actual substance was the same in 1905 and 1920; but what cannot be accepted is the possibility of attributing to the 1905 ‘research programme’ a ‘cognitive interest’ from 1920 which does not in turn coincide with that formulated in 1905. Did Weber develop somewhere a ‘research programme’ in 1920, or between 1905 and 1920, that could be compared with that of 1905? Clearly not, with one exception, however, to which we shall shortly

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

38

turn. His generally accepted all-embracing research interest - in Tenbruck’s formulation, ‘what does rationality mean?’, or in the more usual terms, ‘the development of Occidental rationalism —is at best the outcome of interpretation, at most a hypothesis introduced into the work from elsewhere. The‘classical’, one might say sole, text read for this interpretation is the ‘Vorbemerkung’ to GARS;67 here it is indeed stated that it ‘is our first concern to work out and to explain genetically the special peculiarity of Occidental rationalism’68 and the introduction to WEWR is enthusiastically cited to the effect that it seeks by its presentation to be itself a contribution to the casuistry of ‘processes of rationalization’.69 But to what kind of ‘processes of rationalization’? In fact, only to those which related to ‘all forms of practical ethics' and to the ‘rationalisation of Lebensßihrung' ,7I] But we are getting ahead of ourselves. To clarify the nature of the 1905 ‘research programme’, to see whether it perhaps does refer to the ‘Occidental rationalization process’ and not to the ‘central’ interest in the ‘development of Menschentum' first made explicit in 1910, we had best return to the earlier versions of the essays composing PE. Maybe somewhere here there is a statement concerning the ‘Occidental rationalization process’ or somesuch. For on what else could the research programme be based? In the GARS version the first time that the concept of rationalization appears is n. 1 to p. 35. 1 Brentano takes Franklin’s ethic, reported by Weber in 1904 as ‘the earning of more and more money. . . thought ofso purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual,

it

appears

entirely

transcendental

and

absolutely

irrational’ as the occasion ‘to criticize the later discussion of “rationali¬ zation and discipline” to which worldly asceticism has subjected men. That, he says, is a “rationalization” for an irrational Lebensßihrung'. This remark cannot be examined in closer detail here - we are plainly dealing with an insertion from 1920. Where then does the concept first occur in the 1904-5 edition? On p. 61,72 where it is stated: ‘It might thus seem that the development of the spirit of capitalism is best understood as part of the development of rationalism as a whole, and could be deduced from the fundamental posture of rationalism on the basic problems of life.’ Protestantism would therefore only be considered historically in so far as it had played a role as a ‘stage prior to the development of a purely rationalist philosophy’. But it only ‘seems’ to be this way. For, as Weber goes on to say, ‘any serious

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

39

attempt to carry this thesis through makes it evident that such a simple way of posing the question will not work, simply because of the fact that the history of rationalism shows a development which by no means follows parallel lines in the individual areas of life.’ A number of examples are then introduced, before proceeding as follows: ifunder practical rationalism is understood the type of attitude (jene Art Lebensfiihrung) which sees and judges the world consciously in terms of the worldly interests of the individual ego, then this view of life (Lebenstil) was and is the special peculiarity of the peoples of the liberum arbitrium, such as the Italians and the French are in very flesh and blood. But we have already convinced ourselves that this is by no means the soil in which that relationship of a man to his calling as a task, which is necessary to capitalism, has pre-eminently grown. In fact one may [and here the author inserts in the 1920 version an incisive clarification] - this simple proposition, which is often forgotten, should be placed at the beginning of every study which seeks to deal with rationalism - rationalise life from fundamentally different basic points of view and in very different directions. Rationalism is a historical concept which covers a whole world of different things . . . We are here particularly interested in the origin of precisely the irrational element which lies in this, as in every concept of a calling.73 The ‘rationalism’ or rather ‘rationalization’ to which Weber solely devotes himself in PE is therefore the particular transformation, Disziplinierung and Methodisierung of everyday (i.e. in particular but not exclusively) economic Lebensfiihrung. ‘The ethical practice of everyday men will thus stand revealed in its lack of plan and system and elaborated as a deliberate method of Lebensfihrung.’ PE is about this, and only this; not one subordinate clause, nothing in PE warrants the assumption that the investigation is conceived as one of Weber’s contributions to the explanation of the ‘universal historical process of development of Occidental rationalism’ or however this Weberian ‘cognitive interest’, now become a routinized formulation, might be known. Let us return again to the author’s own description of what ‘this discussion has sought to demonstrate’: One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of capitalism and not

40

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

only of that but of all modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born - that is what this discussion has sought to demonstrate-from the spirit of Christian asceticism.74 Nothing in the closing pages ofPE gives us a firm indication of the allembracing problematic in which this result can be placed. We are still the patient reader is here reminded of this and requested to excuse all complications-in search of Weber’s ‘problematic’ and thus also ofthe ‘value-relevance’

(Wertbeziehung)

on

the

basis

of which

this

problematic can be explained and justified. We might recall that Weber’s debates with the critics ofPE should help us in our search. Do they do so, or must we come to terms with the fact that the PE essays represent a ‘purely historical discussion’,

which need not be

‘burdened’ with judgements of value and of faith’? There is no doubt that we are confronted with a ‘purely historical discussion’. But why did Weber devote a ‘purely historical discussion’ to these questions and not to a ‘scuffle between two tribes of Kaffirs or Indians’?73 After all these diversions we stand again before the declaration of 1910 with empty hands: he was interested ‘centrally’ in the ‘develop¬ ment of Menschentum’ and this was ‘stated clearly’ at the end of his essays. He refers in this way to the ‘programme’ that can be found there. Since he never suggested that he wished to write the universal history of the penetration of Occidental rationalism, we resist attempts to relate the 1905 programme to any such unannounced cognitive interest. He had declared a ‘central’ interest in the ‘development of Menschentum’ and in the sentence directly following this declaration of interest he refers to this programme (‘so that I could as far as possible develop this programme’).76 If Weber’s ‘central’ interest was the ‘development of Menschentum’ and had, with the essays on the Protestant Ethic, completed a part of this programme (a partial illumination of the genesis of Berufsmenschentum) we must look again more closely at this ‘programme’ so that we might see how he himself conceived its further elaboration- ‘in so far as it is meaningful’. Perhaps from this point more light can be cast on the intentions lying behind the already completed ‘purely historical investigation’, but also on those that he had from the very beginning. For Weber wrote his ‘ Anticritical Last Word’ in the autumn of 1910, and thus almost exactly at the end of what Tenbruck and Küenzlen have called the ‘dark years’;77 he also wrote at a time which coincides

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

41

with the beginning of the work on WEWR. In one of the skirmishes in the debate with Rachfahl that is hidden in a footnote, Weber bragged about his knowledge of Dutch culture at Rachfahl’s expense, relevant here because of the‘wider concept of “culture” that was at stake’-that is, its constitution in terms of‘typical problems of Lebensjuhrung’. Anyone who has worked on this [‘the typical problems of LebensJuhrung', W. H.] can see that he knows nothing about it, for the most part has no idea of the literary character of the printed literature, not even the tiny fragment which I cite in my criticised essay’. To proceed, and I emphasize, as written in 1910: ‘For my part I have not given up hope of being able to pursue this section [i.e. the influence of religious factors on Lebensjuhrung, W. H.] of my work (and hence to further elaborate it), but this will certainly require another visit to America. ’78 We know how we should treat Weber’s announcement: for the journey was not to America, but first to China, then to India, then back to ancient Israel — and it was supposed to go further into the world of Islam, and of early Christianity. But it was supposed eventually to return to the Occident, for it was here that through a particular ‘concatenation of circumstances’ there had arisen ‘universal historical problems’ and cultural phenomena that - would we still so readily conceive of this? - ‘were developing in a direction of universal significance and validity’. But do we have to pretend that we are more stupid than we are? As Weber wrote his ‘Anticritical Last Word’ he was already embarking on the ‘sketches’ for WEWR. He was headed instead in another, much more productive direction: how much clearer could the ‘development of Occidental culture’ be grasped ex Oriente lux, in particular if one purposively emphasized in the Asiatic studies what ‘had stood and did stand in contrast to Occidental cultural development’.79 Within a few years, with a barely imaginable intellectual energy, starting in 1910 or 1911, he was to indisputably deepen and extend those ‘sections’ of his work which related to ‘Lebensjuhrung’. The Archiv could scarcely contain the ‘sketches’ that began to pile up. There had been doubt even in 1905 whether the works produced in the course of this ‘programme’ could be further presented and discussed in ‘thisjournal’. They were. Only: ‘Instead of following up with an immediate continuation in terms of the above programme, I have . . . determined, first, to write down some comparative studies of the general historical relationship (universal¬ geschichtlichen Zusammenhang) of religion and society. ’80 The passages

42

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

that I here deliberately omitted (. . .) have been ruminated upon by generations of Weber scholars. Nothing has come of it. We do not need this bridging piece with its tortuous ‘reasons’. For is it at all imaginable that he begins the WEWR sketches, then publishes them ‘to correct the isolation of this study [the PE essays]’ and place the theme of these essays ‘in relation to the totality of cultural develop¬ ment’, with a ‘central’ interest other than that documented as ‘central’ when initiating this work: the ‘development of Menschentum'? How far the ‘diversion via the Orient must have forced Weber to return to the Occident is clearly shown by a further passage from the reply to Rachfahl. Referring to particular ‘useful’ and ‘necessary’ comparative studies of a few countries influenced by ascetic Protestantism, he explains: ‘the really pressing question is, at least for me, elsewhere. Initially, of course, in the differentiation —(this must be pursued in detail in much greater depth) — of the effects of Calvinist, Baptist and Pietist ethics on LebenstiV,81 How much more productive must have been the pursuit of the ‘differentiation of the effects’ of oriental religious ethics on Lebenstih As Weberin October 1915 began with the publication of the ‘Sketches on the sociology of religion’ in the Archiv, the first sentence of the ‘Introduction’ relates itself directly to the older studies without the slightest break, moreover without a shadow of a suggestion that an interest is at work that goes beyond such a work of‘differentiation’. Now he would be able to ‘differen¬ tiate’even further: for the Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Islamic religious ethics, plus that of thejewish religion, were to be at his disposal. The ‘world religions’ were understood as ‘systems for the regulation of life’ in exactly the same way as in the older studies on the ascetic Protestant ‘ethics’. ‘In relation to Christianity, reference will be made to the earlier essays which have appeared in the Archiv, and acquaintance with these must be assumed.’ Naturally-for there he had explicated his cognitive interest in these ‘systems for the regulation of life’ in a manner that had become famous, and it is not evident that this interest had altered. Much more material has been worked through for the purpose of‘differentiation’, but the interest in the practical effects of religious ‘systems for the regulation of life’ remained the same.82 After this lengthy diversion the road should lead back to the Occident. Its problems were constantly in Weber’s mind. He had not yet in 1910 gazed ‘differentially’ beyond the limits of the Occident.

43

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

The ‘programme’ was at this time geographically identical with that of 1905. Alongside the above-cited forms of Protestant ethic whose differential effect of Lebenstil were to be pursued in greater depth, the most urgent task of further study was held to be ‘a thorough investiga¬ tion of the elements of similar developments in the Middle Ages and in ancient Christianity’; and so again we find ourselves once more referred to the ‘programme’ whose yield for the ‘development of Menschentum’ was to be examined. We assume here knowledge of the three sentences of the ‘programme’83 and will only cite completely from the commentary relating to them which is to be found at the close of the reply to Rachfahl,84 which provides us with clues (from 1910) on Weber’sown perspective on what he had done on the essays on the Protestant Ethic, and what remained to be done; but which also indicate, taking up the concept of his ‘central’ interest, why he had launched into this monstrous investigation, and also wishes to take it even further. Here it is stated: The great process of development which lies between the still extremely labile circumstances of capitalist development in the late Middle Ages and the mechanisation of technology so decisive for contemporary capitalism is completed for the latter through the creation of specific and important objective-political and objectiveeconomic preconditions,

above

all

through

the

creation

and

preparation of the rationalist and anti-traditional ‘spirit’ and the entire Menschentum which took this up in practice: the principal evidence for this is in the history of modern science with, on the one hand, the practical relation to the economy which it developed in early modern times and, on the other, the history of modern Lebensfiihrung in its practical significance for the same. My essays dealt with the last components [i. e. the history of modern Lebensfiihrung] and this will be dealt with further. Weber’s ‘programme’ therefore relates to nothing but the further elements entering into the development of Lebensjuhrung in a manner exactly the same as the study that had already been completed - the ‘purely historical presentation’ — had exclusively done. Let us summarize: what was Weber’s ‘central’ interest in his most famous studies? Nothing less than the requisite comprehension of the genesis of modern man - no! Menschentum - by way of a historical-

44

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

differential investigation! For the ‘cultural sciences’ were constantly and exclusively concerned with ‘qualitative’ and ‘value’ problems, and Menschentum was that word in which the German language had, since the mid-nineteenth century, chosen to express ‘qualitative’ interest in the history of Humanity (Menschentum).85 Weber promised two

‘histories’,

which would provide the

‘principal evidence’ for the development of a Menschentum that had ‘taken into itself the rationalist and anti-traditional spirit: a ‘history of modern science’ on the one hand, and on the other the ‘history of modern Lebensßihrung’,86 In his essays, he was only concerned with the latter components-the history of Lebensfiihrung — and this would be discussed further. He had investigated only one factor indicative of the Lebensfiihrung of modern Berufs- und Wirtschafismenschen with respect to method and regulation in these essays: the religious drives of‘ascetic Protestantism’. That there were of course numerous other motivating factors related to ‘rationalization’ and Methodisierung in the Lebensfiihrung of modern men was known to him, and he sought repeatedly to remind the reader of this with reference to his article on sects. Here he was not concerned with religious ‘substance’ but rather with the influential role played by different forms of religious ‘association’ - ‘church’ or ‘sects’ - on Lebensfiihrung. In the ‘research programme’ he had stressed that one of the tasks for further investiga¬ tion, ‘only . . . touched upon in the foregoing sketch’ would be to show the ‘significance of ascetic rationalism’ ‘for the content of practical social ethics, thus for the types of organization and the functions ofsocial groups from the conventicle to the State’. This is an anticipation of Weber’s sociology of association and socialization, the ‘institutions’ and ‘associations’ that marked in such different ways the ‘conduct’ oflife.87 If his ‘central’ interest was the specificity of modern Menschentum, then Lebensfiihrung became the ‘material’, the object of investigation. The respective domains of the different sciences are certainly demarcated by ‘problems’, but in any particular ‘area’ ‘material’ must be presented and worked through. The ‘material’ or ‘theme’ of Weber’s sociology is to be found not in ‘interests’, or in ‘ideas’, or in ‘images of the world’, or above all in ‘action’: its sole object is Lebens¬ führung. Upon this, where men reveal their particular human qualities (Menschentum),

everything turns.

In Protestant Ethic, Weber had

investigated one characteristic factor, a ‘plastic element’ of modern

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question

45

Lebensfahrung: ascetic Protestantism in its effects on the idea of vocation. Not one sentence of these two essays justify the assumption that he was concerned here with a contribution to the decoding of the ‘universal-historical process of rationalization’. Weber never tired of emphasizing that ‘rationalization’ could mean anything, and that what interested him was closer definition of the ambiguous concept. In the famous sentence from the ‘Introduction’ to WEWR,88 cited repeatedly in support of the claim that Max Weber’s central interest was that of the Western ‘process of rationalization’, he in fact also made clear what ‘kind’ of ‘rationalization processes’ would be ‘of interest to him in the following’, what the ‘contribution’ of WEWR was supposed to be: solely to the ‘rationalization of Lebensfahrung — and in this case principally its ‘practical’ form relating to the economic sphere. At the close of his debates with critics in 1910, it was of great importance to him to emphasize this once more. ‘The development of the practical-rational method of Lebensfahrung’ — this was what the essays were about - is ‘obviously fundamentally distinct from the development of scientific rationalism’ and ‘cannot simply be derived from it’.89 The ‘practical involvement of the natural sciences in the service of the economy not on an occasional basis, but quite methodi¬ cally’ is ‘one of the keystones of the development of Lebensmethodik in general’ which has, together with others, contributed decisively to the ‘change’ in Lebensfahrung that he had described in a fragmentary fashion. His theme is thus not some process of rationalization ‘in general’, but rather that of the process of rationalization of‘practical Lebensfahrung’. Just as Weber’s ‘central’ cognitive interest does not relate to the oftinvoked rationalization process ‘in general’, neither does it involve the rationalization process of practical Lebensfahrung as such. We need avoid the issue no longer: his cognitive interest was directed to the ‘specialist restriction’ consequent upon the rationalization of Lebens¬ fahrung,

the

‘cool

inhuman

“formality”

(Sachlichkeit)’,

the

‘mechanised petrification’, the capitalism which rested no longer on a religious, but triumphantly upon a mechanical foundation - with an implicit ‘consequence’ for the men living in the ‘cage’ of modernity. What would become of them: ‘specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart’? Weber constantly sought to conceal the traces of his ‘central’ interest: ‘But this brings us to world ofjudgements of value and of faith, with which this purely historical discussion need not be

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

46

burdened. ’ But if the problems of the ‘cultural sciences’ are inevitably posed in terms of their ‘qualitative’ ‘cultural meanings’, what can ‘cultural meanings’ involve but inquiry into the consequences for men, for Menschentum. In English, the sciences concerned with life and the creation of men and women are still called the ‘humanities’. Economics was dubbed a ‘science of man’ by a young Weber who, in his later judgement, had sometimes been ‘immature’;90 how much more does this apply to the ‘cultural science’, ‘social economics’ and ‘verstehende sociology’ of the mature Weber? But we can pose our¬ selves the question: what should the ‘central’ interest of a ‘science of man’ be, if not the fate of man as man?91

The ‘Anthropological—Characterological’ Principle and the Limits of Empirical Verification We have seen that Weber’s ‘central’ interest is in the development of Menschentum and is - if this might be introduced as a preliminary hypothesis in the characterization of his verstehende sociology — directed towards anthropological knowledge: ‘sociology’ as a science of the ‘variety of social relations’, a particular ‘academic’ (i.e. necessarily specialized)

path

to

this

central

cognitive

objective.

What -

‘spiritually’, ‘qualitatively’ - will Man become? This is the stake in PE and there is no reason to believe that it was any different in WEWR. These investigations,

which reached deep into the history of

Menschentum, offered a more differentiated prospect of the manner in which Menschentum could develop under the influence of specific ‘formative and substantive’ factors,92 religious in this instance. The WEWR studies had laid very great emphasis ‘on those features peculiar to individual religions in contrast to others and at the same time important to our study’.93 ‘Our context’ was that ‘rationalization of Lebensfiihrung’ that, decisive for the West, had on this basis become ‘universal’ and, above all, without which that ‘most fateful force in our modern life’ - modern capitalism - could not have developed.94 In the context of a study of the historical conditions of possibility of ‘modern capitalism’, and for Weber this was at the same time a study of the Lebensfiihrung of Berufs- und Fachmenschen - the elective relation is one between a particular sort of men and a particular form of social order93-Weber, six years after the first publication of writings on this

Max Weber’s 'Central Question’

47

theme, registered in passing the direction in which his ‘central’ interest lay. Common sense - with which we are, according to the Wissenschaftslehre, so richly endowed, enabling us to understand human action and men alike (‘for behind every action there is the human being’) - tells us that the ‘central’ interest revealed in 1910 was not the outcome of a passing fancy, or of a subjective brainwave in the course of his research, or of some elegant hypothetical construction. Is Weber’s work perhaps concerned with the ‘development of Menschentum’ and ‘anthropological—characterological’ knowledge in any way other than ‘centrally’? Since the early studies by Landshut and Löwith, none of the more penetrating interpreters has overlooked the fact that his question took its ultimate point of departure from the problematic of modern Menschentum and was oriented to an ‘idea of Menschentum’. But this motivation has been credited - since Dieter Henrich’s work of 1952 this theme has not been seriously pursued - to the account of Weber the ‘philosopher’. Henrich himself used for his interpretation only the Wissenschafislehre\ not one glance was taken at the genuinely sociological work, but this was sufficient none the less for him to recognize Weber’s anthropology. Henrich’s questions were deter¬ mined by Weber’s idea of what a ‘personality’ in the modern world must be, and not the intentions realized in his work.96 Whoever like Johannes Winckelmann has taken pains with the ‘whole’ Weber was constantly endeavouring to make a clear distinction between the ‘practical science’, the material investigation, and the ‘philosophical metatheory’.97 Perhaps the ‘secret’ or magic of Weber’s work is to be found in its ‘metatheoretical’ or ‘prescientific’ origins, that here the problem of the relation of ‘person’ and ‘work’ is hidden - that a ‘final secret’ of the ‘creative spirit’ wishes to remain concealed. If Weber’s ‘central’ interest in Menschentum ‘ultimately’ - and that means, the point at which explanation stops - turns on such murmurings, then contemporary sociology would do right (as it is in fact doing) to take no account of this Weber, employing instead his ‘usable’, inviting and empirically secured results to lend prestige and credibility to ‘developments on the basis of,

‘references to’,

‘explications’,

‘reconstructions’, and so on. A Max Weber from whom a truly living body of research could begin therefore does not exist: the ‘philo¬ sophical’ Weber, the ‘person’, the object of Zeitgeist research in the spirit of enlightenment and rectification of the past, the ‘work’ not

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

48 entirely

intelligible

either

as

sociology

or

as

non-sociology,

presenting a vault of expired concepts in which we can freely rummage to find antiquities with which the icy functionalist splendours of today can be smartened up. No appeal to pure common sense is sufficient to demonstrate convincingly what Weber’s concern was, and so here no such appeal should be made! If Reinhard Bendix has already delivered a Portrait of the work, it should now be time to write its biography: its derivation from existing problems, the ‘situation’ out of which it grew, its specificity’ in its time, the threads that hold it together, its aspirations and achievements, naturally its ‘becoming’ as well, the inheritance entering into the work, its development, maturity, its so difficult to recognize (non-?) completion, and finally its unity.98 Here I set down in a preliminary fashion, based more on a process of association than on a systematic view, what has to be done if such a proposal is taken up: 1

To begin with, a careful reading of the whole work, in which attention is to be directed to the manner in which, if at all, the assumed ‘central’ interest finds expression. In this, nothing can be left out, and above all else presumptions about texts that are probably more important, productive, or unproductive must be left on one side. To approach Weber’s work with ‘an open mind’, the fundamental recommendation of the Wissenschaftslehre, is all that we should bring to it from outside.

2

This is a task that can be isolated-Weber’s endless specifications of ‘value relevance’, ‘problematic’ and ‘cognitive tendency’ must be filtered out of the writings.

3

Should the work really prove to be constituted by an anthropo¬ logical interest, then the essays in WL must be studied with particular intensity so that it might be established whether- if they have any ‘methodological’ meaning at all - they hide methodo¬ logical signs pointing to the realization of this ‘central’ interest.

4

After such repeated readings of WL in abstraction from the substantive studies, it must be examined with a view to estab¬ lishing the manner in which it can be made to agree with such a value-laden

question

as

that

concerning

the

quality

of

Menschentum. 5

None of these tasks can be carried out without - and this is barely

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

49

separable- constantly keeping in view the life history of the author in relation to the development of the work so far as we have it before us today. In particular, Weber’s development from a student of law into an economist has pivotal significance for the anthropological problematic. It is necessary to investigate, in the context of the contemporary condition of the sciences, how the newly appointed professor of economics at Freiburg could claim to have heard his first lectures on economics (delivered by himself), how he could deal impartially with the established problems of the discipline, the distinction between the German ‘Historical School’ and the ‘classics’ (a distinction which itself basically relates to anthropology), an impartiality with which he then made free use in the analyses of Roscher, Knies, Menger and also the ‘revered master’, Schmollen99 This ‘openness’ with respect to the disciplinary boundaries opened up for him the further route to a ‘cultural science’ and, finally, the broadening to a ‘verstehende sociology’, throughout stages and transitions of broadening and refinement in which the ‘problematic’ remained the same; but this process is not to be divided into ‘early’ and ‘late’ works by means of some central ‘insights’. Only when we have through such careful filling-in gained a precise image of Weber’s intentions and achievements is there sense in dealing with the so-popular history of the ‘reception’ and effects of the work, including the more weighty attempts to interpret it that began with Walther, Landshut and Löwith, as a means of testing our conclusions. In itself, the history of the reception of a body of writing that is intrinsically not understood (and this is the point of departure that we share with the whole of research on Weber) can hardly be deemed productive or very illuminating, assuming as it does the form of the game of Chinese whispers. Only when we know—to the extent that science as such permits such ‘knowledge’, subject as always to revision - what Weber was concerned with, what he ‘said’, does it become of interest to ask how particular deviations and displacements arose in the transmission of the works through the years. How was it that Landshut and Löwith could come close, as no-one after¬ wards, to the core of Weber’s question, but ‘ultimately’ fail to realize it: holding fast to his ‘image of man’ where Weber was concerned to secure the possibility of scientific endeavour with

50

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

respect to a (‘qualitative’) anthropology; separating the theme of rationalization

from

its

academically

uniquely

meaningful

concentration on the problem of ‘rational Lebensfiihrung'; and, above all, their overlooking at decisive points - this is indeed related to Weber’s ‘image of man’ - Weber’s symmetrical proximity to and distance from Marx (here Landshut less than Löwith): and this is in the entire work, right from its initiation, the defining question of the potentiality for ethical interpretation of the world, which ‘sites’ us by virtue of its ‘thus-and-not-otherwiseness’. Weber saw the world in the same way as Marx. But he bore ‘in his heart’ something other than Marx, and consequently he saw beyond Marx. Here, in the way in which his vision followed the course of the world, his path diverged from that of Marx. 7

If Weber was a genuine ‘classical thinker’, then we must face up to the task not only of placing him in the history of the discipline ‘social science’ but of viewing him in the historical context in which he belongs: (a) in a specific history of the ‘German intellect’; (b) in the wide-ranging history of the debate with the bourgeois world, of the same status as, and as direct descendant of, Marx and Nietzsche; finally (c) in the even more extensive history of modern thought on man and the world - not, I think, in the tradition of ‘bourgeois’ thought, but rather in that perspective so irritating to modernity of the once ‘fully developed’ mankind, which defines political

thought

from

Machiavelli

through

Rousseau

and

Tocqueville to Weber.100 That is a preliminary hypothesis, which I do not wish to discuss any further here, but which is to be more thoroughly examined elsewhere.101 In addition to the history proposed under 7b - but which is never¬ theless of value for a possible continuation of Löwith’s From Hegel to Nietzsche -the history of the impact of Weber during the last 30 years (from Parsons to Habermas) must be ascertained. Everything can become a mirror of its time; we are not here dealing with a temporal Medusa. Having made this diversion into the situation and tasks of research into Weber, let us return to our original question concerning Max Weber’s ‘problematic’ and try to render less isolated the conclusions at which we arrived. Do our ‘gains’ tell us anything? Is the registration of his ‘central’ interest that Weber provides in his ‘Anticritical Last

Max Weber’s 'Central Question’

51

Word’ intended only as a solitary clarification, an inattentive veering into a discussion reluctantly entered into? Only for the sake of ‘uninvolved friends’ had he taken upon himself the ‘sterile and burdensome business’ of dealing with Rachfahl’s ‘pettifoggery’.102 The simplest way of disposing of the possibly erratic character of our results so far is by a partial anticipation of the task outlined above under point 2: we must see whether Weber did not express elsewhere the objectives and ‘interests’ that preoccupied him. Where is there promise of such an insight? Weber conducted or promoted investiga¬ tions that, in the modern sense, are ‘projects’, where it was necessary to articulate his interests for others, notably his colleagues and financial supporters, and formulate these interests in proposals. In the case of PE, we took up a ‘controversial’ text, which impelled Weber to the clarification of misunderstandings, and it is possible that the ‘empirical’ texts could prove fruitful for our problem.

When

proposing, or at least seeking financial support for a project that involves costly empirical research, we have to - or at least we ought to - name both horse and rider. While sufficiently identified by a scepticism with respect to conventional empirical research, I none the less bow to the implacable regard called for by any involvement with Weber, and express myself, in relation to my understanding of Weber’s famed ‘postulate’, as briefly as possible. Is not the fundament of all Weberian science the strict separation of fact and value? What then is Menschentum? Upon what dubious foundation is the concealed ‘central’ interest of PE II? Max Weber said himself of his renowned ‘postulate’ that it concerned an ‘extremely trivial demand’ and quite evidently saw that he had thereby given rise to ‘quite sterile argument’ and ‘endless misunderstanding’. Argument and much misunderstanding had been created by the way in which he had treated his ‘basic principle’, embodied in articles of association and with his constant complaint of presumed affronts. He repeatedly transgressed his own ‘dictate’. For this ‘dictate’ related only - and could only relate in this way, as long as science has any kind of meaning - to the ‘evaluation of a phenomenon susceptible to influence by our action [ W. H. ] as objectionable or worthy of approval’. So it runs in the first sentence of the essay on the meaning of value freedom.103 The postulate was supposed to relate exclusively to ‘practical’ evaluations, which could also of course be ‘veiled’ in ‘theories’ - in assumptions relating to ‘action’, etc. (the perfect

52

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

example of ‘productivity’!). There was thus nothing in Weber’s ‘postulate’ that prevented him from talking of ‘elevated thoughts’, ‘inspired constructions’, ‘crude and dark thoughts’, ‘pure and deep convictions’, ‘first rate works of art’, etc., etc., a tendency that was mocked by Leo Strauss and many others.104 Weber’s crusade, so often in the style of Don Quixote, was forfreedom as a practical value, free of a tutelage exercized by the presumptions of science.1 ‘,r’ The entirety of this requirement is contained in a good German word that he, from the beginnings to the very last testament, always considered when introducing it: Unbefangenheit, openness or lack of prejudice.106 His struggle over the so-called ‘freedom of evaluative judgement’ (Werturteilsfreiheit) is no more or less a struggle for impartiality, that is, intellectual freedom in an era in which (‘bourgeois’) science had laid its prejudice like mildew upon imagination - especially in the belief in a ‘progress’ that it alone could orchestrate. Weber’s struggle for freedom from the prejudice of‘scientific’ tutelage is his tiltyard, his Rhodos in the struggle for human freedom, a struggle that places him as a successor to Marx’s struggle against ‘bourgeois science’ and Nietzsche’s struggle for ‘free spirits’. Everything not comprehended by the ‘central’ point of departure of Weber’s ‘postulate’ leads in fact into ‘sterile argument’ and ‘endless misunderstandings’, and into complete distortion and inversion of his ‘central’ interest-as we will at the end of this essay have to demonstrate, in a case of mistaken translation, explicable only by the effects of extreme ‘prejudice’, and which has had possibly irreparable consequences for his reception in the English-speaking world. After this deviation, back to PE. Is the question of the fate of man and his qualitative development posed elsewhere in his work, possibly explicitly? Let us consider in particular the empirical studies. This quest is not without reward, and in the following pages I should like to outline more exactly the points that, in my opinion, not only permit, but actually demand, a reading of Weber’s work from a ‘central’ perspective given by one problematic, in whose terms the work can be made intelligible. Here we are seeking to provide an initial basis for this. If we might characterize his ‘qualitative’ question on the fate of man (‘development

of

Menschentum')

as

the

‘anthropological-

characterological principle’ of his work, then we discover the first clear expression of this in his Freiburg Address of 1895. Weber is

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

53

concerned with the standard of value for all economic reflection. Is there such a thing as a specifically ‘economic’ standard for economic policy? He argues against this idea. In turn, economics has laid emphasis as a standard of value upon now the technical-economic problem of production, now distribution, i.e. the question of‘social justice’.

According to the common view,

the sole intelligible

objective of economic policy is the improvement of the ‘balance of pleasure’ of human existence. This is bluntly rejected by Weber. The question which leads us beyond the grave of our own generation is not ‘how will human beings feel in the future’, but ‘how will they be’. In fact this question underlies all work in political economy. We do not want to train up feelings of well¬ being in people, but rather those characteristics we think constitute the greatness and nobility of our human nature.107 Weber did later distance himself from this ‘immature form’ of his quite sturdy and robust mode of expression, but recalled the state¬ ment itself in 1913 as proof of the continuity of his views.108 The decisive standard of value for economic science should not be the production and distribution of goods: Yet again and again a different perception, in part unconscious, but nevertheless all dominating [W. H.] has raised itself above both these standards of value: the perception that a human science, and that is what political economy is, investigates above all else the quality of the human beings who are brought up in those economic and social conditions of existence. The highest and ultimate terrestrial ideals are transitory and mutable. We cannot presume to impose them on the future. But we can hope that the future recognises in our nature the nature of its own ancestors. We wish to be the forefathers of races of the future with our labour and our mode of existence [W. H.]109 Again we have to ask that Weber’s contemporary and youthful language be not allowed to put us off: he substantially formulates here the ancient idea of all political science — what are the consequences of man’s conditions of existence for his ‘quality’, or expressed more archaically, for his ‘virtue’.110

54

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

First as an economist, then as a sociologist, Weber was a pioneer of consistently ‘empirical’ research. But what were his intentions? We are in a position to demonstrate the nature ofhis ‘central ’ interest in the cases of three surveys with whose planning he was entrusted.111 In 1908, during those years that are not in my opinion so ‘dark’, Weber wrote his ‘Methodological introduction for the survey of the Society for Social Policy concerning selection and adaptation (choice and course of occupation) for the workers of major industrial enter¬ prises’. It begins with the sentence: The present survey seeks to establish: on the one hand, what effect the whole of large industry has on the personal individuality, occupational destination and extra-occupational Lebensstil of its workforce, what physical and mental qualities it develops in them, and how this is expressed in the complete Lebensführung of its workers.112 His interest was directed towards the consequences of the modern form of realization of capital for the ‘internal articulation of the workforce’. What kind of changes in occupational destination and in ‘vocational and “human” qualities’ had the modern form of capital realization called forth? The collaborators on the survey were urged to concern themselves specifically with the investigation of the general ‘spiritual’ qualities and the ‘characterological individuality’ of the worker. He examined in detail the conceptual problems posed by the contemporary condition of psychology in translating exactly this research interest. The ‘qualitative content’ of the ‘old concepts’ (e.g. ‘character’ and ‘moral’ state) is ‘lost’ in the new quantitative concepts of‘intensity’ and ‘duration’ of‘emotional state’.113 (An analysis of this fascinating attempt on the part of our author to put old wine into new bottles without converting quality into quantity - the fate or, according

to

taste,

the magnificent

‘achievement’

of modern

‘empirical social science’ - must here be left to one side.) In this way an approach will be gradually made towards answering the question: ‘what sort of people are produced by modern large-scale industry, by virtue of its inherent characteristics, and what fate does it prepare for them

vocationally

and

also

extra-vocationallyf14

The

‘cultural

problems’ that are ultimately brought about are of ‘monumental importance’.11 s The replacement of private-capitalist forms of selection in the workforce of large industry by ‘any form of collectivist-

Max Weber’s 'Central Question

55

economic “solidarity” would radically change the spirit that lives in this monstrous cage’ and ‘no one can ever surmise with what consequences’.116 But such considerations are not of relevance to this study. He closes his ‘Introduction’ with the assurance that the survey might content itself forjustification with the fact that ‘the “apparatus” as it is today, with the effects it has and which will here be examined, has changed the spiritual countenance of mankind practically beyond all recognition, and will continue to do so.’117 The consequences for ‘mankind’ were also in Weber’s view central to the survey on the ‘sociology of the press’ planned by the German Sociological Society. The detailed (and, as far as I am aware, unpublished) ‘Preliminary Report’ is a fascinating sketch of his thoughts on how an empirical investigation should be conceived and carried out.118 In this research project, it is not the ‘relations of power’ within the press that interest Weber.119 The aim of the project is set down with exemplary clarity at the head of the ‘description of the project’, as would be said today. Close analysis of the ‘Vorbericht’ cannot be made here; the ‘ultimate objectives of the investigation’ will have to suffice. After some brief preliminaries, he states: A survey of the press must in the last analysis be directed towards the great cultural problems of the present: 1

The mode of constitution of the apparatus of psychic means of

suggestion by which modern society continually seeks to assimilate and adapt individuals - the press as one of the means of moulding the subjective individuality of modern men\ 2

The conditions

created by public opinion,

whose most

important determination today is the newspaper, for the develop¬ ment, maintenance, undermining of artistic, scientific, ethical, religious, political, social and economic cultural components: the press as a component of the objective individuality of modern culture. Weber scatters from the plenitude of his scientific imagination a cascade of different perspectives, and then concludes: Such questions can be easily multiplied and only in relation to these and similar questions would the actual major cultural questions concerning the significance of the press - with its ubiquitous, standardizing, matter-of-fact and at the same time constantly emotionally coloured influence on the state of feelings and

56

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

accustomed ways of thinking of modern men, on political, literary and artistic activity, on the constitution and displacement of mass judgements and mass beliefs — be open to debate. It must again be noted, what the aforegoing report should have made plain: that before one begins with such questions, on which it is very easy to write an entertaining Feuilleton, on which it is unbelievably difficult to compose a scientific presentation - a broad foundation of experience and of analyses has to be created. One could wish that Weber’s ‘Vorbericht’ on the survey of the press be made a set text for every introduction to the methods of empirical study. In his contribution to discussion at the first conference of the German Sociological Society, held in Frankfurt in 1910, Weber went into detail on the planned survey. This contribution opens up wider dimensions of Weber’s ‘central’ interests. At the beginning he states as usual the importance of the ‘problematic’. ‘Because, gentlemen, the decisive scientific labour is precisely the formulations of the actual problematics within which we are to work. ’ A sociology of the press is a ‘monstrous theme’. Jacob Burckhardt stood in awe of the public nature of Greek life, ‘which conditioned the whole existence of the Athenian citizen down to its most intimate aspects’. How far Weber viewed every ‘sociological’ question ‘centrally’ in terms of the perspective from the ‘regulation of life’ and ‘internal Lebensführung' and not at all ‘substantially’, but only indirectly in terms of that of social ‘relations of power’ — is made plain by his mentioning the opinion of‘a socialist publicist like Anton Menger’: in the state of the future, according to Menger, the press would perform exactly the function of ‘assuming the ancient role of the censor, dealing in its forum with matters that one cannot leave to the Courts’. It was the way in which the ancient institution of the censor moulded, publicly supervized, cautioned and disciplined the soul of the citizen that so fascinated Machiavelli, Rousseau and even Tocqueville. Weber with¬ holds his ‘opinion’ from us, but the extent to which he conceives the fundamental problem of a sociology oj the press in this perspective, one which in its (totalitarian) tradition is so hard for us to conceive, is made clear by his cryptic comment on Anton Menger’s view: ‘It is worth

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

57

establishing: what are the ultimate Weltanschauungen which underlie the one tendency (Burckhardt) and the other (Menger). Only this, certainly, and not an opinion of the matter, should be our task.’120 One of the tasks of the interpretation of Weber would be to work out the actual nature of his inner ‘opinion’, despite his cryptic silence, on the ‘liberal’ view of Burckhardt and the socialist (we would rather say fraternal-civic) view of Menger. I have no doubt that in principle Weber - while not necessarily applying it to himself - inclined to Menger’s view! Weber’s non-bourgeois, at any rate by no means latebourgeois, but explicitly classical-political image of man must be traced here, in the innumerable hints of his inner sympathy hidden in the whole of his work, in ES and WEWR in particular. Here also we can find a way to his conception of ‘democracy’, which the present generation finds so hard to understand. The formulation of‘represen¬ tative’ and ‘plebiscitary’ democracy has only to do with externalities. Questions of the form of the state were known to be of no interest to him, his problem was with their internal meaning as ‘moulding’, ‘forming’ and ‘substantive’ elements - admittedly all too often hidden under bluster on the ‘power interests of the nation’ and so on. In the discussions about a planned sociology of associations - like¬ wise a ‘monstrous theme’121 - he also comes directly to the central point. And in fact the theme of association - that is, in contrast to all forms of ‘institution’ - provides us, in my opinion, with the key to Weber’s deepest and most profound ‘position’ on the ‘cage’ (Gehäuse) of the modern world. But I must put that to one side here and briefly outline what was, in this case, the stake for Weber. Always the same. ‘What is the inner effect of belonging to a particular form of association? On personality as such?’122 Every culture finds its ‘basis in the interposition of inhibitions between sensation and abreaction’. Again he leaves to one side an evaluation of the culture of German bowling clubs and choirs, ‘for we are not here concerned with the question of evaluation.’123 A few lines before this,

however,

Professor Weber allowed a glimpse into his most private inner life in suggesting that, in the case of German choral societies, there are in his opinion considerable effects in addition in areas which one would not at first suspect, for example in the political domain. A person who is used daily to let powerful feelings flow out of his breast through his

58

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

larynx without relation to his action - without therefore adequate abreaction of these powerful expressed feelings in powerful actions - that is a person who, in short, very easily becomes a ‘good citizen’, in the passive sense of the word. No wonder that monarchs have such a love of these sorts of performances. ‘Where they sing you can peacefully settle down’. Mighty and strong passions, and great actions, are missing there.124 This and many other comparable ‘evaluations’ that allow us an insight into Weber’s ‘image of man’ must be gathered together so that an idea of the ‘internal’ system, the genuinely ‘central’ interest ofhis sociology of domination can be formed. But this is not only true of this particular ‘partial sociology’; what is here apparent is also true for all the so-called ‘partial sociologies’, and in the same way for his ‘ verstehende sociology’ as a whole. But it is not Max Weber’s ‘image of man’ - ultimately ‘personal’, binding upon no one, quite distant from most of us - that is decisive for an insight into the problematic that constitutes his sociology, but rather the attempt to discipline this line of questioning according to specific methodological and academic standards. This is the sole ‘central’ problem in his so-called

Wissenschafislehre. The pieces

assembled in WL belong almost exclusively in the context of Weber’s sociology of Lebensfiihrung — the rejection of claims of Lebensfilhrung on the part of science, this ‘specifically atheistic’ {gottjfemden) power, hostile to all piety. However, these essays contain, principally in the debates with Knies, Eduard Meyer, Stammler and Ostwald, the author’s heroic endeavour to ‘save the problem’ - to express it in an Aristotelian manner - of the old ‘moral sciences’, of the old ‘practical philosophy’ for a modern ‘empirical’ social science. This is the core of Weber’s so-called

Wissenschafislehre.

Again, however,

it is not

possible to redeem this claim in this context. Perhaps the reader might in any case gradually lose patience with so much heresy. But a final proof of this contended ‘central’ interest of Weberian sociology will not be spared this reader. We could still object that all of the proofs for Weber’s ‘central’ interest that have been presented so far are to be found in obscure passages; but this can hardly be said of the most important exposition of all (in our opinion) of the ‘anthropological principle’. It is to be found in the report composed for the Verein fur Sozialpolitik in 1913,

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

59

and only printed as a manuscript, in which form it served as evidence in the debate on valuejudgements.125 It was published by Weber in the journal Logos in 1917 under the title ‘The meaning of “valuefreedom” in the sociological and economic sciences’, and belongs today to the central works of the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre.126 Weber refers to the essay on objectivity, in particular to the analysis ofthe problem of‘value relevance’ and ‘culture’ developed there-and that means Va/we-interests’, which ‘also indicate the path to be taken by purely empirical scientific work’. ‘Struggle’ is not to be excluded from all cultural life. ‘Peace’ signifies the ‘shifting of the forms of struggle or finally the chances of selection, nothing else. ’ If and when ‘such displacements stand the test of an ethical or some other evaluative judgement’ - on this nothing can be stated generally. Only one thing results without any doubt: Without exception every order of social relations (however constituted) is, if one wishes to evaluate it, ultimately to be examined in terms of the human type (menschlichen Typus) to which it, by way of external or internal (motivational) selection, provides the optimal chances ofbecoming the dominant type. For without it empirical research is neither really exhaustive, nor is there the necessary real foundation for such an evaluation, be it consciously subjective, or an evaluation claiming objective validity.127 Here Weber, in the memorandum of 1913, refers to the Inaugural Address, delivered almost two decades previously, in remarking that in an ‘often certainly immature form’ he ‘had wished to express this’ i. e. the demand that one had ultimately to assess every order of social relations in terms of its anthropological consequences - ‘in my inaugural academic address’.128 We shall break off our discussion at this point. I regard this passage from Weber’s last essay devoted in a restricted sense to epistemo¬ logical questions - Vol. 7 of Logos appeared in the years 1917-18- as the most important indication given to us by Weber for the under¬ standing of his work. It would do no harm to write the two sentences down on a small piece of paper and then, whenever Weber referred to ‘institution’, ‘grouping’, ‘enterprise’, ‘association’, ‘sect’, ‘acquisitive activity’, ‘exchange’, ‘market’ and so forth, to take out this piece of paper and ask: what does this order, this type of social relationship

60

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

imply for the human type to which it sets limits or opens up chances? Naturally one has to write the sentences down correctly. The dissemination of these sentences in the English-speaking world demonstrates how little my comparison of the history of the reception of Weber’s work with the party-game ‘Chinese whispers’ missed the point. At a rough estimate, four out of every five readers of Max Weber will today only be able to read him in English translation. Quite probably the proportion is even higher. What would they have on their little pieces of paper should they unwarily follow my advice? Certainly that which many more than four out of every five readers would regard as the correct text: Obviously, absolutely nothing of a general character can be said as to whether such shifts can withstand examination according to an ethical or other value-judgement. Only one thing is indisputable: every type of social order, without exception, must, if one wishes to evaluate it, be examined with reference to the opportunities which it affords to certain types of persons to rise to positions of superiority through the operation of the various objective and subjective selective factors. For empirical investigation is not really exhaustive nor does there exist the necessary factual basis for an evaluation, regardless of whether it is consciously subjective or claims objective validity.129 It must be freely admitted that, with the current ‘niveaux’ and ‘standards’ according to which a text of Weber is ‘reconstructed’, the practice of transmuting the question: Which human type has the optimal chance of becoming dominant? into the (certainly easier to ‘operationalize’) question: Which types have the greater possibilities of entering leading positions? is to be recommended. What this sole available translation in the world language of sociology of those sentences written upon our little piece of paper has led to in countless Masters’ theses, seminar papers, textbooks, etc., hardly bears thinking about. No real damage. But innumerable young people would have been given the chance of wondering about an obscure sentence, reflecting on it and posing questions. How should they know what is withheld from them? But those are questions that reach beyond our theme. The object here was to seek the realization of Max Weber’s ‘problematic’. In Weber’s texts there are sentences which everyone knows and which

Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’

61

are cited again and again. Like the one stating that what is at issue is the saving of a ‘remnant of humanity’ from the ‘parcelization of the soul’.130 Or the one that states that all historical experience confirms that ‘one would not achieve the possible if the impossible were not constantly sought after in the world’.131 Such sentences have a value as powerful and beautiful prose, impressive evidence for the ‘person’ but saying nothing about the ‘work’ of Max Weber. We have tried to demonstrate that the central interest of the work was, in terms of academic and methodological discipline, directed to Menschentum. With this objective Weber aimed his cognitive objective (free of all extravagance) exactly at the same level at which, according to his Wissenschaftslehre, it was to be set. There is in Weber no discrepancy between ‘work’ and ‘person’. The work is the work of Max Weber, and he saw what was close to his heart. He was neither scientist nor positivist, if these concepts convey anything. For nothing connects the vigour ofhis scientific questioning with the fuss about ‘standards’, ‘permissibility’, etc., which has become the norm in the regimenta¬ tion of contemporary social science, the most recent mannerism of academic presumption and obscurity. Weber questioned in a quite unpositivistic fashion the view that ‘questions which we cannot answer, or cannot answer with any certainty, are therefore really “idle” questions’. More than this: ‘Empirical science would be in a bad way if those most important questions for which it had no answers had never been posed. ’132 This is to be found in the Wissenschaftslehre, and not in the collection of political writings. Weber did not only pose these ‘highest questions’, he also tried to respond to them. But that does not belong in the context of an attempt to make his Fragestellung visible.

2

Max Weber’s Theme: ‘Personality and Life Orders’

‘Principal insight: ultimately everything is ethical’. (Goethe, autobiographical outline, 1810) It might seem from the very first quite absurd to seek a theme running through Max Weber’s work - and this in the singular! How can work of such dimensions be determined by one theme? Nonetheless — or we might also say, precisely! Is it not the intimidating proportions of the work which, once confronted, force us to search for possible ‘unity’, the ‘red thread’ that could lead us through the labyrinth? Research on Weber has never been free of this compulsion. From the beginning it has addressed itself to the ‘real research intention’ (Landshut), the ‘fundamental motive for research’ (Löwith), the ‘central’ or even more emphatically, the‘life theme’ [Lebensthema] (Tenbruck).1 It has long been supposed that Weber’s work involved

more

than

exceptional scholarliness, that it was more than a treasure house for new and stimulating concepts.

This notion cannot easily be

dismissed, and hence the question of the innermost core of the work has never been allowed to rest in peace. As Tenbruck has suggested, Weber stood at a point in the development of modern society ‘at which for the first time the process of modernisation wThich defines modernity, and in which we are now all involved, first emerged in all its inevitability and totality’. Perhaps Weber really did pose the ‘decisive and lasting questions’ of his time, questions that still confront us today.2 If this is so, we must clearly identify these questions: as a great intellectual achievement, as a challenge to contemporary social science remaining only to be fully realized, as a standard for the status of the questions posed by the social sciences.

Max Weber’s Theme

63

In Search of the ‘Theme’ Some prefatory remarks are called for here. It is not only the protean nature ofWeber’s work that makes a search for a ‘theme’ problematic. Compared with other ‘classics’ of social philosophy Weber is chronologically close to us - deceptively close. He is nevertheless part of our world; in terms of his ‘genuine’ work (that after 1903) part of our century. Why is there a peculiar difficulty in understanding his work, a difficulty that with other authors can be overcome? Already we have here sources for confusion. Weber has been served up with great success by modern sociology as its classical author, its founding father. It is then quite understandable that a science which has become used to dealing with Weber in terms of its own prehistory, and which identifies its own thematic concerns in his works, resists the idea that these works might be read in terms other than those that it has established. Bendix’s Intellectual Portrait - with the work of Parsons the only secondary text that has had a systematic influence - identifies without any elaboration the question of social stratification as the central problem for Weber.3 This was certainly one of Weber’s concerns; but it was far more the concern of Bendix, for whose generation the social structures of Wilhelmine Germany and Weimar — considered in terms of the question of democracy — were quite understandably of primary interest. But this was not the central problem for Max Weber, since he did not consider the question of democracy to be ‘central’.4 The problems of understanding are more fundamental, however. Weber did not in his lifetime create a school around himself. Generally, this is only possible through the development of a method capable of wide application, or the posing of a question open to repeated verification. During Weber’s lifetime it was Schmoller who provided the model for such an academic pope. Even if Weber had been able to enjoy a more lengthy period of academic engagement he would hardly have been suitable material for the formation of a school: he offered neither a method nor a question susceptible to easy replication. Apart from a few concepts and a few canonical teaching texts, little of his work has as a consequence been taken up by contemporary sociology; the demand for value freedom has become merely an inexhaustible source of misunderstanding and of use to the self-understanding of a social science not weighed down with

64

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

‘cultural problems’. On the intellectual plane, Weber and con¬ temporary sociology stand side-by-side and quite unrelated. No sociology that adopts as its core problem ‘society’, that seeks in its dominating tendency to be ‘sociology and nothing but sociology’ (an expression that is used by the influential author of this formula in open opposition to ‘historical

and existential’ sociology5) - such a

sociology cannot in any way be seen as a successor to Weber. The existential and culture-critical mood of crisis of Weber’s work is, to put it mildly, foreign to such a modern sociology, if it possesses any sensitivity to such moods at all; even if not dubious, it must at very least find such sentiments ominous.6 The ‘foundation’ out of which Weber’s work develops is one quite distant to a modern sociology. Sociology is the specific science, the scientific child of modern society, and for more than a century this has meant modern industrial society. Weber was no less familiar with this industrial society, with the living conditions of the workers of‘large industrial concerns’, than was Marx; and not only from the folios of the British Museum. The transformation of the old personalpatriarchal world of orders into the estateless,

individualistic,

impersonal mass society-however ‘empirical’ the perspective Weber gained of this as a social scientist of the time, he did none the less experience this shift from the point of view of an agrarian world, with its closeness to nature, its irrational traditionalism and at the same time its sober outlook on life. For Weber the peasant was the last free human being. Which sociologist today would have the patience to work out what Weber might have meant by that? How is it possible for contemporary sociology to recognize here, without distortion, Weber’s central motif? Alfred Weber knew his elder brother well when he called him a ‘romantic’. Max Weber was firmly placed in a modern ‘disenchanted’ world, whose lack of commitment left nothing to men and women except recourse to their own resources. For him, there was no way back. Nevertheless, his scale of values and his entire system of categories derived from the waning ständisch agrarian old-European world. The methodological intention of his conceptual formation can be summarized in the following terms: a break with the preoccupations implicit in the values of a past world, without at the same time falling under the influence of the con¬ temporary beliefin progress. He was only able to realize this intention to the degree that the

Max Weber’s Theme

65

contrast between the old and the new world became the forming principle of his polar concepts; and I believe that at an unconscious level this led to the precise formulation of his ‘theme’. A path to this theme remains closed to a generation of social scientists for whom old Europe represents a Hecuba, whether by virtue of theoretical decree or simply out of ignorance. ‘Alteuropa’ occupies at best a niche in the history of the discipline alongside antiquities such as the writings of W. H. Riehl, Schäffle or Tönnies, and with it this aspect of Weber’s own work. If Weber is to be ‘usable’ we can take him at his word and understand his concepts as purely nominalistic and heuristic in character. The subjective value-relation underlying the problematic which generates these specific concepts appears in the case of Weber (if it is at all recognized) to be merely historic, obsolete- despite Weber’s own emphasis on the formative nature of this value-relation. Whoever wishes to identify Weber’s theme-whoever considers this a worthwhile pursuit - must thus be prepared to read him in a radically historical manner, and not ‘reconstructively’; we have to be ready to pay him complete attention and disregard the question of whether that which we get out of him is ‘systematically’ or ‘theoretically’ relevant to our present concerns. There is a further reason to be aware of the risks involved in raising the question of Weber’s theme, and this is related to the present state of research on Weber. There is a great danger that the very success of a generally recognized elaboration of a ‘central theme’ will lead to a premature termination of further investigation; dogmatic rigidity would then set in at the point where continued investigation was called for. This danger becomes particularly marked if the inter¬ pretive approach is linked to an attempt to deal with the development (genesis) of the work in a manner that identifies the leading theme with a particular work or piece, so that it emerges at a particular moment or is

established

as

a

‘breakthrough’

(whatever the

phraseology used to label the process of scientific discovery might be). This results inevitably in a periodization of the works with evaluative implications which can then become decisive for the future course of research. In this way Weber’s work is divided into the ‘work proper’, dating from the time at which he establishes his theme, and that which precedes this; and so an ‘early’ and ‘mature’ body of work is created on the axis of the thematic discovery. The work that Weber did before his illness has always been over-

66

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

shadowed by the ‘breakthrough’ that occurred with his return to health. On the basis of modern sociology a division has been established between a pre-sociological phase (before 1909-13) and a sociological one; this introduces a break between a historical ‘cultural science’ and a sociology of Verstehen,7 which to some extent involves transitions, greater precision and conceptual development, which although transcending earlier positions does not dispense with them. (In all admiration for the proportions of Weber’s work it is none the less impossible to overlook the economy with which he employed completed work; the works heavily depend on recapitulation, repetition, revision and resumption - in ‘substantive’ pieces as well as those on method. It is only necessary to recall the thematic continuity from the essay on Stammler, through the essay on categories to the conceptual introduction to Economy and Society.) A body of work composed in this way renders unlikely any unique and specifiable ‘breakthrough’, inspiration, or fundamental insight that could then give it positive shape. But this is not to deny the great importance of a historical approach to the writings if the work as a whole is to be properly understood. The problems that are associated with the fixation of an inter¬ pretation on a particular ‘central motiF in terms of an ascertainable and specific historical breakthrough are demonstrated by Tenbruck’s absorbing and suggestive essay of 1975, at once stimulating and admonishing in both positive and negative senses. Taking up the idea that the ‘core’ of Weber’s investigations was to be found in the notion of a process of rationalization (this became a prevailing idea at the latest after Bendix’s work), Tenbruck sought to show that Weber could only address the process of rationalization after he had discovered the (religious) process of disenchantment.8 Tenbruck poses the questions: ‘how, when, where?’ Weber unravelled the notion of a religious and historical process of disenchantment from which the rationalization of modernity proceeded as central to a proper understanding of Weber.9 He argues that the collected writings on religion occupy a ‘central’, ‘dominating’ place in the work as a whole, in particular an ‘Economic ethic of world religions’ separated by a breakthrough from the Protestant Ethic, for here, and only here, did Weber (according to Tenbruck) discover ‘religious rationalization’, which with its ‘own logic’ is ascribed ‘priority’ over rationalization in general. Thus the ‘Economic ethic of world

Max Weber’s Theme

67

religions’ is assigned a central place in the development of the writings and employed as a key to an outline of a ‘late sociology’, which Tenbruck clarifies by the example of‘Science as a vocation’.10 More minor points of Tenbruck’s interpretation will not be questioned here.11 Weber in fact noted in a late addition to the writings on religion that the historico-religious process of the disenchantment of the world was dealt with in the ‘Economic ethic’12 indicating here precisely the point from which Tenbruck’s analysis begins.13 The question of‘how and when and where’ this discovery of the process of religious disenchantment took place cannot therefore be so very obscure if Weber refers so openly to it; his works are just as much illserved by such mystification as they are by their ‘operational’ fragmentation into disparate elements for all and every purpose. Tenbruck’s essay is of importance rather because it has subsequently led many to the conclusion that —as Zingerle recently stated-Weber’s work appears to be ‘interpretable from 1911 onward in terms of a central concern’.14 It therefore seems that the older assumption, that the theme of rationalization plays a central role, has been reinforced by a more historical appreciation of the texts, and made more precise through its association with the thesis of disenchantment. A view of Weber’s work that has prevailed for two generations - rationality as the central theme of Weber - has thus been refined, become more ‘differentiated’, but not actually placed in question. Quite the contrary: an opinion that has been repeatedly aired is in danger of becoming a dogma. Why bother to study Weber’s ‘early works’ when it is quite clear that no trace of Weber’s ‘real’ problems is to be found there? How is it possible to talk of the ‘thematic unity’ of the work if that which leads up to 1911 is just a preamble to the ‘genuine work’? In 1911 Weber was forty-seven and had behind him an enormous amount of work. It is quite improbable that the great breakthrough should have taken place at this point.15 It is also out of the question that he could have first perceived the ‘universal historical’ meaning of rationality after his insight into the religious process of disenchantment: as a young man he had experienced the shattering force of economic rationality at its most vivid in his much earlier studies on the East Elbian estates. If we wish to discover Weber’s ‘life theme’ we cannot ignore the early and middle periods of his work; indeed, it is here where he had his first scientifically reflected experiences that we might anticipate the motif in its initial emergent form.

68

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

Enough of such preliminaries. By what means can we make sure of Weber’s theme? In the previous essay we looked for his ‘central problem’ at those points where he himself had to reveal it. It was shown that he had to emphatically and unambiguously formulate his primary ‘central question’ in rebutting the misunderstandings of Protestant Ethic and in arguing for his empirical investigations - at any rate, the ‘central question’ of these instances. It was possible in this way to identify the question of the ‘development of Menschentum under the influence of determinate social constellations constituted by the ‘forming’ and ‘impressing’ ‘orders and powers’ of society. How then - if this is Weber’s central question — is this ‘thematized’, made into a theme, a basic melody running through the works and recognizable whatever the particular variation might be? If we wish to recognize this theme it is necessary to pay close attention to the thematics of the works that Weber himself supplied. This does not of course take us very far. He never explicitly stated his ‘theme’, his basic melody - and we would not expect a creative individual either to wish or be able to do so in the course of work of such dimensions. Weber did not plan his work; the topics accrued to him and no system can be detected in their entirety. If we are to remain true to our present intent we must have the courage to interpret, to chance an ‘interpretive understanding’ or at least a preliminary effort in this direction, even when at the ‘level of the texts’ we find little in the way of support.16 Whereas in the previous essay it was possible to identify definite proofs of the ‘central question’ (quite apart from any possibility of disagreement as to their significance), we are only able in the case of a ‘theme’ to render it ‘plausible’ or illuminating - and little more. It is possible, of course, for Weber to prevent us from making any great errors. Few scholarly authors have made free in such a way with passionate expressions: there is no reason to cease taking Weber seriously when he speaks of a ‘monstrous’, ‘stirring’ or ‘stupendous’ theme. We have also to pay attention to his expressive, ‘innermost’ and often revealing writing style. He did try, however, to secure his work, in a principled manner, from misunderstanding. Did he not at the end of his work, on the first page of Economy and Society, state once again quite precisely what a ‘verstehende sociology’ should not be: one would almost like to say, virtually everything that the sociology of today wishes to be, that is, a science of society.17 It was precisely this that ‘verstehende sociology’ did not want to be. Its object, and this is

Max Weber’s Theme

69

‘the point of departure of our investigation’, is not society but solely individual ‘social action’ — earlier referred to as communal action (Gemeinschaftshandeln), including the relevant ‘states of feeling’ for such action. Weber cites first of all the sense of virtue, then pride, then envy and then jealousy,18 as those states in which the person can reveal him or herself, states that are also determined by social orders and powers. Although Weber described his work to around 1910 in terms of ‘cultural science’, the shift to a sociological terminology changed nothing in the intent of his central question: the ‘cultural problems of man’ remain the object of his work. And this means: the problems arising from the insertion of man (Mensch), a being capable of social action, in social constellations which in turn form these persons, develop their capacities or alternatively deform them up to and including the ‘parcellization of the soul’. This is ultimately the cultural problematic of the times, and it is here that we must look for Weber’s ‘theme’. We will search on three levels: (i) simply in terms of content, ‘structural’ if you like, i.e. on the level of his investigations into the relation of Menschentum and social orders and powers; (ii) in the anthropological-ethical values interwoven in Weber’s empirical base; (iii) at the level of the special cultural problems of the ‘modern Kultur¬ menschentum, which will be dealt with very briefly.

‘Personality and Life Orders’ Marianne Weber, reporting on Weber’s participation in the debates of the Frankfurt Sociological Congress during the autumn of 1910, recounts the manner in which he sought to delimit the tasks of the Society: above all a purely scientific and ‘value free’ treatment of all the problems: ‘the question should be put as to what is and why some¬ thing is exactly the way it is, but there shall be no judgment as to its desirability or undesirability. ’19 What is at stake in this ‘what is’? Marianne reports how Weber developed and worked on the problem of the survey of associations and newspapers whose investigation

could be fruitful , and he

formulated a possible framework for questions that ‘ultimately

70

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

should relate to the universal point of view: how do those phenomena influence the formation of modern man? ‘Even for the sociology of associations (ranging from bowling clubs to political parties and religious sects) ‘the most important question would be the extent to which a person’s whole make-up (Gesamthabitus) is influenced by the various aspects of club activity’.20 What, in a previous essay, has been called Weber’s anthropological and characterological principle (in part, at least, with reference to the surveys of the press and associ¬ ations) is described here by Marianne as the ‘universal point of view’ directing his questions. This raises the question whether there exists in his writings an external feature — for instance, in the title of one of his works, which could be directly ascribed to this ‘universal point of view’. Quite clearly this is not the case: none of the printed texts allows such an ascription. How much easier everything would have been if Weber’s most famous study could be attributed to this ‘universal point of view’, ifin its title it referred to the capitalistic ‘Gesamthabitus’ instead of the ‘spirit’ of capitalism. However, Marianne provides us with more help. Searching for the link to the ‘universal point of view’ in this still invaluable biography, we come across a topic whose theme is recorded but not its contents. This is the lecture that Weber delivered at Burg Lauenstein in the autumn of 1917. Marianne gives a vivid picture of the intellectual mood,21 and the famous photograph of Weber in conversation with Ernst Toller and Erich Mühsam brings the situation to life for us. It is quite obvious that Eugen Diederichs, publisher and editor of Die Tat and sponsoring organizer of the conference, had the same problem in deciphering Weber’s letter announcing his theme as the works as a whole have created until today. Weber was not prepared to talk on ‘The personality and its influence on life’ (this was how Diederich’s read the letter) but on something far more specific, ‘The personality and the life orders’.22 The lecture is not known to us and the available reports do not tell us very much about it, but we may guess that Weber did not give the audience (who were mainly youthful students and expecting some sort of guidance) what they wished to hear.23 ‘Be who you are. In any case you live in “orders” which have their own regularity, they make their demands. Gentlemen, only he who knows how to live up to the demands of the day has “personality” ’. He may have expressed

71

Max Weber’s Theme

himself in this way. The tension between an external order and demands of inner personality - fate, chance - that will have been the theme. I think it is worth raising the question whether the tension between the human person, the endless malleability of human nature on the one hand, and on the other hand the ‘orders of life’ - the orders of society and its powers cited in the actual title of Economy and Society are not in truth the life-long theme running through his works. I will try first to establish this thesis on the basis of two texts from the ‘later works’ in which the ‘universal point of view’ is worked out with unquestionably ideal-typical purity. The texts in question are ‘Science as a vocation’ and ‘Politics as a vocation’; here the theme ‘personality and life orders’ is developed in a by no means general fashion, but is rather conjugated in a schoolroom manner on the basis of concrete ‘life orders’. Such a reading procedure is rendered plausible by the fact that only five weeks separated the Lauenstein address and the delivery of‘Science as a vocation’; and it is thus permissible to assume that the ‘general’ and ‘particular’ aspects of the thematic of Weber’s preparatory work overlaid each other.24 It is hardly a coincidence that we have today only the ‘particular’ aspect in a finished form - the lectures were delivered ‘by request’,25 while in the case of ‘Politics as a V ocation’ he accepted the request out of a fear that an unsuitable speaker might otherwise seize the opportunity.26 How does Weber approach the two topics? In the dryest fashion imaginable. Now, we Nationalökonomen have a pedantic custom, which I should like to follow, ofalways beginning with external conditions. In this case, we begin with the question: what are the conditions of science as a vocation in the material sense of the term? 27 Of the twenty-six pages of the lecture, more than six are devoted to the

external

conditions

of an

academic

occupation.

German

conditions are compared with American, and it is shown how even in this domain the separation of the worker from the means of production has become the ‘fate’ of all. Weber finally comes to the (probably quite different) expectations of his listeners: ‘But I believe that actually you wish to hear ofsomething else, namely, of the inward calling for science’.28 The lecture proceeds to the question: who has ‘personality’ within science? And the answer is given: ‘only he who is devoted solely to the work at hand . . .’29 ‘An inner devotion to the

72

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

task’ is decisive; only this can raise the scientist ‘to the height and dignity of the subject he pretends to serve’.30 But ‘this holds not only for the field of science’. The lecture, ‘Politics as a vocation’, follows the same pattern. Weber depicts in an even more disillusioned fashion the external workings of modern politics. The English translation takes fifty-one pages, and almost forty of these are given over to sociological considerations: the definition of politics, of the state, of the bases of legitimation, the distinction of living ‘from’ and ‘for’ politics,

of officials and

politicians, and finally a comparative sociology of political parties. In the last dozen pages Weber finally comes to the issues that the listeners presumably came to hear: ‘Now, what inner enjoyments can this career offer and what personal conditions are presupposed for one who enters this avenue?’31 What goes to make up the ‘genuine men and women’ who can follow the ‘vocation of politics’? It is once again at root the capacity of devotion to the matter at hand ‘if action is to have inner strength’.32 It is not necessary to say more about these famous texts. The point is this: when asked to deliver lectures on politics and science as vocations, Weber addressed the given topics in a manner that can, if we are not mistaken, throw light on all his work. The point of departure is that of ‘external’ given conditions. The life orders, however, do possess a kind of inner regularity, an organized form of rationality that must be confronted by all who become involved in it. The tension between the regularities of these orders, ‘spheres’, ‘values’, become the third major element in Weber’s theme; and for Kulturmenschen the fact that we ‘are placed into various life-spheres [Lebensordnungen], each of which is governed by different laws’ is unavoidable.33 There is, however, a fundamental problem that is prior to these reciprocal tensions of the life orders: that each of these orders involves a demand, type, form, a variety of‘impositions’ or perhaps opening-up of possibilities for future conduct, a formative tendency for ‘person¬ ality’. What becomes of the person who enters such an order, or is caught up in the ‘power’ of one-whether this is a matter of free choice, or whether the person is born into it, as in family, status, linguistic community, state and religion? What ‘fate’ do these orders dictate, reveal or refuse to the persons placed in their power by conditions of time and place? Is this Weber’s ‘theme’?

Max Weber’s Theme

73

Max Weber’s ‘Intellectual Foundation’: Rural Labour Organization in East Elbia There is a passage in the essay on objectivity of 1904 that has always played a key role in considerations of Weber’s intentions: The social science that we wish to pursue is a science of reality. We want to understand the specificity of the reality of life which surrounds us, in which we are placed - the relation and cultural meaning of its individual appearances in their contemporary organisation, on the one hand; on the other, the bases of their historical formation as this and no other.34 Why Weber wishes to pursue social science in this way was shown in the previous essay: he is concerned with the ‘fate of Menschen’ and hence the problematic is anthropological, characterological and ethical in nature, and this draws him with his ‘universal-historical’ investigations into a differential illumination of the culture in which we are placed. The material through which the questions are developed is a ‘reality of life’ rendered historical; the ‘structural relations of our culture’35 as Weber put it in the prospectus for the founding of the German Sociological Society, or as is elaborated in an exemplary fashion in the sections on ‘external’ relations in the two lectures on science and politics. Not only there, however: the ‘structural cultural relations’, viewed from the aspect of the cultural significance

that

they

carry

for

Kulturmenschen

alive

to

such

impressions, lead to the isolation of the questions that appear ‘worth posing’ to the scientist. They are materialized substantively in terms of the dual relation ofperson and external relations: neither the one nor the other is itself the object of Weber’s work. Can this be seen in Weber’s work? I will try to demonstrate this in outline and then go on to show how Weber’s diagnosis of the cultural problematic of his time, his notions of the ‘fate of Menschentum’, determines his concept formation down to the smallest detail. In doing so, we shall leave on one side his dissertation and Habilita¬ tionsschrift. These belong to the period that Eduard Baumgarten has quite accurately dubbed ‘growth and maturation of personal field of vision’. But even these two early pieces display the writer’s unique capacity to differentiate historically active forces. Theme and value relation are already present here.36

74

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By contrast, the specifically Weberian theme of‘personality and life orders’ is fully present and completely dominating in the two surveys of rural labour. These have always been read in general as texts that provide some understanding of the young political academic, of the nationalist and imperialist. These surveys do certainly involve political judgements and proposals, and it is quite possible to evaluate them biographically from a ‘political’ aspect.3' Nevertheless, these surveys written when Weber was 27 to 30 years old have a much greater, quite simply ‘fundamental’ significance for the formation of his specific mode of posing problems.38 The scope of that which Max Weber addressed and covered in the surveys of rural labour is only apparent to the reader prepared to consider together everything that was published between 1892 and 1899 on this theme, if possible also in the light of his writings on ancient agrarian history. Only then does the impulse and aim of these investigations become apparent and a gigantic field is opened up before the reader; here it is possible to see how more or less for the first time the young academic gives free play to his energies in his working over of the task assigned to him, disciplined by the critical eyes of his more experienced colleagues while stimulated by a historically and empirically satiated scientific imagination. Here, in the surveys and the related lectures, contributions to debates and newspaper articles, we can see the first measured analysis of a ‘life order’ that has been thoroughly thought through. It is already a contribution to a ‘verstehende sociology’, and is oriented to ‘social action’ or, more concretely, to the conduct of life of men and women living in a community (in an almost Aristotelian sense). This ‘life order’ is that of ‘rural labour organization’, or defined more broadly: the social and economic ensemble ‘within which the working population finds itself,39determining ‘fate and general situation’.40 All that he had learnt from the agrarian-statistical school ofMeitzen and his studies of Roman agrarian law are here developed in a clear and vivid fashion. His craving for material is insatiable: Vinogradoff s work on the medieval English village41 is dealt with alongside a study of the agrarian organization of the Argentinian pampas.42 In order to make as clear as possible a differentiated treatment of the conditions in eastern Germany, Weber employs the most extreme ‘typical’ cases: as an example of total lack of freedom, the ancient slave living in a barracks without any family, and the Argentinian gaucho as

Max Weber’s Theme

75

a counter-example of total but just as ‘barbaric’ freedom.43 The differences of labour organization in the south, west, northwest and east of Germany are introduced, and it is shown that labour plays a completely different role in these areas, especially in the relation of smallholding and wage-labour. In the west, wage-labour is considered to some extent to be a neighbourly act of helping out . . . these people distinguish quite unconsciously the concept of labour from that of duty or obligation. Here individualism in labour organisation finds its most extreme form . . . He labours perhaps because he actually has to, but in his mind it is because he likes to. He is not familiar with the kind of labour that we know from the east, this rigid, obligatory form of labour that yokes the whole life together.44 Immediately a connection is made with the political implications for the Reich of this kind of social organization: the southern and west German labourers lack the ‘characteristic Prussian concept of “damned duty and obligation” ’.

‘This frequently overlooked

psychological moment is of great importance for the question: would such a reorganisation of the [east German] labour organisation associated with the radical breaking-up of all large estates - be politically desirable as an objective?’ Weber rejects the idea categoric¬ ally. ‘It is no accident that the regions of Germany where this [west German] organisation prevails have not been endowed with the political organisations and political sensibility which made possible the unity of the Reich.,4S Disregarding the fragmentary form in which we today find Weber’s studies on rural labour organization, we are strongly reminded (in their ‘prospect’ and their approach to the facts) of Tocqueville’s analysis of the moral consequences of the transition from an ancien regime of personal servitude to the individualistic epoch of unfettered equality.46 ‘The historically developed social stratifica¬ tion of the population’ is decisive, it is the moment determining the ‘general situation’ of the labourer.47 Weber carried out his rural survey at the time that the process of ‘destruction’ of the old ‘patriarchal’ labour organization was in full swing. ‘The irredeemable disintegration of this labour organization has in part already begun, is in places under way and is ultimately a question only of time’.48 There was no way back. In places, the older

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patriarchal organization was still intact, but it was increasingly losing ‘its people’ and they were being replaced by Polish and Russian migrant labourers. At the same time the ruling strata was changing: the older landed aristocracy were replaced by a class of agricultural entrepreneurs who were, in terms of their social characteristics, no different in principle to commercial capitalistic entrepreneurs. Patriarchal relations- defined by Weber in his questionnaire of1892 as ‘fatherly concern on the one side, true loyalty on the other’49 - lost their foundation, the ‘free’ labourer replaced the Instmann who had lived within an economic community of interest vis-ä-vis his land¬ lord. With the transformation of the labour organization brought about by the modern reorganisation of the enterprise the face of the permanent labour force changed as much as that of casual labour. . . . The ‘free labour contract’ thus arrived in the country¬ side, with a worker paid in money living either in his own or rented property. Let us consider the consequences. ^1 This emphatic ‘let us consider the consequences’ is typical of Weber’s approach. To what? As the survey states - the ‘situation’, the ‘relations’ of the rural labourer. Not least among the objectives of the survey is a consideration of the ‘inner’, ‘human’ effects that the shift in enterprise forms has on the people concerned. The changing face of the ‘masters’ is also an important issue. They, too, owe their character, their ‘personality’, to the life order, that of the old and that of the emergent new. The old estate owner was no common employer ‘but rather a political autocrat, a miniature territorial ruler who personally dominated the labourer’.51 In his report to the Fifth Meeting of the Evangelisch-soziale Kongreß, Weber deployed his sociology of domination to the full — although this was hardly appreciated by his public. The old landed aristocrat lived in the naive belief that he was predestined to be ruler and that the others were likewise destined to live on his land in obedience. Why? This was something he did not think about. Such absence of reflectiveness was indeed one of the material virtues of his domination [Laughter]. I am completely serious [my emphasis, W.H.]. The absence of pure commercial considerations was characteristic and from the point of view of the state quite valuable . . . This class of our landed

Max Weber’s Theme

77

aristocracy . . . which precisely because of this lack of real commercial intelligence was suitable as a politically ruling class, is now on the wane, and in its place there is emerging a class of rural entrepreneurs ... a class with a different social and economic physiognomy.

The leading aristocrats as well - Kanitz is meant here - are no longer cast in the same mould. ‘Their foreheads have lost the crimson shade of passion and taken on the pallor of thought. They are agrarian meditators, a combination of scholar and noble . . .’52 And the rural labourers? As a class they become proletarianized.53 The ‘bases of social organization’ of the eastern landed estates crumbled. Weber is far from playing down the merits of the eastern aristocracy. But he does not consider that it can be claimed ‘that we owe an especial thanks to large landed property as such. . .Above all, I do not believe that any due recognition is owing to individual persons, rather to the social organisation, whose products these persons have been’54

[my emphasis,

W.H.].

This is an almost ‘materialist’

formulation of the relation ‘personality and life orders’. A social organization forming men and women like ‘products’ quite plainly independent of the motives that might be attributed to them as merits - here an aspect of Weber’s work must be emphasized that cannot in my opinion be overstated, and that goes far beyond the dichotomy of ‘values’ and ‘facts’ that is always associated with Weber’s ‘method’. He owed this insight quite unambiguously to his perception of the agrarian world - in both its upper and its lower levels. A well-known passage from the ‘Economic ethics of world religions’ is employed in every interpretation of Weber that aspires to some significance: ‘Not ideas, but (material and ideal) interests directly command human action. But: “images of the world” created by “ideas” have often been the switchpoint determining the future course in which the dynamic of interest conditioned action.’ Weber thus recognized ‘ideal’ interests. But the question is: can this concept be used to render intelligible in older social orders ‘social action’ that is not religiously motivated, for burgher, peasant or noble? We have already seen that the central term of Weberian sociology is that of Lebens¬ führung. In Economy and Society it is absolutely clear that this belongs completely to the world of orders, of Stände56 - classes have no

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

78

particular Lebensßhrung. They do have a standard of living, in Weber’s precise formulation: a typified chance for ‘consumption’, also an ‘external’ position in life and an ‘inner fate’,57 and there exists in general an ‘interest’ in the maintenance of this standard. The support of a Lebensßhrung appropriate to a Stand - and Weber, of course, defines a Stand in terms of Lebensßhrung - is conditioned by factors other than ‘interests’. ‘Image of the world’ and Lebensßhrung belong together in a society still governed by orders in a way that cannot be explained on the basis of a mediation of‘ideas’ and ‘interests’ alonenot even ‘ideal’ interests. What is the purpose of the notion of‘sense of virtue’, for instance-this extremely important concept for Weber?^ We could force it in somewhere, but all the same it would not fit properly at this or that point. Weber’s ideas on the constitution of social orders (of‘social organization’, of the ‘structural relations of cultures’) are still conditioned by considerations — both historically learnt and directly experienced - that are not covered by the conceptual couple,

ideas/interests,

a typical nineteenth-century

dichotomy. It is known that Weber was greatly influenced by Rodbertus’s theory of the oikos,59 He saw in the more or less autarchic eastern estates the persistence of ‘the fragments of the isolated house economy’.60 The estate owner now has to become involved in cash transactions if he is to maintain his living standard at the level of that of the ‘higher’ urban bourgeoisie and not become a peasant; and this living standard is no longer sustainable on the old economic basis of production for local markets.61 In the east it became evident to Weber that capitalism displaced the standards of a traditional Lebensßhrung, on all social levels. Instead of Lebensßhrung, the class-related concept of ‘standard of life’ assumed a central place. But it is only Lebens¬ fiihrung with its related ‘social action’, open to influence by the whole spectrum of possible ‘orders and powers’, that requires interpretive understanding and is, in fact, capable ofit. Establishment of thelevel of a ‘standard oflife’ can be effected by a single measure: that of income or wage compared with the prices ofmeans ofsubsistence. Given all due regard to the lines cited from the ‘Economic ethic’: prior to interests and ideas in Weberian sociology it is the given conditions of Lebens¬ führung that direct human action, and it was, throughout the entire old world, typical that they were ‘reflected’, that is, ‘rationalized’ neither by ‘ideas’ nor by ‘interests’. Affect and ratio were still not here

Max Weber’s Theme

79

individually distinct. The ties holding the old communities together were not woven out of‘ideas’ and ‘interests’ (typical material of the nineteenth century); these ties were constituted in ways that elude modern concepts.62 What is it that separates Weber from us and thus makes an under¬ standing of him so worth while? No ‘modern’ sociologist would (a) be able to conceive these conditions: the ‘foundation’ or ‘store’ is exhausted;63 (b) be unconsciously too much influenced by the principles of liberty and equality to be able to locate Lebensfiihrung, in its specifically ständisch cast, in any special place in the social scientific system of categories. Stände have a marginal status and cannot be accommodated by the usual social indicators. Since rural labour organization represents the first significant life order that Weber analysed, its structure deserves a much more exact investigation in terms of the analytic arsenal which was, even then, at Weber’s disposal.64 But this cannot be done here. Instead it will be shown how the political perspectives in these earlier works - usually the sole aspect that is of interest - must likewise be seen in terms of ‘personality and life order’.

The ‘Viewpoint of Staatsräson’ However slight present-day sociology’s interest in Weber ‘early writings’ might be,65 it is none the less the inevitable starting point for an understanding of his political thought. Ever since the appearance practically two decades ago of Mommsen’s influential biography, all investigation of Weber’s ‘politics’ has begun with the studies on rural labour. Mommsen’s assessment of Weber the politician, moreover, has had a much wider implication for the understanding of his work in general. Even with the young Weber his real concerns easily escape anyone too impressed by his vigorous mode ofexpression. What is the ‘view¬ point of Staatsräson from which he wishes the problem of rural labour to be exclusively considered?66 Mommsen saw in these few words of a 29-year-old the axis for the entire further development ofthe political aspect of Weber’s work. His well-known assessment relates to this: ‘He placed the ideal of the national state in the centre of his considera¬ tions and subordinated to it all other social and economic concerns. In

80

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this way he attained the standpoint which was to permanently condition his political thought'.67 In view of this evaluation Mommsen then quite consistently raised the question of what Weber meant by ‘national state’.The answer supplied by Mommsen will be hardly satisfactory to a modem reader, but it does demonstrate the barelyjustifiable (even for 1959) limitation of an analysis of the ‘political’ Weber that refrained from introducing even in small measure the ‘scientific work. ’69 In any case Mommsen, in his detailed presentation of the studies on the question of rural labour,70 overlooks in my opinion quite what the ‘viewpoint of Staatsräson' might really involve as a consequence of the survey. It is just incorrect, or at any rate only a partial truth, to conclude that ‘Weber treated as the quintessence of the social process of trans¬ formation the increasing “polonization” of the German east’.'1 Not, in any event, a quintessence! Even in the text from which the previous references are taken (the 1893 report to the Verein on rural labour organization) the situation is more complicated. Weber established that large landed property is the factor which at present in the east is the strongest Polonisator. It is merely a matter of time before the moment will come when large landed property will have to make common cause with Poles. In the long run it is not possible for it to uphold German national interests if its workers are Poles!72 Weber feared that the German nobles would meet with the same fate as the German magnates in the Bohemian-Hungarian regions of the dual monarchy. It was here that the ‘viewpoint of Staatsräson' inter¬ vened. What form did it take? The viewpoint from which he considered ‘the problem of rural labour’ ts neither that of the rural labourer (‘is he doing well or badly, how can he be helped?’) but even less is it a question of ho w labour is to be found for eastern great estates. The interest of the state and of a nation can diverge from that of an individual Stand-diverge not only from that of large landed property (this is sometimes forgotten) but also from that of the proletariat, which recently has been just as frequently forgotten. The interest of the state in the problem of rural labour in the east consists solely in the question [my emphasis, W.H. ] of the condition of

Max Weber’s Theme

81

the bases of social organization - can the state in the long run rely on this for the purpose of solving those political tasks with which it is confronted in the east’.73 The ‘interest of the state and of a nation’ is thus related to ‘the bases of social organization’ and this is quite certainly a question for Weber (whose political perspective was fixed at the time on the problem of political leadership), the ‘curse ofliving up to a political inheritance’,74 which is not the same as that of German or Polish national identity. He was as little concerned with the general question of the economic productivity of the eastern regions as was his interest primarily related to national or even nationalistic positions. The eastern provinces had for centuries been characterized by an ethnically mixed population. The Wilhelmine Empire was a German national state with an ethnic minority that was predominantly Polish. This was an established state of affairs. Since thenational state in regard to ‘life orders’ represented a high value for Weber, he had no interest in the weakening of the national foundations. But the ‘ideal of the national state’ as such does not occupy the centre of his political thoughts; it is rather an explica¬ tion of this ‘ideal’ that is determined by more basic elements of his thought. What is meant by the interest of Staatsräson in the ‘bases of social organization’ is clarified a year later in the essay that summarizes the findings of both surveys75 and in his joint report to the fifth meeting of the Evangelisch soziale Kongreß; and these render tangible the relation of the theme ‘personality and life orders’ to the concern with Staatsräson. The ‘transformation of the organization of labour and its general effects’ is the issue here. Effects on what? What is in the ‘foreground’ of his interest? ‘Interest in the form of geographical dispersion of the population’.76 This applied equally to the position of the ruling stratum: the manor houses of the east signified the dispersion of a ruling class throughout the rural areas . . . and they still provide an extra¬ ordinarily effective. . . counterweight to the monopoly of political ability by the grand bourgeoisie of the cities.77 Weber assumes that the demolition oflarge landed property in the east is neither possible nor desirable. It is in nobody’s interest to destroy them, there is indeed an interest

82

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

in the maintenance of these rural centres of economic and above all social intelligence, so that this intellectual capital might not also be monopolized by the towns, and become the exclusive property of the urban bougeoisie.78 The large agricultural enterprises were ‘a political reserve held by the state against the urban bourgeoisie’. It was not a matter of indifference that a ruling class of this kind, situated on the eastern estates, without interest in commercial gain, was distributed through the land . . . and in this way a barrier was formed against the monopolization of political intelligence on the part of the bourgeoisie, which had therefore to first prove its qualification for political rule, and which has unfortunately still [1894] to provide such a proof. I can state that as a class-conscious bourgeois without suspicion of partiality.79 The policy of settling peasants on the land — the task of‘inner coloniza¬ tion’ — was also viewed by Weber in terms of the ‘geographical distribution of the population’ and seen as a means of preventing the rise to dominance of the ‘Spiessbürger’, a type which not only lacked substantial instincts for power but which is characterized by the restriction of political endeavour to material goals or to the interests of his own generation; this absence of consciousness for a measure of responsibility with respect to succeeding generations permanently separates us from them. It is this which also separates us from the social democratic movement, for this too is largely a product of German Spiessbiirgertum.so Weber wants to strengthen the physical and psychic reserves of the nation through such peasant settlement schemes: ‘That which appears to us the most valuable of human qualities: self-reliance and respon¬ sibility, a deep urge for improvement in terms of intellectual and moral human goods - we want to preserve and support this even where we encounter it in the most primitive form’.8' The prospects for the peasant population of the east were not rosy. But this was not the point. We do not pursue a social policy because we want to make men and women happy.

Max Weber’s Theme

83

Far more - and this is the broadest aspect according to which the ‘political’ Weberformulates the theme ‘personality and life order’: We wish, so far as it is in our power, to constitute external relations in a manner not directed to the immediate happiness of men and women, but rather so that, exposed to the necessities of an unavoid¬ able struggle for existence, the best in them is preserved, the qualities both physical and spiritual which we would like to preserve for the nation.82 It cannot be doubted that the nation is for Weber the life order that provides what can be regarded as the greatest scope for the central theme that is here at issue. But the nation does not represent a trans¬ cending purpose, it is no ‘indubitable value’ in the way that Marianne Weber phrased it in the foreword to the first edition of the political writings —Weber certainly loathed particular features of the Germans! It rather designates the site, the life order, within which the best is to be developed in relation to men and women who only here can give shape to their political existence. Of course, it is not possible to separate from the concept of the nation its aspects of power especially when as in the case of the Reich the nation constituted a great power. Weber’s central moving impulse is given by the ‘characterological’ questions, the ‘physiognomy’, the ‘intellectual countenance’ of the nation, confronting, forming and stamping individuality. However much he was aware that the question of industrial labour sought socialist solutions, it was for him only just - to some extent as a distributional compensation - that the rural labour question should be solved with the natural force of individual efforts; as he formulated it in the concluding.‘Prospect’ to the 1892 Verein report, whether the ‘possibility

could

be

offered

of an

elevation

to

independent

existence . In concluding this review of the rural organization of labour, we might recall a passage for the Inaugural Address of 1895, which has to be read as a resume of the studies on rural labour, even if this is only one among many ways of reading it. Weber talks here as an economist, but what he says can be taken as the ‘universal viewpoint’ of all his work: whatever one had expected from economic science, there was a halfformed but nevertheless pervasive recognition ‘that a human science, which is what economic science is, investigates above all else the

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

84

quality of the human beings who are in those economic and social conditions of existence. ’84 Is it possible to define the theme any more clearly?

The ‘Universal Viewpoint’ in the so-called ‘Special Sociologies’ It is in Weber’s writings on the sociology of religion that the question of the relation of ‘personality’ — identifiable in its ‘everyday’, that is, substantially economic Lebensführung - to the life orders (religious; in the ‘Economic Ethic’ in addition economic and social) becomes completely dominant. What kind of Lebensfiihrung, what ‘practical rationality’ made possible modern Western capitalism, which factors were absent or prevented its development outside the Occident? It is today generally assumed that the question of the unity of Weber’s work is most accurately revealed in the sociology of religion. On the other hand, a path to the heart of his thematic can also be obstructed if an all-too-central place is given to these writings. Only in the number of pages that Weber devoted to the influence of religion on Lebens¬ fiihrung can it be said that he devoted the most attention to this issue. He often emphasized that it fascinated him, in the century in which the ‘economic mode of perception’ penetrating on every level led to an ‘overestimation of the importance of one’s own viewpoint’,8^ to at least recollect other ‘more elusive’ causal factors in their historical force and formative power. There is certainly no form of spirituality hidden in this aspect of his work, although it does reveal an idealistic element shared with the entire Historical School of the German human and social sciences, countering a ‘classical’ economism with an idealism that could lay claim to a greater degree of anthropological realism. The great mass of human sacrifice, which brought to a violent end so many in this century, was but rarely carried out on the altar of ‘economic interests’. The young Weber had poured scorn on the ‘mechanical, materialistic jargon’ of social democracy, with their belief in the ‘universality of the “knife and fork” question’. He knew that the ‘best representatives ofsocialism’ in truth thought differently: ‘their scorn of idealism is no more than jargon, lip-service’.86 Despite the enormous amount of space that Weber’s treatment of religion takes up in his work, it was nevertheless the capitalist form of

85

Max Weber’s Theme

economy - ‘the most fateful power of our modern life’ - and the mode of political domination that were for him far stronger ‘cultural powers’. From 1906 to 1911 priority was given in his studies to the effects of modern working conditions on the lifestyle of the workers. Here, in his investigation of the characterological consequences of modern large-scale industry with its influence on the ‘spiritual face of mankind’,87 the same basic theme is played through that appears in the essays on the Protestant Ethic, where he dealt with the ‘substantial’ factor of inner-worldly asceticism. But this is simply by way of a reminder. Whoever seeks to engage with the scope and substance of the work’s ‘universal aspect’ still finds the studies on the sociology of religion the most abundant source of material, along with the sociology of domination. Furthermore, this is the only set of writings that Weber himself supplied with ‘preface’,

‘introduction’ and

‘Zwischenbetrachtung’, providing useful assistance in relation to the purpose of the enterprise. Even if he personally was only able to complete editorial work on the first of the three volumes of GARS, it is not difficult to see how the second and third fit into the total scheme. Deeper consideration of the sociology of religion is here neither possible nor necessary. This is because it can easily be seen that this thematically most comprehensive exposition of a substantive area the power of religious ideas on the conduct of life — is oriented exclusively towards one question: what becomes of the human being, what are the consequences of religious ideas that guide his lifeconduct in this or that direction? For, while these religious ideas are one factor among many, they have a particular force that seizes human beings with an especial impulse. According to a statement of Weber’s recorded by Marianne Weber, he wished these writings to be ‘con¬ tributions

to

the

characterization

of modern

Western

man,

knowledge of his course ofljievelopment and of his culture’.88 This corresponds to her formulation of the ‘universal aspect’ and cannot be too strongly emphasized by contrast with the generally accepted idea that the writings on the sociology of religion are to be read primarily asi contributions to a sociology and typology of rationalism. Weber says that they seek to make such a contribution as well, but the insights into the processes of rationalization are results of Weber’s investigation. The intent to which he holds fast with an iron grip is, however, the ‘characterization of modern Western man’, i.e. the fate of human

86

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beings subject to the repercussions of processes of rationalization or even of their absence. One has constantly to bear in mind that — with the exception of the studies on ascetic Protestantism - the studies of China, India and ancient Judaism present cultures within which the process of rationalization of daily life so fateful for the Occident had not established itself. Despite all initial signs, especially in Judaism, the specific form of Western capitalism did not develop here. Since Weber made this circumstance (the non-development of capitalism) the impulse for wide-ranging investigations into all the greater cultures of antiquity, starting with the dictionary entry on ‘Agrarian relations in antiquity’, we must constantly ask why he embarked upon these studies that led him into remotest regions. Since the world religions under investigation were not squeezed into a developmental historical schema leading from a lower to a higher culture (nothing was further from his intentions!), the most plausible interpretation remains that he wished to make evident in a ‘differentiated’ manner exactly which forces had prevented the penetration of Asiatic cultures by a Western rationalism so as to expose all the more clearly those forces that had enabled it to prevail in the Occident. There was a great deal of significance in the way that Weber placed at the beginning of his collection on the sociology of religion the murky and tragic history of the formation of the modern ‘spirit of capitalism out of the specific rationalizing power of ascetic Protestantism’. No reminder is needed here of the melodramatic way in which Weber depicted in these essays the prehistory of the fate of modem human beings, their ‘objectification’, ‘depersonalization’, ‘soullessness’ and ‘dehuman¬ ization’, all of which grew out of the greatest of religious motives. In the studies of the Orient he revealed a completely different world, a deeply human world. But: there was no way back. Nevertheless, in these studies there emerges a different form of ‘humanity’, and in consequence these studies have an inordinate importance for the comprehension of Weber’s conception of the human being, the scope of his anthropological problematic, concerned as it is with the historically given possibilities of humanity in all its infinite substantive diversity, and not with delineation of anthropological invariants. If this is true of the GARS collection, it has nevertheless an even greater significance for the outlines presented in Economy and Society of religious and all sociological ‘special areas’: economy, law,

Max Weber’s Theme

87

domination, social stratification and, dispersed through the entire work, allusions to education.90 Weber’s reputation as an author whose work is difficult to read is given especial weight in the pages of Economy and Society. It cannot be said that they are readily compre¬ hensible. This must be because the point of view from which the work has to be read - or in any case can be read - has not been identified by previous interpretations. As is known, the first difficulties arise with the title. ‘Economy and society’ was indeed conceived as the title for a section of the Basic Foundations of Social Economics.91 Within this section, Weber had taken over responsibility for the first major part, ‘The economy and the social orders and power’. Comprehension of this title is also problematic until it is recalled that for Weber and his contemporaries ‘the economy’ meant: the economizing human being. Nationalökonomie in Weber’s time was still rooted in the tradition of‘Ökonomik’, in the sense of a discipline belonging within the domain of practical philosophy, and hence it dealt naturally with the action of human beings and its outcomes, in so far as these were directed to ‘economic’ ends and needs. Let us recall the concepts that are used: Chapter 2 of the so-called ‘Categories’ in Economy and Society deals with the ‘sociological categories of economic action (Wirtschaften)’. Book 1 ofthe 1898 outline Conceptual Foundations of Economic Doctrine begins with a ‘concept of economy’. This is defined however as follows: By ‘economic action’ we understand a specific form of external pursuit of a goal- i.e. a conscious and planned relation to nature and humanity-. . . serving the end: provision for the future. ‘Economy’ is the complex of measures created by the human action of an individual or of a human community. In connection with this the ‘Presuppositions of an abstract theory of the economy’ are clarified - on the basis, that is, of a modern theory that presupposes a ‘constructed’ rather than an ‘empirical’ human subject, and that ‘ignores, treats as if absent, all those motives of a non¬ economic nature which influence actual, empirical human subjects’.92 The extent of Weber’s allegiance to a practical, concrete and by no means ‘abstract’ tradition in his conception of ‘economic action’ is demonstrated by the way in which he constantly elaborates the fundamental differences of forms of economy: economic action oriented to need (Bedarfswirtschaft) and that oriented to economic gain

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Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

(ErwerbsWirtschaft). This is done with an obstinacy barely intelligible from the viewpoint of modern economics. For Weber, both forms of economy have an equal conceptual value. It is, of course a problem, a ‘fateful’ problem, fate itself, that ‘today’, beyond one’s own four walls, it is only the capitalistic Erwerbswirtschaft that is characteristic of economic action, and that in fact penetrates every aspect of human fate. Freely translating the title of Economy and Society we might read it as: The human subject (der Mensch) - especially the economically acting human subject - and the determination of its action by the orders and powers exerting influence on this action; be it economic action in a strict sense, be it economically relevant phenomena of action, be it economically conditioned phenomena of action. It might be recalled how much emphasis Weber placed, in the essay on objectivity, on the closest possible delineation of the extent and nature of economic phenomena.93 The domain of objects proper to social economics extends ‘through the totality of economic life’. So great is the ‘force’ of economic motives that they have ‘conditioned and transformed not only the mode in which cultural wants or preferences are satisfied, but their content as well, even in their most subjective . , 94 aspects . If we add to this the fact that Weber always emphasized that behind ‘action’ was to be found ‘the human subject’, then ‘economy and society’ deals with ‘orders’ and ‘powers’ - that is, the 'special sociologies’ and their effects on the conduct of both the inner and outward life of man, especially of economic man. Let us briefly recall — still at the ‘structural—empirical' level - the basic problematic of these special sociologies, or at least some of them. In the chapter on the sociology of religion the reader is informed that at issue here is ‘by no means the “essential nature” of religion, but rather the conditions and effects of a particular form of communal action which can only be understood in terms of the subjective experiences, ideas and aims of the individuals concerned - in terms of their “meaning” — since the external manifestation of this action is greatly varied’. The ‘theme’ here is defined quite unambiguously: a particular form of communal action (i.e. Lebensordnung) in terms of its effects, assimilation for the individual (Persönlichkeit). Religiously or magically motivated action is quite fundamentally temporally oriented: religiously or magically ordained action takes place on the assumption ‘that one leads a long and healthy life on

89

Max Weber’s Theme

earth’. Weber is interested in the determination of life-conduct by the God (or ‘demon’) which most strongly acts upon human interests in their

everyday

manifestation;

how,

therefore,

religious

ideas

determine the conduct of life (Lebensführung). Detailed attention is given to those who conserve, promote or challenge this conduct, that is, the prophets and the priests. Soon we shall see, or at least be able to indicate, the importance of differentiating ‘prophet’ from ‘priest’ for the unfolding of Weber’s ‘theme’ at the level of the normatively ‘spiritual’ ‘personality’. Dozens of similar couples have to be treated in the same fashion. Weber elaborates the distinctions specific to stratum in the religious influence oflife-conduct, considering peasants, the urban population, the military aristocracy, officials, merchants, artisans, slaves and daylabourers. The stake in all this is emphatically expressed in the statement: ‘for what concerns us here is the Effekt itn Handeln’. This ‘Handeln’ is not ‘action’, and by no means ‘behaviour’, but always ‘Lebensfiihrung’.95 He outlines the specifically sociological consideration of law in a similar manner. For sociology, law is not a cosmos of norms whose rectitude is logically deducible, but rather a ‘complex of actual determinants of human conduct’.96 Some readers find harsh the manner in which Weber refers to the ‘motives of compliance’97 in relation to the power of a legal order to promote obedience, but any offensiveness is lost if we consider that the intention is to gain access to the inner motives of obedience — an obedience to the law out of ‘utili¬ tarian’, ‘ethical’ or ‘conventional subjective’ motives, or out of fear of general disapproval - these inner motives then translate into a corresponding outward or inner Lebensfiihrung. Behaviour that is legally ordained is compulsively guaranteed behaviour; custom, by contrast, involves typically uniform behaviour that is maintained on traditional lines by the imperative or unreflective imitation. Custom is thus a form of action whose continuation cannot in any sense be ‘imposed’ cn an individual by anybody. The concept of ‘imposition’ (Zumutung) or ‘that which is imposed’ is often used by Weber and always relates to Lebensfiihrung. Convention is an escalation of imposition, because there is an effect on particular forms of behaviour, but this does not take place through physical or psychic compulsion; instead, it works through the sanction of approval or of disapproval. Weber

also

describes

political

associations

as

exactions

or

90

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

impositions of Lebensfiihrung98 - a term also used in connection with the class or Stand situations, which he regarded in terms of differen¬ tiated Lebenschancen.99 But is it only ständisch societies that are ‘conventionally ordered by the rules of Lebensfiihrung , and they therefore

give

rise

to

‘economically

irrational

conditions

of

consumption, hindering in this way the free development of the market’.100 However cryptic and cool Weber’s possibly greatest scientific achievement (the sociology of domination) might seem to us, here again we find that its sociological core consists of a series of consequences in Lebensfiihrung which follow from the claim of obedience: the inner recognition of its authority out of personal conviction, out of a feeling of duty, out of fear, out of simple force of habit - ultimately, compliance on account of a power-constellation and with the dispensation of one’s own ‘Lebensführung’ (discipline is enough) - the ‘subject’ as the result of ‘personality’ - or an order that makes obedience possible on the basis of free choice: the ‘free citizen" as the correlate of‘personality’. The topic is too great for anything more than these few scattered ideas, and we must leave it here and ask: have we exhausted our subject of investigation, Max Weber’s ‘theme" (personality and life order)? Not by any means; at this point we arejust coming to terms with it.

Person and Cause It seems that the political scientist, at any rate, has not exhausted Weber’s ‘theme’. The sociologist - oriented to empiricism and value freedom - might be content, when considering ‘personality and life order’ (i.e. ‘personality profile’ and the corresponding empirical ‘life orders’), with the demonstration of Weber’s ‘theme’ in terms of the empirical constellations indicated above. But the political scientist wants to go further, wants to know whether this is Weber’s final word on the theme of‘personality and life order’. It is the authority ofW eber himself that binds modern social science to a freedom from value judgements. The proper understanding of this demand is of the greatest significance for all the social sciences. For political science, however, it is something more: a real existential question. Weber’s authority seems to recommend that the old central question of political science (what is the best political order?) be abandoned as

Max Weber’s Theme

91

insoluble, and that the discipline henceforth direct itself to ‘empirical’ political sociology, or rather at long last begin practising it. Weber appears to stand at the end of a history of political science declining through the centuries from Plato and Aristotle, and at the beginning, as a solid and stable point of departure, of all scientifically viable political science research. Now if it is true that the question of the origin of modern Lebens¬ ßihrung occupies the centre of Weber’s problematic, lending the entire body of work an anthropological intentionality, then we must be permitted to ask: is it possible to deal with the Lebensßihrung, with the fate, of modern human subjects without becoming involved in questions of value? Weber had himself, if cryptically, attributed questions of imposition (Zumutung) to the sphere of values. Never¬ theless, might there not be, even in Weber, hidden behind the empirical-historical investigations of the correlation of person and life-order, an idea of the proper Lebensßihrung? Leo Strauss, one of Weber’s sharpest critics, said of Hobbes’s political science that it was the first peculiarly modern attempt to coherently and comprehensively answer ‘the question of the proper life of men’, which was at once the ‘question of the proper arrangement of human life together’.101 The question of the proper life for men and women, simultaneously a question of the proper ordering of human community (we might say of ‘personality’ and ‘Lebensordnung’) - this is indeed the classical theme of political science and Hobbes only elaborated this in a ‘modern’ fashion. The question of the proper Lebensßihrung for human beings as human beings, combined with the ordering of social relations corresponding to this idea of rectitude is in fact the central question of natural law, forming a problematic that today is unfamiliar to us. The bitter accusation made by Strauss and several others against Weber is that he abandoned this question or, put more bluntly, betrayed it. I believe that the demonstration offered above, that on the ‘empirical’ level it is the relation of personality and life order that ‘thematically’ determines the substance of Weber’s work, compels us to go further and see if this question might not have a determining influence on the ‘normative’ level of the work. More specifically, it is a question of whether, at the base of his cultural-scientific investiga¬ tions and of his verstehende sociology, there is not an ‘idea’ of the human subject, an ‘anthropology’ - of course, not in the sense of the

92

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

contemporary fashion for measuring crania, but rather in the tradition of Western reflection on the human being — on the basis of which his arrangement of social orders and powers can be covertly directed. Here it is possible only to sketch the basic outlines of the question. The problematic of the modern mode of life — disenchanted, rationalized, disciplined102-became clear for Weber with capitalism. It has only a partial use for human beings, for specific and isolated qualities. What then is a ‘complete human being’ in comparison with this? We might recall Weber’s differentiation of the influence of prophecy, which works upon the inner life of men and women, from the externally derived ‘cultivation’ of a form of Lebensjuhrung, which can be found for instance in the Confucian ethic of propriety. 'An optimally adjusted human subject, rationalized only in the degree of adaptation required by a particular Lebensfiihrung, has no systematic unity but is rather composed of a combination of useful individual qualities. ’103 We associate an inwardly rooted pursuit of unity with the concept of personality, but this was unknown in China.

‘Life

remained a series of events, and did not appear as a whole, methodically arranged with respect to a transcendent end.' How does such a systematic Unity, a ‘whole’, emerge in a human being? If I am correct, by the fact that such a person is capable of a complete and inwardly motivated personal ‘dedication’ (that central concept of the speeches discussed at the beginning of this essay) to a ‘cause’ (Sache) that transcends individuality. The conditions of the modern world do not force human subjects to such dedication through tradition, a deep sense of necessity or prophetic power; nevertheless, it is possible to ‘cultivate’ the ability of decisively ‘taking position’, even if this is a weaker form of‘dedication’.104 For Weber, at any rate, it was necessary that an inner decisiveness develop if such a ‘systematic unity’, a ‘whole’ were to develop within the human subject and hence form a ‘personality’. Dedication to a cause is only directed by ethical imperatives under quite specific circumstances, for the ‘more natural’, original form of human ‘ethical’ dedication is not to a cause but to other persons. It must be possible, however, for the relation of the human subject to persons or to causes to be individually realizable, to be susceptible to an ‘ethical’ (hence ‘inner’) inter¬ pretation. That is relatively straightforward if the ‘cause’ or ‘cultural value’ is something out of the ordinary. What happens, then, if it is everyday life - for Weber synonymous with the modern specialized

93

Max Weber’s Theme

world (Berufswelt) - which lays total claim to men and women while at the same time withholding an ethical construction for this claim? This circumstance arises for Weher in capitalism. Weber was so fascinated by ascetic puritanism because of the way in which modern capitalism

entered

the

world

through

a

(historically

unique)

potentiality for the everyday to be interpreted in a completely ethical manner. Since that time capitalism had come to rely on a ‘mechanical’ foundation and could dispense with the spiritual support of religion. The ‘cool and inhuman “objectivity” ’ of modern capitalism; ‘calculability’ and rational consistency; the gravity of labour stripped of all existential simplicity; the specialized restriction of modern life these demand an ‘impassioned protest from the artistic, ethical and above all purely human point of view’ and lacked for ‘serious-minded people. . . a solitary scrap ofethical self-justification’. They would be ‘ replaced, if at all, by surrogates which could be easily seen to be such’. It was obvious that ‘capitalism could easily continue like this, there being two possibilities: either it was to be fatalistically accepted as an inevitability, as today was increasingly the case; or legitimated as a somehow relatively optimal means of making from the relative best in the world that which was relatively best- and this approach is typical of the era of Enlightenment and of the modern style of liberalism.’ ‘For serious-minded people, however, capitalism could no longer appear to form the external expression of a style of life based upon an ultimate, finished and demonstrable unity of personality. ’1 (b Once things had been different: once vocation and the innermost ethical core of personality (this is decisive!) had formed an unbroken whole. In the Middle Ages this ‘spiritual bond’ between the innermost core of personality and vocation had been lacking. Today, the ‘inner dissolution of this unity is quite tangible’.106 The Puritans had succeeded, however, in bringing the two together - the ‘inner core of personality’ and

the everyday necessity of a vocation.

What

consequences follow for Menschentum once the rationalized ordering of everyday life no longer permits this? I believe that this is the central question that Weber, following on from Marx, posed to the world in which we are ‘located’. I also believe that it can be shown that this question leads us for a second time to the red thread, the ‘theme’ permeating all of Weber’s writings; a lead that does not first emerge in recognizable form during the years of Weber’s involvement with religious problems. The

94

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

thread becomes evident much earlier; in the initial ‘empirical’ writings: actually, in the very first writings, on medieval trading companies and the agrarian history of antiquity.107 It is again in the years of engagement with the survey of rural labour that we can find the first, quite precise and easily ascertainable formulation of the problem. In 1892, immediately before publication of his own major con¬ tribution to the Verein survey, Weber published an essay in Christliche Welt, rebutting criticism that had been directed by an orthodox consistory councillor to Paul Göhre’s book on his experiences as a factory worker.108 He wrote of Göhre’s book, Three Months in a Workshop: the reader has the impression that the workers depicted by Göhre are people of one’s own flesh and blood, having much the same intellectual and sociable needs, pursuing the material and inward interests assigned to them by the organization of human society [my emphasis, W.H.] with approximately the same degree of compre¬ hension and stupidity as the reader and his own. He commended the depth of Göhre’s studies for the way in which they made plain that which the bare figures of the usual statistical investiga¬ tions could not: ‘the ultimately decisive feature: that reflex deep in the human body which determined mood and attitude.’ This ‘psycho¬ logical moment’ — ‘the inner life-condition of the workers’ as it states soon after ‘is tangibly reproduced by no numbr and no discussion, no matter how painstaking and didactic’. The 28-year-old makes quite clear in the same essay how significant the concept of profession is even at this time; Göhre’s critic contends that his book ‘falls outside the Godgiven path of the profession’, and Weber asks in reply whether this critic is properly aware of the anachronism involved by this canonisation of men and women to profession categories serving human ends at a time when a steadily increasing section of the population were losing the concept of a profession in this sense, a concept which moreover had to be lost in the course of economic changes.109 Weber wrote this thirteen years before the famous sentences in which it is stated that the idea of ‘vocational duty’ merely circulated in our lives ‘as the ghost of formerly religious beliefs’ and - with few

Max Weber's Theme

95

exceptions - the individual usually dispensed with an ethically meaningful interpretation of their vocational fulfilment.110 In these closing passages of Protestant Ethic, Weber neglected to mention why that should be so. He had done so, however, more than a decade before, and with a pungency that is in my opinion unmatched in all the later writings. We find the explication in an essay of 1894, once again in the Christliche Welt, which analyses the work of his friend and political compatriot Friedrich Naumann.111 Naumann, argued Weber, had not consistently recognized the reality of capitalist economy with its tendency to promote the formation of large enterprises. Weber writes — and I consider these sentences to be a linkage in the foundation of Weber’s work: The leading characteristic of modern development is the demise of personal relations of domination as the basis of labour organization, and hence the subjective and psychological preconditions for the dependency of the dominated classes, preconditions which are stamped with and made comprehensible by an ethical-religious cast. Whether in artisan labour, in agricultural labour organization, also in the large agricultural enterprise (especially here) - the psychological foundation for a relation of subordination is present, as in every labour relation, in the personal relation to the master. Hence, I believe, Naumann’s (quite unconsciously held) slight interest in the agricultural worker’s struggle for emancipation. A similar situation exists in the personally managed industrial large enterprise which Naumann seems forced to recognize as a product of evolutionary development. Modern development, however, replaces this form of enterprise increasingly with one founded on the impersonal domination of the class of proprietors, it puts purely commercial relations in the place of personal, obligations of tribute to an unknown, invisible and intangible power in the place of personal subordination, removing in this way the possibility of comprehending the relation of ruling and ruled in ethical and religious terms. The individual entrepreneur is merely a class-type. It is this which is the problem from a religious standpoint, and not some form of social and economic harm arising from the distri¬ bution of property. Weber thus sees the central problem of the modern economic order in

96

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

the lack of possibility of regulating the relations of owner of capital and labourer in some conceivable ethical—psychological manner; it is a question of Nichtethisierbarkeit. The logic of this course of development followed by the specifically modern mode of class formation will force Naumann, if his programme is to be realised, into an opposition to every form of private capital, for it is no longer individual persons with individual psycho¬ logical relations who confront one another, but rather classes prepared to struggle one with another, and here moral and religious influences on the individual have for the present no power.1'2 For the present? In any case this idea ofthe opacity ofimpersonal social relations for an ethical interpretation runs through the entire work: it is to some extent the second encounter with the ‘red thread’ that we seek,

inseparably

bound up

with

the

‘empirical’

circumstance

‘personality and life-order’. During the same year, 1894, Weber published on Naumann’s request his small book on the stock exchange, even today perhaps the most intelligible German-language introduction to its organiza¬ tion.113 Interest on capital he describes as ‘tribute payments’. Once interest was a sign of‘unfreedom’. ‘Among brothers’ loans were not made with interest. ‘Interest was levied by the foreign conqueror by the head from persons, as rent from the land; or the master of the land levied the property-less and hence not completely free persons who rented land from him. ’ Ownership ofland is the oldest form in which interest-like rights can be found. It still exists today, as is proved by the urban rental rates. The difference now is that another lord is demanding tribute, the owner of capital. It is his peculiar quality to be ‘impersonal’. The tax farmer levied the landlord who ruled over him personally and who was known to him; today the possessor of interest-bearing bonds has no idea whose income is taxed on his behalf, and the landowner who has taken up credit through mortgaging his land does not know the original lender of the money that the bank places at his disposal in this way. . . . The impersonal nature of the relation of those paying and those receiving interest is the most characteristic feature of this contemporary obligation of tribute. Therefore one speaks of the domination of‘capital’and not ofthat of‘capitalists’.1,4

Max Weber’s Theme

97

The modern payer of tribute confronts not only a stranger, but rather an ‘unperson’. Weber constantly returns to this basic point. Even shareholders do not know each other.115 A socialist organization would bind all together with a single thread . . . Present-day organization binds each through countless threads to countless others. Each hauls on the network of threads so that he might attain the place that he desires and which he believes to be his; but even if he is a giant and holds many threads within his grasp, he is far more pulled by others to the place which is open to him.116 That could come from Capital; but Weber sees deeper and further than Marx, for whom one must always ‘think in’ the ethical dimension. Weber by contrast elaborates this dimension with a precision upon which a professor of ethics could scarecely improve.117 There is a statement which can be found in many variations in Weber’s writing and which perhaps expresses in the most radical form Weber’s view of the modern world: Every purely personal relation of man to man, of whatever kind and inclusive of the most complete enslavement, is susceptible ofethical regulation; ethical demands can be made of them, since their constitution depends on the individual wills of the parties con¬ cerned, hence making space for the development of charitable virtue. Commercial rational relations are not like this, and the more rationally differentiated that they are, the less they are susceptible of such regulation. The relation of an owner of securities to the mortgagor of a mortgage bank, of the holder ofgovernment bonds to a taxpayer, a shareholder to a factory worker, a tobacco importer to a foreign plantation worker, an industrial consumer of raw materials to a mine worker - these relations are not only practically but in principle immune to charitable regulation. The objectifica¬ tion of the economy through the socializing force of the market follows its own material regularities; to ignore them is to court economic failure,

in the long run economic ruin.

Rational

economic socialization is always objectification in this sense; and it is not possible to direct a cosmos of objective-rational social action through charitable demands directed to specific concrete persons. The objectified cosmos of capitalism provides no place for this at all. The demands of religious charity founder here not only on the

98

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

recalcitrance and inadequacy of concrete persons (as everywhere in individual cases); they lose all sense in general. The religious ethic is confronted with a world of interpersonal relations completely incapable of adapting itself to its elemental norms.118 This completes our presentation of the second level at which W eber’s theme emerges: the ‘ethical’ consequence of this kind of‘cosmos’, of a substantially fully rationalized life order. It is not merely its rational autonomy that renders it immune from ethical domination. More important is the fact that it holds out to those persons bound up within it the possibility of an ‘ethicization’ of their ‘condition of location’ in this order. No foothold is offered to an ‘inwardly oriented’ interpreta¬ tion; every position adopted out of ethical principles becomes mere declamation. It is no longer possible to ‘individually’ determine Lebensfiihrung beyond a simple disciplined functioning in a process of socialization that is fully objectified, is no longer personal but only ‘interpersonal’. We are approaching the question of why the ‘Western process of rationalization’ (which has to be related to each life order if we are to perceive the significance it has in his work1,9) was in fact so central for Weber. Repeatedly, Weber expresses the idea (the early instance from the Christliche Welt has been outlined above) that ethical demands can be made of every personal relation, even if this relation involves force — it is the personal bond that counts. But it is not only ‘masterless slavery’ (as Adolf Wagner dubbed the modern proletariat) but rather the ‘cosmos of the rational state machine (Staatsanstalt) which no longer has in any form the character’ of an order of which one can make ethical demands, ‘as will be discussed in due course’.120 ‘ “Without regard to person”, sine ira et studio, without hatred and thus without love, with arbitrariness and thus without mercy, as a material vocational duty and not by virtue of personal relation’ the homo politicus ‘like the homo oeconomicus discharges his responsibilities most ideally when he does so according to the rational rules of the modern order based on compulsion {Gewaltordnung)'. The ‘personalistic’ ständische order recognized that one had to proceed differently according to the status and prestige of the person concerned, and was aware of the instances when problems might occasionally arise. This is not the case with the modern state: ‘The modern judiciary passes judgement on the life of the criminal not out of personal anger or a

Max Weber’s Theme

99

need for vengeance, but quite detachedly and for the sake of material norms and objectives, quite simply by virtue of its immanent rational autonomy’.

Internal

political

violence

becomes

increasingly

objectified into the ‘ “order of a state based on the rule of law” —from the religious point of view only the most effect form of mimicry of brutality’.121 There is no doubt that Weber attributed the depersonalization of the modern world, following from each moment of rationalizing objecti¬ fication to capitalism, to the ‘most fateful power of our modern life’. Nothing is more misleading than the still common opposition of Weber to Marx. Weber lacks any sense of historical-philosophical hope and all kind of revolutionary promise, including the myth of the proletariat. It was, none the less, a simple matter of intellectual candour that any ‘objective’ assessment of the state of the world in which we live had, when dealing in terms of cultural values, to begin with Marx and Nietzsche.122 We can detect even in Weber’s dissertation a conception of the state of the modern world as determined by Marx. Here, the theme is the contrast of forms of legal action determined, on the one hand, in a purely objective, capital-oriented fashion and, on the other, through personal attachment. The lawyer finds his way from legal science to social economics. He finds the paradox of formally free labour under the conditions of capitalism a striking one, specifically in the mode by which ‘freedom’ is associated with the complete objectification of the person of the employee, subjected to the market by the ethically neutral conditions of the capitalist economic form. In 1902, his darkest year, Weber published a review of the first extensive scientific investi¬ gation of the labour contract that had appeared in German, which with contracts of hire and lease were the kind of purely objective and material contractual relations within capitalist economy that were of especial interest to him.123 It is in these years then that the ‘theme’ ofWeberian sociology finds its fullest development. A cascade of conceptual polarities fixates the theme, all turning on the contrast between the possibility of personal contact and objective-impersonal properties that deny such possibili¬ ties. First comes ‘church’ and ‘sect’, fully present in the Protestant Ethic, then, related to this, ‘institution’ and ‘association’, ‘socialization’ and ‘communalization’,124 domination by personal authority or through constellation of interests and so on - each of the couples is ultimately

100

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

determined by the question of the ‘ethical’ inward consequences that these orders and powers have.12S There can be no doubt that here we also have the basis for Weber’s fixation on sociology as a ‘verstehende’ sociology concerned with the meaning of individual action but which remained a cultural science. This restricted conception of‘his’ sociology is consistently related to the actual material involved; where there is nothing ‘personal’ to register Weber falls silent, and gets no further than unfulfilled intentions. Through the entirety of the writing it is the great ‘cultural problems’ of the age that are the ultimate determinants; or,

more specifically: the elaboration of the ‘subjective human

property’, the mode of ‘fitting in’ with or of adaptation to modern society — life order in the widest sense and, on the other hand, the ‘objective properties of modern culture', the concept that he con¬ sistently favours to that of society.126 Weber’s specific sociological problematic

is

located

in

this

relation

of ‘human

property’

(personality) and ‘cultural property’ (life order), and this remained constant throughout his work, even when he shifted from talking of a ‘cultural scientific’ problematic to the idea of a ‘sociological’ problematic. It should be quite evident now what the phrase ‘great contemporary cultural problem’ involves; we have not found any¬ thing new here, but have simply confirmed the old suspicions - it is human fate conditioned by a human and spiritual ‘absence ofcommitment in the public realm’.127 The ‘ultimate and most sublime values’ which are the making of men and women, retreat from the public domain into ‘the distant realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct relations of individuals to one another’. The cultural problem of the age for Weber is the depersonalization of all the life orders that determine human life — from the agricultural organization of East Elbia, via the rational Anstaltstaat to the modern enterprise of scientific organization. If Weberian sociology turns, on the one hand, on Lebensfiihrung and, on the other, upon the orders and powers conditioning it,

then the culmination of rationalization is the

destruction of this connection. ‘To lead one’s life’, to have the possibility of doing so, always implies that some degree of freedom is left for the conduct of one’s life. Complete rationality annihilates this free space. A completely rationalized order gives no chance for Lebens¬ fiihrung in the sense defined by Weber. There is no place for Lebens¬ fiihrung in the ‘cage’, it is rationalized away, discipline is enough. In the same way, every completely rationalized ‘power’, each cultural value

Max Weber’s Theme

101

defined in terms of rationality, is unsuitable as a means of orienting human Lebensführung wherever anything beyond technical decisions have to be made. Weber’s postulate of value freedom for sociological and economic sciences is no different: claims of Lebensführung are ofno relevance-as in the first sentence of the Logos essay of 1917, ‘practical evaluations

of the

unsatisfactory

or

satisfactory

character

of

phenomena subject to the influence of our action’ fi.e. Lebensjuhrung, W.H.].12H Here, and only here, we find the core of the well-known postulate: anger at the demands of a power (which science had doubt¬ less become) in relation to the central point of all his thought, the Lebensjuhrung of the fee human being. Here science had nothing to find, at least in the form that it had assumed. Weber was not in the position to directly approach the objectified life order of the modern world. Any moderately competent modern social scientist is able to do so, with the assistance of functionalsystemic models or however. Weber did not get as far as this. All the instances of clearly delineated objectified life orders are based on contrasts - old European contrasts - and he had more or less exhausted the theme of this kind of life order in his sociology ofbureaucracy: this rule ‘of formalistic impersonality’, ‘sine ira etstudio, without hatred or passion, thus without “love” or “enthusiasm” - in this way the official conducts his affairs’. It was not Weber’s early death that prevented the development of sociologies of the state,129 the factory and

the

army beyond

conceptual

definitions,

but

rather

the

limitations of his intentions and the possibilities of his problematic. When a modern sociology of organizations makes free with Weber, as it frequently does, it does so in the spirit of Dr Faust’s Wagner.

Prospect We break off at this point, although we have not yet reached the third level of the theme ‘personality and life order’. It is not just the opacity of individual rationalized and objectified life orders (beginning with the vocational world) that becomes an ethical problem, but rather a second consequence of rationality: the struggle of life orders one with another and the placement of the modern Kulturmensch in this. The tensions and conflicts of the life orders- this is how Weber formulates it at the beginning of the ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’130 become more

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intense, gain force, the more each is exposed to the ‘dictate of consequentiality’. ‘Orders’ and ‘spheres’ collide with increasing force — but naturally only in the ‘individual human breast’ to the extent that it remains sensitive at an ethical level to these tensions and conflicts. The third and most sublime level of Weber’s motif is simultaneously the most ‘historic’, deeply rooted in the sensibilities of his age- and of his person. Where Weber saw the possibility of cultural goods ‘being hastily made to serve valueless ends, moreover ends which were completely contradictory and mutually antagonistic’, where an uneasiness ‘with a culture becoming ever more senseless in its further differentiation and development’131 shapes his basic motif; today there prevails here a mood of contentment with ‘pluralism’ and pleasure in the excitement of role-change. I will leave this aspect of the theme for a more relaxed and ‘historical’ treatment.132 We must recall the reserve with which we began our study of Weber’s motif. If we have succeeded in exposing some part of this theme, it should not prevent further work in this direction but should rather stimulate new and impartial readings of the work. This is the sole intention of the arguments put forward here. Following on from the explication of Weber’s problematic, we have sought to make a case for a theme leading through the work from the survey of rural labour to the famous lectures on science and politics from Weber’s final years. This theme, the question of the relation of life order and the development of personality, is not taken up merely at the empirical level, but is dealt with as a question concerning the destiny of the human species; the question of the possibility of living a life in an ethically interpretable manner under the prevailing conditions. We might remember the ideal motives which, according to Weber, drove the best and most virtuous of the East Elbian rural workers away from their homes. We often encounter in Weber’s work the curious word ‘ethically neutral’ (anethisch) -not unethical or anti-ethical, but ethically neutral. A prime concept of an ethically neutral institution was for Weber the market. Domination through a constellation of interests had an ethically neutral character, that is, it was not susceptible to ethical interpretation. This resistance, opacity, of the world in which we are ‘placed’ to ethical interpretation is the ‘fate’ with which Weber’s work struggles. What would be on the agenda if the claimed basic theme in Weber

Max Weber’s Theme

103

were to to be proved correct? Initially a much more precise analysis of the entire body of writing would be called for, beyond anything that might be possible in one essay. It is not to be hoped that the ‘theme’, the ‘basic melody’ that we pursue, can be defined with complete exactitude. In a central passage of the Inaugural Address, which is of central importance for the understanding of the entire works, Weber mentions the ‘forces of selection’ operating through the historical living conditions in East Elbia on its inhabitants, and ‘willingly concedes’ that he is in no position to develop theoretically the significance of the various general points which may be derived from them. The immensely difficult question, certainly insoluble at present, of where to place the limit of the variability of physical

and psychological

qualities in a

population under the influence ofits given conditions ofexistence is something I shall not even venture to touch on.133 Weber, friend of exact concepts, never turned the immense topic of ‘anthropology and history/sociology’ (for this is what the question of personality and life order implies) into a ‘theory’ of this relation, despite his piling up of material and his conviction of the cultural significance of this theme. He never sought to develop a ‘recon¬ struction’ of this relation. The ‘general viewpoints’ lie-for the most part implicitly — at the basis of his concepts.134 We have only sought here, within the limits imposed upon us, to establish as far as possible what was made explicit. A search for ‘theoretical’ clarity is quite foreign to the spirit of Weber’s work. It seems to me more important to prove that his questions were by no means eccentric, but rather corresponded in the closest possible way to those questions related to the new ‘place of the human being in the world’, which occupied his contemporaries from Dilthey to Scheler. We shall have to re-examine the concepts hitherto employed for the understanding of Weberian science. On the basis of which scientific context and tendencies is the work to be understood? In my opinion: in the disappearing tradition of the moral sciences, and especially in the tradition of the German Historical School, as a student of which Weber was to some extent baptised three times: as a student of the Historical School of Law, as a young representative of the Historical School of Economics and, finally, as a major repre¬ sentative of German neo-idealism.

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In our first essay we begairi with the question of whether Weber is correctly placed in the victory shrine of a modern ‘value free’ social science. Desecration was not intended, but neither was misplaced devotion. Weber belongs to the late history of the tradition of practical science; and he finds a place in the pre-history of modern social science only if his central questions and concerns are neglected. What kind of provocation does this image of Weber present to present-day social science, if at all? For me this is the real question. It could be that Weber would then lose interest for contemporary science. ‘The torch of cultural problems has moved onward.’ Social science has for a long time sought ‘to shift its location and change its conceptual apparatus so that it might regard the stream of events from the heights of reflective thought’.135 Who could dare to doubt this? Nevertheless: it could be the case that Weber’s work, centred on the question of human destiny in the modern world, could make us aware of the questions that we no longer pose, and thereby provide an impulse for the posing of new questions.

PART II

The Biography of the Work

3

(A Science ofMan’. Max Weber and the Political Economy ofthe German Historical School

In the first essay that he wrote on Max Weber’s work, Friedrich Tenbruck referred to the ‘historical isolation’ surrounding the inter¬ pretation of Weber’s writing, an isolation that has closed off important aspects of its historical and genetic context.1 Little has changed since 1959; on the contrary, the progressive consolidation of modem sociology has ensured that this situation remains fixed and unchanging. There is, of course, a mountainous literature on the so-called ‘reception’ of Weber.2 Equally evident is the fact that this literature contributes very little to the understanding of Weber’s work. The various evolutions in the game of Chinese whispers can certainly be highly amusing, but here as in scientific ‘receptions’ we do not expect the original message to survive the process. Or might we - to take the most ‘fruitful’ example draw conclusions about Weber’s ‘interpretive sociology’ on the basis of Talcott Parsons’s Theory of Social Action? Parsons certainly thought so3 and a whole generation of sociologists has learnt to read Weber through his eyes. Even the rapid accumulation of studies of the relations, influences and possible parallels between Weber’s work and that ofhis contemporaries (Rickert, Lask, Münsterberg, Troeltsch, Jellinek, Sombart) - who all without doubt prompted here and assisted there, stimulated, corrected and so forth, but nevertheless did not really mould the basic features of the work - has not led to any of these studies being able to contribute very much to a fundamental understanding of the work, for they assume without exception that Weber is to be understood as a founding father of modern sociology.4 Consequently, interest from the very first has been directed to the process of development that sociology has undergone.

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Weber had nothing in common with the sociology of a Comte or a Spencer, or a Dürkheim (who, in fact, is never once mentioned), and Weber’s verstehende sociology clearly distanced itself from the ‘organic’ variants of Schäffle and Gumplowicz. Here, we are obviously dealing with a ‘founding father’ of a sociology sui generis, ex nihilo, a pure intellectual invention. At the most, Tönnies and Simmel seem to belong to the same ‘genetic’ context, although wherever Weber greets them as kindred spirits he makes sure to keep a certain distance. Max Weber maintained a distance wherever it was possible; his work is not free of an addiction to laboured originality.3 However, if we disregard the mannerisms of verstehende sociology, then Weber’s writings are seen to fall within the broad stream of later nineteenthcentury German human and social sciences, a period in which these sciences truly blossomed. Such a point of view robs the work of none of its greatness! But let us reverse this perspective. Taking up Tenbruck’s formulation, let us examine the connections which are historically and genetically relevant to the work, and which lead up to it. ‘Reception history’ is a diversion; the history of contemporary influences and contacts remain of importance but cannot lead us to the origins of the work. Where do these origins lie- from which formative traditions does the work develop? In the two previous essays I have sought to demonstrate that Weber’s central problem - in his words, his zentrale Fragestellung - concerns the ‘fate of humanity’ under conditions of modernity. This can thus be regarded as a fundamentally ‘anthropological’ problem or, to use a term then current, a ‘characterological’ question; it is this question that generates the thematic thread running through the work: namely, the relation of‘personality and life-orders’ — another of Weber’s formula¬ tions.6 Anyone familiar with the history of political philosophy will notice at once that Weber’s problem and theme — when properly defined - share little with the specifically sociological traditions associated with the names of Comte, Spencer or Dürkheim. On the other hand, there is a striking resemblance to the central themes of political philosophy from the Greeks up to Rousseau.7 To use Comte’s formulation, sociology developed as a politique positive from moral philosphy, and especially from politics - and in this process effected a decisive emancipation. The central point of‘practical’, ‘moral’ and ‘social’ sciences is no longer the political community - in modem terms the state as societas perfecta cum

‘A Science of Man

109

imperio; in its place there appears society in its ideal form, societas perfecta sine imperio, constituted by those who are in principle free and equal. ‘Society’, with the market as an ideal type of sociability in which power and influence are freely competed for, delineates the extreme bounds for human action. The political order becomes subordinate, a sub-system of the social system. The result is a radical intellectual re-orientation, which encountered (and not only in Germany)* particularly intense and stubborn resistance-Treitschke’s post-doctoral thesis on the ‘science of society’ need only be recalled here.9 The question to be posed in this essay aims at an understanding of the characteristic features of Weber’s science between a waning tradition of‘politics’ on the one hand and an up-andcoming sociology on the other, within the German academic context of the late nineteenth century. Is it possible, therefore, to understand Weber properly if he is viewed unquestioningly as the great sociologist, as the German founding father of sociology? First, we must recall a few biographical details of significance in Weber’s development, before moving on to examine the special character of that science into which Weber entered and with which he identified himself at the beginning of his academic career.

From Jurisprudence to Political Economy In the first sentence of the first letter by Max Weber known to con¬ temporary researchers, a letter from the twelve-year-old Max to his mother, we read: ‘I have taken a look at Uncle Julian Schmidt’s books and glanced at Herder’s Cid,

and am at the moment reading

Machiavelli’s Principe, which Herr Dr Brendicke has lent me. Later I want to borrow Anti-Machiavell too.’10 In April 1888, he writes to his uncle Hermann Baumgarten that he has to ‘continually think about public affairs’.11 And a year before his death, at the time when his chance of being elected to the National Assembly had finally come to nothing, he wrote to a friend: And then the political (I am now able “to speak of it more freely. . .”) -that is my old “secret love” \12 As we know, Max Weber never did find a path into practical politics. But what role should this ‘secret love’ be given in his scholarly work? Does this question help us in our search for its origins and for its basic working principles? Weber studied law, that much is known, taking the broad approach that was usual at the time, but all the same not transgressing the usual

110

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boundaries. Thus, in addition to law, he read theology, philosophy, a great deal of history and also political economy. Law and political economy had always been closely associated in the German cameralist tradition. He gained a doctorate in law, completed his period as a junior barrister without any especial enjoyment and became an assistant judge (Assessor)-, he therefore became a qualified lawyer and was qualified as such in Berlin. Drawn into legal practice, he at first doubted his aptitude for scholarly work. The chance of working as a syndic in Bremen, i.e. practical work in the full sense of the term, fell through'3 and he did after all write a post-doctoral thesis and complete his ‘Habilitation’: in German and Roman law, as well as in commercial law. Shortly after this, Friedrich Althoff, who had in mind great things for Weber, conferred on him an associate professorship in German and commercial law in Berlin. If we wish to appreciate properly Weber’s interests and his way of thinking, it is illuminating to look rather more closely at what Weber wrote on law in his lifetime. I hope that nothing has escaped my attention - but my conclusion is that he devoted scarcely a single line to that which lawyers call de lege lata. The doctoral dissertation and the post-doctoral thesis deal with questions oflegal history, questions that would never pall for him. But what he writes on law in the more restricted sense concerns legal policy - and this is written from the viewpoint of the legislator, de legeferenda. The earlier themes concern social and commercial law: law of inheritance, law of residence, law ofentailment and - reaching out even further- the la w of the stock exchange and of bonds. In the final years, his interest turns to constitutional and public law. Weber now actually sees himself in the role of a legislateur. The titles of his main articles express his intention with an almost provocative tone. In May 1918, ‘Parliament and Government in a reconstructed [i.e.

to be re-constructed]

Germany’; finally in January 1919, summarizing the essays from the period November/December 1918: ‘Germany’s future state form’. During his entire life, legal questions were ofinterest to Weber only with respect to their potential political effect; questions oflegal doctrine never caught his interest.14 And so, in 1894, the fully qualified lawyer, who in a letter of 1889 confessed to having in the meantime ‘become one-third economist’15 eagerly seizes the opportunity of exchanging his easily attained Berlin appointment in commercial law for the Freiburg chair in National¬ ökonomie. His work for the Verein für Sozialpolitik on the condition of rural labourers in the eastern provinces had brought him recognition

‘A Science of Man’

111

among contemporary economists. He felt equal to the tasks of the new discipline, even if he did claim, with some exaggeration, that he had for the first time attended principal economics lectures - given by himself.16 For a time the Freiburg opening was not completely assured, and he wrote to his mother: ‘I would be sorry if I remained harnessed to the relatively barren province of law. ’17 By assuming the Freiburg chair Weber by no means said goodbye to politics, as is sometimes assumed; he rather sought and found a way into a more practical politics18 —into a science more ‘political’ than law could be, where anyone who wanted to make a career had to devote their efforts to work on positive law. One of the attractive aspects of the appoint¬ ment to a small university like Freiburg was the possibility of participating in practical political work. Later, when Weber assumed chairs in Heidelberg and Munich he was in each case quite aware that political activity (for example, appointment to the Reichstag) would scarcely be compatible with the more demanding commitments of teaching.19 The reasons for the shift from law to economics are primarily scholarly in nature, and relate to the differences existing between the two disciplines. Marianne Weber summarized them as follows: a change of discipline suited him. As a science, economics was still elastic and ‘young’ in comparison with law. Besides, it was on the borderline of a number of scholarly fields; it led directly to the history of culture and of ideas as well as to philosophical problems. Finally, it was more fruitful for a political and socio-political orientation than the more formal problems of legal thought.20 Before turning to a closer examination of the discipline that Weber joined, it might be of use to recall briefly the work that Weber left at his death. Can it, viewed from the perspective of 1920, be straight¬ forwardly assigned to sociology? Weber had certainly been the driving force behind the foundation of the German Sociological Society. However, the society was hardly established before he left it.21 He nearly always referred to sociology in a distancing fashion (for instance, in the opening passage of Economy and Society) and the tone is often distinctly ironic. Wherever he accepted the term for his own work he sought, by using specifying adjectives (‘verstehend’, ‘inter¬ pretive’) not only to isolate it, but actually to singularize it. The ‘later’ Weber only admitted a sociology conducted in his fashion (‘for

112

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

sociology in our sense which is restricted to subjectively understand¬ able phenomena — a usage which there is no intention of attempting to impose on anyone else’);22 a Weber who, in the usual genetic reading, arrived at his ‘mature’ sociology in the first pages of Economy and Society via political economy and ‘cultural science’. Is such a view of Weber’s development beyond doubt? Does an uncritical acceptance of the conventional wisdom contribute to a more precise acquaintance with the overall character of the work? For Weber, the real task ofscience was precisely the casting of doubt on the ‘taken-for-granted’, at the very least to recognize the existence of a problem, to be on guard. On closer examination, then, the first 56 pages of Economy and Society with the essay on categories published in 1913 certainly are ‘sociology’. But ‘basic concepts’, ‘categories’? What are they for? For a contribution - Economy and Society - to an outline of social economics, all of whose remaining contributions (contents and authors all selected by Weber) were arranged according to a ‘social economical’ perspective and purpose. Weber chose for himself, and delivered, the section on ‘Economy and the social orders and powers’.23 Does Economy and Society represent a sociology? It cannot be disputed that the object was approached through an inter¬ pretive framework constructed in Weber’s own fashion, and that was what the unavoidable ‘basic concepts’ were for. But does the applica¬ tion of a sociological method to a given material make a ‘sociology’? That is a scholastic question in whose ramifications we are not interested here. What is of interest to us is Weber’s own conception of his academic standpoint and how his contemporaries regarded this position. For them, Weber was an economist: an economist with an uncommon breadth of interest and subtlety of approach. But none of this was, in principle, alien to the discipline! The first contribution to the memorial volume for Max Weber provides an appreciation of his contribution to economics.24 This is treated as perfectly natural - for what was he if not an economist? Had he occupied anything other than professorial posts in economics? In Munich, he changed the name of Lujo Brentano’s chair into one concerned with social sciences, in an attempt to protect himself from the full range of duties connected with the post. Despite this, both Ministry and Faculty routinely continued to treat the chair as one in economics and Weber did lecture, for good or ill, on ‘general economic history’. Until his death, Weber was officially bound to the disciplinary domain that he had entered in 1894

113

‘A Science of Man ’

- whatever the label might be that the history of the sciences chose later to hang on his work. As some have experienced for themselves, it is quite usual for academics to discuss among themselves the question of whether this person or that is a ‘real’ economist, lawyer, historian and so on. In spite of his admiration for Weber, Joseph Schumpeter was brave enough in his History of Economic Analysis to doubt whether Weber was a ‘real’ economist.25 But to what did his doubts relate? Primarily to Weber’s ‘almost complete ignorance’ ofeconomic theory as under¬ stood by that ‘strong partisan of economic theory, in the Marshallian sense’. But Weber understood enough of this to state that, in Schumpeter’s words, ‘he saw no objection of principle to what economic theorists actually did, though he disagreed with them on what they thought they were doing’.26 In these amusing passages from Schumpeter’s masterpiece it becomes clear that these attributions and delimitations are chiefly expressions of shifts within the discipline - in fashionable terms, expressions of a ‘paradigm shift’. For Schumpeter, Weber belonged to a superseded epoch in economics, an epoch of which Schumpeter was no longer a part. And this is quite true. Weber declared himself repeatedly to be a student of the ‘Historical School of German Political Economy’ - and, if we are to understand the attraction that economics held for the young Weber, then it is to this school that we should direct our attention. In his Freiburg Inaugural Address, Weber reduced his critically distanced, partly polemical (but none the less irrevocable) relation with the Historical School to the formula: economic science is a ‘political science’.27 What did he mean by this statement? It is certainly rather provocative, but all he fundamentally does is to reduce the barely disputed contemporary character of political economy to the most concise formulation: a formulation that encapsulates, in our opinion, almost the entire ‘secret’ of Weber’s work, and especially of Economy and Society and the ‘Economic ethic of world religions’.

Economics as Political Science and as a Science of Man It is not possible to arrive at a historical interpretation of the foundations

and

basic principles

of Weber’s

work from

the

114

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

perspective of present-day sociology. As far as today’s sociology is concerned, political economy is part of a pre-history existing at the same level as the work of Aristotle, Montesquieu, Machiavelli and many others: all those ‘predecessors’ who contributed to the eventual breakthrough. In no area of historical science is such a naive and simple faith in progress still to be found as in the history of science.2* From the perspective of contemporary sociology, it is impossible to develop a genetic characterization of Weber’s work that avoids prejudice and anachronism. First of all, it is necessary to identify historically the academic location of Weber’s oeuvre. However massive this oeuvre might be, however much it overflows the boundaries of defined academic disciplines, it must none the less have a place among disciplines established to be both taught and learnt. It must be related to the distinctions existing between faculties; it must be situated within the domains of competence of academic journals, monograph series, associations and so on. Once again: where does Weber’s work belong? Or, as I would prefer to put it: out of which framework does it develop? Weber never uttered a word about this, he never wrote anything resembling a ‘history of doctrines’. The essay on Roscher and Knies expressly refuses any claim to such a history.29 Despite this, Weber’s work is in fact full of remarks that make it possible to summarize his own estimation of the position he occupied: within ‘the science of human action’ in the widest possible sense.30 It is quite apparent from the work that he had a perfect command of the doctrinal history of the subject in which he assumed a chair in 1894. This was taken for granted by economists of his generation, because all theoretical controversy up to Walras and Marshall was almost exclusively a question of doctrinal positions and their disputes - as Methodenstreitigteiten. Any doubt on this point is removed by referring to the comprehensive bibliography of Weber’s unpublished ‘Grundriß of 1898, and to the notes in the Nachlaß. In the Federal Republic of Germany today the history of economics has become the hobby of a few outsiders and among professional economists we would not even need the fingers of one hand to name them. It would be quite incomprehensible to German readers that a book on the history of economics from Dugald Stewart to Alfred Marshall, a period in which political economy sought to break loose

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‘A Science of Man

from its traditional integration with political science, should be entitled That Noble Science of Politics,31 and no German publisher would accept such a title. Nevertheless, late nineteenth-century German economics had remained particularly close to the common point of departure for all national ‘schools’ of economics, namely and in particular moral philosophy,

and its most important sub¬

discipline, political science. It is here that the real difference is to be found that divides the Western ‘classics’ from German economic thought since Adam Müller and Friedrich List — a way of thought that culminated in the ‘older’ Historical School of Bruno Hildebrand, Wilhelm Roscher and Karl Knies, where it assumed an unmistakable profile when compared with ‘Western’, ‘economistic’ and ‘cosmo¬ politan’ economics. Some basic facts:

Adam

Smith was

a professor of moral

philosophy, and his famous work was written within the framework of this academic domain. If politics was simply the science concerned with the public good in general, then political economy related to the economic good, in particular to ‘popular welfare’. For Smith, this simply meant wealth, since his conception of‘welfare’ was already a restricted one - ‘wealth’. As is stated in the opening passage of Book 4 of the Wealth of Nations: ‘Political ceconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects . . . It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.’ This objective of political economy, deriving from natural law and emphasizing the centrality of wealth, or more precisely ‘pro¬ ductivity’, was one that Weber vehemently opposed, for along with the entire German economic tradition he did not believe that such a conception could be scientifically justified. However, this should not disguise the possibility that Weber’s questioning of practical ends (which he shared with the older school)

caused the German

perspective of economics from the viewpoint of a ‘statesman or legislator’ to remain a much more radically ‘political’ one. If it is possible to summarize the development of English economics up to Marshall by saying that ‘political economy’ was finally struck out of academic nomenclature, being replaced by the laconic ‘economics’,32 it can be seen that, by comparison, German economics remained up to the early 1950s a definite ‘science of the state’ (Staatswissenschaß): more precisely, the ‘economic science of the state’ as most of the chairs in economics were designated. During the nineteenth century, and in

116 some

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

cases

even later,

Nationalökonomie,

while

retaining

this

collective name, moved out of the Faculty of Philosophy into the Faculty of Law and Politics.33 This could not occur in England, because there existed no

such relationship

between

law and

economics. In Germany, on the other hand, political economy remained a science with close links to the state and administration, continuing a line going from cameralism and Policeywissenscha.fi via Friedrich List and Lorenz von Stein. To this day, we have a memorial to this tradition in Robert von Mohl’s Zeitschrift for die gesamte Staats¬ wissenschaft. In Weber’s time, the leading economicjournal, generally referred to as Schmoller’s Jahrbuch, was properly called the Journal for Legislation, Administration and Economy, and Braun’s Archiv, which Weber with Sombart and Jaffe took over in 1904 as the Archiv for Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, had as a subtitle: New Series of the Archive for Social Legislation and Statistics. Brief consideration of this terminology provides a background to a reading of the Freiburg Inaugural Address, leading us to a closer understanding of Weber’s own conception of his discipline, as well as the continuing effects of this conception after his illness. The Freiburg Address is, to use a formulation of Wolfgang Mommsen, ‘the most significant documentation that we have of Max Weber’s political philosophy until the war years'.'4 In contrast to its political content, little attention has been paid to its programmatic scientific provenance, its documentary value for Weber the academic; for it is generally believed that the ‘work proper' begins only in the years following his illness. In the discussion on value judgements in 1913, Weber certainly distanced himself from the ‘in many respects immature form’ of the address, finding that at many points he could no longer identify himself with it. This is, however, a mere rhetorical figure, for in the same sentence he proceeds to recall that at the time he had sought to make the point that ‘social orders, however they might be organized, are ultimately to be assessed in terms of the changes offered

to

particular

human

types

to

assume

a

position

of

domination’.35 The question (what social order produces what sort of human type? or, as we put it: what sort of man will come to predominate?) can scarcely be of more import within the framework of a human (inner-worldly) science - beyond that question lie other ways of attaining ‘salvation’. I would argue that we have to locate the axis and fulcrum of the oeuvre in the above position, already outlined

117

‘A Science of Man’

in the 1895 lecture, and it is obvious that this question is central to the whole

of political

science

from

Aristotle

to

Rousseau

and

Tocqueville: namely, what chances are there in the configuration of a political order for a particular human type to achieve prominence; not a statistical predominance but an ethical model, a representative and a setter of standards? Economics was not the least of the disciplines in nineteenth-century

Germany

that

upheld

this

tradition

and

incorporated it into a science of man. In his Frieburg Address, Weber stands within an as yet unfractured tradition. There are two central passages in which Weber expresses the older ‘moral philosophical’ tradition of political economy, and we have to consider both in some detail. The first thesis, repeated in altered form in 1913, states: [. . .] a science of man, and that is what economics is, inquires above all into the quality of men who are brought up in those economic and social conditions of existence.36 And the second is the laconic statement: ‘The science of economic policy is a political science’.37 In coming to terms with this protestation, with which Weber confronted his listeners in 1895 - and it is no more than new wine served up in the old bottles of the German Historical School —let us begin with the second statement.

Economics as a ‘Political Science’ What did it mean for a German economist in 1895 to state that his science was a ‘political’ one? An assurance, delivered in nationalimperialistic tones, that it should not be ‘unpolitical’? Not at all. In the terminology of Weber’s time the opposite to ‘political’ is not ‘unpolitical’, but ‘cosmopolitical’. This is true of an unbroken line from Adam Midler to Karl Knies. The fourth and fifth books of Adam Midler’s Elemente der Staatskunst [Elements of Statecraft] (1809) are dominated by a critique of the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of the Smithian school. The case of Friedrich List is no different, the title of whose principle work,

The National System of Political Economy (1841)

contains in the word ‘national’ a definite critical connotation.38 Chapter 1 of Book 2 (Theory) in List states the opposition perfectly clearly: ‘Political and cosmopolitical economy’.39 According to List, things had gone wrong from the time of the Physiocrats: Quesnay . . . was the first who extended his investigations to the

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whole human race, without taking into consideration the idea of the nation. [Quesnay demands] that we must imagine that the merchants of all nations formed one commercial republic. Quesnay undoubtedly speaks of cosmopolitical economy ... in opposition to political economy . . . Adam Smith sees his task as consisting in the justi¬ fication of the cosmopolitical idea of the absolute freedom of world commerce. . . Adam Smith concerned himself as little as Quesnay did with true political economy, i. e. that policy which each separate nation had to obey in order to make progress in its economic conditions. He entitles his work ‘The Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations’(i.e. of all nations of the whole human race). . . He seeks to prove that ‘political’ or national economy must be replaced by ‘cosmopolitical or world-wide economy’.40 Wilhelm Roscher’s Grundriß zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirtschaß. Nach geschichtlicher Methode

[Outline

of Lectures

on

Political

Economy, according to the Historical Method] (1843) is usually treated as the inaugural text of the Historical School of political economy. It begins with the classic line, aimed right at the heart of Smithian doctrine: ‘For us, as for others, the question ofhow national wealth might be best promoted certainly is of prime importance; but it does not in any respect constitute our actual purpose [my emphasis, W.H.]. Staatswirtschafi is not a mere chrematistics, the art of becoming wealthy, but a political science in which thejudgment and domination of men is at issue. ’ In the sentence that follows, we can see clearly how a Weberian ‘sociology’ develops out of the ‘cognitive purpose’ of the Historical School: ‘Our objective is the representation of that which peoples have, in economic terms, thought, wanted and felt, what they have striven for and have achieved, why they have striven and why they have achieved. This approach is only made possible by the closest association with the other sciences of national life, in particular legal, state and cultural history.’41 ‘Cosmopolitanism’ as a means of characterizing the specific ‘one¬ sidedness’ of the Smithian school likewise runs like a red thread through the text, which can be regarded as the real methodological foundation of the Historical

School:

Bruno Hildebrand’s

Die

Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Znknn/f [Political Economy of the Present Day and the Future] (1848), a text marked by intellectual penetration, scholarly urbanity, a feeling for social justice and a

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masterly style.42 A basic principle of the Historical School concerns the practical problems of economic policy, promoting human conscience, judgement and political responsibility as against a conception of economics (classically represented by Ricardo) as one of calculation and the application of cosmopolitan laws ‘remote from time and space’ - laws that are founded in the relationship of man to material goods.43 And finally, Karl Knies (1821—98) took up the argument against the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of Western theory in his most important book, Die politische Oekonomie vom geschichtlichen Standpuncte [Political Economy from the Historical Point of View],44 the economic text¬ book that indicated to Weber, while still a student, the path that his research would later take. Knies took up the earlier theoretical objections to ‘cosmopolitanism’ (i.e. its disregard of geographical, political and temporal differences), transforming them into the concept of‘absolutism’ or the ‘abstractness’ of theory-a terminology that Weber adopted in his 1898 ‘Grundriß’.4"’ A long passage from Part 3 in Knies’s text can show to us the appropriate context within which we have to understand the meaning of Weber’s Freiburg dictum that economics is a political science. It follows a long passage on protective tariffs and free trade, which emphasizes the ‘absolutism of the solution’, and which precedes the chapter on ‘The principle of relativity’, which is itself a classic in the teaching ofeconomicjudgement. The degree to which this anticipates Weber’s central problem is concisely summarized by the list of contents of the section from which the passage is drawn: 9. The uniform features of the endeavours and activities of individuals and peoples. Significance ofnon-economic factors and goods for the settlement of economic questions. Decisional norm relating to the principle of the conflict of obligations. Application to the controversial issues of modern trade policy.46 If I suggest that the Freiburg Address is a modernized paraphrase of pp. 401-40 of Knies’s book, this is no belittlement of Weber. With a few good cigars, the whole thing could be finished off in a couple of mornings. So to the passage: The economic life of a people is so closely interwoven with other areas of its life that any particular observation can only be made if

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one keeps in view its relation with the whole, existing as a truth in the complexity of empirical reality; just as a divination of the future development of the economy can only be made on the basis of the entire development of the life ofa people. If political economy were to limit itself to the elaboration oflaws in a world of material goods, or seek only to establish a technico-economic theory of enterprises, it would have to give up the title of economics and make way for a new independent discipline.

If,

however,

political economy

genuinely bases its observations and deductions on the real facts of people and state, if it seeks to solve the problems arising in the life of people and state, then it should not detach its domain and task from that of life in its entirety, but must rather treat both as a living member ofa living body. . . Since political economy has to respect this context, and in its own concerns contributes to the solution of the moral-political problems of the whole, it is therefore enjoined to take its place with the moral and political sciences. Only then does it effect a proper connection to real life, for in fact the individual as well as entire peoples and states seek to realize the objectives of their whole life through economic endeavour and economic success. In this way economic concern for material goods attains the level of political and ethical activity.47

What makes economics a political science, therefore, is that which Weber

rather

obscurely

and

unnecessarily

refers

to

as

the

‘heteronomy of ends’ in all economic actions. Economic action, especially the economic policy of a nation, is never oriented to merely economic ends.48 In 1894, Weber entered a discipline whose German variant, marked by the influence of the cameralist tradition, distinguished between socalled general or ‘theoretical’ economics and economic policy. It had to make this distinction so that it might bring together both the accumulated practical knowledge of the cameralist disciplines and the theoretical advances of the ‘classics’. Weber’s doctrine of the ideal type and the postulate of value freedom develop out of this evolving disciplinary matrix, and he presents his solution in the essay on objectivity. Some further steps remained to be taken at the end of the Inaugural Address, but the basic lines of the solution are evident in the Address and the ‘Grundriß’ of 1898. ‘As a science of explanation and analysis economics is international’,49 referring here in the Freiburg

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Address to a ‘cosmopolitan’ classicism; ‘theory is ethically indifferent', we find on the second page of the Heidelberg ‘Grundriß’. Since this is the case, it is possible to employ an ideal type, and this Weber does in the Grundriß with a thoroughness and comprehensiveness to be found nowhere else in the whole of his published writings. The passage, therefore, has to be cited in its entirety: To ascertain the most elementary life conditions of economically mature human subjects it [theory] proposes a constructed ‘economic subject’, in respect of which, by contrast with empirical man, it (a)

ignores and treats as non-existent all those motives influencing empirical man which are not specifically economic, i.e. not specifically concerned with the fulfilment of material needs;

(b)

assumes as existent qualities that empirical man does not possess, or possesses only incompletely, i.e. (i) complete insight into a given situation - economic omniscience; (ii)

unfailing choice of the most appropriate means for a given

(iii)

complete dedication of one’s powers to the purpose of

end - absolute economic rationality; acquiring economic goods - ‘untiring acquisitional drive’. It thus postulates an unrealistic person, analogous to a mathematical ideal model.50 Here we have homo oeconomicus, the archetype ofthe ideal type; an ideal type that, in this form, was not Weber’s invention but had been declared by the ‘classics’ (pre-eminently by John Stuart Mill in his canonical Principles of Political Economy of 1848) to be quite plainly a fiction employed for theoretical ends. The 1898 ‘Grundriß’ demonstrates to us how thoroughly Weber was acquainted with the ‘box of tools’ (Schumpeter) of ‘analytic science’, that is, state of the art ‘theory’. But it is not this that really is of interest to him. What he finds interesting are the questions concerning ‘values’, ‘political’ questions relating to the ‘cultural tasks of the present time’ (a term used by Knies as early as 1853) in so far as they are affected by the economy. And so we read in the Address: ‘The economic policy of a German state, and the standard ofvalue adopted

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by a German economic theorist, can therefore be nothing other than a German policy and a German standard. ’51 Before we examine more closely Weber’s admission — ‘half unconscious but all the same dominating’ - that economics (i.e. including its theoretical parts) is a science of man investigating ‘above all else the quality of.. . human beings’, and before we turn to the intention and ‘polemical’ meaning (in Carl Schmitt’s sense) of the other programmatic statement contained in the Address, let us briefly return to the actual content of the Address. Weber begins with a summary of his findings from the Verein fur Sozialpolitik investigation into rural labour. As in later works, he takes pleasure in beginning with ‘dry data’. '’2 On the eastern borders of the German Empire there is an economic struggle taking place between the German and the Polish populations. At stake are ‘protective tariffs’ and ‘free-trade policy’, except that this time the product in question is human labour. Bismarck had closed the frontiers to eastern migrant workers in the interest of national exclusiveness; Caprivi gave way to pressure from the big agricultural employers and opened them up again. Adopting the point ofview of a state that wished to be a national state, Weber demanded a return to Bismarck’s policy. At this point, the properly scientific part of Weber’s address begins; he poses the question of how one relates to this demand from the point of view of economic policy: ‘Does it [economic

policy]

treat

such

nationalist

value-judgements

as

prejudices, of which it must carefully rid itself in order to be able to apply its own specific standard of value to the economic facts, without being influenced by emotional reflexes? And what is this standard of value peculiar to economic policy?’53 First of all, Weber destroys the picture of‘peaceful’ economic competition:

The German peasants and day-labourers of the East are not being pushed off the land in an open conflict by politically superior opponents. Instead they are getting the worst of it in the silent and dreary

struggle

of everyday

economic

existence,

they

are

abandoning their homeland to a race which stands on a lower level, and moving towards a dark future in which they will sink without trace. There can be no truce even in the economic struggle for existence; only if one takes the semblance of peace for its reality can one believe that peace and prosperity will emerge for our successors

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at some time in the distant future. Certainly, the vulgar conception of political economy is that it consists in working out recipes for making the world happy; the improvement of the ‘balance of pleasure’ in human existence is the sole purpose ofour work that the vulgar conception can comprehend. This ‘vulgar’ conception is brusquely rejected. It is factually incorrect: the deadly seriousness of the population problem prohibits eudaemonism; it prevents us from imagining that peace and happiness lie hidden in the lap of the future, it prevents us from believing that elbow-room in this early existence can be won in any other way than through the hard struggle of human beings with each other.54 Weber has no time either for the normative aspects of ‘vulgar’ eudaemonism: ‘The question which leads us beyond the grave ofour own generation is not “how will human beings feel in the future” but “how will they be”. In fact this question underlies all work in political economy.’

[my emphasis,

W.H.]55 Weber reveals the ultimate

objectives of his scientific and political thought when he states: ‘We do not want to train up feelings of well-being in people, but rather those characteristics we think constitute the greatness and nobility of our human nature.’56 The young man assuming a chair in economics begins his appoint¬ ment by denying his discipline the capacity of providing itself with ultimate standards ofjudgement. Everywhere, the economic way of thought was on the advance. Even in pandectic textbooks (this is five years before the introduction of the Civil Code) it was possible to detect here and there a quiet but insistent economic current. ‘A method of analysis which is so confidently forging ahead is in danger of falling into certain illusions and exaggerating the significance of its own point of view. ’57 In much the same way that the diffusion of the material of philosophical reflection among a lay public had often led to the opinion that: the old questions of the nature of human knowledge are no longer the ultimate and central questions of philosophy, so in the field of political economy the notion has grown in the minds of the coming generation that the work of economic science has not only immensely extended our knowledge of the nature of human

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communities, but also provided a completely new standard by which these phenomena can ultimately be evaluated, that political economy is in a position to extract from its material its own specific ideals.58 But wherever one sought to establish a specifically ‘economic’ principle of judgement, one relapsed into vague uncertainties. ‘In truth, the ideals we introduce into the substance of our science are not peculiar to it, nor have we worked them out independently: they are old-established human ideals of a general type. ’59 Weber does not yet express himself with the precision that he would achieve in the essay on objectivity. But already here it is a question of making the value-relation more precise, through which is to be gained the specific objectivity - at base a radicalized subjectivity — which alone appears to be solely realizable in the social sciences. This ‘value relation’, however, is and remains none other than that stated in the Inaugural Address: the ‘quality ofhuman beings’, which is ‘bound up with the distinct imprint of humanity that we find in our own nature’.60 We might hope ‘that the future recognizes in our nature the nature of its own ancestors. We wish to make ourselves the forefathers of the race of the future with our labour and our mode of existence. ’61 Directly following this, we find the crucial sentence that is always read as a nationalistic statement: ‘The economic policy of a German state, and the standard of value adopted by a German economic theorist, can therefore be nothing other than a German policy and a German standard.’62 The ultimate standards of value are ‘political’; for Weber they are only conceivable as individual and specific. Weber follows this statement immediately with a discussion of the question of ‘cosmopolitanism’, and this is further proof that this passage should be read in a ‘politico-anthropological’ manner, and not nationalistically. Has the situation perhaps changed since economic development began to create an all-embracing economic community of nations, going beyond national boundaries? Is the ‘nationalistic’ standard of evaluation to be thrown on the scrapheap along with ‘national egoism’in economic policy? . . . We know that this is not the case: the struggle has taken on other forms, forms about which one may well raise the question of whether they should be viewed as a

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mitigation or indeed rather an intensification and a sharpening of the struggle.63 The emergent world economy is merely another form of the struggle of nations one with another, and it aggravates rather than mitigates the struggle for the maintenance of one’s own culture, because it calls forth in the very bosom of the nation material interests opposed to the nation’s future, and throws them into the ring in alliance with the nation’s enemies. We do not have peace and human happiness to bequeath to our posterity, but rather the eternal struggle for the maintenance and improvement by careful cultivation of our national character.64 With this we come back to the second programmatic statement, Weber’s recognition that economics is a science of man concerned above all with the quality of men, who are reared under the influence of economic and social conditions of existence.

Economics as a Science of Man It is possible to associate Weber with Social Darwinism on the basis of such terminology only if his precise clarification is consistently ignored.65 He has as little to do here with Social Darwinism as had Nietzsche, i.e. nothing, but it is patently Nietzsche’s conception of moral ‘breeding’ that Weber here has in mind. He points out ‘the irrelevance ... of the disputes in natural science over the significance of the principles of selection, or over the general application in natural science of the concept of “breeding”, and all the discussions which have taken this as their starting-point. This is in any case not my field. ’ He hopes (quite in vain, as the Weber literature shows) ‘that a misunder¬ standing of their meaning is impossible for anyone who knows our literature’.66 The idea of human ‘breeding’ was characteristic of even the Platonic state. When Weber characterizes economics as a science of man, we are placed not on the terrain of a (pseudo-) natural science but on the most ancient ground of political science; the mutual relation of ‘conditions of existence’ (political in the older context, social in the modern) and the quality (‘virtue’) of man. This pair constituted the specific theme of political science for more than two thousand years, from Plato and Aristotle to Rousseau, and it remained one of the

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themes, if not the central one, of political economy even after Adam Smith.67 Weber took it further, not in any particular original fashion theoretically- but the manner in which he worked through this theme in a perspective of‘universal history’ reaching from distant China to the Mormons of Utah68 secures him a permanent place in the history of political science. How did Weber come to recognize that economics was a ‘science of man’? In the same way as the idea that runs parallel with it: that economics is a ‘political science’. What Weber states here is no more than a truism repeated remorselessly from textbook to textbook in the Historical School. And just as in the conceptual pair ‘political— cosmopolitical’ the formula ‘Wissenschaft vom Menschen’ has an unmistakably delimiting, ‘polemical’ sense.69 It should be read as ‘the science of the whole man’, countering a science of ‘ascribed’, ‘constructed’ and ‘unrealistic’ beings, the ‘mathematical ideal model’ of‘abstract theory’. It was exactly on this point that the debate with ‘Western’ theory had turned, led in the older Historical School primarily by Roscher and Knies; this issue was also in the background of the dispute conducted between Schmoller and Menger - in which there was a considerable amount of misunderstanding and wayward¬ ness, as is usual in such disputes. But the bitterness with which this dispute was conducted was itself a consequence of the fundamental nature of the positions at issue.70 Here, I shall confine myself to only the most necessary proof that ‘science of man’ should be polemically read in historical context as ‘science of the whole man’. The proof consists of the most relevant statements from the inception and the twilight of the Historical School - formulae that provide disciplinary self-definition - and further, exact proof from the author who must be regarded as Weber’s real economic teacher. In the beginning - as in the Old Testament — is the first sentence, set off from the rest, of Roscher’s System der Volkswirthschafi [System of Political Economy], Vol.

I, which

concerns itself with the foundations of political economy: ‘Point of departure and objective of our science is man.’ The sentence opens paragraph 1 (‘Goods’) in Chapter 1 (‘Basic Concepts’). Here is note 1, for it makes the delimiting and polemical sense quite plain: Well emphasized by Schaffte (Deutsche Vierteljahresschrifi, 1861). Quite characteristically Smith’s system (Wealth of Nations, 1776)

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begins with the concept of annual labour; that ofJ.-B. Say (Traite d’economie politique, 1802) with the concept of richesses\ that of Ricardo (Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817) with the concept of value.71. At the twilight of the Historical School we can cite a passage from an essay by Schmoller, the ‘honoured master’. He wrote in 1897: Contemporary economics has arrived at a historical and ethical perception of state and society, in contrast to rationalism and materialism. From a mere theory of market and exchange, a kind of business economics which at one time threatened to become a classweapon of the propertied, it has once again become a great moral and political science, which alongside the production of goods investigates their distribution, alongside value forms investigates economic institutions, which once more places man at the centre of the science instead of the world of goods and capital.72 We can cite as additional proof of the quite routine nature of this view, which is nevertheless the essence of the difference separating the Historical School from the ‘economism’ of the Classics, the circular sent by Schmoller to Treitschke (1874—5): The entire argument over the limits of economic freedom remains as a whole at a formal and superficial level. This formality has its own significance and its own history . . . But what is and remains important ... is that we become more cultured, more hard¬ working, more intelligent and more just human beings. And the forms of life-orders which lead us most directly along this path are thejust ones.73 It might be recalled here that we are involved in a quasi-biographical approach to the ‘character’ and ‘peculiarity’ of Weber’s work. What was the contemporary state of social science from which it grew, what position did Weber assume in contemporary debate? Since we cannot believe that after his recovery he created sociology virtually ex nihilo, we are trying to locate the point in the formative years from which everyone, even the greater genius, must develop. The conception of economics as a science of man and as ‘political’ in the Inaugural Address restates the conventional positions of the Historical School,

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albeit with great precision. Can we see more exactly how Weber’s work ‘stands on the shoulders’ of this tradition? We can find out from Karl Knies. There is little point in looking at Weber’s essay on Roscher and Knies (1903-6)74 when seeking elements determining his ‘formation’. This essay in fact deals, as Weber remarks in the section on Roscher, with ‘long-superseded conceptions’. In our present context it is not at first clear why Weber feels compelled to expose the remnants of ‘emanationism’ and ‘naturalism’ in such a clumsy and persistent fashion. Was this really the most significant thing about Roscher’s work? That the ‘problem of irrationalism’ went to the heart of Knies’s work - Weber failed to make this clear to anyone who had not only flogged through to the end of Weber’s essay, but had also taken the trouble, this time with decidedly greater profit, with Knies’s main work. Two decades before Weber wrote his critique of Knies he must have felt much the same. In the early letters we have the sole example of a development in Weber’s capacity at judging the status of one of his teachers. On 2 May 1882 Weber reported to his mother on the lectures that he had attended: ‘First Institutions with Bekker, a fine and extremely likeable old bachelor’. It is also a constant source ofpleasure to listen to his lecturing, ‘he makes things very easy for one, scatters here and there pretty and witty remarks, and never, and this should not be ignored, becomes boring like Professor Knies’. At the end of the following semester (23 February 1883) he writes to his father: ‘In Knies’s lectures political economy and finance are dealt with thoroughly; while not interesting (the content prevents this), I have at some time or other to attend these lectures.’ In the summer of 1883 (letter to his father, 5 May 1883) he finally realizes: ‘Now that I have gained a few basic economic concepts through studying Adam Smith and others, Knies makes a quite different impression on me than he did a year ago, when in mid-semester I went once and found it dreadfully dreary. Only he speaks too fast, one has the greatest difficulty in taking notes from what he says, for his lecturing is even more fluent than that of Kuno Fischer. It is only his voice - it always seems troubled by the world, as if he regretted all the facts that he introduces - that weakens the impact of his extremely intelligent and creative disquisitions.’75 Weber’s 1905judgment ofKnies’s literary style (‘so awkward as to be

almost

incomprehensible’)

was

certainly

marked

by

his

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recollections of Knies’s oral delivery. None the less: if Weber took note of the ‘wealth ofideas streaming forth’ it was pardonable if now and then a sentence ‘went to pieces syntactically’. Weber’s respect for Knies’s ‘scientific importance’ is unmistakable. And what Weber says of Kmes can just as well be applied to Weber himself: ‘Anyone who proposes to undertake an exhaustive reconstruction of this book - a work eminently rich in ideas — has the following task. First, he must separate intertwined strands ofideas which, as it might be put, come from different balls of yarn. This accomplished, he must then systematize each of these collections ofideas independently. ’76 Let us try to establish the threads linking the Knies of1883 with Weber’s own ‘skeins of thought’. The two parts of Roscher and Knies, which according to the headings are devoted to Knies, certainly give us precious little to go on. The product of a commission taken on for a university Festschrifi, they betray markedly ignoble qualities in Weber. The task of honouring an important teacher, his predecessor, of delivering a balanced assessment-this seems to have gone sour for Weber.77 Of the 188 pages apparently devoted to Knies, only around twenty can be said to be pertinent, and these are written as if haunted by an obsession with Knies’s ‘fundamentally emanational ideas’. Weber must have sensed the awkwardness of his erratic, if not to say confused, article, for he admits that the picture he gives ofKnies’s scientific importance is ‘clearly by no means adequate’; it could indeed seem that ‘I am using Knies only as a “pretext” in order to discuss the problems raised here’.78 This admission, however, cannot prevent us from taking note of the overwhelming importance of Knies in Weber’s socio-economic eduation.79

Karl Knies’s action-oriented political economy What has now to be demonstrated is Knies’s precise contribution to a conception of economics as a ‘science of man’. It must be remembered that the second edition ofKnies’s textbook was published in the very same semester as that in which Weber finally recognized the quality of his teacher. This new edition contained additions involving areas of work in which Weber, two or three decades later, would first make his great reputation. For Knies, the idea that economics has to do with the complete

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human being is one that is so fundamental that there are only a few statements where it is not linked to other conceptions, but these also point forward in the direction that Weber was to take.

As a

consequence of the specifically German notion of ‘humanity’, conceived as ‘the urge to establish moral foundations for everything that has force’ in life and as a result of a ‘real historical sense for the process ofhistorical development, not simply the Englishman’s sense of observation’ (p. 329),80 ‘the philosophical trait of German intellect had turned to a revision, an examination and clarification of general basic concepts as the founding elements of the system’. By ‘taking account of moral and political moments (and in contrast to the doctrine of the universal benefits of self-interest) the horizon of political economy has extended beyond the perspective of Adam Smith’ (p. 330). The ‘theoretical’ (Weber will call it ‘ideal-typical’) character of ‘abstract’ economics is precisely outlined: ‘Economics has as a point of departure a series of explicit or implicit assumptions which are employed as permanent means of support. These are treated as unconditional and constantly uniform and are derived from the general homogeneity of the material means of production as well as human beings (who for the purposes of economic analysis are regarded as acting from purely selfish motives) and also implicitly assumes as self-evident a specific state of social organization and a particular legal and constitutional order’ (p. 497). Knies provides an exemplary introduction to the basic ideas and limitations of a ‘pure economic analysis’ leading from Ricardo to the mathematical models of Walras. Comte and Spencer are analysed, Marx’s theory of value is critically discussed81 and it is continually emphasized that ‘this science, while dealing with questions arising from the world of material goods is always concerned with human beings, with persons possessing intellect and motivated by non-material forces’ (p. 490). It appeared to Knies of prime importance ‘to establish the real domain of investigation for economics as a science of nations (Volkswirthschaftslehre) and to emphasize the primary relation between economic phenomena

and

the

remaining

important

spheres

of human

communal life’ (p. iii). ‘Was this so unimportant, since specialist studies had wasted no words on it?’ he queried. It was not. All of Weber’s ‘special sociologies’, led by the sociology of religion, are anticipated

in

nuce by

Knies.

Above all,

Weber’s

orientation to action can be traced directly back to Knies.

theoretical

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131

Weber is only comprehensible on the basis of the polemical posture of Nationalökonomie with respect to Western theory, which constituted the object of its scientific endeavour in the so-called basic economic concepts (goods, value, property, wealth, economy, etc.) thathadled economics into a ‘domination of the word’, as expressed in the title of Gotti’s famous book, Die Herrschaft des Wortes. Nationalökonomie sought to free itself of this tyranny, and it did so by conceiving of ‘the economy’ as the outcome of man’s ‘economic activity’ under real historical conditions and subject also to the ‘heteronomy of ends’. The real aim of the Historical School was to place empirical man at the centre of economic reflection - while recognizing the methodological utility of‘constructed’ man. None of the older school had expressed this with more sophistication than Knies, and, asastudent, Weberhad the greatest difficulty in keeping up with this stream of thoughts. His Heidelberg ‘Grundriß’, as well as the work done after the recovery, testify to the great impression made by his old teacher. The degree to which Weber’s ‘sociology’ - ‘as a science which seeks to understand social action interpretively and thereby explain the origins of its course and effects’ — was conditioned by the Historical School, which for him culminated in the work of Knies can now be demonstrated by way of a summarized ‘reading guide’ (Schumpeter) of Knies’s principal text. The affinities with Weber will be detected without any difficulty.

A reading guide to Karl Knies’s politische Oekonomie A scientific approach to householding and economizing activity is related at all times to ‘human actions, human conditions and human tasks oriented to the fulfilment of human purposes’; at issue is the ‘investiga¬ tion of one region out of the entire domain of hum^n life and endeavour’ (p. 2). Material objects (wood, grain, iron), which are worked up into economic goods, are only taken into consideration by economics to the degree that they are ‘objects of human desire and action, employed as means for the satisfaction of human needs’. From this it follows that all questions of technique, like that of the hunter, fisher and miner, do not belong to political economy. At stake is not a mere economics, but a political economy (p. 2).82 The object of investigation in the sciences of state and society consists of‘actions or

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works of man and of the resulting forms of socialized and legally ordered communal life’ of many individuals and entire peoples. The object of reflection is not, as in the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), ‘the world of thoughts and ideas of the inner man, but processes and conditions to be found in the world of perceptible appearances’. This suggests parallels to the natural sciences; yet, in contrast to them, the ‘investigation of the causes of these external phenomena leads back to the spiritual regions of the human interior’ (p. 6). We also note that which the soul of man has lent to these external phenomena. ‘In war and riot, market and fair, in the assemblies of popular representatives and of manual workers, we do not note the movements of an organized natural being, in the way that we observe the results of attraction and cohesion in natural bodies. If domination, sub¬ ordination, happiness, misery, freedom, lack of freedom, order and disarray are expressed in the communal life of man, then the meaning of such

perceived phenomena will

only be grasped through

immersion in the relationships between these phenomena and human spiritual life’ (p. 6). At stake here is thus ‘neither an “inner” nor an “outer” human world. Instead, we are concerned with a perceptible “outer-world” of phenomena conditioned by “inner-worldly” causation and therefore not entirely accessible through the methods of natural-scientific research. From this “bifurcation” there follows a task which, although not necessarily more difficult, is certainly more com¬ plicated, and there will emerge many significant differences on basic methodological issues’ (p. 7). Knies clearly sees how the ‘industrialism’ of the modern period,83 with its consequences for ‘modern cultural life’, has drawn the results of political economy into the struggle about current issues (p. 10). ‘The conflict in the endeavours and demands of practical life is reflected in the antagonisms between scientific theories’ (p. 11). Knies, following the ‘relativism’ of German historical orthodoxy (and here ‘relativism’ should be understood exclusively as a counter¬ concept to the ‘absolutism’ of abstract theory), emphasizes the significance of the ‘differences’ of given situations, possibilities and conditions of peoples for economic life, in which not only soil and climate but also the ‘interest in and capacity for work’ of humans has to be considered (pp. 44 ff.). According to Knies, it is only possible to talk of economic activity

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and economic productivity in so far as they appear as the outcome ‘of the combination or combined effects of forces and objects provided by external nature and the activity of man.’’ ‘The second part of this generalized discussion, therefore, consists of the investigation of human nature, to the extent that this is relevant to the economic activity of man’ (p. 67). But such investigation of the ‘conditions given in the nature of man’ is not only neglected by political economy but also in many other disciplines, which have continually to return, from the most abstract level of discussion, to concrete and historically given men.’

(P-67). ‘Perhaps even more striking than the physical differences of people in individual countries are the differences of inner capabilities and drives, and of intellectual endowments.’ Within the line separating the cultural level of the white race from the remainder it is possible to demonstrate ‘manifold stages of intellectual ability and different modes in which this ability tends to be expressed’ (pp. 75-6). General writing in history has shown many a time that some peoples are given to contemplativeness and passivity, ‘while others display a strong drive to study, know and understand; that alongside a people slow to stir and holding stubbornly to traditional forms there exist peoples eager for renewal; that frontiers divide satisfied and equable people from pleasure-seekers and achievers, the indolent from the active and busy’ (p. 76). All such features are not merely characteristic for the representation of the general history of nations, ‘but they must also have great and lasting effects precisely in the field of economic affairs’ (p. 76). We find in Knies a comprehensive review of the factors that have an effect on the economic occupations of peoples, a review which becomes analytically ever more differentiated. Man itself must be regarded as an economic force. It is not sufficient to recognize the difference in which the negro replaces the Indian as mineworker, to be then spared death in the cultivation of cane sugar, a death which easily carries off the ‘Caucasian’, or that ‘the American redskin, in the midst of the white population, dies the death of civilisation [my emphasis, W.H.].84 ‘The national nature of humans also renders the economic position of individual peoples differentiated, concrete, characteristic’ (p. 78). As an ‘economic labour force’ humanity is conditioned ‘by the influence of general occurrences which in the course of historical time

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affect the life of peoples’ (p. 91). Throughout all historical time the economically active person is subject to ‘the changing effects of state and society which condition relations among a working population both quantitatively and qualitatively’. It is thus only a question of recognizing the significance of these circumstances for the general development of historical

economies.

However often

‘purely

economic causes’ might in the course of time have had an impact on the change in material circumstances, they then have as a rule ‘been overtaken by general historical relations or circumstances’ (p. 100). The first non-economic conditioning factor for economic life that Knies deals with is that of the ‘influence of general state power on the form and development of the economy among historically given nations’ (pp. 106 ffi). Even those who assign ‘to economics the task of composing a system of naturally given laws, immovable, complete and with identical effects whatever the circumstances, corroborate such a view when they see fit to complain of the intervention of the state in the economy having resulted in hundreds of years of misguidedness up to that day when the government renounces all such intervention; and in so doing they ascribe to state power a far greater influence in economic affairs than that which we have in mind with respect to historical experience’ (p. 107). Not every era and not every people have in their economic activity wanted and striven for the same things that ‘our wills are inclined towards’ (p. 108). Following on from the influence of‘general state power’ - here we could say : of the character of domination in Weber’s sense — Knies examines with especial care ‘the actual influence of the second great force in life’: that of the church and of religion. Curiously, remarks Knies, ‘these have never been sufficiently appreciated or generally noted’ (p. 110). It is here-already suggested in the terminology-that the central question of Weber’s sociology of religion is prefigured.85 The influence of religion is exerted ‘upon the inner man’ and, because the psychological element in ‘man as a factor contributing to the production of goods’ is of such predominant importance, ‘it it vital to pay attention to the influence of religious doctrine on economic relations’. The vocation of the church has always consisted in being ‘the bearer and guardian of this influence on inner man’. For the ‘external significance of the church, the impact of religion (in its canonical forms) on inner man has always been decisive’ (p. 111). Knies complains that he ‘can by no means exhaust the total mass of

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materials relevant to a consideration of this issue’. He has to settle, therefore, ‘so that doubt might be dispelled’, for a brief discussion of the influence of Christianity on the economy, contrasted with the religion of the ancient peoples, and he adds to this a sketch of the ‘extent and form of influence exercised by the Catholic church during its formative period on the configuration of economic factors’

(P-111). Pre-Christian religions are presented as national religions-, ‘they possess a relation with the body politic and with general state power that is so close one is hardly aware of an independent influence of the church on life unconnected with political forces’ (p. 111). But‘not on the inner man, for the moral character of national religions coincides with the moral character of the national state’. ‘The state identifies itself with religion and religions with the state; religious decrees are laws of the state and those laws are consecrated as such by religion.’ The theocratic states of the ancient Orient are characterized by ‘such a close relation of religious with political life, and of church with state power, that we often link together as one the ruling powers of the church and of the state, and treat the control of each power’s domain as being combined personally in the same individual’ (p. 112). One cannot ‘emphasize too strongly the manner in which Christianity contrasted decisively’ with this state of affairs. Christ countered law and entitlement with duty and obligation, ‘love of one’s neighbour with selfishness’(p. 113). ‘The moral character of the individual was placed on an entirely new footing by such ideas, ideas which the ancient world could not assimilate’ (p. 113). Christianity dispelled the aura ‘employed by the national religions to exalt the political egoism of a people’ (p. 114), presenting itself as a world religion, ‘a religion for all humankind, heathen and Jew alike; it outlawed national selfishness by announcing the equality of all beings and peoples before God’. No further elaboration is needed to see ‘the changes that this implied specifically for economic relations, placing upon a new basis internal as well as external intercourse, the relation¬ ship of individuals as well as of peoples to each other. Everything which could be connected to duty, fairness and the equality of all peoples of humanity is here brought into direct association. It is perhaps no overestimation to see the consequences of these principles at their most effective in the area of economic life’ (p. 114). Christian doctrine regarding the profits of trade and its estimation

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of trade in general are dealt with in detail. Similarly, Christian maxims on the question of money lent at interest are outlined: ‘The main principle was that loans should be negotiated for consumption and on the part of the poor on account of want, so that in such circumstances the Christian’s love for his neighbour appeared to enjoin good works’ (p. 118).86 One also has to ‘emphasize the influence of the church on economic conditions, for its real and lasting calling is the cultivation of religious interests and the exhortation that they be realized in the practical activity of man’. Especial emphasis has to belaid on this today, since it has been ‘historically authenticated’ that ‘in theory the morality of economic activity and the morality of Christian religion are two quite separate things’ (p. 121). It is precisely consideration of the religious motives ofhuman beings that brings to mind the truth that ‘economic forces and phenomena of the present day are to be comprehended as a mere historical fragment, and are neither to be treated as entire and universal for all economic phases and evolutions, nor as typifying such phases and evolutions’ (p. 122).

In an addition to the 1883 edition, Knies can then write-and once more it is to be remembered that, at the time that this edition appeared, Weber was attending Knies’s lectures and had difficulty in keeping up with all the elaborations and deviations: ‘The preceding three decades form one of those epochs in which the relation between the religious ideas of human beings and the economic phenomena of daily life becomes recognizable even to the most shortsighted observer. We have a constant and emphatic example in the economic results of a fatalistic oriental Islam, and East Asian Buddhism has also tried out its typically utilitarian doctrine among Chinese migrants in California. The great difference in the “economic morale” of the Jewish and Christian religions has also been felt more sharply in Germany since the political emancipation of the Jews. Of course, for all those Jews and Christians who do not practise their religions this difference is not effective, for example in the case of Christians who demand standards of behaviour from others very different to those which they them¬ selves practise with respect to their “nearest”.’ We can also ‘observe the far-reaching relationship of religion and economic life with respect to the fact that, among many individuals and in great sections of social strata, all religious belief has lapsed. This fact has results quite immeasurable in economic life — whether this draining away of

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religious belief is connected with the “advance of modern natural science” or with “philosophical proofs” as can be found in the “old and new belieP’ of David Strauss; with the savage scorn of a popular agitator or with the dire poverty of life and the “happiness of the unjust” ’ (p. 125). Knies lays proud emphasis on the originality of his views with regard to the reciprocal effects of religion and economic life, and also outlines the ‘significant relations between economy and law (legal norms and economic life)’ (pp. 126—7). Regardingthelargenumber of obvious connections existing between ‘economic life and legal order’ he thinks it to be striking that ‘for so long even extremely perceptive theorists have neglected this aspect’ (p. 128). Reference is also made to the importance of political ideas to economic life; here, also, it is a question of the ‘emotive endeavours and instinctive motives of inner man, whose strongest roots strike into an invisible foundation’. The peculiar character of individual historical periods rests in the main on the fact that ‘specific ideas and intellectual currents become preponderant, achieving and sustaining a dominance over people’s minds’ (p. 123). Passionate affects take hold with single-minded energy ‘seeking everywhere to transform the old and the traditional’. ‘Despite the slow development of a reaction which assists in the setting of natural limits, a different epoch is inaugurated, and the effects of excess’ cannot be totally undone (p. 123). It is by no means the case that one only finds particular ideas dominating ‘where they are writ large and prominent on the tablets of history’. ‘It is no different during periods of “calm” — even here particular underlying tones dominate, distinguishable above the total mass of phenomena’ (p. 123).87 In conclusion, Knies outlines what could be called a cultural sociology applicable to economic life. Human beings, ‘bodies with souls or sensual-intellectual beings’ possess ‘an inner world’ of selfconsciousness and soulful existence; the presence and influence of the “psyche” in ideas, feelings, judgements, etc., whose nature we seek principally

through

self-observation,

apprehending its

specific

character and its separate existence from the sensuous appearance of material things in their manifold expressions’. In particular, the relation of man to his outer world is determined by this psychic inner world, his ‘action’ seeking to satisfy material needs and also to shape the ‘outer’ world, which includes other persons. On the other hand,

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‘in the human spiritual inner world general recognition is given to the link of such external occurrences with conditions of the soul and spirit of the human being. On the basis of such connections we speak of “civilization” or “culture”, phenomena peculiar to man. They include every legal order. And because the inner life of man is not simply open to variation, but is capable of development, it is not only possible to speak of a specific state of civilization for individuals, groups of individuals or even entire peoples, but also necessary to take account of the great differences and developmental stages existing in human civilization’ (pp. 138-9). Hence, all further discussion is superfluous ‘for the provision of especial proof that scientific investigation of human “economic life” has of necessity to be linked with an inquiry into psychic processes by means of psychological and ethno-historical studies’. The concepts are precisely differentiated by Knies: ‘the “soulful” and “spiritual” or “psychic” aspect ofman which forms the basis ofall manifestations of culture is not the same as the “moral” or “ethical” dimension in the German sense of the words’ (p. 139). ‘For the scientific study of the causal system operative in the domain of economic life’ [!], ‘manners constitute a considerable force in them¬ selves, especially in addition to law, public administration and the free will of individuals and communities. ’ The actual efficacy of manners has considerably declined. ‘One need only recall the contrast with a time in which guild organization has established in law that which had previously been customary in the workshop, the actual effectiveness of such guild regulation being guaranteed by a constancy in the customs of consumption. ’ (p. 140-1). The modernity and portentous nature of Knies’s ideas is shown by the concise comments, more thoroughly dealt with in his mono¬ graphs,88 on the influence of modern means of communication such as the railway and the telegraph. In particular he points ‘to the farreaching influences of the most modern means of communication on the psychic life of human beings' [my emphasis, W.H.]. This is the precise problem on the basis ofwhich Weber, thirty years later, was to approach the investigation of associations and of the press. 89 Knies also elaborates the difference, so important for Weber, between the traditional motives of economic action and the forces that disrupt such traditions. ‘While the peasant learns how to adapt himself to an uninvestigated rule of providence and is thus receptive to the authori-

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‘A Science of Man’

tative power of worldly government, commercial activity will promote a “rationalistic” attitude and the urban dweller will be prompted to introduce the question of “accountability” everywhere. Hence the great cultural significance of any considerable alteration in the proportions between urban and rural populations’ (p. 166).90 To close this brief guide, which cannot pretend to an exhaustive account of the links between Knies and Weber, we might recall once again the basic idea of Knies’s book: to redefine the character of political economy as an ‘ethical science’, developing further the work of predecessors and contemporaries. He sees this as the ‘cardinal point of economics’ (p. 235). He does not seek to gain truth by means of a ‘monologic

abstraction

of ideas’

but

rather

through

‘exact

observation of historical life in its progressive development and the psychological study of man’ (p. 235). Quite naturally, Knies argues within the framework of contemporary academic doctrine and controversy, conditioned as it was by the ‘classical’ assumption of self-interest as the sole relevant basic economic motive. But he goes beyond this question which, with the search for further ‘basic motives’, had occupied German economics so intensively between Hildebrand and Schmoller. What interests him, to express it in Weber’s terms, is a ‘science of reality’, the influence of human beings on a historical material context which rebounds upon them. This can be seen above all in his efforts to establish a balanced and considered intermediate position between ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’: ‘If on the one hand society is atomized in order to completely liberate the individual, so on the other the individual is robbed of a soul so that material need might be abolished among an undifferentiated mass. In the former the freedom of the individual is also the roughjustice of the strong, while in the latter order means stagnation and death’ (pp. 2923). Knies’s position between the two fronts can be characterized as sceptical, but the view of a thoroughly political man all the same. What are the logical bridges, and what bridges of living experience lead from ‘freedom’ to ‘distributional justice’? ‘Here we are only faced with a petitio principiil Since every human being is not by nature thoroughly good and just there is no guarantee of justice if persons acquire only that which they can win by their own efforts in one way or another. And how could one properly estimate the justness of the actual outcome for the respective parties’ claims in the struggle among individuals, equipped with unequal powers and positions, for their

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share of the income that is to be distributed? Rewards for equal effort which are unequal over time and space permit of no evidence by analogy and render baseless even the first attempts at the constitution of a theodicy in this area. And the time is long past when people subscribed to that cloudy fascination, that unclear desire which supposed that goodness and justice would rule on earth if only unconditional freedom of desire and action could be secured for all’ (pp. 307-8). Whoever fails to hear an echo of this ‘mood’ in Weber’s Inaugural Address twelve years later—although in a decidedly harsher tone, the result of a generational change (and of Nietzsche!) - must be completely insensitive to intellectual relationships. Economic science is a science of man. ‘However much one may refer to the effects and the effectiveness of eternally unchanging natural laws, there will always be found in the domain of economic affairs the presence of man - as an individual and as a fragment ofstate and nation-as the living bearer of all economic activity, and alongside material conditions and relation¬ ships personal elements must have their effect. The first will in all materia] questions become more predominant, while the latter will prevail everywhere that spiritual and ethical factors are to be observed.’ National differences will become emphasized ‘when the political and ethical questions concerning the optimal distribution of goods, the proper proportioning of economic activities in the complete context of the tasks of national life, and the purposiveness of economic creation gain significance’ (p. 317).

Only these last

questions interested Weber. Just as ‘law’ was of interest to him solely from the viewpoint of the legislator, so the economy was considered as the ‘most fundamental’, most ‘worldly’ factor of man’s life - in its vitality, its power or, to use the old word, its ‘virtue’.

On Weber’s New ‘Methodological’ Beginning Having run through the important positions of Knies that are here of relevance and having established Weber’s indisputable debt to them, when we return to the essay on Roscher and Knies we are left with a bad taste in the mouth. All representatives of the Historical School of Economics had related ‘whole’ man to the specific features of human economic action. State, religion, law and ethics were constantly kept in mind, with all other natural and personal features. It is thus quite

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natural that what they understood by ‘economy’ was ‘the complex of measures’ (to borrow Weber’s expression in the 1898 ‘Grundriß’) ‘brought about by the economic activity of an individual or of a human community’.91 No one had expressed more clearly than Knies the view that political economy concerns human actions and ‘human circumstances’ for the fulfilment of ‘human objectives’, that here there existed ‘one section of the entire area of human life and endeavour’ to be studied. Since Weber, in 1898 the immediate successor to Knies in Heidelberg, demonstrably relies on Knies’s basic positions in his ‘Grundriß’ - and since he continues to propose, right up to Economy and Society, that ‘social action’ be the specific object of verstehende sociology—the paltry analysis that Weber devotes to Knies is curious, to put it mildly. There is no point in seeking to rectify the many misrepresentations of Knies’s position that we find here. Weber graciously accepts ‘for the present’ the standpoint of Knies ‘without any further discussion. In his [Knies’s] view, the sciences in which human action - whether exclusively or only pre-eminently - con¬ stitutes the subject matter of the investigation are logically related in such a way that they belong together. ’92 One often has the impression that Weber here goes to enormous trouble to reproduce Knies’s thoughts in such a way that the reformulation leaves no echo of the original. When one is aware of the importance of the concept of ‘personality’ for Weber, and the manner in which he defines it, then it is quite simply irritating to see the way in which he shakes off the dust ofKnies’s concerns. Weber works with insinuations93 which have no basis at all in Knies, where we often read exactly the reverse of what Weber wishes to impute to Knies. It is obviously necessary for Weber to attribute to Knies the ‘atrophied remains of the great Hegelian ideas’: ‘emanatist ideas’, ‘panlogicism’94 - although I find this completely incomprehensible, given the fact that Knies is silent on or even radically distances himself from such ideas.95 In closing the essay he announces that ‘in fact we shall see that the preeminence of this view is explicit in Knies’s methodology’,96 that is, the theme of another article. We have never seen this - the announced article was never written. Perhaps Weber himself recognized the unedifying nature of this kind of analysis devoted to an important former teacher - truly a form of patricide and let things be. What is certain is that Marianne Weber is here also correct when she

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states in relation to the work following the recovery that ‘Weber did not forget his scholarly past’.97 If this is not given due recognition (as in the assumption of a ‘completely fresh start’), if a ‘genetic’ inter¬ pretation refuses to see in the early economic writings the foundation, the ‘genetic code’ as it were, of the work as a whole, then the work must remain unintelligible- a ‘marvel’ in the strongest sense, ‘a work of pure inspiration’.98 It is not possible here to deal in any greater detail with Weber’s debt to German political economy. However, it can be generally stated that Weber simply radicalizes the positions of the Historical School, including those of Knies - whether it be as a consequence of his own inclination to favour the extreme over moderation, or whether it be a consequence of the much more radical disillusionment

of his

generation

with

the

‘universalist’

and

‘harmonious’ remnants ofEnlightenment thought. Nietzsche cleared such remnants away, and that has here to be left at that. But an attempt should be made to establish in a few points what Weber carried with him from the Historical School. From the above it should have become clear that Weber ‘carried with him’ not only the definition of verstehende sociology in terms of the action of the ‘whole’ man, but also his concern to ‘uncover the causative relations between economic development and all remaining social phenomena’ 99 Apart from the sociology of music, I can detect no ‘sociological’ theme in Weber for which one of the older school, in particular Knies, had not laid the basis or at least provided an impulse.HX) How is it, then, with the new beginning in methodology? The two most comprehensive treatments of Weber’s Wissenschafislehre that we have - from Alexander von Schelting and Dieter Henrich101 - are free of any mention of political economy as a starting point for Weber’s work. Since the publication of these two studies it has been generally accepted as a canonical truth that Weber’s methodological

position

developed

out

of a

debate

on

neo-

Kantianism. The sole text that deals in detail with the methodological writings as having developed from contemporary debates on economic methodology is Friedrich H. Tenbruck’s article of 1959,102 where it is suggested that ‘the tendency and context of these works [on method¬ ology] is apparent only to the reader aware of the historical co-ordinates in which they are placed’.103 We refer to this important article, because there is another point that emerges from it. For Tenbruck in 1959, Weber’s writing can be divided into three periods.

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The writings of the first period are within the bounds of German political economy, ‘One can see the doctoral and post-doctoral student following more or less uncritically the customary paths of academic labour’;1"4 there is no word here from Weber the method¬ ologist. The break with this initial period is registered with the Freiburg Address.105 The second period begins with the article on Roscher, and culminates in the essay on objectivity. Finally, the third period begins with the Protestant Ethic, leading via the essay on categories and the ‘Economic ethic ofworld religions’ to Economy and Society. With respect to Weber’s methodology, Tenbruck claims, it is only the second phase that is relevant, and within this really only the essay on objectivity. Weber places the ‘axis of the whole question’106 in the opposition of the historical to the theoretical tendency of Nationalökonomie especially in the dispute between Menger and Schmoller. Carl Menger appears as the quintessential exponent of the ‘theoretical’ tendency. But Tenbruck sees quite clearly that the back¬ ground to the essay on objectivity is to be found in the entire recent history of economic science since the demise of cameralism.107 So much for Tenbruck. In the objectivity essay, Weber, in line with the Historical School, uses the term ‘abstract theory’ when referring to the ‘theoretical tendency’. Menger is not directly named once, although clear allusions to him exist (‘the creator of the theory’).108 ‘The question as to how far, for example, contemporary “abstract theory” should be further elaborated is ultimately also a question of the strategy of science, which must, however, concern itself with other problems as well. Even the “theory of marginal utility” can be subsumed under a “law of marginal utility”.’109 If the objectivity essay is once more read against this great historical background,

it becomes apparent that the problems of ‘con¬

temporary’ ‘abstract’ theory reflect at base those of the entire history of German economics. After a few opening remarks, the essay states that‘our science. . . first arose in connection with practical considera¬ tions. Its most immediate and often sole purpose was the attainment of value-judgements concerning measures of State economic policy. It was a “technique” . . .’Weber is able to assume familiarity with the context in stating that ‘it has now become known how this situation was gradually modified. This modification was not, however, acccompanied by a formulation of the logical distinction between

144 “existential

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

knowledge”,

i.e.

knowledge

of what

“is”,

and

“normative knowledge”, i.e. knowledge of what “should be” . . . With the awakening of the historical sense, a combination of ethical evolutionism and historical relativism became the predominant attitude in our science . . . None the less we can and must forgo a discussion of the principles at issue. We merely point out that even today the confused opinion that economics does and should derive value-judgements from a specifically “economic point of view” has not disappeared but is especially current, quite understandably, among men of practical affairs.5110 We can see that Weber here directly takes up the central question of the Inaugural Address without the merest indication of a ‘breakthrough’: does economic policy generate its own standards of value? The answer is likewise the same: ‘it can never be the task ofan empirical science to provide binding norms and ideals from which directives for immediate practical activity can be derived. ’111 If we add to this ‘binding everywhere and at all times’ then we have the precise position of the Historical School, which had in another respect reached a position which it is generally assumed Weber gained only with the assistance of neo-Kan tian philosophy: the fundamental distinction of‘what is’ from ‘what ought to be’. Here again, there was something which Weber could take with him. With Weber this distinction would gain a philosophical, moral and ‘existential’ significance that cannot be compared with Roscher’s straightforward methodological distinction of the two ‘principal questions’ to be applied to ‘every science concerned with the life of a people’: ‘what is (what has occurred, and how? etc.) and what should be.'U2 For Weber this division is not merely a methodological one (this cannot be discussed here), but rather a matter of fundamental principle, confronting the actor with his existential responsibility. It is only possible to understand properly and appreciate Weber’s dis¬ tinction in all its ethical rigour (‘the profound seriousness of this situation’) against the background of Nietzsche. It is a distinction that marks him off from the ‘optimistic syncretism’ of the older school.113 Despite this, and however awkward the actual mode of expression might have been, it was the Historical School that first elaborated this distinction. It had to do so in order that it might bring together two unrelated streams of scientific thought: the German tradition of technical and practical cameralism and English

‘theory’.

This

disparate inheritance was, and still is, embodied in the two principal

145

‘A Science of Man’

lecture courses in economics: ‘General and theoretical economics’ and ‘Practical

economics’

or

‘Economic

policy’.

Weber

himself

recognized in the essay on objectivity that,- alongside the socialist critique, it was the ‘work of the historians’ (i.e. the older teachers of the Historical School), which had made a beginning with the trans¬ formation of‘the original evaluative standpoints’.114 Weber becomes hazy and unclear, as in all the sections of the essay devoted to the historical background of its arguments, when he claims that: the vigorous development of biological research on one hand and the influence of Hegelian panlogism on the other prevented economics from attaining a clear and full understanding of the relationship between concept and reality.115 The work of the German Historical School of political economy is expressly noted as one of the factors resisting the ‘infiltration of naturalistic dogma’.116 In order to give his own position an added stature, he needed to present the superseded position as one that had not really understood the problem to itsfull extent. Only in this way can the distortions of Knies’s position be explained. The ‘old teachers’, primarily Knies, had made the distinction in a manner adequate to their own ‘philosophical needs’. If this distinction is then existentially radicalized by Weber for quite different needs and related to quite distinct experiences, it must be remembered that even in this instance, in the ominous opposition of‘fact and value’, Weber simply continues a long tradition initiated by the Historical School. Weber’s position has to be seen against this background and that of Nietzsche. The oftpraised contemporary ‘logicians’ merely helped in lending the affair a ‘scientific’ gloss. Something had changed, however, in the real world, and Weber outlines this in striking terms at the close of the essay on objectivity: the practical cultural problems had been transmuted, old cultural problems had been replaced by new ones. Who wishes to doubt this? Weber’s attempt to confront the new situation in a scientific manner none the less drew on positions already ‘prepared’ by the masters of the German Historical School.

4

The Traces ofNietzsche in the Work ofMax Weber

In February 1920, a few weeks before his death, Max Weber took part in a discussion with Oswald Spengler. Returning home along the Ludwigstraße, he said to the students accompanying him: ‘The honesty of a present-day scholar, and above all a present-day philosopher, can be measured by his attitude to Nietzsche and Marx. Whoever does not admit that considerable parts of his own work could not have been carried out in the absence of the work of these two, only fools himself and others. The world in which we spiritually and intellectually live today is a world substantially shaped by Marx and Nietzsche.’1 Christian Morgenstern formulated the ‘experience of Nietzsche’ for his contemporaries in the following terms: ‘There is now for all futurity a new criterion of the thinking man - what is Nietzsche to him?’2 We ask: what was he to Weber?

I Attempts to understand Weber’s work in historico-genetic terms have become lost among the mountains of Weber literature. Perhaps this turn away from the historical roots of the work was the most important condition for its rise to a contemporary worldwide renown. After 1945, Weber entered the textbooks of international social science as a follower of the southwest German variant of neoKantianism (not a very inspiring chapter of professional German philosophy), as a founding father of a universally applicable valuefree empirical sociology open to ‘starting points’ and ‘recon¬ structions’, and also as a relatively ‘good’ German —certainly a man of his times in respect of nationalism, but a Liberal, a democrat even. He would never have been received in this way if his writing had been suspected of a closer relation to Nietzsche. In Reinhard Bendix’s Max

147

Nietzsche in the Work of Weber

Weber. An Intellectual Portrait — a text that has been so important in creating

Weber’s international

influence - Nietzsche is never

mentioned,3 and in a later special study Guenther Roth (in a book edited with Bendix) comes to the conclusion that Weber’s scholarly and political indebtedness to Nietzsche ‘appears rather limited’.4 Despite growing opposition, this could represent the prevailing opinion today; and Weber’s work does not appear at first glance (which is how one is used to reading it) to contradict this.5 Contemporaries who were in a position to judge saw it differently. In his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Thomas Mann ‘attached importance to the realization’ that he had, without any reading and with a direct insight, sensed that the idea of‘the modern capitalist man bent on acquisition, the bourgeois with his ascetic ideal of vocational duty, was a creature of the Protestant ethic’. Only subsequently did he remark that the idea was thought and expressed simultaneously by several scholars - by Max Weber in Heidelberg, after him by Ernst Troeltsch, and taken to its most extreme by Werner Sombart’s book on the ‘bourgeois’. What Thomas Mann wished to ‘newly add’ was the ‘suspicion, which comes close to being a certainty’ that this coincidence of poetic apprehension and scientific exploration ‘came about through a higher, in fact the highest spiritual medium: through the medium of Nietzsche’.6 Mann’s suspicion, which approached a certainty, that without the ‘pre-eminent experience’ of Nietzsche, ‘which influenced the entire intellectual experience of the epoch down to its finest elements’ and which was a ‘new and hitherto unheard-of modern form of heroic experience’, the ‘social scientist would doubtless never have come to the formulation of the heroic Protestant principle’, or thought of seeking the beginnings of the modern Berufsmenschen in the puritan ethic. Mann thereby poses the question of the place of Nietzsche in Weber’s work with an authority that is beyond question. If Weber’s central question proves to be that of the fate of Menschentum under the conditions of modernity; if this central question takes up as its theme those

relations

of

personality-type

and

their

conditioning,

challenging, plastically forming ‘life orders’, beyond which it was not the theoretical abstraction of homo oeconomicus, but rather the historically actual, economically active man, together with deter¬ mining orders and powers, that occupied the centre of Weber’s real discipline, economics in its German form; if then the arguments

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presented in the three previous essays are accepted, it should be possible, therefore, to question the influence ofNietzsche in a manner more precise than hitherto. The concept of ‘influence’ certainly needs some specification. There are indeed a great number of positions adopted by Weber that run back directly to Nietzsche; but it seems to me more important to establish the existence of a quite fundamental

‘attuning’

and

‘inspiration’ of Weber by Nietzsche’s epochal consciousness and mode of posing questions, although this can only be demonstrated in the parallels of numerous statements, a form of evidence that seldom allows of a philologically exact derivation. None the less, this ‘attuning’ was more than a simple element in the Nietzschean determination of Weber’s generation-otherwise our question would not be worthwhile.7 When did Weber take note of Nietzsche? When Nietzsche’s intellectual powers failed in 1889, Weber was not quite twrenty-five yearsold. Nofurtherelaborationisneededofthefactthat, forWeber’s generation, Nietzsche was the great intellectual experience. Since the general view expressed in the meagre treatments of our question is that Marx is of greater significance for the earlier work of Weber, while Nietzsche has importance for the later8 — the periodization of ‘before/after the illness’ plays a major role in Weber-philology — it would be good to know when exactly Weber read Nietzsche. Hitherto the question could not be answered.9 It could be assumed, of course, that Weber must have stumbled upon Nietzsche some time in the first half of the 1890s. During that time Weber published several articles in Die Christliche Welt, the periodical run by his friend Martin Rade. A lively debate on Nietzsche’s ideas took place in its columns. Whoever pays closer attention to Weber’s style will detect a clear break between 1892 and 1895. Up to 1892, Weber’s style is that of a lawyer and economist - here, there is no especial flourish. In his contribution to the fifth meeting of the Evangelisch-sozialer Kongreß in May 1894, where he reported on the results of the survey on rural labour, there is a striking new cultural-scientific cum critical tone.10 The young man presents ideas that sound strange for a lawyer, such as his assertion that the feeling of happiness is greater in animals than in men. Who can there avoid thinking of the beginning of the second Untimely Meditations: ‘Consider the herds that are grazing yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday, or of today . . . Man must

Nietzsche in the Work of Weber

149

once have asked the beast: why do you just look at me and not speak to me of your happiness?’ Weber is convinced that ‘the quantum of subjective happiness does not increase with the elevation of men, but will probably decrease . . . But we do not practise social policy to make human beings happy.’11 He apologises for his harsh tones. ‘Much will certainly appear crude and brutal to many of you.’ But what was happening in the East was more than a problem of economics. He characterized the situation of the East Elbian rural labourer as a ‘great cultural problem’, and he did not believe that he overstated its significance by treating it in this way. The bald Nietzschean tone assumed by Weber in his Inaugural Address of May 1895 is familiar. He proudly wrote to his brother Alfred: ‘I have aroused horror by the brutality of my views in my Inaugural Address, the Catholics were almost the most content, since I gave a determined kick to “ethical culture”.’12 Our presumption that something happened in the intellectual development of Weber between the years 1892 and 1895 is confirmed by a copy of a letter to Marianne Weber on 26July 1894, which is today in the Merseburg collection. Marianne Weber had copies made of those letters that were woven into the biography of her ‘companion’, but this letter was not used — and none of those who have previously used the collection has mentioned it. Weber, inclined occasionally to brag and bluster,13 wrote in typical Berlin dialect: ‘Dear Child! Your note still testifies to a significant impairment of spirit, but that is good and healthy and will I hope remain so until you return to cultivated regions here so that nerves maltreated by surveys, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Simmel can be freshened up.’ In one breath: surveys, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Simmel! The letter coincides exactly with the days when Weber had to prepare his contribution to the fifth meeting of the Evangelisch-sozialer Kongreß for the printers; the completely new tones of this key text and, shortly afterwards, of the Inaugural Address cannot therefore be attributed to general cultural conditions; they evidently relate to a specific reading of Nietzsche.14 This brings us to the question of the manner in which Weber appropriated Nietzsche, at what ‘pitch’. Thomas Mann proudly recalled in his Betrachtungen that his youth had not prevented him from ‘recognizing the ethical element in Nietzsche at a time when it was modish to read him in terms of an idolization of power and “beauty” ’.15 What happened in the case of Weber?

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The manner in which the mature Weber regarded the core of Nietzsche’s doctrine can bejudged only by one piece ofevidence from his own hand: the letter to Edgarjaffe on 13 September 1907, rejecting Otto Gross’s essay for the Archivfitr Sozialwissenschaß.16 At the end of this letter Weber turns to Otto Gross as a person. He did not under¬ estimate the ‘noble streak in his nature’. ‘How much more purely would the nobility of his personal charisma and that ‘universality’ of love (for which I have the deepest respect) impress if it were not concealed under the dust of technical jargon and loyalty to a particular ‘mental-hygenic’ discipline, if he dared to be what he «-and what is certainly something other and better than a disciple of Nietzsche. And moreover, not the “ethic of distinction”, which is what is lasting in Nietzsche and central to his doctrine, but instead precisely the weakest part of Nietzsche, the biological embellishments which are heaped up around his thoroughly moralistic teaching.’ What is lasting and central to Nietzsche’s teaching for Weber is thus Nietzsche’s ‘ethic of distinction’ - he had thus read him as a moralist. This is exactly how Simmel, mentioned in the letter ofjuly 1894, understood him, as well as Weber’s colleague from Freiburg, Alois Riehl, who published in 1897 one of the first rigorous scientific monographs of Nietzsche. Simmel, like Riehl, saw in Nietzsche, far beyond all cult of genius, the deep moral philosopher, the important scholar of morality and culture. Simmel repeatedly addressed himself to Nietzsche; his sociology, first conceived in 1892-3 under the title ‘moral science’, cannot be conceived without Nietzsche. His line of interpretation remained the same from the 1890s onward: at the centre stood Nietzsche’s ‘ethic of distinction’, as for example in his book Schopenhauer und Nietzsche of 1907, a book that Weber read with the greatest care. The remarks and underlinings in Weber’s copy17 are important testimony to his under¬ standing of Nietzsche. Simmel characterized the core of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy as an ‘ethical personalism’.18 I know of no better term for the heart of Weber’s ‘sociology’. Also important for Weber’s early assessment of Nietzsche was certainly Simmel’s debate with Ferdinand Tönnies’s polemic on the ‘Nietzsche cult’, in which Tönnies, in the meantime become a socialist, sought to free himself from the demon of his youth.19 Gemeinschaß und Gesellschaß, the standard text of German sociology from 1887, was by no means left unmarked by the spirit of Nietzsche, and the young Tönnies had even visited Nietzsche in Sils-Maria.20

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151

One reference will suffice to illustrate the manner in which Alois Riehl understood Nietzsche, in which we have only to read ‘Weber’ for ‘Nietzsche’ and ‘sociology’ for ‘philosophy’ for a proper under¬ standing of how Weber’s work grew out of the experience of the cultural problematic at the turn of the century. Riehl states:‘Nietzsche is the philosopher of culture. Culture is the problem around which all the substantial thoughts can be arranged. This task is not affected by the shift in his views; it connects the periods of his thought and occupies the central point of his philosophy . . . The problem of morality, Nietzsche’s best-known problematic, is also subordinated to the question of culture and is therefore only to be properly under¬ stood in relation to it. ’21 It is precisely out of this interest-perspective that Weber will have read Nietzsche - up to and including the ‘logical’ problems of cultural science.

II With this I turn to a brief chronological sketch of the impression left by the Nietzschean experience in Weber’s work. In view of the certain dating of Weber’s first confirmed reading of Nietzsche, which is now possible, it seems to me quite probable that the mood of deep resignation in which the Weber of 1892 felt himself oppressed by his generation’s feeling of epigonism was positively overcome not least through his assimilation of Untimely Meditations, a work that was dedicated entirely to a struggle with the epigonistic spirit of the time. Out of a resigned pessimism a ‘strong’ pessimism was formed, a pessimism that sought to transform the feeling of epigonism into the obligations of ‘succeeding generations’.22 The Freiburg Inaugural Address is the final testimony of this forced change of mood. Henceforth, Weber struggled against a merely antiquarian relationship to history, and placed the responsibility of the living for the as-yet unborn at the centre of all ethical and political orientation.23 Explicit reference to or even debate with Nietzsche seldom occurs in the work, but such reference always provides an insight into Weber’s innermost feelings. In the ‘Einleitung’ to WEWR and in the sociology of religion contained in ES, Weber takes up Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, straightens it out and transforms it into an ideal

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type for the understanding of salvational religions. Without naming the relation to Nietzsche, the whole ‘Einleitung’ is an analysis of the role that, according to Nietzsche, affliction played in the formation of salvational religions.24 Otherwise Nietzsche remains a silent guest. Even in the years before Weber’s illness those central ideas occur upon which, in my opinion, all the further work turns, ideas which in this way could not have been conceived without Nietzsche. First of all, there is the question concerning the relation of social ‘orders and powers’, which have plastically formative effects upon men, always oriented to the higher question of the Typus Mensch positively or negatively formed under the impact of these relations. In the comment on the question of value-judgements from 1913 (published in 1917 in Logos)25 Weber states: Without exception every order of social relations (however constituted) is, if one wishes to evaluate it, ultimately to be examined in terms ofthe human type (menschlichen Typus) to which it, by way of external or internal (motivational) selection, provides the optimal chances of becoming the dominant type. For without it empirical research is neither really exhaustive, nor is there the necessary real foundation for such an evaluation, be it consciously subjective, or an evaluation claiming objective validity. He had wished to express this in immature form in his Inaugural Address.26 Thus, twenty years later, Weber admitted that this was a leading idea in all his research. If we take the sentence seriously, and how could we fail to, then we have to read Weber’s work with other eyes than the usual ones. His work no longer appears to be a ‘sociology’, that is, a science that, if anything, seeks to establish the quality of a social order; the quality of the society is then only a means for the real question concerning the Typus Mensch promoted or suppressed by these means. What Weber expresses here corresponds to the core of Nietzsche’s thought: how can the ‘diminishment’ and progressive ‘mediocracy’ of men, the outcome of 2000 years of history and, according to Nietzsche, the result of Christianity and its succeeding idea, the ‘modern idea’ of democracy and Liberalism, be halted? The ‘universal-historical’ investigations (as they are called) by Weber into the world of religion, the history of domination and ofthe economy are held together by this one idea concerning the Typus Mensch, an idea for which Weber had only Nietzsche to thank — who

Nietzsche in the Work of Weber

153

else could have thought in this way and expressed himself in such a manner? That it is in fact so is demonstrated in the style of a Freudian slip at the close of the first major work that Weber published after his illness and which established his reputation: the treatise on The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism. This work has always been under¬ stood as a contribution to the investigation of the origins of capitalism. Weber himself certainly contributed greatly to this misunderstanding. None the less, he made his real interest crystalclear: the working-out of one thread in the history of the modern Typus Mensch who has learnt to lead his everyday life, and especially his professional life, in a disciplined and methodical fashion, opening the way - without wishing it - for the modern Fach- und Berufs¬ menschentum.27 This was a precondition for the emergence of modern capitalism, but Weber’s primary interest was not the capitalist economic form, but rather the Menschentum required for the victory of bourgeois acquisitive capitalism. At the end of his investigation it slips out: no one yet knows who in the future will occupy the ‘cage’ of the modern capitalist life-order, ‘or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. Then indeed for the “ultimate beings” of this cultural development it might well be truly said: “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart: this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilisation (Menschentum) never before achieved”. ’2K This Nietzschelike citation with the use of the term ‘ultimate beings’ has led most to believe that it actually comes from Nietzsche; it is not, however, to be found there, but can instead be assembled from four or five passages and is thus quite in the spirit of Nietzsche. But it is not simply the conclusion of that renowned study that makes use of Nietzsche, the whole work is inconceivable without the impulse given by the third section of the Genealogy of Morals (‘What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?’) - Thomas Mann’s certainty is based upon this. A great many things did come together in Weber’s head to arrange the material then ignited by the spark of fertile thought, the decisive problematic. The determination of economic action by religious factors was familiar to Weber from the teaching of the Historical School; his teacher in Heidelberg (Karl Knies) devoted great attention to this question. But

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from all the motivating factors known to us: the pious mother, Jellinek’s study on the declaration of human rights which emphasized religious motives, Weber’s work on the monasteries of the Middle Ages,29 - none of these explains Weber’s problematic, directed exclusively as it is at the Typus Mensch, formed by the conditions of Christian ascetism in its puritan variation. I cannot discuss individual details here, but the parallels between Nietzsche’s ‘brilliant essay’ (as Weber called the third section of the Genealogy of Morals) and his own essays are so striking that, once indicated, they cannot escape notice. In the few remarks made in the literature on the relation of Weber and Nietzsche much is made of the manner in which Weber consistently distanced himself from Nietzsche: certainly everywhere where Nietzsche believed he could assume the air of a specialist scholar. Here, Weber criticised him like anyone else. What he did take from him were ‘problematics’, the ‘fine ideas’ and ‘constructions’, which Weber the professional scholar moulded into usable problematics and ideal-types. As far as scientific, causal, flawless ‘imputations’ were concerned, Nietzsche was no authority; here, others were competent, the learned scholars of his time such as Mommsen, Wellhausen, Eduard Meyer and ultimately himself. But for posing the right questions - he saw here no reason to prevent Nietzsche from being of assistance.3U The degree to which this is the case is shown most strikingly by the progress of Weber’s work in the studies on the sociology of religion which, under the title ‘The economic ethic of world religions’, we have in the three volumes of GARS. Weber was certainly driven into this monstrous sea by the force of his own research. None the less: I am sure that here also the direction was provided by The Gay Science,31 Beyond Good and Evil,32 and The Genealogy of Morals.33 Here we find the imperative to embark upon the empirical collection of moralscientific material and, quite in the spirit of Weber, not that of ethical dogma, but rather the real religiously motivating psychological drives to particular modes ofleading lives-this is of decisive influence on Weber’s research. In my opinion this is a weak formulation of the dependencies and connections that exist here.34 The question of the Typus Mensch runs like a red thread through all the so-called empirical studies that Weber either conducted or prompted. The cultural scientist worked through the external relationships (what the sociologist would call ‘social’ relationships) to

Nietzsche in the Work of Weber

155

the question that really interested him, although his specific pro¬ fessional task was in the exact analysis of the external relations. But to ask after the motivation is ultimately a question involving anthropo¬ logical, philosophical and ethical elements; the analysis of‘relation¬ ships’ is not an end in itself, but has rather the purpose of establishing in as exact a manner as possible the ‘plastic’, ‘forming’ powers in these relations, which are then placed in reference to the Typus Mensch, which is shaped by them. It was exactly in these terms that Weber drew up his investigations on the fate of workers in modern large enterprises, and on the impact of the press and of associations.35 But the other idea, which also structured the entire work, falls in the early period before his illness; we can identify it for the first time with certitude in the summer of 1894. In 1894 Weber changed disciplines — from jurisprudence to economics. He had experienced, in the process of transformation undergone by the East Elbian estate economy, the force of the transition from traditional-patriarchal modes of economy and domination to an impersonal, rational, capitalist economy based on acquisition. Henceforth, capitalism is and remains the ‘most fateful force in our modern life’,36 down to his last utterances. In what sense is it ‘fateful’? Aside from Nietzsche, there was no stronger influence on Weber’s work than that of Marx. All the prevailing opinions on the inadequacy of Weber’s knowledge of Marx are untenable.37 Even at the age of nineteen, Weber was introduced to Marx’s analysis of capitalism by Karl Knies. Weber never disputed the then unique fertility of Marx’s problematic. But he did not take up the responses and prophetic vision that Marx believed followed from his own analyses. Weber’s analysis of capitalism is consequentially deeper than that of Marx; it considers the universal human perspective without, like Marx, becoming involved in ‘desirabilities’. In two decisive points Weber goes beyond Marx, and both are directly attributable to Nietzsche. Those affected by capitalism are not the proletarian and the capitalist alone, but all humankind, who in one way or another are caught up in the mechanism of modern capitalism.38 Weber’s scorn, even hatred, was reserved for those who believed that they could maintain a peaceful existence within this mechanism. What determined the nature of capitalism for Weber? For one, all those economic circumstances, the dictate of the productivity of capital, that Marx had analysed. Beyond that, some¬ thing hitherto insufficiently noted: the fact of massive exchange.

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Exchange has always existed. But the massive scale of exchange, the impersonal nature of human relationship, this appeared to him to be the truly remarkable feature of the capitalist economic order. And in the train of the massive scale of exchange came the depersonalization of human relationships under the rule of capitalism. Employing a formula of Adolph Wagner, Weber liked to describe capitalism as ‘masterless slavery’. He repeatedly emphasized that the capitalist economic order rested upon the foundation of formally free labour. That meant that the worker no longer had a master, with the consequence that the relation of employer to employee could no longer be interpreted in ethical terms. Weber emphasized again and again that the relation between master and slave was susceptible to ethical interpretation, while that between employer and employee under the conditions of capitalism was not. From 1894 — the time of the contribution to the fifth meeting of the Evangelisch-sozialer Kongreß - Weber regarded this loss of the possibility of interpreting working life in an ethical manner as the real basic fact of modernity, the ‘anethical’ economic order as he called it. Where could he have found this proposition other than in Nietzsche? ‘The impossible condition’ is the title of one of the aphorisms in The Dawn.y> The ‘disgrace’ of the worker in ‘factory slavery’ to be a screw in a machine and at the same time to be used as a makeshift for human inventiveness. Pish! to believe that through higher wages the substance of their poverty, I mean their impersonal vassalage, could be alleviated! ... to have a price for which one can be no longer a person, but a screw!40 Weber was aware-in a manner unusual at the time-that all scientific work operated with the prevailing stock of concepts, that these concepts were bound up with the problems of the time and that a change in the cultural problematic led to a critique of this conceptual stock.41 Thus we must also look into the concepts that he used for the contemporary problematic as he saw it. He saw it with Nietzsche’s eyes as conditioned by the process of rationalization in the sense of a general reification, that is, depersonalization, with the result that an individual ethical interpretation of Lebensfiihrung became impossible. Each of his conceptual couples, beginning with Church and sect, institution and association, reflect this fundamental problem of the time.42

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157

But — the sceptic may here object: admitted that the question of the Typus Mensch and the disenchantment of the world through the power of rationalization are related to Nietzsche; but, none the less, what has Weber as a neo-Kantian dedicated to the value-freedom of science to do with the prophetic ductor Nietzsche? Is it not rather the respectable Heinrich Rickert who is the source, the philosophical authority for Weber? This is certainly the understanding of Weber that currently prevails, and this view can only be shaken, if at all, by a careful and detailed investigation.43 So I only raise this to give pause for thought: when Weber read the second volume of Rickert’s Grenzen der naturwissenschaßlichen Begriffs¬ bildung, published in 1902, he wrote to Marianne: I have finished Rickert. He is very good; in large part I find in him the thoughts that I have had myself, though not in logically finished form. I have reservations about his terminology.44 In the famous note to Roscher and Knies he wrote: ‘In the foregoing, I believe I have conformed fairly closely to the main views ofRickert, at least in so far as they are germane to the present study. ’ So that he could then proceed politely but without commitment: ‘One of the purposes of this study is to test the value of his ideas for the methodology of economics’.45 The question that Weber forcibly poses to Weberresearch with these sentences concerns the nature of what he himself had thought, although not ‘in logically finished form’. Rickert provided his thoughts with logical form, to some extent the logical dress that fitted - but these ‘articles of clothing’ are not really that important.46 The material problems: the competence of science in making practical evaluations, the question of what was worth knowing, the saving of concepts from naturalism and emanatism, the meaning of the inverted commas in the claim of the social sciences to ‘objectivity’ (the legitimacy of disciplined subjectivity!), what a ‘science of reality’ might mean - all of this was carried forward with Weber. From where? As long as the social sciences insist upon ignoring the work of Weber before his illness and date the ‘real’ Weber from the Protestant Ethic, and regard the essays on Roscher and Knies and, even more so, the 1904 essay on objectivity as the real beginning, all that he had thought up to 190447 (by which time Weber was forty) remains unconsidered in the comprehension of Weber’s work. Weber did indeed think highly of Rickert, the logical problems of concept

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158

formation were, on account of the contemporary scientific constel¬ lation

of the

unenlightened

time - the remnants

widespread

of idealism,

prejudice historism,

arising

from

materialism,

naturalism, etc. - all of great importance to someone concerned with clarity, intellectual honesty and a clear view of matters - but only in the sense of a great clearing-up that had first to be done. All the actual problems just named were considered by Nietzsche - culminating in his destruction of all general metaphysical concepts. It was from here that Weber took up his construction of the ideal type, which was of course preceded by the problematization and clearing-away of general economic concepts. I remind the reader here only of his shredding of the economic concepts of value, production and the agricultural interest, with a sarcastic questioning of which fraction was then meant: the cattle-raising or the fodder-producing or the grain-growing or the corn-feeding or the schnapps-distilling farmer? The awful confusion that such a concept can create was then spun out over three pages.48 What was Rickert to him? He stated in an ironic passage in a previously uncited letter to Franz Eulenberg: ‘By the way, I am really not aware of anybody, myself for instance, who considered Rickert a “great man”. This would not be fitting. -But I do consider him one of our best logicians.’49 Weber liked citing Nietzsche’s ‘pathos of distance’. Can one express ‘distance’ any more clearly?

Ill Let us try and reduce the most important impressions that Nietzsche’s work made on that of Weber to a set of theses. 1

Weber accepted without any reservation Nietzsche’s diagnosis

of the time: God is dead. He treated it as the ‘basic fact’ that we are fated to live in a ‘godless time, without prophets’. All objective order of values deriving from the Christian conception of God breaks down. Weber is the first to have drawn the most radical scientific conclusions from Nietzsche’s diagnosis of nihilism. It is the fate of our epoch to have eaten of the tree of knowledge: that is, with Nietzsche to have turned the consistency of the Christian pathos of truth, of intellectual honesty, itself against all hitherto-prevailing values. We live in a disenchanted world in which we can, if we so wish, calculate every-

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159

thing; but in which we thereby gain not one bit of a dependable orientation to the world.

Everything has now to come from

ourselves. The radical isolation with which modernity is associated was noted in passing by Weber time and time again in Protestant Ethic as one of the most consequential outcomes of modernity. 2

Weber took over his ‘ideal type’ of Christianity from Nietzsche.

The ideal-typical stylization of the universal religion of love and brotherhood preached in the Sermon on the Mount, which must itself necessarily conflict with all other worldly life orders (eroticism, family association, economics, politics and aesthetics) owes without doubt its strongest impulse to Nietzsche. The idea of life as ‘struggle’, a struggle of man against man and the dearest against the dearest is, quite apart from the question of whether this is a correct or distorted vision of the reality of human existence, owed to no one as much as Nietzsche with his idea of life as the will to power. For Weber, there is no human relationship, no ‘life order’, that could not be defined by struggle. Life is struggle, struggle is life. 3

It is through Weber’s horror at the radical disenchantment of the

world that his ‘universal-historical’ problematic relating to the genesis of Occidental rationalism develops. He wants to know how the world in which we are ‘placed’ came to be the shocking reality it is, and what this reality is.50 One must hold one’s ground against this knowledge. This ‘heroism’, related to a contemporary aesthetic stylization, belongs to those aspects of Weber that today irritate us. What we allow poor sick Nietzsche is not so readily allowed Weber the scholar. The question also arises of whether he did in fact ‘hold out’ in this pose of the hardy knight. Who would not have sought salvation, have sought a chance of flight from the spiritual world that Weber outlined? Nietzsche found his escape in art: in music and poetry. An exact review of Weber’s personality has yet to begin with his artistic interests and estimations.

The lyricist Rilke enjoyed Weber’s

particular admiration. He was fond of the little book Der Garten der Erkenntnis

by

Leopold

Andrian

(the

friend

of

Hugo

von

Hofmannsthal). He knew Baudelaire, Maeterlinck and Oscar Wilde well; in music his interests and likings were very close to those of Nietzsche.51 Eduard Baumgarten tells of a conversation in which Weber asked his wife: ‘Can you imagine being a mystic?’ Marianne’s answer: ‘That would be the last thing I could think of. Can you

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160

imagine yourself as one?’ Answer: ‘It could be that I am one. Since I have ‘dreamed’ more in my life than one should permit oneself, so I am at heart nowhere completely rooted. It’s as though I could (and wished to) entirely withdraw myself from everything. ’ This fits Weber’s work and the representation of the world in which we are ‘placed.’.32 4

Weber reintroduced the dimension of tragedy into history quite

in the spirit of Nietzsche. For Nietzsche, the ascetic ‘man’ was the great ‘calamity’ (Verhängnis) of modern human development. Weber also used the work Verhängnis at the end of the essays on the Protestant Ethic.33 The exact analysis of this historical calamity right down to its origins - in Nietzsche back to Socrates and, in Weber, in exactly the same context, as the history of Occidental rationalism — is the attempt to make oneself clear about this ‘calamity’ in the development of Menschentum. In a letter to the art historian Carl Neumann, Weber was full of admiration for the striking depiction of the deep pessimism of ancient Greece that he found in Jacob Burckhardt’s Griechischer Kulturgeschichte. The pessimistic view of pre-Socratic Greece united Nietzsche and Burckhardt. I am sure that this is one of the deepest sources for Weber’s ‘universal-historical’ perception of the history of modern Occidental man.54 To properly understand Weber we cannot set the intellectual distance at a line (a line which contemporary sociology would like to draw as its baseline) that is far enough away from us. He was entirely a man of the nineteenth century, by contrast to the optimistic eighteenth century in Nietzsche’s words: ‘honest but gloomy’. 5

In his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Thomas Mann cries

despairingly: ‘Forgive me that I see Nietzsche and only Nietzsche. ’551 admit that I am not free of such a temptation. None the less: we have before us the task of reading Weber anew - in the light of Nietzsche. The undoubted influences can be recapitulated - above all they are to be found in the domain of the sociology of religion. The common (brotherly) scorn could be specified exactly: the idea ofepigonism, the madhouse of‘modern ideas’, the contempt for parvenus, the aversion to wishful thinking, the scepticism towards ‘progress’ and ‘develop¬ ment’, the indifference towards all ‘moderation’, the rejection of those merely

‘differentiated’

modem

men

seeking

their own

‘experiences’. Then also the common affirmations (‘estimations’). The will to truth; not to deceive and not to be deceived. The disinterest in

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161

‘humanity’, the passionate interest in human ‘type’. The concept of personality: ‘become that which you are.’ The will to be ‘untimely’; intellectual righteousness as our ‘ultimate’ virtue. Then on science: the common struggle against the depersonaliza¬ tion of scientific questioning, while at the same time disputing its competence to form binding ‘evaluations’. ‘Objectivity’ as the most conscious form of‘subjectivity’. ‘Value freedom’ as ‘impartiality’. The technique of disillusion in relation to all general concepts: thus ‘ideal types’!56 The comparative study of cultures: where has the human plant hitherto flourished most strongly? The diagnosis of the modern soul. Finally, the community of world vision. What are ‘universal historical’ problems? (Those with which Europe has provided the world.) The two moralities - two moral status orders? The men of great responsibility. The social forms as ‘cultural complexes’ and ‘structures of power’. Great politics as ‘creating conditions’, against ‘milieu’ and ‘adaptation’. The tragedy of the world, the dialectic of value-realization. And ultimately, not to be forgotten: the differences! But we should not wipe away the traces before they are secured. Of course, Weber was not Nietzsche’s monkey, not one of his ‘followers’; he was just as little a Nietzschean as he was a Marxist. But let us finally ask: why did Weber conceal the influence of Nietzsche? Why do we have to seek after the traces? Is it in fact a matter of traces, of‘influences’ of the type that we pursue philologically in intellectual history? For Weber, one figure still had indisputable reality, a figure whom we would recognize as a historical topos. I recall the words spoken on the Ludwigstraße after the discussion with Spengler: ‘The world in which we spiritually and intellectually live today is a world substantially shaped by Marx and Nietzsche’. If that is so, why are they hardly ever cited, why is there an absence of explicit reference, not to speak of debate? A passage in the essay on ‘ “Objectivity” ’does perhaps provide an explanation. It is stated there: Tobesure, without the investigator’s evaluative ideas, therewould be no principle of selection of subject-matter. . . so the direction of his personal belief, the refraction ofvalues in the prism of his mind, gives direction to his work.

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For Weber, that is true for every investigator. But he continues with something that is more unfamiliar to modern ears: And the values to which the scientific genius [my emphasis, W.H.] relates the object of his inquiry may determine, i.e. decide the ‘conception’ of a whole epoch, not only concerning what is regarded as ‘valuable’ but also concerning what is regarded as significant or insignificant, ‘important’ or ‘unimportant’ in the phenomena.37 We do not have to repeat once more who were the winged spirits who determined the epoch. Neither would Weber. To express it in his language: no science and no dialectic can ‘demonstrate’ to someone whether someone is a scientific genius, and who they are. Were we on the right track? Searching for the traces of Nietzsche, or for the genius of Nietzsche in Weber’s work?

PART III

The Unity of the Work

Voluntarism andJudgement: Max Weber’s Political Views in the Context ofhis Work

In Hans Staudinger’s memoirs a graphic description can be found of that ‘overwhelming’ man, the ‘teacher’ in the highest philosophical sense, that many felt Max Weber to be.1 One day Staudinger sought out Weber to put a hard question to him: ‘Max Weber, what is your leading supreme value?’ Weber was astonished and replied that few had posed him this candid question. ‘I have no leading supreme value’, he answered. ‘How can you live then?’ cried Staudinger. Weber smiled and said: ‘Imagine that hanging from the ceiling of my study there are violins, pipes and drums, clarinets and harps. Now this instrument plays, now that. The violin plays, that is my religious value. Then I hear harps and clarinets and I sense my artistic value. Then it is the turn of the trumpet and that is my value of freedom. With the sound of pipes and drums I feel the values of my fatherland. The trombone stirs the various values of community, solidarity. There are some¬ times dissonances. Only inspired men are able to make a melody out ofthis-prophets, statesmen, artists, those who are more or less charismatic. I am a scholar who arranges knowledge so that it can be used. My instruments are to be found in bookcases, but they make no sound. No living melody can be made out of them. ’ The question that Staudinger posed Weber was directed to the roots from which ‘person and work’ drew their strength. We take up this question here and ask: are there not after all, hidden in Weber’s work, elements of a ‘practical philosophy’, a ‘supreme value’ that we must know if we are to understand the work in its entirety? Related to the entirety of the work means - to that which is apparently unrelated: to seek the inner connection between Max

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Weber’s practical-political views and positions and the ‘purely scientific’ position and anti-positions of the Wissenschafislehre. I am searching for a way into these connections, and begin by examining the ‘world-view’, the ideological trace in Weber’s basic political positions — his curious ‘Liberalism’. If anywhere, then his ‘supreme value’ should be evident in his political opinions and views.

I

Max Weber’s‘Liberalism’

The political views of Max Weber and his activity in the practical politics of his time have been investigated with a detail and care which outdoes that directed to any other aspect of his work and person. Wolfgang

Mommsen’s

important

book

unleashed

passionate

controversy. But it is today regarded as a fact beyond all argument that Max Weber was a great Liberal. Is Weber’s greatness the outcome of his liberalism, or even to the ‘Enlightenment’? That Max Weber was a Liberal appears to be a secured result of modern knowledge. Wolfgang Mommsen saw in him one of the most prominent repre¬ sentatives of European Liberalism on the threshold of its demise.2 Although this judgement might be qualified, we can basically agree: Weber was one of the most important representatives of Wilhelminian Liberalism. As a result of later experience we can see all too acutely the weakness, the ‘antinomism’3 and seductiveness of this Liberalism - but it is none the less Liberalism. Weber, a ‘bourgeois’ Liberal according to David Beetham;4 a Liberal merely in form, not from conviction, as Robert Eden has recently argued'1 — the assigna¬ tion to ‘Liberalism’ nevertheless remains undisputed. Even those keenest critics closer in time to Weber than the above invoked his ‘Liberalism’ so that they might then reject him - thus with both love and hate Christoph Steding, more distanced Erich von Kahler, and more subtly Leo Strauss.6 In the literature that has to be taken seriously I can recall only the instance of Alexander von Schelting, who rejected any assignation of Weber to Liberalism with coolness and objectivity.7 Did Weber report on his credentials himself? In the Freiburg Inaugural Address the young professor called himself an ‘economic nationalist’. He liked to emphasize that he was a class-conscious bourgeois; towards the end of his life he once referred to ‘we radicals’,

Voluntarism and Judgement

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while the very young man, putting himself on equal footing with his correspondent, once wrote ‘we liberals’.8 Aside from these instances, I know of no occasion when Weber expressly referred to himself as a ‘Liberal’. Weber was no retiring scholar. He was politically active all his life, whether joining others in associations or acting on his own with the pen. Within the various fronts that constituted the constellation of Wilhelminian politics he never became involved with forces that we might call illiberal. When he once did so, briefly having a guest role in the Pan German League, he withdrew very quickly. He had nothing in common with the ‘Manchester’ free-trading liberalism of Eugen Richter, while he always felt himself bound to the nationally and socially tinged liberalism of Friedrich Naumann.9 If we direct ourselves solely to his political associations, for instance his con¬ nection with the Frankfurter Zeitung, then the label ‘Liberal’ can be allowed. Those who are politically active are not in a position to be stringent in the selection of their associates. We are here interested only in the isolated Weber, his thought and writing. Does this permit his assignation to Liberalism? This faces us with the unavoidable question of what we mean by ‘Liberalism’. The almost endless varieties in which Liberalism appears is one of the individualistic-bourgeois characteristics of this great intellectual current that has so strongly determined modernity. None the less: if we are discussing Liberalism there can be only one sense if, in all these varieties, whether above or below the line, there is an element shared by this or that form of each variety. Lothar Gall argues that ‘we still lack even a definition acceptable as a working hypothesis which characterizes the historical phenomenon evoked by the concept of Liberalism. ’1(l We have therefore to address ourselves, without any claim to originality, to an ‘ideal-typically’ emphasized definition of this essence. In my opinion, three factors should be identified in such a core. Victor Leonovitsch suggested that the basic method of Liberalism was ‘not creation, but abolition’ (nicht das Schaffen, sondern das AbschaffenY .u I would like to nominate as the first central liberal idea: abolition, the removal of limitations, setting free, combined with hopel J. Salwyn Shapiro is in total agreement with this when he states that Liberalism strives for a dynamic society ‘which constantly changes for the better. For Liberalism time was the universal friend who

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would incessantly provide ever more people with great happiness. ’’ 2 We can regard this belief in time as the second central liberal idea. Finally, there is a certain universality of values belonging to the core of liberal thought - a legacy of Natural Law - at very least those of freedom and equality, bound up with the moral imperative that everyone is obliged to work for the realization of these values. The task of realizing the universally valid values of the modern, anti-traditional human right to freedom and equality can serve us as the third characteristic feature of Liberalism. Let us consider Weber ’s attitude to these positions one by one.

?

Liberalism as ‘abolition’

The most significant version of nineteenth-century liberal belief was that of economic Liberalism-the idea that the freeing of economic action from the tutelage of the state would lead to greater welfare. Since Weber as an economist has until now attracted little attention, there has been no detailed consideration of Weber’s economic ideas. Perhaps the most pithy formulation of his economic credo can be found in the foreword that he wrote for the Archiv in 1904.1' The practical ‘tendency’ of the Archiv was for him decidedly ‘nothing other than the result of specific insights into those historical socio¬ political situations . . . with which one must deal.’ This tendency ‘rested therefore upon convictions which were completely indepen¬ dent of personal wishes.’ These ‘insights’— in Weber’s terminology more or less the opposite of‘desirabilities’ — related: primarily to the following points: 1

That capitalism, as a result of historical development that must

simply be accepted as such, can no longer be simply done away with, and that there is no return from it to the patriarchal foundations of the ancien regime. 2

That as a consequence the older forms of social

order

corresponding to those patriarchal foundations have to make way for new forms, whether we like it or not. In so far as social policy was to be pursued in the Archiv, this would in ‘future be Realpolitik on the foundation of what is now irreversibly given.’ Weber never regarded capitalism based upon ‘free’ labour as especially desirable. It was fate, the ‘most fateful force’ of the age, a

Voluntarism and Judgement

169

given condition that had to be reckoned with, and which had its merits in comparison with other possible contemporary forms of economic organization. He never made the specifically liberal economic form a matter of faith. It was ‘fate’, unavoidable; the socialist command economy was no acceptable alternative.14 The liberal demand for the freedom of scientific research from the tutelage of church and state is older than economic liberalism. It is only under the conditions of such freedom that scientific ‘progress’ can flourish. W eher was a passionate partisan of the freedom of science in this sense and he lost no opportunity in furthering its cause. It was for him a quite personal value: each should be able to make his contri¬ bution; and he regarded the universities as the autonomous sites of scientific debate.15 But did he believe in ‘progress’ in the sense that onward movement led to a deeper apprehension of the truth? Not the slightest trace of this original liberal idea can be found in Weber. Is there a more incisive renunciation of such beliefs than ‘Science as a vocation’? Progressive disenchantment of the world is the result of modern science-it renders neither the world more intelligible nor the individual more wise, more insightful or more discriminating.16 One of the principal fronts upon which Liberalism fought out its battle was the struggle over the freedom of information, freedom of the press, freedoms from the restrictions of state and church censorship. This struggle was justified by the conviction that an increase in information, free of limitation, would lead to greater discrimination and judgement. Weber regarded the freedom from censorship as an evident liberal truth; during the war he accepted the necessary restrictions on newspapers with some difficulty. But the freedom of the press as a vehicle for the increase of discrimination andjudgement? The idea never occurred to him. His magnificent plan for a survey of the press shows what interested him in the press: the stereotyping of opinion,

more the tutelage exercized over judgement than its

liberation.17 The roll of honour of Liberalism had rather earlier included the struggle for freedom of belief free from restrictions imposed by confession or by the state. Weber knew, however, following his friend Georg Jellinek, that this struggle had not been initiated under the banner of Liberalism, but rather as a religious, even ‘sectarian’ path to deeper piety. Weber wished to extend Jellinek’s investigation of the origins of the ‘declaration of human rights’, which was so

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objectionable to the historical consciousness of liberal orthodoxy, by writing an essay on the concrete situation in Cromwell’s time and the state doctrine of the Anabaptists.18 Nowhere in Weber do we find that so characteristic liberal appraisal of freedom of belief as the chance of freedom in belief, or rather the chance of being free from belief altogether. Religious indifference, the final result of ‘ecrasez Vinfame', did not appear to him to be a cultural value. Religious systems of Lebensführung that know no adiaphora, within which, therefore, nothing is trivial from the point of view of belief, that claim men ‘entirely’ like ancient Judaism and the radical puritan sects - these gained his especial admiration. Liberalism considers itself to have increased the happiness of men by liberation from moral ‘prejudice’, not least in the sexual domain. Quite certainly Weber, as a modern Kulturmensch, would have found life under the conditions of the puritan sexual ethic unbearable. But it would never have occurred to him that men and women were ‘more happy’ ever since such liberties had been won by struggle or simply assumed. The famous letter to Edgar Jaffe, relating to Otto Groß,19 demonstrates his very ambivalent attitude in this question, central as it was for his generation. He had struggled with it personally in a painful manner and taken his own small liberties.20 But he was never a ‘libertine’. Did Weber ‘believe’ in Enlightenment? Did he believe in the resolution of conflict through

freedom,

through

rational

discourse? I believe that we have to categorically state that this was no longer the case, that his scale of values was one quite different to that of the liberal Enlightenment.21

2

The Liberal belief in ‘time’

Before we get caught up in terminological pedantry, let us examine the second table of categories with whose help, perhaps, Weber’s position in relation to fundamental Liberal positions can be more exactly located. How did Weber relate to time, to the belief in develop¬ ment to higher stages of human life? Liberalism has always trusted in the positive dynamic of liberated forces - one had only to give them time. The more man was aware of himself, the more he came to reason, the more the powers of the past lost their force, and the more a science of society appeared to provide practical and applicable laws of development - so the outlook for the

Voluntarism and Judgement

171

future became rosier. This liberal conception of time was expressed in the theories of development lavishly produced during the nineteenth century in the footsteps of Hegel, Comte and Spencer. The historical school of German economics also greatly contributed to this futureoriented interpretation of time by the elaboration of doctrines of economic stages. Not only Marianne Weber sought in the biography of her ‘companion’ to paint Weber as a liberal democrat; this presentation of Weber as a ‘good’ (i.e. liberal) German was, for the reception into postwar American sociology, tantamount to the condition for the issue of an important licence. This image found its ultimate canonization in the sole general presentation of Weber’s work so far produced, Reinhard Bendix’s Intellectual Portrait.22 Following this, the presentation of Weber as the ‘theorist of development’ has become the central theme of Bendix’s two students, Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchten 23 There is no space here to go into detail. Nevertheless, it can be said that Weber’s transformation of‘economic stages’, ‘cultural stages’, etc., into ideal types, into auxiliary conceptual constructions devoid of all teleology and ‘dynamic’, marks a radical break with an optimistic belief in development typical of the liberal nineteenth century. In every theory of developmental stages Weber saw a covert ideology of progress, which he then fervently exposed. Given the force and lack of equivocation in Weber’s texts, one of the most incomprehensible features of contemporary Weber scholarship is the fact that minds as different as Friedrich Tenbruck, Schluchter

and

Jürgen

Habermas

cannot

resist

Wolfgang discovering

evolutionary elements in Weber’s work. For Weber, history was a ‘concatenation of events’.24 Naturally, there were at particular ‘developmental stages’ greater and lesser probabilities,

greater

proximity and removal, elective affinities and strangeness, all of which were recognizable to the trained eye of the scientist. But there was one thing that did not exist in history: ‘evolution’ as an inner lawfulness and teleological determination of development.25 But it was upon this that the liberal confidence in the progressive, ‘ameliorative’ power of time was based. Weber dismissed in precise terms all attempts at conceiving ‘cultural development in terms of biological processes, as a lawful sequence of diverse but universally repeated cultural stages’. Repeatedly he sought to make quite clear how we should not go about employing the concept of cultural stage in a

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scientific manner.26 In research, the continuous comparison of the developmental stages ofindividual peoples and the use of analogies is a heuristic tool that ‘used with care was highly suitable for highlighting the historical specificity of each individual development in its causal determination’. But it is a serious misunderstanding of the investigative goal of cultural history if one considers the construction of‘cultural stages’ as anything more than a means of representation, and proceeds to treat the ordering of the historical into such conceptual abstractions as the purpose of cultural-historical work . . . and it is an infringe¬ ment of the method of research if we regard a ‘cultural stage’ as anything other than a concept, and treat it like a real being in analogy to an organism studied by biology, or as a Hegelian ‘idea’, in which case its individual elements ‘emanate’ from it — and so finally treat ‘cultural stages’ as constructions of analogical conclusions ... In other words: they [cultural stages and similar constructs] are conceptual means of representation but not the basis for deductive procedure. . ,27 It is, however, precisely this procedure - drawing conclusions about the future from historically given circumstances - that characterizes nineteenth-century Liberal and socialist thought. Its force remains unbroken to this day. The entire discussion surrounding the under¬ developed peoples of the so-called Third World, those who have still to ‘develop’ (and here one is tempted to use Weber’s words: ‘as we would like to believe . . .’) revolves around a persisting adherence to this belief. Weber’s thought is far removed from all the common¬ places operating with the categories of a ‘logic of development’ both of his and our times. Two ideas are hidden in the Liberal conception of time, and they have to be dealt with separately: first, the notion of a scientifically recognizable progress ; secondly, the belief in a human ‘happiness’ susceptible to augmentation, which can likewise be dealt with scientifically. Both ideas are absolutely central to Liberal thought, and it is therefore all the more important to see how Weber relates to them. 3

‘Progress’

In a note to the essay on Roscher, Weber proposes that the concept of progress:

Voluntarism and Judgement

173

is required only when the religious significance of the human condition is destroyed and the need arises to ascribe to it a ‘meaning’ which is not only this-worldly, but also objective.28 This necessity arose in the ‘godless’, intellectualized and disenchanted world of the nineteenth century. Perhaps it has to be emphasized: it had arisen, for we still felt the vacuum created by the dissolution of religious sensibility. Weber’s most detailed analysis of the concept of progress is to be found in that central passage in the essay on value judgements where he elaborates the manner in which every kind of order is ultimately to be subjected to social scientific investigation - ‘in terms of the human type to which it, by way of external or internal (motivational) selection, provides the optimal chances of becoming the dominant type.’29 Directly following this passage there is the analysis of the concept ofprogress. According to Weber, we can employ the concept of progress in a value-free manner (‘but always with a great risk of misunderstanding’) if it is identified with the ‘progression’ of some concrete process observed in an abstracting and isolating fashion. Progress

is

also

present

where

the

objective

in

question

is

unambiguously defined. But we are at once caught up in scientifically insoluble questions of value when the term is applied to human modes of conduct. Can it be said that modern man, with his greater potential range of sensibility and the differentiated scale of chords through which he might resonate, represents ‘progress’ with respect to the ‘simple’, ‘undifferentiated’ man of the past? Weber does not doubt that there is ‘progression’ in the ability to register nuances of feeling, partly as a result of the increasing rationalization and individualization of areas of life, partly as a result of the increasing subjective importance ascribed by the individual to actions and utterances that are to others, however, quite trivial. It was beyond question that modern man had far greater possibilities for ‘experiences’, to use a favoured expression of the day. But whether we should characterize this progressive differentation as ‘progress’ is, as far as Weber is concerned, a question of terminological utility, and the question of whether we should evaluate it as progress could not be decided by empirical investigation. Weber makes clear that he is hardly prepared to make a positive evaluation by immediately suggesting that it is a ‘question as to the price which is “paid” for this process (in so far as it is

174

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

more than an intellectualist illusion).3" Here Weber cites, with some slight distancing, Simmel’s Schopenhauer und Nietzsche. The whole passage is

a

recapituation

of Nietzsche’s

presentation

of the

‘discerning’ man of‘modern ideas’ and cultivated experiences, a weak and by no means strong man. 31 Progress exists for Weber only where definite given objectives can be isolated, where there are clearly ascertainable concepts of‘technical’ accuracy. In this sense, according to Weber, ‘progress’ coincides with increasing rationalization. Weber makes quite plain that one does not have to be a ‘fool’ to fail to see ethical ‘progress’ in ‘progression’ that involves the inevitable collision of values. However guardedly this might be expressed, Weber elaborates the aporia of modem technical progress with supreme penetration. This is not, however, ‘Liberal’. Without some degree of optimism, some faith in the course of events, there is no Liberalism. It Weber had been born fifty years earlier, and thus been a man of the Vormärz and the Paulskirche - for which he did have the greatest respect 32 — he would have made an excellent ‘old Liberal’. After Nietzsche that was no longer possible. Everything now became a ‘problem’. In a letter dated 8 February 1897, from Freiburg, Weber wrote thanking Sombart for a letter and delivered a blunt rebuff: Your ideal, which is despite all reservations purely technical, is no kind of ideal at all - unless this concept is stretched to such a degree that one could even call a well-constructed lavatory an ‘ideal lavatory’. . . You seem to have arrived at the old Liberal ideal of the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number' and thus suffer the optical illusion of believing to have thereby eliminated the heteronomy of ideals. This cannot be your last word on the matter.33 Belief that the heteronomy of ideals is soluble- through compromise, parliamentary discussion or rational discourse - is the indestructible heritage and historical proprium of Liberalism. There is in my opinion no sense in talking of Liberalism in the absence of this belief, a belief which hardly moves mountains. ‘Tragic’ Liberalism or ‘pessimistic’ Liberalism are in the final analysis ‘wooden iron’, a contradiction in terms. If one accepts that, then Weber was not a Liberal. Or could this sentence from a letter to Lujo Brentano written on 12 January 1897 come from the pen of a Liberal? ‘Ethical pathos leaves me quite unaffected, and the ‘highest ideals of the age’ is a phrase which I do not comprehend.’34

Voluntarism and Judgement

4

175

‘Happiness’

It is just the same with Weber’s attitude to happiness. His echoing of Nietzsche’s scorn for those who invented happiness is well known. As an economist, he dissects happiness above all in terms of an analysis of the concepts of‘interest’ and ‘productivity’. German economic doctrine during the nineteenth century was preoccupied with the problem ofinterest, andthehappinessofthegreatestnumber. With an intellectual precision bordering on maliciousness, Weber broke down all obscurities and contradictions in this concept. The essay on objectivity revels in the pleasure of demonstrating the inconsistency of such a seemingly simple concept as that of‘agricultural interest’. While I would otherwise not rate too highly the influence of Kant on Weber,35 there is in fact for Weber no return to a pre-Kantian past, beyond Kant’s demolition of philosophical eudaemonism.36 But Nietzsche is more immediate: happiness is a word for the herd-green pastures, security, protection by a good herdsman, comfort. If the ‘credo of Liberalism’ is, in the words of Octavio Paz, ‘progress as the law of every society,’37 then Weber detached himself as sharply as possible from this part of the confession of faith of every Liberal. If we come across the concept of happiness or comfort, we sense that this is for Weber something that is quite distasteful. The world in which we are ‘placed’ holds no promises of happiness. Religious sentiment is exhausted, and happiness is not the concern of science and tech¬ nology. There is absolutely nothing in Weber’s three types of legitimacy that involves the slightest suggestion that there is a tendency to progress, an implicit form of ascending from one type to another. T raditional society was defined by the specific values of piety and reverence; within charisma, which disrupts tradition, there burns a spiritual power. Neither the one nor the other determines rational orders. They are defined by reason, they are ‘cold orders’, soulless, ‘functioning’ all the better as they makeless and less use of humans. To see (with Wolfgang Schluchter)38 in Weber an unequivocal option for the modern rational bureaucratic state (Anstaltsstaat) represents a radical misunderstanding of this deep pessimism,

this gloomy

nineteenth-century man (‘honest but gloomy’). Onward with gritted teeth - yes! But without hope, simply following the ‘demands of the day’. We do need to have sympathy with this posture, we could call it exalted or ‘romantic’; but it has to be taken into account and should not be reinterpreted in conformity with our own dispositions and needs.

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Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

A further category constitutive of Liberal thought is the idea that the liberation of individual powers through the medium of ‘free competition’ will ‘finally’ bring about a ‘harmonious’ social condition adjusting itself towards ‘equilibrium’. Weber never disputed the idea that an economy based upon free competition was, from the purely economic point of view, the most effective form of developed economic activity.39 What he objected to was the idealized (we might as well say ideological) view of this. What Liberals called ‘peaceful competition’ - whether it involved nations, human beings or lovers was (or him struggle, conflict, the struggle of man against man. Wecannot assess such judgements, although there is certainly more than judge¬ ment involved here. Primarily, it is a matter of analysis, of exact perception, of not being at all misled by what we see. In all ‘liberal’ positions, which for the most part he substantially shared, Weber hated and fought with passion against everything that he regarded, to adopt an expression Nietzsche used for conservatives, as ‘super¬ imposing liars’ (Hinzugelogenes).

Nietzsche called conservatives

Hinzulügner,40 that is, those who obscure a specific interest by deceptively imposing a value. Liberalism was and is in this respect hardly less creative; only ‘scientific’ socialism can match it. In the debates on the question of entailment, Weber took the conservative Hinzulügner by the scruff of the neck; but his general opponent has tended always to be Liberalism, at any rate where it ‘superimposed’. For Weber, the concept of ‘struggle’41 was central to any under¬ standing of the social realm; this represents a curt rejection of the Liberal belief in peaceful competition, the benefits of the division of labour, and the ultimate identity of human, class and national interests. Weber subscribed unreservedly to the liberal position that all humans have the right to pursue their own interests. That was not as far as he was concerned a matter for the law, but rather a kind of natural law of the social. But, even as a young man, he had doubts that anything positive had to come of that. The struggle between the migrant Polish workers and German peasants,

quite certainly

‘competition’

rendered

the

ambivalence and the ‘heteronomy’ of ideals quite plain.

The

conducted

without

weapons,

‘Zwischenbetrachtung’ in the first volume of the collected essays on the sociology of religion is the most magnificent elaboration of this idea of conflict in Weber’s work. Once rationalization set in, the spheres of human life came under the sway of a ‘dictate of con-

177

Voluntarism and Judgement

sequences’, struggle would be unavoidable.42 We have already noted that Weber regarded all human relationships, including that of love, as relations of struggle of man against man. Is there a view of the ‘world’ that is more alien to that of the usual Liberal?

5

Weber’s‘individualism’

How is it then with Weber’s oft-invoked ‘individualism’? Might there not here be a close affinity to Liberal conceptions? The idea of the dignity of every individual and the associated idea ofequality certainly has older, ancient and Christian roots; but in the intellectual politics of the nineteenth century it was especially Liberalism that succeeded in ‘annexing’ the concepts ofequality and human dignity. Individualism and collectivism appeared to be the great opposition, stamping the intellectual differences of the time. While equality appeared to be an irrevocable process to which all the determining forces of the age conservatives, liberals and socialists alike - contributed; and if the great social institutions, such as state, law, education, etc., were principally viewed from the perspective of the claims of the individual (‘right to . . .’) and the individual’s chances for development - no other grouping was such an exclusive proponent of these ideas as the Liberals. There is no doubt that Weber was deeply imbued with the Christian idea of the dignity of every human being. But he was also aware of the possibilities of belittlement, of degradation to canaille and ‘enslaved souls’. We seek in vain for a soulful humanitarianism in Weber. Weber was a great hater and could display heartfelt contempt. The startingpoint of his sociology is indeed individual action. But is Weber therefore an ‘individualist’ in moral-political terms? Did he fight for the equality of all Germans? I know of no convincing evidence of that.43 The soldiers returning from the trenches had successfully struggled for an equal right to vote. They were not entitled to it on the basis of a doctrine; they had fought for it and now no-one had the right to refuse them. I can find nowhere in Weber, neither in the political nor in the scholarly writings, a specifically ‘humanitarian’ interest in the fates of individual men, for man ‘as such’.44 His interest was in the fate

of

individual

collectivities,

‘humankinds’,

which

were

represented in major solitary ‘types’ and not various individuals. His thought was not defined by an individualism bound to the idea of

178

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

equality, but rather by an interest in the representative individual, a type laden with responsibility and standing out from the mass, set apart from ‘everyman’ and expressly marked by the ‘pathos of distance’. This attitude of Weber has been called ‘aristocratic’. Only against the background of Nietzsche — and Jacob Burckhardt — is Weber’s ‘characteristic’ individualism rendered intelligible.

His

thought has nothing to do with a Liberalism that is codified, enshrined in declarations of human rights and egalitarianly individualistic.

6

Security

But let us look further. An indisputable property of the specific form of bourgeois Liberalism is an interest in the security of life chances. ‘Chance’ and ‘calculability’ are central concepts in Weber. Do these derive from the bourgeois-liberal storehouse of ideas,

did he

appropriate these concepts as ‘values’, or are they perhaps merely heuristic, ideal-typical categories for the apprehension of something that was in essence foreign to him? That cannot be dealt with in passing. It must be evident, however, that Weber’s attitude to security and the calculability of‘chances’ was ambivalent. These categories belong in the context of the presuppositions of the ‘bourgeois’, calculable-capitalist economic order. Were they spiritual, human ‘values’ for Weber, as they were undoubtedly for a particular strain of bourgeois Liberalism? I refer here only to Thomas Hobbes’s praise for the cultural advancement afforded by the security of the Leviathan: peace as a cultural factor, bourgeois security as a stronghold for cultural values. Is that Weberian? To pose the question means, if it is not to be answered in the negative, to surround it with question marks. Nothing seems more superficial to me than to characterize Weber as a bourgeois thinker.4’’ Indeed, there was no way back to the splendour of a daring, fuller life. Again and again Weber turned sharply on the cult of‘experience’. The life of the achieving bourgeois had its own dignity, its own heroism, as Thomas Mann demonstrated in Buddenbrooks,46 None the less, what stood out in the bourgeois way of life when compared with other ‘cultural stages’ was its cramped¬ ness,

limitation,

methodicalness,

discipline,

routinization,

its

reduction of everything to the everyday. Bourgeois-liberal

thought,

in

particular,

founded

political

obligation on the relation of protection and obedience. It is a relation

Voluntarism and Judgement

179

of contract. Weber, who enjoyed a close relation with Georgjellinek, had an exact knowledge of the history of the modern doctrine of contract. At that time the great treatises of Gierke, Wolzendorf, Zweig and Redlob on the fundamental principles of the modern constitutional state were appearing. One of his students was Karl Löwenstein. Nowhere in Weber’s sociology of domination can I find the faintest positive reference to the modern conception of contract. Only in the sociology of law is there a brief mention of this doctrine.47 Weber was just not interested in the speculation on the contractual foundation of civil obedience. He was interested rather in the actual motivating dynamic of obedience, its durability and fragility, the means for the enforcement of obedience, in which the ultimate means remains the ‘legitimate’ use of force-here there is no talk of‘contract’. German Liberalism loved reflecting on the ‘boundaries of con¬ stitutional obedience’. As a legal problem! Unfortunately, Weber did not write the chapter on political revolutions which he intended for Economy and Society, and there is no hint in his writing of how it might have turned out. But we can be quite certain that it would have been no contribution to the doctrine of the legal right of resistance. For people who feel obliged to purchase the official platform ticket before storming the railway platform — that is basically the level of bourgeois theories of legitimate resistance - Weber merely had contempt. Security, calculability are determinate elements of the modern economy and the rational bureaucratic state. Weber was certainly no modish revolutionary, but he was just as far removed from the self-deceiving bourgeois conception of security. Security all that we understand by an ordered bourgeois life - definitely had a high value for him, expressing a sober acceptance of the demand ofthe day; but, like every value, it was in conflict with others. For Weber, bougeois security was no ultimate value. Weber had not the slightest sympathy and hardly any understanding for the pacificism that flourished in his time.48 Or if so, then for a form so exaggerated that he knew it to be impossible as a collective form of life under modern conditions. It was no time for a St Francis. It is well known that Weber wanted to write a book on Tolstoy. We can be absolutely certain that he would have subjected the insoluble aporia of Tolstoyan ideals under the conditions of modern civilization to merciless criticism. Not that he had no respect for Tolstoy and those of like conviction. Not at all; but they were ‘illusionists’, and his criticism was unsparing

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

180

whenever the idealist deviated in the slightest from the path of virtue on account of the imperatives of the ‘world’.

7

The Liberal achievements

If the West has anything to thank Liberalism for, then it is certainly for the elaborated theory and (to a great extent) practice of the modem constitutional state based upon the rule oflaw. The liberal relationship to institutions, to the proper ‘arrangement’ of a political common¬ weal, was summed up in a pithy formulation by Kant: even a people of devils should be able to create such an order. To create this order is a question of understanding, a matter of calculation and computation. Weight and counterweight must be set in place, no force must be too powerful - only in this way can the protection of the individual from and through the Leviathan be guaranteed. The complete freedom of Weber’s struggle for parliamentarization and democratization from the usual liberal ‘wishfulness’ often evokes a certain surprise, even indignation.49 Weber is accused of a purely ‘technical’ approach to all constitutional questions.'4' He did lack a belief in a particular ideal dignity of these institutions as such. He knew that the political ‘individualism’ of West European ‘human rights’, so far as it was ‘ideally’ determined, had grown in part out of religious convictions that rejected all human authority as an ungodly idoliza¬ tion of creatures — Convictions which the modern form of‘enlightenment’ no longer allow to surface at all . . . and besides this individualism was a product of an optimistic belief in the natural harmony of interests between free individuals which is today for ever destroyed by capitalism.51 Weber knew that the institutional achievements of Liberalism were indispensable, as indispensable as daily bread - but today definitively detached from its deeper ‘ideal’ justifications.

For ‘us’,

West

Europeans, members of the German Reich, they had long been fought for and hence were for Weber basically uninteresting—indeed we were in danger of reverting into a soft, cushioned ‘satiated’ people. The institutions of the the state based upon the rule of law had to be ‘voluntaristically’ filled out; later, we would say that they should contribute to the ‘integration’ of the polity through the form of

Voluntarism and Judgement

181

decision-making and consultation adopted, but in the absence of stimulation to political life they had no value in themselves. Weber’s deep distrust of‘Natural Law’ - he never used these words without quotation marks - is not least explained by the fact that at the core of the idea of Natural Law there lay the idea of a law ‘of nature’: a right that one has, that is born with us and that we do not have to struggle for. Only those rights that are taken, that have to be continually fought for anew, that must at least have laid claim not only to the calculation of reason but also to the passion of the soul - only these rights stand up to Weber’s criticism. Thus his fervent interest in the Russian bourgeois revolution, where he saw the last chance of con¬ structing a free order from the foundations up, an order that will be fought over. He became passionately involved because it was a struggle. For him,

‘human rights’ were examples of ‘extreme

intellectualist fanaticism’.52 This

characterization

expresses

his

distance from all that is merely conceived in thought, from everything that is not gained ‘in the struggle of man against man’. I see nothing here that is in the least comparable with Liberal thought. Weber is worlds

apart

from

typically

Liberal

and

logical

intellectual

syllogisms, ‘insisting upon’, ‘referring to’, ‘deducing from’, etc.

8

The illusory liberal peace

Weber’s distance from Liberalism becomes even clearer if we turn to consider his position in relation to the extraordinary, to extremes. It is not only that his concepts constantly seek extremes; in all social phenomena it is the non-everyday that interests him, that which bursts through everyday life.53 (This fact alone removes Weber from his position as a founding father of a sociology based upon empirical social research, for the concept of the empirical is here defined in terms of a metaphysics of the everyday.) That the politican has to make compromises, develop moderate, generally acceptable solutions - that he knew, but it did not interest him\ to provide them with a justifica¬ tion as a scientist was quite out of the question. Weber was never in the position of behaving like a Liberal politican, but he does not even think like a ‘Liberal’. Liberal thought can be characterized by ‘bracketing out’ or perhaps rather ‘parenthesizing’: declaring questions that do not meet with general assent as adiaphora, as not ‘agreeable’, that which must initially be left on one side, etc. That which is so treated can be the

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most important thing of all: belief in God and the form of worship. The main thing is to evade argument. This the Liberal does in the name of the most sublime ‘values’, which he earnestly believes he has to ‘realize’. The Liberal is the time-served realizer of values in politics. But it is a matter of liberal values - secondary values, one might say, that we have truly learnt to treasure- Weber did not refer to the lessons from which we are not spared. A liberal political culture certainly runs the risk of no longer looking beyond the immediate confines of secondary values. Who will deny that European civilization first gained its characteristically pacified inner form only through the art of ‘bracketing out’, of neutralization and depoliticization. But all this was a problem for Weber! At the international level, in the struggle of these civilized societies one with another for a place in the sun, it looked completely different. Liberal peace and peaceful competition were deceptive. The real task of science seemed to Weber to be to always see the problematical behind that which was taken for granted, or regarded as unproblematical. And what was for him more problematical than modern civilization? For the Liberal it is profoundly and from the deepest conviction unproblematical; it is an ‘achievement’, a progression with respect to all earlier worlds. Naturally capable of amelioration and improvement-but in principle all the same . . ., etc. The Liberal does not feel impelled, therefore, to reflect upon that which was at the centre of all earlier political and also religious thought: on the task of the leadership of man. Of course, Liberalism had not yet proclaimed that the rule of man by man had been displaced by the administration of things. But, instead of men, it was public opinion or the law that was to rule personal domination was to be replaced by institutional domination. The whole structure of Weberian sociology rests upon the most radical renunciation of this basic Liberal idea. Domination, whether it be exercized by a constellation of interests (especially of monopolistic inclination), or whether it be exercized through personal authority, is for Weber the ‘central phenomenon of all social organization’;54 his sociology is not a theory of society oriented towards the ideas of freedom and equality, but rather a theory of‘the complex of power’ entirely in the sense of Nietzsche. If Weber had been a Liberal, he would have been the one who placed the problem ofleadership and its quality before all other political and social questions. The problem of leadership, or of rule, dominated him, bewitched him one might

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almost say. The religious prophet and the political demagogue are the cornerstones of his sociology. He was scornful of the leading politicians of his time. None of the gentlemen who presently occupy ministerial seats would lay claim to being a statesman. Such a thing no longer exists today. They are matter-of-fact men, who know how to adapt themselves. . . to given situations.55 His thought circled constantly around the problem of domination, the problem of men capable of exercizing it: where do they come from, how are they selected, what are the leading ideas, what is their formative power? Although many of the major emancipatory measures of the nineteenth century were in fact brought about by conservative statesmen, liberation and emancipation as a demand were in fact the central programmatic points of the Liberals. Nowhere, however, did a ‘programmatic’ demand based upon a deeper ideal come to the fore in Weber’s views. Socialism, alongside Liberalism the great political idea of the time, provoked in him only a thousandand-one doubts. Syndicalism fascinated him —but only because of the radicalness of ultimate ends. ‘Objectively’ it is the outcome of immature thought - the gentlemen have not thought about it for long enough. The typical Liberal mode of thought in which the realization of certain values is paramount is completely absent in Weber. Nowhere are rights and security promised. Everything has to be struggled for and,

like the foundation of the Reich in 1871,

responsibly preserved (‘Achieve it if you will possess it’). Likewise the demands of the day, the ‘just demands’ with which the liberals make so free, play hardly any role in Weber’s thought. He thinks always of the morrow, the present generation should always feel itself to be the forerunner of those that succeed it.

9

The last chance offieedom

But what hopes he in the lap of the future? Since the death of Max Weber, futuristic liberal thought has been able to associate itself with all kinds of mischief. The First World War opened the way to the League of Nations, the Second World War ushered in the United Nations, both of which promised to secure ‘peace in our time’ by means of their institutional mechanisms. There is absolutely no

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human activity - science, trade and commerce, sport, economy, the new media, the ‘atom for peace’, the coming together of peoples in space travel - from which Liberal thought has not been able to draw inspiration for its hopes. For the last four decades, ‘development’ has been the magic word - never have the peoples of the world been promised so many ‘breakthroughs’ into a beautiful future, never have so many promissory notes been written out to history as there have since Weber’s death in 1920, and more so since 1945. How did Weber see the future chances of freedom? In the first essay on Russia he saw the crucial question of Russian Liberalism as follows: would it find its vocation, as it had previously, in struggling against both bureaucratic and Jacobinist centralism, while continuing with the imbuing of the masses with the old individualistic conception of these ‘inalienable human rights’ that had become so ‘trivial’ for the West Europeans - in the same way that those who have eaten their fill have no interest in black bread.n6 He argues that these axioms, based as they are on Natural Law, were not suitable for the establishment of unequivocal directives regarding social and economic problems, just as little as they were produced by modern economic conditions alone. On the contrary: however much the struggle for such ‘individual¬ istic’ life-values has to take account of the advance of the ‘material’ conditions of the environment - its ‘realization’ could not be left to ‘economic development’. It would be bad for the chances of ‘democracy’ and ‘individualism’ if we were to rely for their ‘development’ upon the ‘law-governed’ effects of material interests. For these indicate as clearly as is possible the opposing path: in America, ‘benevolent feudalism’, in Germany, so-called ‘welfare arrangments’, in Russia, factory organization-everywhere the cage for the new bondage is ready. ... It is really laughable to ascribe to contemporary high capitalism, as is being imported into Russia and as exists in America - this ‘ineluctable force’ of our economic development - an elective affinity with ‘democracy’ or even ‘freedom’ (in any sense), when the question can only be the following: how, under its domination, are all these things at all possible in the long run? They are in fact only in existence where the constant will of a nation which does not allow itself to be ruled like a herd of sheep supports them.S7 I would like to draw attention to Weber’s use of the noun ‘the will’.

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185

Weber has absolutely no faith in time, it is solely the will of men and women that we can rely upon. But this only goes for Russia. There and also in the USA - constellations still exist such that ‘perhaps the “final” chances exist for the construction of “free” cultures “from the foundations upward” ’.58 Here Weber, in a manner that can hardly be overestimated, relativizes and historicizes modern liberty, binds it to constellations that will never again repeat themselves in such a way.59 Since this represents a radical ‘historical’ renunciation of all ideas of the ‘universal’ validity or possibility of Western Liberalism, and since the passage is relatively unknown, I would like to cite it at length. Having apostrophized the (Nietzschean) herd of sheep and emphasizing the role of the will, Weber proceeds: ‘Against the stream’ of material constellations we are ‘indi¬ vidualists’ and partisans of ‘democratic’ institutions. Whoever wishes to be the weathervane of a ‘developmental tendency’ should abandon these old-fashioned ideals as quickly as possible. The historical origin of ‘modern’ jreedom had specific and unrepeatable constel¬ lations as its precondition [my emphasis, W.H.]. Let us enumerate the most important of them. First of all, overseas expansion: in Cromwell’s army, in the French Constituante, in our entire economic life, this wind today still blows from beyond the sea — but a new portion of the earth is no longer available; great interiors, of the North American continent on the one hand, of Russia on the other, are the areas upon whose monotonous wastes, so propitious for new schemata, the population of Western culture ineluctably advances, as once in Antiquity. Second: the uniqueness of the economic and social structure of the early capitalist epoch in Western Europe; and thirdly, the conquest of life by science. The final requisite for modern ‘freedom’ is the following: Finally: certain idea conceptions of value which have grown out of the historical specificity of a particular religious mode of thought which, combined with a multitude of likewise specific political constellations and those material conditions, stamp the ‘ethical’ characteristic and the ‘cultural values’ of modern men. The question of whether any material development as such, or even the present advanced form of capitalist development, is capable of maintaining or even re-creating these specific historical conditions

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has only to be posed to find an answer. And no shadow of probability indicates that economic ‘socialization’ (Vergesell¬ schaftung) as such will cradle in its lap either the development of inwardly ‘free’ personalities, or more ‘altruistic’ ideals.611 It was a pressing matter, therefore, ‘to act while it is still day’. While the typical Liberal relies upon time, for Weber everything depends upon the seizure ofthe correct point in time and upon willpower. That which is not now, in the course of the coming generation, won for the individual of the broad masses as an ‘inalienable’ sphere of personality and freedom, will perhaps never be won when the world becomes for the first time economically ‘complete’ and intellectually ‘satiated’, in so far as our weak eyes are able to pierce the impenetrable fog of the future of human history.61 The Kairos can soon dissipate. The Liberal faith in time and the socialist sidelong look to historical regularities seemed equally irresponsible to him. Man alone forges his fate. If Weber were a Liberal then his Liberalism was of a curious kind, a very peculiar Liberalism.62 If we have to give him a label, then we could talk of a voluntaristic Liberalism, more properly perhaps of a liberal voluntarism closely bound to freedom. This word is not of my own invention; it is a central term in Weber’s political vocabulary, the counter to the patriarchal and tutelary ‘state socialism’, which he regarded as the property of the right wing of the Verein fur Socialpolitik.63

II Max Weber’s ‘Liberalism’ and his ‘Logic of Judgement’ What follows from this attempt - so far as it might be convincing — to examine the prevailing assessment of Weber’s Liberalism? We have not found an answer to Hans Staudinger’s question about Weber’s ‘supreme value’. ‘Be yourself!’ is the gruff answer dealt out to any who questioned Weber as a teacher. Our attempt to establish a more exact analysis of Weber’s ‘Liberalism’ has shown us a man - by comparison with every other

Voluntarism and Judgement

187

thinker whose work is even only slightly coloured by Natural Law who was basically without principles, inconstant, and who treated as problematic everything that modernity regarded as ‘progress’. Leaving to one side the ‘nation’ as his supposedly ‘supreme value’,64 was Weber not an ethical agnostic, ‘free of value judgement’ to the extent of practising a cynical Realpolitik?65 The man was certainly a puzzle to his contemporaries. Paul Honigsheim reports that many ‘remembered him as an unstable, contradictory and irritable figure, or at least pointed to the divergent interests which seemed to find no sort of coherence within him’. Seldom, according to Honigsheim, has a man of this kind ‘presented himself to the world as fragmented, and at each opportunity declared himself to belong to a particular sphere rather than presenting himself as a totality’.66 ‘You cannot make a lively tune out of that’, he said to Staudinger. The puzzle of his personality overlies the work. The most important ‘divergence’, one that renders comprehension of the work so difficult, appears to be that between the emphatically ‘evaluative’ political-cum-publicistic work on the one hand, and the hermetic ‘value-free’, ‘scientific’ work on the other. But is it conceivable that Weber’s mode of thought in the scientific and the political domains could be so different? Honigsheim thought that ‘there must be a sneaking suspicion that behind all this compartmentalisation, behind these separated spheres . . . there was a totality concealed, which perhaps even could only find expression in such a compartmentalised form.’ Let us approach again this question of the ‘totality’ in Weber’s thought. Is there not after all a ‘supreme value’, a leading idea that defines work and person? In what does Weber’s real greatness consist, the ‘geniality’ of Weber the scientist about which his contemporaries speak? It has to be in his unique apprehension of the contexts and relations of effects, an apprehension that was closed to a less genial gaze. Even the section of the survey on rural labour for which he assumed responsibility demonstrates, by comparison with the other regional studies, his ‘genius’, his perceptiveness, his superiority in deductive ability - in short: his superiority of‘judgement’. The most famous example of his scientific stature are the essays on the role of the Protestant Ethic in the formation of the modern Berufsmensch and, hence, a precondition of modern capitalism. Other examples that are not so well-known are

188

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

his studies of the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire. Greatness and decline, the case of Rome, is one of the major themes, the puzzle for historical writing since the time of Augustine. We have to thank Alexander Demandt for a thorough presentation of all the theories which have been put forward to explain this earth-shaking event. At stake is the question of the most convincing ‘interpretation’ of this event.67 In the noble series of thinkers from Augustine through Machiavelli, Montesquieu and Edward Gibbon, Weber occupies a prominent position. His thesis that the pacification of the Empire, hence the decrease in the supply of slaves, shook the economic foundations of ancient Rome, is still keenly discussed today. No one before had taken account of this factor. It is, therefore, Weber’s supreme capacity for judgement, his ‘power of judgement’, that constitutes his greatness as a scientist. How then is it with the political writer? When Marianne Weber published the first collection of scattered writings a few months after the death of her spouse, she wrote in the foreword to the political writings: ‘As a source for the guidance of the political thought of our nation, many generations to come will find them imbued with a living force.’ That was certainly not the case. Weber was not a political teacher to the Germans. Nevertheless, Marianne was right: if there is today still a fascination in these works, then it is for a thinker of supremejudgement. Where the normal political publicist looks to the next corner, Weber is seeing around five corners, endowed with the perceptiveness of a Cassandra, never announcing anything very pleasing, but nevertheless with a merciless sense of truth, due to an admirable capacity to see things together in context in a manner denied to the average mortal. It is his characteristic power of political judgement, not necessarily his being right in every judgement, but rather his mode of thinking that makes the political writings still such fascinating reading today. If I had to nominate one motto for the works as a whole I would reach for Nietzsche, where we can read that it is time to spread the seeds of the power ofjudgement. That is most certainly the most difficult thing for a teacher to do. The power of judgement cannot be learnt, but one can be schooled in it, with what¬ ever result. Max Weber’s legal training, as a good legal training remains today, is a training in judgement. Whoever has muffed it ten times will at some time come to recognize the difference between possession and property. And the economic training of Weber’s time

Voluntarism and Judgement

189

was characterized by the way in which it trained the judgement of young economists, in that they learnt to differentiate between the material determining factors of the economic activity of men and women, and to recognize their significance. The Historical School of Economics produced such excellent practical men precisely because, by contrast with the theoretical perspective of Western political economy, attention was directed towards the real (‘historical’) determining factors of economic life.68 Certainly: Max Weber regarded the importation of personal r'd/wejudgements into science as the cardinal sin of modern science. But that should not be allowed to obscure the fact that he never disputed the obligation of science to judge social affairs. In the Inaugural Address of 1895 we can read: We are confronted instead with a chaotic mass of standards of value, partly eudaemonistic, partly ethical, and often both present together in an ambiguous identification. Value judgements are made everywhere in a nonchalant and spontaneous manner, and if we abandon the evaluation of economic phenomena we in fact abandon the very accomplishment which is being demanded of us.69 It never occurred to Weber to exclude this obligation for National¬ ökonomie to judge economic facts from the register ofthe obligations of science. Certainly the scholar was obliged to himselfand others for an account of the ‘ideals’ (‘value relations ) from which he advanced to thejudgement of observed facts’ — but, nevertheless: this is a matter of judgement. The appraisal of a sequence of events, whether they be historical facts, whether they be data which place the acting agents, presupposes power of judgement, a specific capacity of thought sharply distinguished from that which we could call, according to the example of the natural sciences, a ‘logic of scientific discovery . If this fervour in arriving at appropriate judgements was Weber s specific political and scientific passion, and the texts ofthe so-called Wissenschaftslehre all grew out of the contemporary problems of economics, we might well ask how ^Veber s Wissenschaftslehre sYiould really be understood - indeed, the most difficult chapter in Weber scholarship, in my opinion still completely unsolved, and distorted by a chain of quite erroneous approaches. And so I pose the following: Weber described politics as his secret love’. Political action was denied him. Even as a boy he enjoyed

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

190

reducing historically competed events to possibilities. ‘What would have happened if. . .?’ We do not have to be Caesar to understand him. The capacity for imputation is exercized and developed by such an early beginning with historical modes of thought. Weber studied a discipline in which this capacity was especially stimulated, changed to another that gave him greater, ‘more practical’ possibilities for the application of this capacity. (The work and the position of a company lawyer in Bremen had been more attractive to him than the work of a Professor of Law.) As the Inaugural Lecture of1895 shows, Weber’s ‘methodological’ thought circles around what we could best call a ‘logic ofjudgement'. In the prefatory remarks to the printed version of the lecture he writes: An inaugural address offers an opportunity for the open elaboration andjustification of a personal, and to that extent ‘subjective’, stand¬ point in the judgement of economic phenomena.70 It is around this question of ‘judgement’ that all the essays in the Wissenschaftslehre revolve. It is their sole object. The sciences that Weber pursued were called by him ‘sciences of reality’. Their task: knowledge of concrete reality, knowledge of its invariably qualita¬ tive properties, those properties responsible for its peculiarities and its uniqueness. Because of the logical impossibility of an exhaustive reproduction of even a limited aspect of reality - due to the (at least intensively) infinite number of qualitative differentiations that can be made — this must mean the following: knowledge of those aspects of reality which we regard as essential because of their individual peculiarities. The logical ideal of these disciplines is to differentiate the essential properties of the concrete phenomenon subjected

to

analysis

from

its

‘accidental’

or

meaningless

properties, and thereby to establish intuitive knowledge of these essential features. The attempt to order phenomena into a universal system of concrete ‘causes’ and ‘effects’ that are immediately and intuitively

understandable

commits

these

disciplines

to

an

increasing sophistication of concepts. These concepts are meant to approximate to a representation of the concrete actuality of reality by selecting and unifying those properties which we judge [ Beurteilung, my emphasis W. H. ] to be ‘characteristic'.71

Voluntarism and Judgement

191

These sentences are to be found in the first few pages of the Wissen¬ schaftslehre. In the ‘ “Objectivity” ’ essay of 1904-this “objectivity” (the quotation marks are decisive!) is nothing other than the disciplined and radicalized ‘subjective’ standpoint of the prefatory remarks from 1895 - Weber develops the logical structure of the required concepts. What is the principal work that the ‘ideal type’ has to do? ‘The ideal typical concept will help to develop our skill in imputation in research ’.72 So here also there is schooling in the power of judgement! What could we name as the common factor under which Weber’s diverse aversions to Liberalism could be brought together? The answer can only be: the partiality of Liberalism in a tangle of‘desired states’, deceptive hopes and unclear ideals. Weber’s passionate efforts on behalf of impartiality - whether it be in the political or the scientific domain (in the latter, especially against ‘developmental tendencies) enabled him to distance himself from contemporary Liberalism. Every ‘partiality’ was at the cost of power of judgement. The opponent, the ‘primordial enemy’, whom Weber tracks down in the essays of the Wissenschaftslehre (which are, with the exception of the balanced essay on ‘ “Objectivity” ’, biting polemics), are those partialities of the nineteenth century: the ‘colourful array’ of isms: emanatism, historical materialism, evolutionism, psychologism, etc., etc. All of them put on offer scientific panaceas, which the name of ‘laws’ identified by science propose to do away with the need for acting and knowing humans to exercize their power of judgement. This sacriftcium intellects no longer demands faith, but rather a form of science that can no longer come to terms with ‘those general pre¬ suppositions in which our scientific work is based’.73 Every philosophical beginner knows - or knew it some day - that the ‘power ofjudgement’ belonged in the specific logic of the practical (or ‘moral’) sciences. In any case, it is needed there. It was exactly this problem that the young Weber stumbled upon - the Inaugural Address of1895 is the first evidence of his knowledge ofthe situation. Did the ‘logicians’ of his time, with whom he was so closely involved intellectually, help him here? Can we find in John Stuart Mill’s miserable treatment ofthe logic of practical judgement any leads for Weber’s problem? To my knowledge there are none. The problem of judgement, after Kant’s critique of the same name (which is, in any case, only a critique of aesthetic judgement or taste), fell more or less

192

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

entirely out of academic consideration.74 But this would be a great

theme in itself, to be noted for later study: Max Weber’s ‘logic ofjudgement’ and the logic of his time. His struggle with this problem has to be treated, not in terms of nomenclature such as ‘neo-Kantian’, but in the light of Weber’s own problem-in the Wissenschafislehre as well as in the materia] studies—and his relation to Sigwart, Rickert, Lask, von Kries, Wundt, etc., etc. For the most part he had to help himself. Judgement is required by the acting subject: in his private existence, in the framework of bourgeois society (‘economics’), finally that of politics. Under the conditions of democracy (freedom and equality) everyone should dispose of it. The educational task that Weber ascribed to economics ‘the ultimate goal of our science’75 - he understood to be the education to a capacity for sober judgement. Possession of this is indispensable for the responsible politician or, in Weber’s language, the ‘statesman’ - the consequences are fatal if it is absent. He had this figure in mind when posing one of his most famous pairs of ideal types: that of an ethic of reponsibility and an ethic of ultimate ends. Three qualities are ‘pre-eminent’ for the politician: ‘passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion’. He regarded the ‘decisive psychological quality of the politician’ to be a sense of proportion, ‘his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. ’76 What is ‘sense of proportion’ if not ‘power of judgement’, which the Ancients also saw, not as a calculating reason, but in its connection with ‘passion’, thus the capacity for making evaluations (phronesis, prudentia). It has long been recognized that the ‘ethic of responsibility’ is better characterized as the ethic of responsible weighing of consequences. Central to it is the power of judgement with which the believer in the ethic of ultimate ends, simply following his own conscience, can dispense. The genuine core of Weber’s political views appears to me to be to refuse this dispensation to men, especially ‘great’ men raised up above the everyday, whether it be in scientific research or in political activity; to hold them to that which truly represents their ‘virtue’ - not simply ‘reason’, but responsible judgement. This is also close to the ‘logic of the work’. Precisely because the world in which we are ‘placed’ is defined by reason Weber’s own pole star had to carry another name, one that no longer belonged to contemporary vocabulary.77 He found his own words: sense of proportion, distance, responsibility - the

Voluntarism and Judgement

193

human ideal is the old one: the ‘man of prudence’ capable of making judgements, bravely withstanding what he sees and considers necessary. Is this not then his ‘supreme value’ a Typus Mensch capable of meeting the tensions and demands of our time, who has found the God or ‘demon’ who holds together the threads of his life? Weber’s world view only had place for this ‘supreme value’ in his conception of the ‘highest form ofhumanity’. That leads to a final question: Max Weber’s position in the history of modern political thought.

Ill Max Weber’s Position in the History of‘Bourgeois’ Political Thought We can argue whether it is really possible, as is generally done today, to mention Weber as a political thinker in the same breath as classical political thinkers such as Machiavelli,

Hobbes,

Rousseau and

Tocqueville. We can only reasonably speak of a genuine political thinker where the sphere of the political is more closely and more exclusively bound to the sphere of central ethical-anthropological questions than was actually possible for Weber, who was in this respect ‘post-Marxian’. In the background of the possibilities of human development there was in fact for Weber - and to this extent he is a ‘sociologist’ — ‘society’, especially in its economic form: in his terminology, more generally called ‘objective cultural relations’, but no longer the state that is, however important it might be, only one cultural power among others. It was no longer the state that was crucial for the full development of humanity, in the manner that Rousseau had sought to classically formulate it.78 None the less, there is still sense in asking, from the point of view of the ‘supreme value’ peculiar to Weber, to what tradition of political thought he belongs. He is, properly understood, a bourgeois thinker, at any rate a thinker in the bourgeois epoch. Let us try briefly to sketch out the tradition of thought to which Weber belongs. Albert Salomon forcibly emphasized that Weber’s ‘idea of man and freedom’, however much the idea of human freedom might stand in the centre of his thought, owed nothing to the historical form of Liberalism.79 It was not least because of this that we felt ourselves justified in measuring Weber’s idiosyncratic Liberalism against an ideal

194

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

type of Liberalism that took no account at all of historical adequacy. How should we proceed if we wish to grasp Weber’s peculiar voluntaristic Liberalism, which is so indifferent to progress and development, in terms of its intellectual and historical foundations? Like everyone, he was a ‘child of his time’. But is a great man only that? Weber was entirely a child of Wilhelminism, even if he was the ‘Bismarck of Science’?80 It seems to me that it is time to take up anew a fragment of German intellectual history-the old theme of‘The German Spirit and Western Europe’ - in a somewhat less constrained manner than Wolfgang Mommsen and I did almost a generation ago.81 Before Mommsen’s admirable book appeared, I published in 1959 a little essay entitled ‘On the problem of the German conception of the state’, which dealt with what I understood to be the too ‘value-free’ and technicist concepts of state and politics put forward by Weber and Carl Schmitt.82 I would still today see a close relation between Weber and Schmitt; in the absence of‘Politics as a vocation’, Schmitt’s Concept of the Political is barely thinkable. But it would not longer occur to me to measure them solely against the approved standard of the Western concept of politics associated with Natural Law and Liberalism. The peculiarity of the German conceptions of state and of freedom when compared with those of the West is indeed a ‘historical’ one: there is today hardly a country more ‘Western’ than the Federal Republic, especially when it comes to mentality. Weber’s mode of political thought is far removed from us. But the explosive question of an understanding of politics peculiar to Germany, today part of the past, will not be pursued here. I would only like to emphasizehow important, not least for an adequate understanding of Weber, is a more just assessment of this body of thought belonging to the European heritage. Helmuth Plessner’s ‘late nation’ cannot be the last work in this matter. Europe does not stop at the Rhine. Wittenberg, Warsaw and Königsberg also belong to Europe.83 To take a literary starting point from which we can once more become aware of this lost intellectual world, I would name Thomas Mann’s Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen as a book that could render understandable much of the peculiarity of Weber’s thought, especially the connection between politics and the cultural tasks of the state. Ought we not today to support Weber’s decisive rejection of the ‘Switzerlandization’ of Germany, at any rate for West Germany; can we treat it as an unconditional gain in terms of world

Voluntarism and Judgement

195

cultural development? Would not some reflection on this be worth while? Its outcome can certainly not be in the form of a revisionism, but rather in an even more unsparing insight into the political failure of Germany in this century, a failure so enormous that, even today, it cannot express itself in its own ‘language’, thanks to the cultural neo¬ colonialism of our time. Weber was a German thinker, from the land of ‘Dr Faustus’: important factors for renewed reflection upon the work of Weber. Let us consider once more a larger historical dimension. Arnold Bergsträsser attempted, in a text dating from 1957, to place Weber in a line of political thought that begins with the name of Hobbes.84

This

followed

Bergsträsser’s

attention

to

Weber’s

formula, according to which politics is a struggle for power. But what has that to do with Hobbes? Surely the construction of the Hobbesian state is characterized by the way in which, at the moment that the state comes into being, struggle for power ceases. Everything in Hobbes’ construction is intended to prevent the holder of sovereignty from being in the slightest way placed in question as its legitimate possessor. The struggle for power takes place between states in a manner comparable to that in the state of nature. The objective of the Hobbesian state is to definitely terminate the struggle for power within the state, securing to the citizen thereby protection, peace, comfort and amenity-and this is quite understandable out of a weari¬ ness with the years of domestic struggle associated with the Civil W ar. This places Hobbes at the beginning of that specifically bourgeois (in my opinion bourgeois liberal) line of political thought that is primarily concerned with securing the rights of the individual (more, the

claim

of the

individual)

to

convenience

and

amenity -

commodious living. The bourgeois theory of the state based upon the rule of law was built on the foundation of Hobbes’s doctrine. After Hobbes, it was not solely in the concentration of sovereign power represented by the Leviathan that the guarantee of freedom and welfare was perceived; but, rather more optimistically, although oriented all the same to the postulated anthropological needs and interests of a ‘convenient life’, in the division of powers, the limitation of powers, the securing of individual rights, etc., as subsequently developed by Locke and all those who belong in the specific Western constitutional tradition. The point of departure of all these constructions remains the well-

196

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

understood interest of the citizen in peace and welfare, the belief that the pursuit of these interests must not disturb those of fellow-citizens, as embodied in the philosophy of David Hume, in the projects of Jeremy Bentham and in the grand design of Adam Smith.83 It is always the needs and interests, peaceful, at root economic, aimed at amenities for men and women, that stand at the centre of these specific bourgeois political theories, and that are seamlessly taken over into both economic liberalism and socialism, with its fixation upon production and distribution. The augmentation of welfare through the free development of individual powers, or the effects of plantul state direction - nowhere in these theories do human sensibilities, feelings and passions - might I also say virtues - deeper than needs and interests come into consideration. This is certainly not the tradition in which Weber’s thought belongs. Of course he did not want to surrender any of the achieve¬ ments of the modern constitutional state. They are the basic condition for an individual stirring and unfolding of human powers and passions. Given the conditions of mass democracy and capitalist economy, bourgeois rights were for him the foundation of every form of the unfolding of human possibilities, but they were not arrangements for the securing of a sheltered existence. He excluded the feasibility of any such arrangement; moreover, he could not conceive how, under such conditions, the human being could develop those specific qualities not covered by the categories need and interest, but rather by passion, sensibility and feeling. Weber belongs to a different tradition of modern political thought,

which can be

associated with the names Machiavelli, Rousseau and Tocqueville.86 Here it is not a question of securing interests and comfort, but rather the unfolding of the power of the soul, an unfolding that appeared to be possible not on an individual basis, but rather communally, associatively, ultimately in the ancient sense ofpolitics. Central to their political theory was the forcing of the individual into the political order, allowing him to participate in the responsibilities and risks of these orders, in certain cases exposing these orders to artificial internal and external risks-hence not excluding struggle through institutional arrangements, but on the contrary provoking such struggle. In the last few years, it has been too easy to ascribe these aspects of Weber’s political thought-alien as it is to many of us — exclusively to Nietzsche. Certainly, Nietzsche was for his generation the central figure in a

Voluntarism and Judgement

197

critique of the satiated comfort of the bourgeoisie of a Europe grown old. This was the reason for his fascination with a voluntaristic America that was vital and hungry, not yet ‘sated’. But we should not relate Weber to Nietzsche alone if we are placing him in a historical tradition of modern political thought; we must also include those named above—Machiavelli, Rousseau and Tocqueville. Atthetimeof his Inaugural Address, Weber described the task of political education to be performed by economics as ‘political science’, and this was later reduced to the formula that Germans wanted to be citizens and not vassals. Under the conditions of the modern social state that means, not least, contented vassals. He repeatedly spoke of‘sated’ peoples for whom no future bloomed. One of the central concepts of his sociology,

a

category

separating the

rational-objectified

from

personal forms of consociation (Vergemeinschaftungen) was that of dedication (Hingabe). This concept also belongs in the context of the oldest traditions of political theory, of Christianity as well as that of Antiquity. I believe it is no exaggeration if we characterize the great opposition of political thought in the bourgeois era as one between the concepts ‘self-preservation’ and ‘dedication’.87 It is, of course, quite clear to me that, after the disgraceful uses to which ‘dedication’ has been put, the word will seem alien to modern ears. None the less: who will dispute that the nobility, the dignity of the human being consists in the capacity for dedication to his or her nearest, ‘brother’, or to a cause. Who will deny that the real nobility of humans is not defined by ‘need’ and ‘interest’,

but rather by strength and capacity for

dedication. This capacity can be misused; who would dispute it? None the less: we should from this point seek to understand Weber, read him afresh and without prejudice. Die Aufgabe lautet: Weber zu verstehen und ihn neu und unbefangen zu lesen.

Notes

The following abbreviations are used here for Weber’s principal publications and later collections: ES GARS GASS GASW

Economy and Society, 3 vols. New York, 1968. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionsoziologie, 3 vols, Tübingen, 1921. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, Tübingen, 1924. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirthschafisgeschichte, Tübingen, 1924. The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism, London, 1930. Die protestantische Ethik I. Eine Aufsatzsammlung, ed.J. Winckelmann, Gütersloh, 1978. Die protestantische Ethik II. Kritiken und Antikritiken, ed.J.

PE PEI PE II PS WEWR WL

Winckelmann, Gütersloh, 1978. Gesammelte Politische Schriften, 2ndedn, Tübingen, 1958. Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, as in GARS. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 4th. edn, Tübingen, 1973.

The holdings relating to Weber in the Zentralarchiv Merseburg, German Democratic Republic, are referred to in the notes below as 'Merseburg collec¬ tion’. Citations from published English translations of Weber’s writings might be revised in places. Within the text, original German terms are used wherever it is felt that accuracy and the coherence of the argument require it.

Essay 1 1

‘Ein jeder sieht, was er im Herzen trägt’. ‘ “Objectivity” in Social Science and Social Policy’ in E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch (eds) Max Weher on the Methodology of the Social Sciences, Glencoe, Ill., 1949, p. 107. Weber uses this phrase repeatedly in his ‘methodological writings, (WL, pp. 105, 120, 209) [trans.].

2

These four most important ‘withdrawals’ from Weber opened the way for the discovery of a ‘problem-free’ and eminently ‘usable’ social scientific ‘classical thinker’. The recent history of Weber’s influence must therefore start with them, and not with Talcott Parson’s very effective commissioning of Weber. The one determines the other: G. Lukäcs, The Destruction of Reason, London, 1980; H. Marcuse, ‘Industrialisation and capitalism’ in O. Stammer (ed.) Max Weber and Sociology Today, Oxford, 1971 pp. 133—51; L. Strauss, ‘The social science of Max Weber’, Measure, vol. 2, 1950, pp. 204—30, developed

Notes

199

further in his Natural Right and History, Chicago, 1953, pp. 35-80; E. Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago, 1952, pp. 13-22. Justice requires that we note that, without Parsons and the American interest in Weber that he promoted, Weber would in all probability now be a dead ‘classical thinker’. 3

4

5

6

7

This deficiency is emphasized by Lepsius (‘Max Weber in München’, Zeitschrift fur Soziologie, Jg. 6, 1977, p. 9). Suggestive of comparable study is C. Schorske’s Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Cambridge, 1981. Reference should also be made to Nicolaus Sombart’s studies on the culture of Wilhelminism, and also H. Stuart Hughes’s Consciousness and Society, New York, 1958. Some time ago F. H. Tenbruck complained of the ‘absence of an intellectual history which penetrated our most recent past’ (‘Die Genesis der Methodologie Max Webers’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 11, 1959, pp. 573 ff, 597). In fact, Weber’s struggle against naturalism can only be properly understood in the context of the neo-idealist movement of Dilthey, Riegl, Simmel, Vossler and many others. Exactly how fruitless the search for ‘dependencies’ is in this field was demonstrated with youthful authority by Dieter Henrich, Die Einheit der WissenschajislehreMax Webers, Tübingen, 1952-without, however, any success. Recent testimony of this endeavour is H. Wahlen, ‘Soziologie als Sozio-Logik’, dissertation, Aachen, 1981. Of all the analyses of Weber’s ‘sociology’ (in a restricted sense) known to me, none has attained the sharpness and penetration of the very first: A. Walther, ‘Max Weber als Soziologe’, Jahrbuch für Soziologie (ed. G. Salomen) Bd. 2, 1926, pp. 1-65. I refer to this work here so that any reader might check for himself the distance that separates the early ‘reception’ ofWeber from modern ‘departures’ and ‘reconstructions’. Valuable outlines for the study of the scientific ‘context’ are to be found inH. Speer, Herrschaft und Legitimität, Berlin, 1978. For further material on the relation to G. Jellinek, see R. Bendix, G. Roth, Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays in Max Weber, Berkeley, Calif., 1980, pp. 308—10; G. Küenzlen, Die Religionsoziologie Max Webers, Berlin, 1980, and W. Brugger, Menschenrechtsethos und Verantwortungspolitik, Freiburg, 1980. Tenbruck’s lasting service is to have emphatically posed this demand and won general assent for it: ‘The problem of thematic unity in the workofMax Weber’, BritishJournal ofSociology, Vol. 31,1980, pp. 316— 51. See in particular M. Riesebrodt, ‘Ideen, Interessen, Rationalisierung: Kritische Anmerkungen zu F. H. Tenbruck’s Interpretation des Werkes Max Webers’, Kölner Zeitschriftßr Soziologie und Sozial¬ psychologie, Jg. 32, 1980, pp. 109-29; and J. Winckelmann, ‘Die Herkunft von Webers “Entzauberungs” - Konzeption’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg.32, 1980, pp. 12-53; and also in W. Schluchter, The Rise of Western Rationalism, Berkeley,

8

Calif., 1980 - all of whose criticisms seem justified to me. Tenbruck, ‘Problem’, p. 337. I cannot understand how Tenbruck can

200

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction claim that in Weber’s time a discipline of anthropology ‘did not exist under such a name’. I would like to note that this essay would not have been written without his friendly encouragement, and that it was above

all his work that maintained my interest in Weber. 9 Tenbruck, ‘Problem’, p. 317. This remark is directed by Tenbruck to ES, but the intention of the essay is without doubt directed to the work 10

as a whole. In particular, the excellent book byj. Weiß, Max Webers Grundlegung der Soziologie, Munich, 1975, and his essay ‘Max Weber: Die Entzauberung der Welt’, inj. Speck (ed.) Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen IV, Göttingen, 1981. The conception of a ‘leading problematic’ that is advanced here naturally does not imply that every element of the writings can be understood on this basis, or even derived from it. It is the property of specialist academic work that ‘particular

11

12

13

14

questions’ repeatedly press themselves to the fore, and that the genuine researcher becomes buried and ‘lost’ in them. It is assumed without discussion by every German student ofWeber in the last decade — from Abramowski to Zingerle — that the question of ‘rationalization’ was the central question of Weber’s life. The limita¬ tions imposed by an article do not allow of detail and criticism, but such is in this case truly superfluous. S. Landshut, Zur Kritik der Soziologie, Munich, 1969 (orig. 1929); K. Löwith, Max Weber and Karl Marx, London, 1982 (orig. 1932). I am eternally grateful to Rudolf Smend (who had distanced himself from Weber’s work) that in the summer semester of1947 he assigned to me as my first paper in his seminar on Staatstheorie a review of these two works. Schluchter, Western Rationalism, p. 234. Such an ‘imputation’ would be fitting for none of Weber’s contemporaries. SeeWalther, ‘Max Weber’, and K. Jaspers, Max Weber, Oldenburg, 1932, as well as the many ‘Documents for the evaluation of work and personality’ in R. König andj. Winckelmann (eds). Max Weber zum Gedächtnis, Sonderheft 7 in Kölner Zeitschrifi für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 1963. But for us what Weber ‘took for granted’ is also barely known. While one-half of the Weber exegetists maintain the alleged centrality of the interest in Occidental Rationalism, so the other, more ‘sophisticated’ half (that is, sophisticated in their eyes) uphold the ‘Copernican re-direction’ of sociology into an empirical science of social action effected by Weber. See for example Winckelmann’s introduction to H. Girndt, Das soziale Handeln als Grundkategorie erfahrungswissenschafilicher Soziologie, Tübingen, 1967. Weber returned as an‘action theorist’ from across the Atlantic via Parsons’ conception of‘social action’. For W eber it was quite obvious that his science was a science of social action; no economist of his time would have thought otherwise; the various schools differed only in their theoretical constructions upon this, tn which it was recognized, however, that you were dealing with ‘con¬ structions’ and not with reality. The total of five pages in the introduc-

Notes

201

tory chapter to ES that deal with ‘social action’ define Weber’s basic concepts -just as any decent jurist or economist of his time used to do (and some still today). To see Weber’s intentions in these concepts can only be regarded as a gigantic misunderstanding, but one which has veritably filled libraries. No one who has taken the trouble to follow Weber’s suggestion (ES, p. 1) and looked at F. Gotti, Die Herrschaft des Wortes, Jena, 1901 (in particular, pp. 1—65, ‘On the “basic concepts” in economics’) can suffer from such a misapprehension. Ifat thebeginning of the ‘basic concepts’ or in the essay on categories there are ‘intentions’; which are supposed to he concealed; they are expressed in the words ‘to be read as a guide’ (deutend verstehen). To what does this relate? Clearly, not just to action. For note — ‘behind the “action” stands: the person’ (WL, p. 530). In ‘action’, in the‘social’, i.e. actions relating toothers, the human person reveals the manner of conducting life, which in the last analysis means his or her qualitative nature (Wesen) — it is this which must be deutend verstanden. I can see no virtue in interpreting the basic concepts by combining the frameworks of ‘action’ and ideologicalcriticism’ (K.-S. Rehberg, ‘Rationales Ffandeln als großbürgerliches Aktionsmodell. Thesen zu einigen handlungstheoretischen Implikationen der ‘SozialenGrundbegriffe’ Max Webers’, Kölner Zeitschriftfir Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 31,1979, pp. 199-236). 15

In the collection of essays assembled as the so-called Wissenchaftslehre we have from Weber’s pen a complete commentary on what he saw as the central questions of contemporary science. But the essays are not read in these terms, they are instead held to contain his methodology. If this were true, then the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre would really be the craziest book written with methodological intent.

16 17

Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 68. It must be noted that Winckelmann’s edition is by no means a critical one. Sentences are omitted without remark. On the pragmatic grounds that the edition is widely available, reference will nevertheless be made

18

to it. No - see J. Flabermas’s Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns I., Frankfurt, 1981, p. 234, in which Weber’s ‘leading interest’ is straight¬ away placed on its head. Things are different outside Germany, rolling along the familiar lines of the ‘origin of capitalism’. There the rights and wrongs of Weber’s alleged ‘thesis’ are still disputed, and much energy is devoted to attempted ‘empirical’ tests. The most recent report on the state of the ‘thesis’ is in G. Marshall’s In Search oftthe Spirit oft Capitalism, London, 1982, together with a detailed bibliography. From PE II only the second part of the ‘Antikritisches Schlußwort’ from 1910 has been translated into English; see M. Weber, ‘Anticritical last word on the spirit of capitalism’, American Journal oft Sociology, vol. 83, 1978, pp. 1105-31. The introduction from W. M. Davis is quite conventional. Outside such conventional limitations is H. Otsuka’s sensitive study, Max Weberon the Spirit of Capitalism, Tokyo, 1976.

202 19

20

21

22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction PEI, p. 187; cf. PEp. 180. GARS I, p. 18. With the assistance ofPetra Weber and Ewald and Karin von Kleist, I have followed up Tenbruck’s urgent summons to compare both versions of PE. Also compared, sentence for sentence, were the two versions of the study on China, which (according to Marianne Weber in the Foreword to GARS III) Weber was able, alone of all the WEWR essays, to revise and ‘supplement extensively’. Apart from supplementation, editorial changes and adaptations, and reference in particular to the fact of the so often promised continuation of the studies (which never appeared), there is nothing to find. No trace at all of any ‘development’. PE II, pp. 27 ff, 44 ff. All the emphases in citations from Weber originate with Weber, except where I indicate with my initials thus: [W.H.]. Weber’s diction, unfortunately, makes it necessary to take account of his style. His many emphases are here printed in italics. PE II, p. 27. The obduracy with which the controversy over the‘Weber thesis’ has failed to take into account Weber’s Antikritiken is without parallel in recent scholarship. The sole participant who has emphasized its significance is E. Fischer, ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism-the history ofa controversy’, Social Research, vol. 11,1944, pp. 53—77. Benjamin Nelson, who devoted himself to Weber’s work with so much love and understanding his whole life long, knew nothing of the ‘Antikritiken’; see his ‘Weber’s Protestant Ethic: its origins, wanderings, and forseeable futures’ in C. Y. Glock and P. E. Hammond (eds) Beyond the Classics? Essays in the Scientific Study of Religion, New York, 1973, p. 71-130. PE II, p. 27. PE II, p. 31. PE II, p. 32. PE II, p. 33. PE II, p. 44. PE II, PE II. PE II, PE II,

p. p. p. p.

46. 50. 53. 55.

W. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, Leipzig, 1902, p. 381. PE II, p. 157. PE II, p. 164. PE II, p. 179. PE II, p. 150. PE II, p. 157. PE II, p. 153. PE II, p. 163. PE II, p. 167. PE II, p. 167. PE II, p. 168. PEII.p. 169.

Notes 44 45 46 47 48

203

PE II, p. 172. PE II, p. 172. PE II, p. 173. PE II, p. 173. And this is by no means ‘intentional’. The PE in its 1904—5 version teems with declarations of intent, which had to be tidied away later in the revised GARS version, the ‘technical publishing reasons’ for the ‘no longer to be postponed separate edition of the essays’ turned out not to be so pressing that Weber could not, after all, postpone them. Weber’s writings - in particular the peculiarly puzzling Basic Concepts - open themselves up only to the reader who is ‘psychologically’ prepared for his ‘deviations’ or, better, who is prepared to meet them with ‘human understanding’. Weber is the Kari Bühl of sociology. Anxious not to be misunderstood, he fails to make clear what he has deep in his heart. He does in this way, however, see what is close to his own

49 50

heart. PE II, p. 186. GARS I, p. 518. For Weber’s ultimate ‘motive’, the chapter on ‘results’ in the study on China is perhaps the most easily intelligible key. From the ‘didactic’ point of view I would recommend its reading before the ‘Einleitung’ and ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’. For the quite clearly special degree ofdifficulty associated with the China study see S. Molloy, ‘Max Weber and the religions of China: any way out of the maze’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 31, 1980, pp. 377^-00. IfWeber’s definition of religions as ‘systems of life-regulation’ can be regarded as a ‘rather idiosyncratic definition’ (p. 385), then the way into Weber’s sociology

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

must be truly difficult. PE II, p. 173 ff. PE PE PE PE

II, II, II, II,

p. 283. p. 286. p.296-8. p. 302.

PE II, p. 283. PE II, p. 302-26. PE II, p. 303. PE II, p. 181. ‘Calling’ is here the translation of Beruf although ‘vocation’ is a more accurate rendering and draws attention to a continuity with Weber’s later usage [trans. ].

60 61

PE II, p. 182. PE p. 13. Weber’s sociology knows only this formulation. Whenever he refers to ‘processes’ this is in the sense of a completely non-technical meaning.

62 63

PE, pp. 181-2. ‘ “letzten Menschen” dieser Kulturentwicklung’ (PE I, p. 189). This is translated in PE (p. 182) as ‘the last stage of this cultural development’, hence altering the referent from Menschen to ‘stage’ [trans.].

64

PE, p. 27.

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

204 65

66

67

68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Instead of this, see most recently A. Zingerle, Max Webers historische Soziologie, Darmstadt, 1981, pp. 12, 147, 152, 190, for the ‘prevailing view’ on Weber’s ‘cognitive programme’. Schluchter now in his Western Rationalism enriches the arsenal of these confusing concepts through the addition of ‘Profilierung'. The pro¬ cedure has great advantage for the individual production of academic texts. On the other hand, it has a rather more deleterious effect on academic ‘communication’ and the comprehension of texts, like those of Weber, of relevance to more than one individual. Printed as ‘Introduction’ to PE [trans.j. PE, p. 26. GARS, p. 266. At this point it should become clear to the attentive reader quite how casually Weber speaks o {processes of rationalization. He means ‘circum¬ stances’, ‘historical instances’. If it is evident —as it is for Schluchter — that nothing was further from Weber’s mind than an evolutionary interpretation ofhistory, why must our own ‘approaches’ (or whatever we may call them) be imposed so freely on the great man? PE, p. 53 n. 9 [trans.]. PE, p. 76 [trans.]. PE, pp. 77-8. PE, p. 180. cf. Max Weber, ‘Critical studies in the logic of the cultural sciences' in Shils and Finch, Methodology, p. 172. PE II, p. 303. Küenzlen, Religionssoziologie, pp. 36 ff. PE II, p.334. cf. PE, p. 29. PE, p. 284. PE, pp. 32 ff. The ‘Einleitung’ to WEWR from 1915 was printed with only small editorial changes in GARS I, pp. 237 ff. Concerning the interest in ‘differentiation’: G. Simmel’s Uber soziale Differenzierung, 1890, is cited in the bibliography from 1898 mentioned in note 99, as well as Simmel’s essay ‘Die Aufgaben der Soziologie’ in Schmollers Jahrbuch, 1894. Sombart had himself glanced into the world of oriental religions in 1902 (Moderne Kapitalismus, p. 379): ‘A glance at other high cultures which

83 84 85

have created no specifically capitalist spirit, like the Chinese, Indian and Ancient American, suffices here also to prove the inadequacy of the conception that the genesis of modern capitalism can be demonstrated as a “general law of development” ofhuman economy.’ PE, pp. 182-3. PE II, p.324. cf. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Bd. 5, Article ‘Menschheit’: ‘Since the second half of the nineteenth century the conceptual content of Menschheit shrank to the qualitative-collective aspect, while qualitatively Menschentum took its place’ (col. 1136). The translation of the

Notes

205

‘ Anticritical Last Word’ by W. M. Davis noted above rendered Menschen¬ tum as ‘humankind’. 86

87

This dating of 1910 with reference to 1904 represents a refutation of Tenbruck’s suggestion that Weber engaged at a relatively late stage with the meaning of science in the modern world, and that this idea more or less constituted his ‘late sociology’. PE, p. 182. ThefactthatTroeltsch, in his treatment ofsects in his Sozial¬ lehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, 1912 (they are hidden among the ‘groups’ of the title), could dispute Weber’s priority, or at least claim equal standing, must have irritated Weber. Forestalling the same thing happening with his sociology of domination must have kept him very busy. There is otherwise little explanation of the quite unmotivated sketch of the sociology of domination added to the ‘Introduction ’ to the ‘Sketches on the sociology of religion’ — first published in the Archiv in 1915 (GARS I, pp. 267 ff.). These concepts play hardly any role in GARS. In the 1913 essay on categories, Weber had not got so far. This essay is also an anticipation, a form of‘declaration of ownership’ for that which was to be elaborated in ES. The small sociology of domination in GARS I, pp. 267-75, is a kind of supplement to that in the essay on categories.

88 89 90

GARS I, p.266. PE II, p.324. Weber, ‘The National State and Economic Policy’, Economy and Society, Vol. 9 (1980) pp. 428-49, p. 437; cf. E. Baumgarten, Max Weber. Werk und Person, Tübingen, 1964, p. 127.

91

As far as is possible, this essay should not be overloaded with disputa¬ tion. But ifWeber’s ‘central’ interest was the ‘fate of Menschentum’, so it was the ‘central’ interest of the opinion-leaders of German postwar sociology to exterminate this ‘philosophical’interest. One did not dare, however, to tackle the great man directly; Talcott Parsons and his German students who had left Alteuropa behind them saw to it instead. The thorough purging from postwar German sociology of its specifi¬ cally German tradition (a tradition that should not merely be rejected) began with Rene König’s essay, published in the year ofhis assumption of the editorship of the Kölner Zeitschrift, ‘Die Begriffe Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft bei Ferdinand Tönnies’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg, 7, 1955, pp. 348—420. Anger could be vented on Tönnies. Enduring thanks are due to E. G. Jacoby - an emigre who found his way to New Zealand - for making this issue clear thirteen years later(!) in his essay with the meaningless title ‘On a pure sociology’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 20, 1968, pp. 448-70. See H. Stieglitz, ‘Soziologie als Herausforderung, sozial zu handeln’ inj. Stagl (ed.) Aspekte der Kultursoziologie. Festgabe fürM. Rassem, Berlin, 1982, pp. 129-58, for an impressive treatment of the feeling of having been ‘duped’ (my expression) by postwar

92

German sociology. Weber’s sociology is about these ‘formative’ and ‘substantive’ elements of Lebensführung: religion, economic form, law, domination, etc. Even

206

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction ifit remained a torso, ES is plainly Weber’s major work. The unproduc¬ tive dispute on this question has been brought to a decisive point by Tenbruck. To decide then in favour ofWEWR instead of this ‘reference book’ shows that he failed to recognize Weber’s basic idea in his original 1975 essay (Tenbruck, ‘Problem’), with its fixation upon ‘interests and ideas’, ‘images of the world’ and ‘process of disenchantment’, ‘Max Weber’s work’ can be well understood in detail on the basis of PE and ES. If, on the other hand, we possessed only WEWR, it would be no more than a ‘historical representation’ from an ‘interesting’ standpoint, but little more. In any case, Weber’s sociology cannot be opened up with the help of WEWR. If we have to choose, then even the ‘systematic’ sociology of religion that is to be found in ES is more fruit¬ ful. But we do have everything — the argument is idle. What has to be asked is why Tenbruck, in his search for the centre of Weber’s sociology, did not take up once again the relation to Simmel (Kölner Zeitschriftfür Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 10,1958, pp. 604 ff.), a thread which as far as I can see he has never taken up again. Since we now know how much the ‘presociological’ Weber busied himself with Simmel (cf. note 82), there is here a fertile field for the assessment of one of our most noble intellectual traditions.

93 94

GARS I, p.265. PE, p. 17. We have to accept that this ‘giant of sociologists’ could only think of universal history’ as ‘lots ofhistories’. He did after all ‘break ofF his investigation of world religions. But it is more difficult to accept that the professional historians, indeed the most eminent, in seeking to understand Weber as a ‘universal historian’ have never bothered to consider what the first paragraph of GARS I might mean. G. Abramowski (Das Geschichtsbild Max Webers. Universalgeschichte am Leitfaden des okzidentalen Rationalisierungsprozesses, Stuttgart, 1966) took as read that, for Weber, universal history was equivalent to world history. Not one thought is given to the actual form assumed by Weber’s ‘total universal - historical conception’ — in so far as for Abramowski he has one - ‘an analysis of his total universal-historical conception is not aimed at here’ (p. 11). Not one eminent historian of Weber’s time is mentioned, with regard to whom Weber could have oriented his ‘conception’: no E. Meyer, no Wellhausen, no Wilamowitz; also no Buckle, Gibbon, Ranke, whom Weber had con¬ sumed in his youth. A mere glance at the title of the first half of Meyer’s Geschichte des Altertums should have puzzled a historian writing a book on Weber’s ‘image of history’: ‘Elemente der Anthropologie’! When W. J. Mommsen comes to the conclusion in his important essay ‘Über universalgeschichtliches und politisches Denken bei Max Weber’, in his Max Weber. Gesellschaft, Politik und Geschichte, Frankfurt, 1974 (orig. 1965), that ‘we are in the last instance dealing with an anthropological point ofdeparture ofa quite particular kind, providing a unified founda¬ tion for the superficial disparateness of Weber’s work’ (p. 111), then I can fully agree with him, except that by that we mean completely

Notes

95

96

97

98

99

207

different things. As far as Mommsen is concerned, the ‘anthropological point of departure’ is connected to Weber’s ‘aristocratic’, ‘individualis¬ tic’, ‘Nietzschean’ ideal of personality. From this, Mommsen considers the concept of charisma-supposedly formed by this ideal of personality — to be the axis of Weber’s historical philosophy, also on this basis con¬ cluding that the decisive ‘dualism’ for Weber’s conception ofhistory is the opposition not of charisma and rationalization, but of tradition and charisma, everyday and extra-everyday. All analysis of Weber’s anthropology, ‘image of man’, ‘image ofhistory’ must begin from the everyday, ‘the familiar’ tradition. Charisma, and also ‘rationalization’ are in ‘indissoluble’ opposition with tradition! The ‘cost’ of this contra¬ diction, the ‘price’ of the dissolution of personal relations of piety (and this is traditional orders at root) is the basic theme of Weber’s historical studies and also of his ‘sociology’. Among the great historians he is closest to Tocqueville in his basic apprehension of the modern. As could be shown elsewhere (see 7c, p. 50) Weber’s sociology (with its elective conjunction of Lebensjuhrungchancen with ‘orders’) directly connects to the classical problematics of political theory from Aristotle to Rousseau. Leo Strauss’s apodictic ejection ofWeber from the context of this tradition rendered me blind for too long to this simple connec¬ tion. In truth, therefore, Weber’s ‘ideal personality’ of the Kulturmensch, not of‘man’ but of men who, in the world in which we are placed, wish to remain persons. This is in the sense of the basic theme of his sociology and to be distinguished from his anthropology. Löwith was the one who side-tracked all discussion on to the question of ‘personality’. Landshut specified the ‘real investigative intention’ ofWeber in a more precise manner than Löwith, and is unjustly overshadowed by him; his ‘Kritik der Soziologie’ and ‘Max Webers geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung’ are now both to be found in his Kritik der Soziologie und andere Schriften zur Politik, Neuwied, 1969. For an appreciation of Landshut’s work see my ‘Zu Siegfried Landshuts wissenschaftlichem Werk’, Zeitschriftfür Politik, Jg. 17 (N.F.), 1970, pp. 1 ff. A sympathetic appreciation of Winckelmann’s merits, and a short report on the current situation ofWeber research, can be found in W. Sprondel etai, ‘Soziologie soll heißen . . Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 32, 1980, pp. 1 ff. How such a ‘biography of the work’ ideally ought to be written has been sketched out by Weber for anyone who cares to attempt it in the example of Goethe’s letters to Frau von Stein (‘Critical Studies’, pp. 138-45) and Marx’s Capital (ibid. pp. 147-52). A unique and, to my knowledge, unexamined source for this aspect of Weber is the printed outline of his lectures, prepared for the Summer Semester 1898 in Fleidelberg: Grundriß zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine (‘theoretische’) Nationalökonomie. It contains a detailed bibliography comprising 23 pages, which, among other things, provides precise information relating to Weber’s interest in the con-

208

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction temporary condition of anthropology - it is to this that his dig at Rachfahl (PE II, p. 334) refers, and the remark that ‘he had lectured on these things’ twelve years ago (in 1898 and not in 1897 as Winckelmann notes); as well as a 34-page summary of the first of six lecture courses on the conceptual foundations of economics. This expose (it is almost as long as the Basic Concepts in ES) begins in quite classic style: ‘By “economic” we understand . . But these reveal as little of Weber’s ‘central’ interest as an economist as the later sociological Basic Con¬ cepts. Why should they? Weber knew how to use the German language and also scientific terminology. Attempts to read his ‘central’ interests out of the ‘almost indispensable’ Basic Concepts — alongside the universal-historical approach, the other highway to the understanding of Weber — must of necessity fail. We can accept Emil Lask’s opinion: ‘The categories which one chooses depend on what kind of philosopher one is’. That cannot simply be reversed, or rather, if we do so it is not without consequences. See the mass of ‘theoretically sophisticated’ interpretations of Weber that run entirely on the basis: ‘look to the concepts’. In this fashion everything is turned on its (empty) head, which then has to be filled with ‘reformulations’, ‘explications’, etc. For a particularly unfortunate example of this, see note 14 above. See Graber’s introduction to Weber, ‘Some categories ofinterpretive sociology’, Sociological Quarterly, vol. 22, 1981, pp. 145—80, for an interesting report on the great gap in Weber’s writings that we are seeking to circumscribe here. In the original 1910 working plan for the Grundrisse der Socialökonomik, Weber suggested an introductory section of Vol. 1 entitled ‘Objekt und logische Natur der Fragestellung’. In letters to the publisher Siebeck, dated 26 March and 1 May 1910, Weber then stated that he intended to omit this methodological part. In letters of 29 March and 4 May, Siebeck objected, but Weber had his way. His well-known remark in the Foreword (p. VII to Vol. 1 of the Grundrisse) does not to my mind clarify the problem sufficiently. That the Basic Sociological Concepts of ES do not cover what we might have expected to find under ‘Objekt und logische Natur der Fragestellung’ must, I think, be made the object of further investigation.

100

There are indications that Weber’s relation to antiquity, just as in Machiavelli and Rousseau, delivers thekey to this, as in Nietzsche. That ‘cultural scientific work’ could not always be conscious of its embed¬ dedness in ultimate values-and that this was a good thing —was heavily emphasized by Weber (‘ “Objectivity”,’ p. 112). The concept for his ultimate idea is unambiguous: the ‘highest form of Menschentum' (‘Logic ofthe cultural sciences’, p. 162). SeeDas Gymnasium und die Neue Zeit (Berlin, 1919, p. 113 ff.) for an illuminating account of a speech made by Weber in 1919 in support of efforts to retain the humanistic Gymnasium. How it was possible, after 1945, to accept that Weber’s highest value was ‘the nation’, the German ‘national state’ (Machtsstaat), etc., is one of the more recent preoccupations that are very hard to understand.

Notes

209

Weber’s exact knowledge- in 1898 - of Marx and the entire socialist literature is indicated by the bibliography contained in the outline dis¬ cussed above in note 99. (The student is supposed to be acquainted with all three volumes of Capital, and to read 26 volumes of Proudhon, and Lassalle, Schippel, Kautsky, Engels, Bernstein, etc., as well). How such an excellent student ofWeber like Guenther Roth could claim that Weber got his knowledge of Marx from Sombart is quite astonishing (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 20, 1968). How could have Weber managed as a co-editor of the Archiv without an excellent knowledge of Marx and socialist literature? How else would one explain his respectful mention of Capital - in the same breath as Goethe’s letters to Frau Stein! -in his ‘Logic of the cultural sciences’, pp. 147-51. Can we imagine in the Germany of the 1880s and 1890s a person of Weber’s historical sensitivity — who changed from law to economics - who was not deeply influenced by Marx? Sombart’s statement in 1927, describing his relationship to Marx, could certainly have been written word-for-word by Weber: However bluntly I reject the Weltanschauung of the man . . .1 admire him unreservedly as a theorist and historian of capitalism . . . and it was his great talent to know how to approach it. In his genial problematic he gave to economic science a path of fruitful research for a century. All social economists who did not take up this problematic were doomed to sterility. We are no longer able to pose questions which have the magic of novelty. There only remain problems for‘practical economists’. . . But that the work of a genial person today, addressing economic life theoretically and historically, can dispense with the enchantment of the older work, has been shown to us by Max Weber. (W. Sombart, Das Wirtshchaftsleben im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus, Munich, 1927, pp. XVIII, XX). It appears to me that the fundamental task of any meaningful work on Weber must be to see if his work does not after all possess this magic; that is, it can after all pose us as scientists questions of decisive signifi¬ 101 102 103 104

105

cance. See pp. 65 ff. below. PE II, p. 283. WL, p.489. Strauss, Natural Law and History. For a criticism of Strauss’ chapter on Weber see H. H. Bruun, Science, Values and Politics in Max Weber’s Methodology, Copenhagen, 1972; and K. Löwith, ‘Max Weber’s Stellung zur Wissenschaft’ in his Vorträge und Abhandlungen, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 228 ff; and, most recently, R. Kennington, ‘Strauss’ natural right and history’, Review of Metaphysics, vol. 35, 1981. That Weber in this way, in idealized competition with the subsumption of ‘practical’ sciences such as economics under a category, ‘cultural sciences’, which Rickert had coined o«/y for the h/stono!/sciences, threw

210

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction the baby out with the bathwater was energetically argued by Robert Wilbrandt at a level of debate never since attained (R. Wilbrandt, ‘Die Reform der Nationalökonomie vom Standpunkt der “Kulturwissen¬ schaften”. Eine Antikritik’, Zeitschrift for die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, Bd. 73,1917, pp. 345-403). On Wilbrandt’s love ofWeber see his auto¬ biography Ihr glücklichen Augen, Stuttgart, 1947, pp. 340 ff. The follow¬ ing passages on the ‘philosophical’ sense of Weber’s struggle is not relativized by this reference. He did not serve one God alone. The theme can here only be hinted at. The point of departure for Weber’s analysis has to be his struggle for ‘impartiality’, which can be demonstrated in his usage from theearliest writings. The methodological ‘foundation’ is

106 107 108 109

110

111

112

a later ‘increment’. Löwith saw this clearly in his essay on Marx and Weber. Weber, ‘National State’, p. 437. Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 127. Weber, ‘National State’, p. 437. This is an ‘immature’ form of expres¬ sion of the central thought of Weber’s sociology. The ‘formative’ powers of the ‘conditions of existence’ on the economy were clear to him long before their effects on religion. This was a banality for every¬ one in the nineteenth century - but what a banality in the case of Weber! The sociology of Weber, who, in his Inaugural Address, had emphatically dubbed economics a ‘political science’, does not just have one foot in the tradition of political philosophy; his central philosophy is rooted here. This should be the thema probandum of the programme formulated under point 7 above. The fact that Weber wished to pursue not ‘philosophy’ but academic social science does not alter this. His central methodological problem was to make philosophical questions accessible to as great a degree as possible in a ‘scientific’ and ‘empirical’ fashion: to lend them the possibility of‘objectivity’. This is the stake in the essay on objectivity. Nothing has contributed so much to the trivialization of the social sciences as the pedantic differentiation whereby ‘pre-scientific’ ‘philosophical’ questions are distinguished from ‘genuine’ ‘scientific’ problems-a green light to every dullard was given by König’s essay on Tönnies mentioned above. The productiveness of the ‘dark years’ is shown not only in Weber’s bibliography but by Marianne Weber’s biography, which indicates that in renewing his work Weber took with him his ‘scientific past’. The Agrarian Relations in Antiquity of 1909, his older historical—economic studies and ES, the studies on ‘selection and adaptation’, and the ‘Psychophysics of industrial labour’ as the bridge between economics and economic sociology, and finally the Russian studies as evidence of a passionate search for a way out of the cage —can we really talk here of the ‘dark years’? Max Weber, ‘Methodological introduction for the survey of the Society for Social Policy concerning selection and adaptation (choice and course of occupation) for the workers of major industrial enter¬ prises’, inj. E. T. Eldridge (ed.) Max Weber. The Interpretation of Social

Notes

211

Reality, London, 1971, p. 104 [this and subsequent citations have been revised, trans.]. 113 114 115

Weber, ‘Methodological introduction’, p. 124. Weber, ‘Methodological introduction’, p. 135. Weber, ‘Methodological introduction’, p. 154.

116 117

Weber, ‘Methodological introduction’, p. 155. Weber, ‘Methodological introduction’, p. 155. As a supplement, the discussion at the Mannheim annual congress must be considered. Here Weber argues that if one seeks to agree on socio-political matters, the individual must above all be clear on the decisive ‘value standpoint’ from which the phenomenon, whose legislative treatment is at issue, is personally viewed. ‘I claim that for myself the question is exclusively: what becomes “characterologically” - to use a fashionable word - of men placed in those legal and factual conditions of existence v/ith which we are today concerned?’ (GASS, p. 399). In this discussion Weber also produced a classical example of his quixotic overdoing of a position, an example not without its comic aspect. Directly following — so that he could get back to the industry of the Saar — he thundered against the inhabitants of the German colony Tovar in the Venezuelan mountains, who had declared their loyalty to President Castro in the conflict between Germany and Venezuela ‘and sought the forgiveness of the Venezuelan nation for the tactlessness and violence which, because of its barbaric regime, was practised by Germany on such a civilized people as the Venezuelans. Scoundrels, you will say. Good; - in the newspapers of the Saarland advertisements occasionally appear in which miners publicly deny the suspicion that they have voted for a particular party. Scoundrels! I say . . . But I ask you rather: who makes these people into scoundrels? The Prussian state and the authoritarian system creates such scoundrels as now appear in Venezuela. And not only there does this system have effects which deprave and weaken character . . .’ (GASS, p. 395). The writer, after 1933, as a boy, and more often later, had the rare luck of forming an un¬ forgettable picture of the character of the valiant Kaiserstiihler in the coffee mountains of the Venezuelan coastal cordillera. He can only

118

refute Weber’s abuse in the ‘sharpest’ manner! The ‘Vorbericht über eine vorgeschlagene Erhebung über die Soziologie des Zeitungswesens’ consists of seven folio pages and is in the archive of the Max Weber Arbeitsstelle, Munich. I would like to thank Dr Ay for his friendly help in the search for the material. This ‘Vorbericht’ is missing from the Bibliography of the Max Weber

119

Gesamtausgabe, May 1981. Which is, however, what Käsler suggests (Einführung in das Studium Max Webers, Munich, 1979, p. 214). But any friend to Weber must be grateful to Käsler for this book. Since he approaches Weber impartially, the book achieves its aim extremely well.

120 121

GASS, p.434. GASS, p.442.

212 122 123 124

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction GASS, p.443. GASS, p.446. GASS, p. 445. Since this Survey of Associations was never carried out, we must turn to a dissertation prompted by the theme: H. Staudinger, Individuum und Gemeinschaß in der Kulturorganisation des Vereins, Jena, 1913. This was published as Vol. 1 ofthe series edited by Alfred Weber, Schrißen zur Soziologie der Kultur. Alfred Weber played the role of supervisor and wrote an introduction. But the study was also jointly supervised, as much as the relationship between the two brothers allowed, by Max Weber. This meant that Staudinger was shunted back

125

126

127

and forth between them. He related all this to me in his delightful Darmstadt accent. I dedicate this essay to the memory of Hans Staudinger, who made it possible for me, in the course of long con¬ versations, to form a new relationship with Weber; as I in turn was able to help him feel free enough to set his memories down in writing. What German Lebensführungsmächte could once have meant —the Wandervogel (Staudinger was proud to have been one of the authors of the Zupfgeigen¬ hansel), Prussian officialdom, the older form of Social Democracy - I got to know this during 1911-IS in his New York flat at Sutton Place in a manner that would in his home country nowhere have been possible. Printed in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 102—39, the decisive passage on p. 127. The significance of this passage had already been emphasized by J. Winckelmann, Gesellschaß und Staat in der verstehenden Soziologie Max Webers, Berlin, 1957, p. 52. This article is translated under the title ‘The meaning of “ethical neutrality” in sociology and economics’ in Shilsand Finch, Methodology ftrans. ]. WL, p. 517.

128

Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 127.

129

130 131

Weber, ‘Meaning’, p. 27. This should not be taken as a criticism of the translator. I am aware of Shils love and reverence for Max Weber, as well as his constant efforts to keep Weber’s work alive. Shils, in 1952, introduced me within the space of a few weeks to Talcott Parsons in Harvard as well as to Leo Strauss in Chicago. If one could make some¬ thing out of Weber as successfully as Parsons did then Strauss must be right. But what if they were both wrong? GASS, p. 414. PS, p.548.

132

Weber, ‘Critical studies’, p. 164.

Essay 2 1

Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie, p. 34; Löwith, Max Weber and Karl Marx, p. 19; Tenbruck, ‘Problem of thematic unity’, p. 318.

2

F. H. Tenbruck, ‘Wie gut kennen wir Max Weber?’, Zeitschrififür die gesamte Staatswissenschaß, Bd. 131, 1975, p. 739.

Notes

213

3

Bendix, Max Weber, pp. 258 ff.

4

This is particularly evident in his debate with Michels; see L. A. Scaff, ‘Max Weber and Robert Michels’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 86, 1981, pp. 1269-86; W. J. Mommsen, ‘Die antinomische Struktur des politischen Denkens Max Webers’, Historiche Zeitschrift, Bd. 233,1981, pp. 60 ff., and also his ‘Max Weber and Roberto Michels’. An assymetrical partnership’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 22, 1982, pp. 100-116, especially, pp. 110 ff.

5

R. König, Kritik der historisch-existentialistischen Soziologie, Munich, 1975. His key statement is that ‘Today as ever passion renders mankind blind’ (p. 98). I would counter this with the epigraph to ‘Max Weber’s

6

7

“Central Question”.’ All genuine searching after knowledge has its pathos, is an obsession. Fundamental here is G. Krüger, Einsicht und Leidenschaft, 2ndedn, Frankfurt, 1948. König’s sensitivity to this question - and for the frequently merely ‘aestheticizing’ lack of seriousness of the ‘theorists of crisis’ - is demonstrated by his fine, although one-sided book, Machiavelli, Erlenbach-Zürich, 1941. Cf. E. Francis, ‘KulturundGesellschaftin der Soziologie Max Webers’, in K. Engisch (ed.), Max Weber. Gedächtnisschrift der Universität München, Berlin, 1966, pp. 89—114. Schöllgen also sees a ‘clear’, ‘recognizable’ break (‘around 1913’) in Weber’s work — ‘Max Weber und Karl Marx’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 31, 1980, p. 733, n. 8. From beginning to end this essay rests upon false assumptions; it is not doubted for one moment that Weber was thoroughly con¬ versant with (all three volumes) of Marx’ Capital. Why then the lack in Weber of an analysis of Marx’s theory of surplus value should be attributed to an inadequate acquaintance with Marx remains un¬ explained. As far as any academic economist of the late nineteenth century was concerned, this was not the central strength of Marx’s

8

work. Tenbruck, ‘The problem of thematic unity’, p. 320.

9 10 11

Tenbruck, ‘The problem of thematic unity’, p. 323. Tenbruck, ‘The problem of thematic unity’, p. 344f. See Essay 1, note 7, p. 199.

12

Weber, Protestant Ethic, p. 221, n. 19.

13

Tenbruck, ‘The problem of thematic unity’, p. 319.

14

Zingerle, Max Webers historische Soziologie, pp. 3, 92, 157. In a similar

15

vein to Tenbruck, see Weiß, ‘Max Weber’. On the biographical improbability of such a late ‘breakthrough’ see the entirely plausible account of Weber’s early maturity given by Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 301 ff. (at 26 quite ‘himself and at the same time ‘complete’) - this is based on Marianne Weber’s account and

16

the Jugendbriefe. Tenbruck, ‘The problem of thematic unity’, p. 319, where he calls for a

17

decoding of the work at the level of the texts. In this respect Weber’s work belongs entirely to that German tradition

214

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction of social scientific research critically reconstructed recently by Rehberg, prompted by debate with the ‘antisociologists’ Schelsky and Tenbruck. SeeK.-S. Rehberg, ‘ “Deutungswissen der Moderne” oder “administrative Hilfswissenschaft” in S. Papcke (ed.), Ordnung und Theorie, Darmstadt, 1986, pp. 7 ff.; andhis ‘ “Philosophische Anthro¬ pologie” und die “Soziologisierung” des Wissens vom Menschen. Einige Zusammenhänge zwischen einer philosophischen Denk¬ tradition und der Soziologie in Deutschland’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 23, 1981, pp. 160—98,

18

especially pp. 160-66. These were presented in this order in the essay on categories (Weber, ‘Some categories’, p. 152). The complications in the exposition of the ‘specific object’ of verstehende sociology — ‘not any kind of “inner condition” and external conduct, but action (Handeln)’ (p. 152) lose their difficulty as soon as one reads ‘the conduct oflife based on the person’ in place of this abstract concept. It is only in this way that a Gemeinschafishandeln can be involved, defined as ‘the conduct of individuals with respect to the conduct ofother individuals’ (p. 160). It can be questioned whether the terminological changes introduced by Weber into his ‘basic

19 20 21

sociological terms’succeeds in rendering this any clearer (ES, p. 1). Ido not see any substantive alteration compared with the essay on categories, although it is apparent that there is an increasingly graphic ‘classifica¬ tion of forms of action’ (ES, p. 25) as types of (purposive rational, value rational, affective and traditional) Lebensführung! Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 422. idem. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, pp. 597-8. For more details see J. H. Knoll, Führungsauslese in Liberalismus und Demokratie, Stuttgart, 1957, pp. 190 ff., and D. Krüger Nationalökonomen im wilhelminischen Deutschland, Göttingen, 1983, pp. 234—6.

22 23

Not Die Persönlichkeit und deren Lebenswirkung but Die Persönlichkeit und die Lebensordnungen [trans. ]. Letter from Diederichs to Weber, 22June 1917, in E. Diederichs, Leben und Werk (ed. L. von Strauss, Torney-Diederichs)Jena, 1925, pp. 294— 6. Diederichs seemed to be a little disappointed at Weber’s contribution to the first conference at Burg Lauenstein in Spring of 1917: ‘For me you were the representative of a critical-intellectual type who seeks by force of personality to dominate the free-play of individual powers and says to the world at large: do as I do, if you are up to it. We lacked the third type [the creativ^political person, W.H.] and this is the really fruitful type. But this type is not yet grown, everywhere I see it as a child in nappies. In Lauenstein we can really only play the part of the Three Kings from the Orient. I am a believer and I always live in hope of a miracle.’ Diederichs reported on the second meeting in letters of 6 October 1917 (to Friedrich von der Leyen) and of 12 October 1917 (to Ernst Krieck) - see Leben und Werk, pp. 301-3. Weber is stated to be ‘the most

Notes

215

valuable acquisition, so much so that it is worth attending for his sake alone’ (to von der Leyen). In the second letter the heart of the meeting is described as Weber’s address, not so much on account of its positive features but rather ‘because ofits human aspect, linked with the graceful personal presence . . . Otherwise damned little came of all the debates and speeches’. In Diederichs’ account of the ‘Second Lauenstein Cultural Meeting’ (Die Tat, November 1917, p. 737), he simply wrote: ‘Of particular importance was Max Weber’s lecture on “Life orders and the person¬ ality”.’ The Max Weber Arbeitsstelle possesses an eight-page type¬ script by Wolfgang Schumann giving an account of the Spring meeting; this was found in the archives of Eugen Diederichs’ publishing house in Cologne. According to this source, Weber argued for open struggle in Parliament: ‘The struggle against materialism must draw its force from sober daily realities: the evil pack of material interest groups must be broken up’. And with respect to Weber’s polemic against the youth movement: ‘He was so sarcastic that most of the initial sympathy that he found among his listeners soon evaporated . . .’ With regard to the faintly comic ‘scholarship’ associated with the correct version of Weber’s theme in his Burg Lauenstein lecture, see my review article relating to the appearance of the first volume in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, ‘Im langen Schatten einer Edition’, Zeitschrift für 24

Politik, Bd. 32, 1985, pp. 208ff., 212. The autumn meeting at Lauenstein took place in the first week of October 1917; Weber spoke on ‘Science as a vocation’ at the invitation of the Federation of Free Students on 7 November 1917. See Mommsen’s account’ which cites the report in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 9 November 1917 ( W. J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, Chicago, 1985, pp. 267 ff.); see also Schluchter, Rationalismus, pp. 236-9. The latter also suggests that ‘Personality and life orders’ was an initial version of ‘ Science as a Vocation’ on the basis of the ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’, referring to Marianne Weber’s biography,

25

p. 600.1 cannot find any evidence for this assertion at the place cited. ‘You wish me to speak about “Science as a vocation” . . .’; ‘This lecture, which I give at your request. . .’ (Gerth and Mills, From Max

26

Weber, pp. 129, 77). His reluctance to speak in generalities is demonstrated by a letter written to Ernst Trummler, a participant at the Lauenstein meeting, and this letter is at the same time evidence of the importance that Weber saw in ‘all cultural questions’ of the ‘purely external possibilities of life and influence’ (Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Munich, 1921,

T1 28

pp. 474 ff. Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 129. Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 134.

29 30

Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 137. Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 137.

31

Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 114.

216

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

32

Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 117.

33 34

Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, p. 123. Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 72. This passage was the starting point of

35

36

the major interpretive work of Siegfried Landshut and Karl Löwith. Published in September 1910 as an appendix to the Archiv. Andreas Walther complained of the fact that verstehende sociology wished to remain simply a ‘cultural scientific’ social science— a limitation that lent Weber’s work a ‘decisively opaque and unfinished quality’ — while Walther at the same time recognizes that this was so desired. Walther, ‘Max Weber als Soziologe’, p. 19. Cf. Baumgarten, Max Weber, p.3. In so far as academic influences are of relevance to Weber’s development, I would like to attribute his capacity for differentiated analyses to the pedagogic effects of his interest in agrarian history. He once stated in relation to these works, ‘influenced by our great master, G. F. Knapp’, that they were character¬ ized by ‘careful classification, precise recognition of the significance of law, and by an unambiguous definition of concepts’ (‘Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Rußland’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaß und

37 38

Sozialpolitik, Bd. 22, 1906, p. 300, n. 60). We also find here employed the concept that must he at the base of any developmental-historical interpretation of Weber’s work: not evolution, but epigenesis — see also Weber, ‘Critical studies’, p. 128, and GARS III p. 3.1 do not think that this has been realized in any of the various ‘developmental—historical’ interpretations and reconstructions of Weber. On the concept of epi¬ genesis see Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Bd 2, col. 580 ff. Mommsen. Max Weber, ch. 2. This has now come to the notice of research; see K. Tribe, ‘Prussian agriculture - German politics: Max Weber 1892-7’, Economy and Society, vol. 12, 1983, pp. 181-226. Also of great importance is L. A. ScafF s ‘Weber before Weberian sociology’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 35,1984pp. 190-215. Dibblehas already outlined thesuperiority of Weber’s sociological insight compared with that of the five other compilers of the Verein survey - V. K. Dibble, ‘Social science and political commitment in the young Max Weber’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 9, 1968, pp. 92-110.

39 40

Max Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, Bericht über die Verhand¬ lungen des 5. Evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses, Berlin, 1894, p. 64. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 65.

41

See his review of Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, Zeitschriß der Savigny-Stifiungfür Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abteilung Bd. 15, 1894, pp. 187-92.

42

See the articles on ‘Argentinische Kolonistenwirthschaften’, Deutsches Wochenblatt, Jg. 7, 1894, no. 2, pp. 20-2; no. 5, pp. 57-9.

43

The articles written for Das Land during 1893 are particularly clear and graphic, aimed as they are at a general readership: jg. 1, 1893, no. 1, pp. 8-9; no. 2, pp. 24-6; no. 3, pp. 43-5; no. 4, pp. 58-9; no. 8, pp. 129—30; no. 9, pp. 147-8.

Notes

217

44 45

Max Weber, ‘Dieländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, GASW, p. 444. Weber, ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 445.

46

Weber was certainly well-acquainted with Tocqueville, even ifhe relied more on Bryce for his view of American politics. Both Tocqueville and Weber are liberals—but of a very particular kind. They are not interested in ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’, but rather in the moral constitutions that correspond to them.

47 48 49

Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 65. Weber, ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 449. This second questionnaire for the Kongreß survey is printed in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 376-86; passage cited here is on p. 383.

50

Max Weber, ‘Developmental tendencies in the situation of East Elbian rural labourers’, Economy and Society, vol. 8, 1979, p. 185. Weber, ‘Developmental tendencies’, p. 180. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 70. This characterological

51 52

53 54

55 56

57 58

differentiation of the new from the old estate owner is overlooked by Schluchter, Rationalismus, pp. 163—9. Weber was not interested in the existence of a ‘thriving capitalist agriculture’ in Eastern Germany; Schluchter sees in Weber an option for a ‘free (bourgeois) capitalism’, just what I do not find in him. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 71. Weber, ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 456. Cf. the letter to Lujo Brentano of 20 February 1893 (Jugendbriefe, p. 365, as corrected by Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 25): ‘I did not seek to attribute personal merit to the eastern Junkers, rather — with respect to its conditions — a relative merit in the form of social organisation’. GARS I, p. 252, translated in Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 280. Cf. ES, p. 305; and also on the Lebensführungproblematik of the modern (free-floating) intellectual, ES, p. 503. Where the chances ofindividual Lebensführung vanish the domain of‘discipline’ begins, ES, p. 731. ES, p. 302. This category (Würdegefühl) is missing from the index to Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Here is a provisional listing: pp. 288, 298 ff., 303, 335, 372, 536, 622 ff., 630, 651 (!), 703. Cf. ES, pp. 472, 491 ff., 497. For Weber, Würdegefühl and Lebensführung were intricately related; in the world of ‘naked rationality’ this relation dissolved. If we can forgive the play on words: Weber’s work is a symphonic farewell to ‘yesterday’s world’ continually interrupted by the word ‘nevertheless’. He cannot think of anything other than conceptual definition to characterize the modern world - as in the rational Anstaltsstaat. More on this later. Its analytic force is comprehensible only with respect to the limits of verstehende

59

sociology. ES, pp. 99, 124; and The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations,

60

London, 1976, pp. 42-3. Weber, ‘Developmental tendencies’, p. 179.

61 62

Weber, ‘Developmental tendencies’, p. 178. We repeatedly encounter in Weber’s work the conceptual problematic

218

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction emphasized in the work of Otto Brunner. See Brunner’s ‘Bemerkungen zu den Begriffen “Herrschaft” und “Legitimität” in his Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte, 3rd edn, Göttingen, 1980, pp. 64—79. Weber’s ideal type represents an attempt to escape from this problematic (‘every science, including simply descriptive history, operates with the conceptual stock-in-trade of its time’ ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 105). See in relation to Brunner Speer, Herrschaft und Legitimität. Landshut had, long before Brunner, given pride ofplace

63

64

in his treatment of Weber to the consequences of freedom and equality for the conceptual understanding of modern Miteinanderleben. In the ‘developed’ Western world, at any rate. For this reason, Weber’s categories are of particular use in the analysis of‘premodern’ civiliza¬ tions. I refer here only to the work of Shils and Eisenstadt. The essay on categories of 1913 did not just come out of the blue. It was not only contemporary German jurisprudence — divided as it was into the two tendencies of Roman and German law — that provided a schooling in the formation of meaningful concepts; the National¬ ökonomie of the time also played a part. W eber was a master of concepts—

66 67

but he was schooled by great masters. ‘The significance of Weber as a “classical” founder of sociology would not be altered in the slightest if the writings from the period before 1900 were, in considering his work, simply ignored’ —Zingerle, Max Webers historische Soziologie, p. 75. This is certainly a representative point of view, based no doubt on a general ignorance of these texts. The Kroner edition, widely used in Germany, has virtually nothing from this period, and it is only recently that some portion of it has been translated into English. Weber’ ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 455. Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 26-7. Since this view is, in this form, un¬

68

tenable, the standpoint from which Mommsen analyses Weber’s further political investigations is also in need of revision. A thorough stock-taking is required here. Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 49.

65

69

70 71 72

Some time later Mommsen also realized this; it must be said, however, aside from any criticism, that the 1959 dissertation is a great achieve¬ ment—cf. Mommsen, Max Weber. The situation was made worse rather than better in the revisions to the second edition, since a ‘universalhistorical’ conception was generally introduced into the work, a con¬ ception that is untenable at the level of the texts. Mommsen, Max Weber, Ch. 2. Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 27. Weber, ‘Dieländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 454. We often look in vain within Weber’s argument for that which he and his contemporaries regarded as self-evident. A decade after the report on rural labour organization it is possible to discover, stated quite simply and in passing, the decisive point: ‘Our national economic policy prohibits foreign corn, and then permits our own to be produced by hundreds of

Notes

219

thousands of imported foreigners without whom a greater part of the large enterprises in the east could not, according to their claims, any longer exist. A stroke of the pen on the part of the Russian government would then suffice to smash them to the ground; and I would like to know of a form of dependency on foreign countries which could match this in ominousness. A policy which attempts artificially to support these large enterprises makes us the slaves of Russian caprice’ (Max Weber, ‘Agrarstatistische und sozialpolitische Betrachtungen zur Fideikommißfrage in Preußen’, GASS p. 392). What is here at stake is not primarily the ‘ethnic’ or material problem ofPolonization, but the manner in which the social organization of the east contributes to the weakening of national politics, despite the leading role that the east still played in national politics. Weber is not so much concerned with ‘polonization’ as with the ‘polonizators’. 73

74 75

Weber’ ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, pp. 454-5. The constant theme ofW eber’s view of foreign policy is Russia’s insatiable hunger for land. As a trained agricultural historian this meant to Weber, in view of its lower ‘cultural’ level, primarily its extensive and relatively un¬ productive agriculture. Weber, ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 467. Weber, ‘Developmental tendencies’. This essay was so important to Weber and the editors of thejournals concerned that it appeared during the same year both in the Archiv für soziale Gesetzgeburg and the Preußische Jahrbücher. The version translated into English is based upon the second of these.

76

77 78 79

Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 76. Long before his brother Alfred had developed a theory of industrial location, Max Weber had outlined a theory of the location of political rule. This can also be regarded as a late contribution to the doctrine of mixed social and political forces, which was in the era of equality on the decline. Viktor Wember has drawn attention to the remnants of this in his book Verfassungsmischung und Verfassungsmitte, Berlin, 1977. Staatsräson expressed as an interest relates to the social physiognomy, or the ‘social countenance’ of the political body, a metaphor that was freely used by Weber and his con¬ temporaries. A final example of the genuine fertility of this political image (one also entirely influenced by Weber) can be found in J. A. Schumpeter, ‘Das soziale Antlitz des deutschen Reiches’, 1929, in his Aufsätze zur Soziologie, Tübingen, 1953, pp. 214—25. See also the essay written by Emil Lederer while Weber was still active as editor of the Archiv: ‘Zum sozialpsychischen Habitus der Gegenwart’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Bd. 46, 1918/19, pp. 114—39. Both Mommsen and Schluchter completely overlook this central concept of political space in theinterpretation ofW eber’s ‘reason of state”. So far as I know, the concept is never dealt with by them. Weber, ‘Developmental tendencies’, p. 178. Weber, ‘Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung’, p. 465. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 77.

220 80 81 82

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

83

Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 81. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 80. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 80. This is (in 1894!) the central thought of Weber the political scientist, from the viewpoint of which the usual categorizations (imperialist, nationalist, theorist of the Machtstaat, decisionist) are problematic, to put it mildly. Max Weber, Die Lage der Landarbeiter im ostelbischen Deutschland, Max

84

Weber Gesamtausgabe, Abt. I, Bd, 3.2, p. 921, Tübingen, 1984. Weber, ‘National state’, p. 437. The problem ofpolitical distribution or dispersion is described then as follows: ‘The manors ofthe East were the points of support for the ruling class of Prussia, which was scattered over the countryside, they were the social points of contact for the bureaucracy. But with their decline, with the disappearance of the social character of the old landed nobility, the centre of gravity of the political intelligentsia is shifting irresistibly towards the towns. This displace¬ ment is the decisive political aspect of the agrarian development of the

85 86 87 88 89

90

91

East’ (p. 444). Weber, ‘National state’, p. 439. Weber, ‘Die deutschen Landarbeiter’, p. 81. Weber, ‘Methodological introduction . . . concerning selection and adaptation’, p. 155. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 331. See Rehberg’s ‘ “Deutungswissen der Moderne” ’ and ‘ “Philo¬ sophische Anthropologie” ’, in which the question of the nature of man is shown to be the prime question of early German sociological thought. This is pithily expressed in the title to Tenbruck’s book. Die unbewältigten Sozialwissenschaßen oder die Abschaffung des Menschen, (The unmastered social sciences or the abolition of man), Graz 1983. Weber’s innermost inclinations are revealed with especial clarity in his sociology of education; it is to be regretted, therefore, that the only treatment of this so far is the (Frankfurtian) essay by U. Jaerisch, ‘Max Weber’s contribution to the sociology of culture’, in Stammer, Max Weber, 221-39. With the death ofPhilippovich, who was supposed to deliver thesecond section of Part III (‘Economy and society’) - ‘Course of development of economic and socio-political systems and ideals’ - Weber claimed in the summer of 1918 the title of Part III for himself, announcing his lectures in Vienna under this title. To be exact: ‘Economy and society positive critique of the materialist conception of history’. Marianne Weber used only the subtitle in her biography (p. 604), in this way providing abundant material for speculation by those researching on Weber. Given the situation ofWeber in the summer months in Vienna, it is possible to be certain of the veracity of Marianne’s statement that ‘he lectured, under the title “Positive critique of the materialistic concep¬ tion of history”, on his own research into the sociology of religion, and also his sociology of the state’; Weber would here have lectured on the ‘older’ section of ES. The emphasis in ‘positive critique’ would, in

Notes

221

contemporary usage, have been upon ‘positive’ (cf. Roscher und Knies, pp. 267 ff. in relation to Gotti).

92

Weber would not have chosen the subtitle without some coquetry: he knew that the male section of the audience would be primarily com¬ posed ofleftist intellectuals (Friedrich von Hayek told me that in Vienna Weber lectured mainly to audiences of young women, the men serving in the armed forces). There isno reason to believe that Weber engagedin a thorough debate with Marxism in these lectures. If he had wished to do that, he would have done it twenty years before. Certainly Vienna prompted Weber to a more rigorous discussion of socialism, as is shown by his ‘Speech for the general information of Austrian officers in Vienna, 1918’, in Eldridge, Max Weber, pp. 191-219. It is possible to speculate that, aside from actual conditions, it was the close contact with von Mises that reinforced his sceptical views. Anything of novelty here I owe to a conversation with Professor Hayek and to the work of Franz Ehrle, who has discovered documents relating to Weber’s stay in Vienna, long assumed to be lost. Written communication with Weber refers to these lectures solely under the title ‘Economy and society’. The construction of economic theory on the basis of the ‘economic action’ of the individual human subject, i.e. on a human praxis taking precedence over all theories of goods, values, prices, etc., was some¬ thing that united all tendencies in this discipline, divided, then as now, into a variety of distinct schools. This is particularly well-expressed by Gotti, who dubbed Nationalökonomie a ‘science of human actions’; ‘Needs, goods, value, economy, property, income, capital, labour, money, price, wage, interest, rent . . . without doubt these are permeated with the effort and worry of everyday life’. These are expressions of‘life in the raw’ and at the same time ‘specialist terms’ (Gotti, Herrschaft des Wortes, pp. 37, 69, 15). Gotti called National¬ ökonomie a ‘science of action’ (p. 71). And Weber sees it no differently. ‘For Nationalökonomie does have the task of investigating the shape taken by human action.’ This is in the 1908 essay ‘The doctrine of marginal utility and the “psychophysical” basic law’, WL, p. 389. The usage is the same in ES: ‘Social Economics considers actual human activities as they are conditioned by the necessity to take into account the facts of economic life’ (ES, p. 312, i.e. p. 1 of the old ms.). The first lines ofthe new manuscript have to be read in this light:‘Sociology . . . is a science concerned with the interpretive understanding of social action’ (ES, p. 4). Weberneverbroketheumbilicalcordconnectinghim to the viewpoint of the ‘practical sciences’; he never became a theoretician in the modern sense of the term, although he did make use of theoretical instruments such as the ideal type. Even Carl Menger opens his Principles of Economics with a discussion of human needs.

93 94

Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, pp. 64ff.; ES, pp. 63 ff. Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 65.

95

ES, pp. 551-2. Cf. forexamplethe'nobleman’ssenseofhonour’ (ES, p. 554); ‘discipline and method in the Lebensführung the clear aim of the

222

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction Berufsmensch’ (ES. p. 556); the influencing of Lebensführung through ‘institutional grace dispensation’ (ES, p. 561); Lebensführung and the

96 97 98 99 100

101 102

103 104

Lutheran faith (ES, p. 569), etc. ES, p. 312. ES, p. 314 - the term Fügsamkeit is more accurately rendered by the word ‘compliance’ than ‘obedience’ [trans.]. ES, pp. 941 ff. ES, pp. 302-5. ES, p. 307, adding ‘More on that separately’. These are the last two words of the ‘new manuscript’! The parallel section in the shocking and ‘ice-cold’ chapter 7, ‘The market: its impersonality and ethic’, from the ‘old manuscript’ (pp. 635—40) goes no further than the dryest concepts, no accident in my opinion. L. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, Oxford, 1936, p. 5. Since Weber’s interest in the process of rationalization arises from the consequences for human Lebensführung, this ‘process’ cannot be directly located within the concept of rationalization but rather within that acting immediately on Lebensführung, i.e. Disziplinierung (together with its synonyms Methodisierung, Schematisierung, etc.). The quintes¬ sence of the conclusion that Weber draws from his ‘universal historical’ investigations is to be found in the (quite misplaced) para. 3, section 5, of the Sociology of Domination: ‘The disciplining and objectification of forms of dominations’ (ES, pp. 1148-57 under a different title [trans.]). Winckelmann should have left this chapter — it belongs more to Dante’s Inferno than to a section on charisma - its old running title, ‘Legitimacy’. Then we would know where we were up to. Hintze saw in this ‘remarkable and somewhat problematic chapter’ the ‘torso of a section on modern state forms’ (O. Hintze, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Bd. 2, Göttingen, 1924, p. 139). A valuable contribution on the concept of discipline can be found in S. Breuer, ‘Die Evolution der Disziplin. Zum Verhältnis von Rationalität und Herrschaft in Max Webers Theorie der vorrationalen Welt’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 30, 1978, pp. 409-37. GARSI, p. 521.

105 106

One could say: what for Menschen is dedication, is for the Kultur¬ menschen the ‘taking of position’ (Stellungnahme). Weber must have sensed how this could easily degenerate into an easily cultivated ‘engagement’. It is in any case a surrogate for ‘dedication’. See for the usage then current K. Stavenhagen, Absolute Stellungnahme, Erlangen, 1925. All citations from the critique of Rachfahl, PE II, pp. 269 ff. PE II, p. 319.

107

This would have to be presented in a ‘biography of the work’.

108

Max Weber, ‘Zur Rechtfertigung Göhres’, Die Christliche Welt, Jg. 6,

109

1892, cols. 1104-9. Theimpulsefortheessay onGöhre’s Three Months in a Workshop is described in Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 133. Weber, ‘Rechtfertigung’, col. 1108.

Notes

223

110

PE, p. 182.

111

Max Weber, ‘Was heißt Christlich-Sozial?’, Die Christliche Welt, Jg. 8, 1894, cols. 472-77.

112

Weber, ‘Was heißt?’, col. 475.

113

Die Börse, Göttingener Arbeiterbibliothek, Bd. 1, Göttingen, 1894; cited here according to GASS. As in Weber’s doctoral dissertation and his Habilitationsschrift, early evidence can be found for the role that the family, that most personal of all relations, plays in Weber’s thought. The basic idea of all his ‘material investigations’, continually breaking the surface, is the dissolution of personal relations of piety (which is basically the nature of all traditional relations) and the ‘price’ paid for this — with uncertain and meagre compensation. The text on the Stock Exchange is one of the most delightful variations on the problem of personality in the whole work. ‘It depends upon the person’ (p. 285). Throughout Weber’s work this is the fixed point, whether it be a matter of prophets, officials, stock dealers or whoever. But a completely rationalized Lebensführung has no further need of persons. Somewhere, sometime, if it becomes too unbearable in the cage — in so far as this un¬ bearableness is still noticed, then all the more so. Then they cannot be magicked away and there are false prophets in abundance (or possibly a ‘falsely’ elected plebiscitary President of the Reich).

114 115 116 117

GASS, p.267. GASS, p.271. p.273. One of the most interesting new works on ethics, T. Redtdorff s Ethik, Stuttgart, 1980, asserts that ‘Ethics is the theory of human Lebensführung' (Bd. 1, p. 11). The central category of Weber’s work is thus also the central concept of his ethics. However much he liked, throughout his life, tangling with the ‘ethical cultural people’ (e.g. Friedrich Wilhelm Förster and his circle ‘whose views in many ways are as remote as could be from mine’ (‘Science as a vocation’, p. 145) from the Inaugural Address, in the text on the Stock Exchange and at regular intervals up to the two great lectures at the close ofhis work-he did in fact remain under the influence of this most intimate con¬ temporary opponent. One of the most widely read books of Förster, republished several times, was simply called: Lebensführung, Berlin, 1910. This also belongs to a biography of the work. For Tönnies’s relation to the ‘Society for Ethical Culture’ see A. Mitzman, Society and

118

119

Estrangement, New York, 1973, pp. 117 ff. ES, p. 585. This is in section 11 ofthe sociology of religion and is there¬ fore one of the preliminaries to the ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’. The same idea is in GARS I, p. 544. Walther was more perceptive than modern-day evolutionary interpreters (Habermas, Schluchter and, in an important respect, also Tenbruck): ‘His ideal developmental types do not possess the genuine property of“development”. Even his central concept of rationalization does not really mean a necessary form of development unravelling in

224

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction the form of human destiny, as Alfred Weber insisted. Max Weber is more concerned with specific-individual causes, here furthering and there hindering the realization of rationalization’ (Walther, ‘Max

120

Weber’, p. 26). WuG, p. 361, edited out of ES, p. 600. This phrase is one of the many announcements of the sociology of the state.

121 122

ES, p. 600. The best summary of the relation of Marx and Nietzsche is still that of Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 554, 571 ff. More detailed, and written with sympathy and understanding, is E. Fleischmann’s ‘De Weber ä Nietzsche’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 5, 1964, pp. 190-238.

123

Max Weber, review of P. Lotmar, Der Arbeitsvertrag, Archiv für soziale

124

Gesetzgebung und Statistik, Bd. 17, 1902, pp. 723—34. Since Tönnies is out offashion recent German sociology has tried to put as much distance as possible between his famous conceptual couple and Weber’s usage. There is no need of this: in so doing, one only denies oneself one of the most important sources for the understanding of Weber. Weber’s reformulation corresponds only to the orientation of his sociology towards ‘social action’. By contrast with any distancing, I see in Weber more a radicalization and universalization of Tönnies’s view. Moreover: Tönnies was a socialist and at heart an optimist. Weber was neither the one nor the other. See W. J. Cahnmann, ‘Tönnies and Weber. Comparisons and excerpts’ in his F. Tönnies. A New Evaluation, Leiden, 1973, pp. 257—83, and also his ‘Tönnies and Weber: a rejoinder’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 22, 1981. pp. 154-7.

125

When examined more closely it become apparent that the most wellknown ofWeber’s conceptual series, the triadic types oflegitimation, is in fact arranged in a rigorously polarized manner: obedience with respect to ‘legally established’ materially impersonal order' or with respect to ‘the person of the master appointed by tradition’ or the ‘charismatic’leader. . . by virtue ofpmomt/trust’. This is the triad in its final form (ES, pp. 24 ff., but is to be encountered at a number of other points. Weber’s terminology exactly follows Tocqueville -‘this immense social power’, the modern institution of the state- while distinguishing itself in origin and character from the older political order: ‘it is not

126 127

bound to tradition; it is impersonal; it is not called the king, but the State’ (Anden Regime, Oeuvres Completes, Bd. 2, Paris, 1952, p. 213). The quotations come from the preface to the proposed survey of the press; see Essay 1, pp. 55.

128

As put by Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie, p. 130, in relation to the closing passages of‘Science as a vocation’. WL, p. 489; cf. WL, p. 532.

129

Both sets of students’ notes from the Munich lectures a mounced under the title ‘Sociology of the state’ demonstrate that nothing more was to be expected from this quarter. Winckelmann, in collecting together a

Notes

130 131 132

225

Staatssoziologie, turns out to have made an unfortunate error. Weber’s last letter to Marianne, 19 May 1920, underlines this: ‘nothing new here; lectures overflowing - follow my nose to begin with (all the same stuff, charisma etc.)’; see Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 635. GARS I, p.537. GARS I, pp. 570 ff. SeeJ. Kocka, ‘Kontroversen über Max Weber’, Neue Politische Literatur, Jg. 21, 1976, p. 281, who has rightly pointed out that ‘controversies around Weber are frequently at the same time disputes on pressing contemporary issues’. Indeed! But what are the ‘pressing issues’ of a modern social science hounded by fashion and wrangling over research grants? All too often those of the labour market and hardly ‘cultural problems’ in Max Weber’s sense.

133 134

Weber,‘National State’, p. 325. Thus the task for the future does not consist in the reconstruction of Weber’s anthropology. It does not exist, and would be a creation of the reconstructor. It is more a question of closely specifying the radius of the concepts — not least ‘Mensch’, ‘Persönlichkeit’, ‘Kulturmensch’ — which Weber used to identify the relations of ‘personality and life order’. Important here is Henrich, Einheit; and this can be compared with E. B. Portis, ‘Max Weber’s theory of personality’, Sociological

135

Inquiry, vol. 48, 1978, pp. 113—20. Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 112.

Essay 3 1

2 3

4

5

Tenbruck, ‘Die Genesis der Methodologie Max Webers’. This is particularly true of the early economic writings, which are left to political historians on account of their lack of sociological usefulness. A real change is marked by L. A. Scaffs ‘Weber before Weberian Sociology’. A useful attempt to provide an overview is to be found in Zingerle, Max Webers historische Soziologie. Virtually a final statement: T. Parsons, ‘On the relation of the theory of action to Max Weber’s “verstehende Soziologie”.’ in W. Schluchter (ed.), Verhalten, Handeln und System, Frankfurt, 1980, pp. 150 ff. Most recently an interpretation of Weber on the basis of his ‘founding’ and ‘legislative role’ - S. S. Wolin, ‘Max Weber: legitimation, method and the politics of theory’, Political Theory, vol. 9, 1981, pp. 401—24. Weber’s anxiousness for originality is very well shown in a passage from a letter to Georg von Below (23 August 1905): ‘Troeltsch’s impressive work might in many points be traced back to promptings of our conversations and my essays (perhaps more than he knows) - but he

6 7

is the theological expert. ’ (Merseburg collection.) See the two preceding essays. John Stuart Mill’s pet project of ‘ethology’ (the science of character

226

8

9

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction formation) is squarely in this political—philosophical context. For the British debates concerning the priority of‘social sciences’ or ‘sociology’ over ‘political science’ see P. Abrams, The Origins of British Sociology 1834-1914Chicago, 1968. Aboveall, however, seeS. Collini, D. Winch andj. Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics, Cambridge, 1983. Treitschke’s Habilitationsschrift on Die Gesellschaftswissenschaft (1859) sought primarily to defend the old unity of politics. In relation to this, see the various writings of M. Riedel, in particular ‘Der Staatsbegriff der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung des 19. Jahrhunderts in seinem Verhältnis zur klassisch-politischen Philosophie’, Der Staat, vol. 2

16 17

(1963), pp. 41 ff. Weber, Jugendbriefe, p. 3. Weber, Jugendbriefe, p. 293. Cited in Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 671. After the Bremen plan fell through, he wrote to Hermann Baumgarten regretfully that it would have been very useful for him to have learnt ‘for a few years the practice of large-scale trading, particularly in this position, which would have involved a continuing engagement in publicistic activity of a scientific nature’ (Max Weber to Hermann Baumgarten, 3January 1891, Jugendbriefe, p. 326). Among the intellectual connections that are not yet closely investigated are those to the work of Rudolf von Ihering. To call Weber’s conception of law ‘positivist’ is not adequate. Max Weber to Hermann Baumgarten, 3 January 1891, Jugendbriefe, p. 326. More modestly, he wrote to AdolfWagner after the assumption of the Freiburg chair: ‘I regard myself as a beginner on nine-tenths of the area that I have to cover’ (Max Weber to Adolph Wagner, 14 March 1895, Merseburg collection). Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 202. Max Weber to his mother, 26July 1893, Jugendbriefe, p. 372.

18

Clearly argued in L. A. Scaff, ‘From political economy to political

19 20

sociology. Max Weber’s early writings’, in R. M. Glassman (ed.). Max Weber’s Political Sociology, Westport, Conn., 1984, pp. 87-8. Cf. here W.J. Mommsen, Max Weber, pp. 35—6. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 200.

10 11 12 13

14

15

21

Max Weber to Robert Michels, 9 December 1912: ‘I have left the “sociologists’ ” committee. In the long run my nerves cannot stand struggling with such cloying insects as Herr G.’ To Michels on 20 December 1913: ‘Beware of giving a paper on the Sociological Society, since I no longer belong to it.' (Merseburg collection.)

22

ES, Vol. l,pp. 12-13.

23

‘Sozialökonomik’ (first employed by H. Dietzel in Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 1883) seemed to Weber the best and most modern expression for something that, at the time, possessed no unitary terminology - without its leading to particular misunderstandings. He suggested to the publisher that the third section of the Grundriß

Notes

227

‘ Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’ (of which Weber had taken on the second part ‘Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte’) should bear the title ‘Social conditions of the economy’ (‘Geselleschaftliche Bedingungen der Wirtschaft’). The publisher ignored this and retained ‘Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’; but it makes clear how one should read the ‘special sociologies’ of Economy and Society. IfJ. Winckelmann added as a subtitle ‘Grundriß der verstehen¬ den Soziologie’ to the later editions, then at any rate he was aware that this did not correspond to Weber’s intentions. During the preliminary work on the Weber edition, Winckelmann examined the correspon¬ dence between Weber and the publisher Siebeck, and it became clear

24

25

26

that Weber referred as a shorthand to ‘my “sociology” ’ when what is today known as Economy and Society was being discussed, but emphasized that this could by no means be the actual title (Max Weber to Siebeck, 6 November 1913). G. von Schulze-Gävernitz, ‘Max Weber als Nationalökonom und Politiker’, in M. Palyi (ed.), Erinnerungsgabe für Max Weber, Vol. 1, Munich, 1923, pp. x—xxii. ‘Indeed, he was not really an economist at all. In an atmosphere not disturbed by professional cross-currents, it would be the obvious thing to label him a sociologist.’ J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, London, 1954, p. 819. Schumpeter, History. In the Merseburg collection are copies of two letters from Weber to Robert Liefmann, which give unambiguous clues to the innermost interests ofWeber, even during the whole ofhis ‘later’ work. In reply to Liefmann’s accusation that Weber had done so little for economic theory, Weber replied on 12 December 1919: ‘I regret myself that I have been able to do so little, or virtually nothing, for theory, but one cannot do everything. I do not hold theory in any less esteem. The other things also need to be done’. What ‘other things’? A letter dated 3 March 1920 makes more clear Weber’s ultimate interest (cf. the ‘Vorbemerkung’ to RS, Vol. 1); here, there is a more concrete response to Liefmann’s accusation that Weber was more interested in ‘special’ and not ‘theoretical’ relations: ‘ Yes if one calls the question: why only in the West does rational (profitable) capitalism emerge, a ‘special’ relation? There have to be people to look into this question. ’ A similar line can be seen in Weber’s letter of 10 April 1919 to Hans Ehrenberg, in which he writes that ‘I yearn for the simplicity and massive grasp of realities — not like you for the penetration of the “idea”, which for the moment must (unfortunately!) be regarded as a “luxury” of “low marginal utility” ’ (Merseburg collection). All that is at stake here is to understand what Weber means by ‘realities’. In any case: not desires (‘Wiinschbarkeiten’) in the sense of Nietzsche’s scornful expression.

27 28

Weber, ‘National State’, p. 438. On this whole problematic see Collini et al., That Noble Science of Politics, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 3 ff. At root this was also the theme ofW. Hennis, Politik und praktische Philosophie, Neuwied, 1963.

228 29

30

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction Weber, Roscher and Knies, pp. 53, 210, 236. Weber called this essay his ‘Seuferaufsatz’ which means literally ‘essay full of sighs (Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 278). Weber characterized the science that he practised as one concerning human action or ‘Sich-Verhalten’, in contrast to ‘dogmatic’ science.

31 32 33

Collini et ai, Noble Science. Collini et al., pp. 312, 332-3. In Freiburg this faculty coup was the work of the newly appointed Max Weber. See, for Weber’s period in Freiburg, the detailed dissertation of F. Biesenbach, Die Entwicklung der Nationalökonomie an der Universität

34 35

Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 36. The ‘Gutachten’ is printed in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 102—39; the relevant passage is on p. 127.

36 37 38

Weber, ‘National State’, p. 437. Weber, ‘National State’, p. 438. ‘Smith’s system should really be called “atavistic cosmopolitanism’’, for it is not only directed against all national bonds, but in addition it divides all individuals into two parts, into producers and consumers.' This pregnant formulation by List in 1843 is cited by Hans Gehrig in the foreword to his edition of F. List, Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie, Jena, 1950, p. xxviii. F. List, The National System of Political Economy, London, 1916, p. 97. List, National System, pp. 97-8 [transl. revised], W. Roscher, Grundriß zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswirtschaß. Nach geschichtlicher Methode, Göttingen, 1843, p. iv. Cited from H. Gerhrig’s edition, Jena, 1922. Hildebrand, Nationalökonomie, p. 22 (against Smith) and p. 87 (against the socialists). First edition, 1853; second revised and expanded edition, Brunswick, 1883. Citations here are from the second edition. Weber wras nineteen when it appeared and was at this time attending Knies’s lectures.

Freiburgi. Br. 1768-1896Freiburg i. Br., 1969, pp. 200 ff.

39 40 41 42 43 44

45

46 47 48

Cf. the references to the ‘Grundriß’ of the first book of the lecture course ‘Allgemeine (theoretische) Nationalökonomie’ (Summer Semester 1898) in W. Hennis, ‘Max Weber’s “central question”,’ see note 99, p. 207. Knies, Die politische Ockonomie, p. xi. ibid., pp. 436ff. The most impressive treatment of the ‘heteronomy of aims’ is to be found in Weber’s ‘intermediate reflections’ (‘Zwischenbetrachtung’) in the first volume of the Religionssoziolgie. Two letters in the Merseburg collection make clear much more plainly what Weber had in mind. He wrote to Sombart on 8 February 1897, expressing thanks: ‘You have more or less arrived at the old liberal ideal of the “greatest welfare of the greatest number” and suffer from the optical illusion thereby to have steered clear of the heteronomy of ideals. It is not possible that this is your final word on the subject.’ On 2 April 1913 he wrote from Ascona

Notes

229

to Robert Wilbrandt: ‘I believe that our views would diverge at the point of involving ageneral theory of “means”. In the sphere of values I consider that irreconcilable conflict, i.e. the constant necessity to make compromises, is dominant; nobody, not even revealed religion, can

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67

68

seek to forcibly decide how such compromises are to be arrived at. . . What is for example “human economy”?. . . What human qualities are to be developed through this? Not only physical ones, of course. But what qualities of the soul? Perhaps only those of anti-economic nature and effect?’ Weber, ‘National State’, p. 437. ‘Grundriß’ (as in n. 45 above), p. 2. Weber, ‘National State’, p. 437 [et passim to fn. 64]. ibid., p. 428. ibid., p. 435. ibid., p. 436. ibid., p. 437 [my emphasis, W.H.]. ibid ibid., p. 439. ibid., p.439-40. ibid., p. 440. ibid., p. 437 [my emphasis, W.H.]. ibid. ibid, [my emphasis, W.H.]. ibid., pp. 437-8. ibid., p. 438. For example Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 41. Weber ‘National State’, p. 448. These questions were central to the project directed by Istvan Hont at King’s College Research Centre from 1978—84. A first impressive result: I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (eds), Wealth and Virtue, Cambridge, 1983. Cf. Weber’s reference to the fate of the Indians in Utah: ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 51.

69 70

71

72 73 74

Whether in Carl Schmitt’s sense, or Reinhart Koselleck’s ‘countercon¬ cepts’—cf. R. Koselleck, Futures Past, Cambridge, Mass., 1985. Cf. the reference to the ‘bitter conflict about the apparently most elementary problems of our discipline’ at the beginning of the essay on objectivity. The English debate on the ‘dismal science’ became em¬ bittered over the very same ‘anthropological’ questions. I cite here, according to the second (1883) edition, the year in which Weber intensively studied economics; the passage cited is from p. 1. It should be noted that this does not appear in the first edition of 1854. G. Schmoller, Über einige Grundfragen der Socialpolitik und der Volkswirt¬ schaftslehre, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 337-8. Schmoller, Grundfragen, p. 68. Weber, Roscher and Knies; for the background to the essay see Marianne Weber, Max Weber, pp. 259, 325 ff.

230

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

75

Max Weber, Jugendbriefe, pp. 41,71.74.

76 77

Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 95. This is also shown by a letter to Marianne relating to Knies’s death. Weber wrote on 9 August 1900 from a sanatorium in Konstanz: ‘I first heard of Knies’s death from the newspapers; I wrote to the family following your letter confirming his death. It would in any event be difficult to make a memorial speech for the 77 year-old-man. I am really glad to be away’. And further: ‘I am on the other hand sorry that I was not able to devote a few words to Bismarck in my lectures. ’ (Merseburg collection.) A peculiarly cold tone, even if we remember that Weber

78 79

was ill. Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 237. I ask that the restriction be noted: Weber’s socioeconomic education. It is not claimed here that Weber was a ‘student’ of Knies and only to be understood in terms ofKnies! But Weber received from Knies, leading proponent of the ‘Historical School’ as he was, his first instruction in the material of Nationalökonomie and was provided with the perspective of the School, a perspective that Weber never renounced. Knies gave Weber the ‘material’ for the direction that he took; the ‘spirit’ came from a far more important event - later it will be necessary to discuss Nietzsche. [Addendum, December, 1985] In November of 1985 the author was able to examine the ‘Wissenschaftliche Manuskripte Max Webers’ (Rep. 92-Nachlaß Max Weber Nr. 31, Bd. 1-6) in the Weber papers at the Zentrales Staatsarchiv Merseburg, which were not accessible on the author’s first visit in March 1985. First of all, a look at these materials makes abundantly clear the basis of political economy/political science on which Weber’s work was founded. With the exception of the special studies on the sociology of religion, it was during the period when he was lecturing at Freiburg and Heidelberg that he acquired mastery of the materials (at least in their basic aspects), which then flowed into Economy and Society. Also the ‘methodological’ issues are already present as questions — even if they are not worked through with such conceptual stringency as they were from 1902. The thesis of this chapter on the pre-eminent significance of Karl Knies in Weber’s scholarly development is confirmed in the Nachlaß (Nr. 31, Bd. 6, ‘notes’), where we find excerpts from Knies’s main work, which Weber had taken with painstaking care. (Weber had these excerpts carefully transcribed (Blatt 76-111). In another envelope (Blatt 112) are more excerpts under the heading ‘Knies I: Maxims and Ethics’.) On the back of the excerpts Weber has written down the key headings of the book: for example, for p. 303 of Knies, ‘conflict of obligations’ (Pflichtenkollision) for p. 42, ‘setting of main question’; for p. 209, ‘no theodicy’. This places it beyond question that Weber had studied Knies most carefully. It also confirms the hypothesis (see note 86, below) of the particular significance of Knies’s main work on finance, Geld un Kredit. This work was a fundamental text for Weber’s extensively

Notes

80

81

231

probing lectures on ‘finance theory’ (Finanzwissenschaft) (Nachlaß Nr. 31, Bd. 4) and the lecture on ‘Money, Banking and the Stock Exchange’ (Nr. 31, Bd. 3). The lecture notes also confirm Weber’s intensive pre¬ occupation with Marx and Marxism, in particular the lecture course on the ‘labour question’ (Nr. 31, Bd. 5). K. Knies, Die politische Oekonomie vom geschichtlen Standpuncte, 2nd edn, Brunswick, 1883. Page references in brackets refer to this work. Dealt with in more detail in K. Knies, Geld und Kredit, 2 vols, Berlin, 1873-9; see Vol. 1, p. vii-viii; in more detail, pp. 117 ff. It is clear from the bibliography in the 1898 ‘Grundriß’ that Weber was familiar with Marx’s theory of value. In a note to paragraph 3.3 a special ‘critique of the value theory of the Classical School and of Socialism’ is announced; following a long list of texts relating to the most recent theory of value (Menger, Böhm-Bawerk and many others), there is: ‘from the older theory’, refer to: Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. T.

82 83 84 85

86

87

Whereby the expression ‘politische Oekonomie’ must also mean for him ‘sociale Oekonomie’. Knies employed this parallel concept to ‘capitalism’, which was usual in English discussions up to the 1840s. Cf. n. 68, above. The biographical impulse for Weber’s interest in the sociology of religion has already been intensively studied, in the greatest detail, by Weiss, Max Webers, pp. 105 ff. (the pious mother, the Roman monastery library, the course ofjellinek’s ‘human rights’, etc.); most recently also by G. Poggi, Calvinism, pp. 1 ff. Since the basic character of Weberian sociology as a sociology oriented to the historical con¬ ditions of human action and its consequences has not been sufficiently recognized, the origins of Weber’s interest in religion (in which he previously declared himself to be ‘unmusical’ or ‘tone deaf) must also have remained obscure until now. On the question of interest and money-lending, see the detailed account in Knies, Geld und Kredit, Vol. 1, part 2, Berlin, 1876, pp. 328 ff., and Vol. 2, part 2, 1879. This second half bears the subtitle ‘The nature of interest and the conditional causes of its level’. Only lack of space prevents the documentation of a filiation, almost

89 90

sentence for sentence, in Weber’s work. K. Knies, Die Eisenbahnen und ihre Wirkungen, Brunswick, 1853; idem, Der Telegraph als Verkehrsmittel, Tübingen, 1857. SeeHennis, ‘Max Weber’s “central question”,’ Essay 1, pp. 55 ff. Weber’s central concern in the ‘evaluation’ of the East Elbian move¬

91

ment of rural workers; cf. the previous essay, pp. 74 ff. ‘Grundriß’, paragraph 2 ‘Begriff der Wirtschaft’.

88

92 93

Weber, Roscherand Knies, p. 98. Weber, Roscherand Knies, pp. 202-5: ‘This claim, as we can see, is very close to the knowledge . . .’ (p. 202); for Knies, ‘homogeneity is the primary element’ (p. 203); his substantive ideas are ‘quite in the spirit of

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

232

Romanticism’ (pp. 204—5); the‘implicit foundation ofKnies’sbook’ (p. 94 95

96 97

98

205). Weber, Roscher and Knies, pp. 206-7. Thus, in a crystal clear and ironically hostile reference to Hegel and all his ‘direct descendants and distant relatives’ (Knies, Die politische Oekonomie, pp. 368-9). Particularly annoying is the confusion of Weber’s lifelong scorn for the proponents of‘ethical culture’ such as Friedrich W. Förster (whose triviality was as distasteful to Weber as was the ‘vulgarity’ of the ‘pleasure principle’) with the understanding Knies had for the idea of‘ethical science’. There is not the slightest connection between them, moreover, nobody had so clearly analysed the non¬ sense of quasi-natural economic ‘laws’ as had Knies (ibid., pp. 24 ff., 351 ff). In his critique of the ‘stages theory’ being acceptable as an ‘ideal type’, Weber merely took further that which had already been carried a long way by Knies (ibid., pp. 358 ff.). Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 205. Marianne Weber, Max Weber, pp. 326-7. Supplemented in Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 301, following reports from Marianne: ‘The illness has not in any way shaken his fixed intellectual form. . . . He has not as a result of the illness “changed direction” —to “deeper” thoughts, or ones previously hidden from him . . . He now has time to elaborate in all directions on his older perspectives: to China and India even. But the perspective of those analytical religious studies, which are now certainly pursued universalistically, are neither surprising to him nor to her. When she met him as a 26-year-old they were already there in place. ’ There is, in my opinion, not the slightest reason to cast doubt on the correctness of this view of the ‘biography of the work’. Only a mis¬ placed sociological ‘patriotism’ has to insist on the ‘completely fresh start’. A basis for an understanding of other aspects of Weber’s debt to previous developmen ts of Nationalökonomie can be found in H. Winkel, Die deutsche Nationalökonomie im 19. Jahrhundert, Darmstadt, 1977. This is true above all for Weber’s emphatic affirmation of the educative task of political economy and directly related to this (and not at all opposed!) is the typical training in powers ofjudgement (these are learnt, and not simply given) resulting from involvement with the issues of economic policy.

99

From the ‘Geleitwort’ on taking over the Archiv in 1904: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaß und Sozialpolitik, Bd. 19, 1904, p. ii [my emphasis,

100

A closer exposition of the context in which the so-called ‘Sociology of Music’ relates to Weber’s basic problematic (‘Why only us?’) is awaited from Christoph Braun.

101 102 103

von Schelting, Max Webers Wissenschafislehre; Henrich, Einheit. Tenbruck, ‘Die Genesis der Methodologie Max Webers’. ibid., p. 576.

104

ibid., pp. 580-1.

W.H],

Notes 105

106 107

233

The primary intention of this essay is to point out the fundamentally traditional features of the Inaugural Address. There can be no question of a ‘break’ with the Historical School; the critical discussion remains within the bounds of the School. See for further details W. Hennis, ‘Max Weber in Freiburg’, Freiburger Universitätsblätter, no. 86, December 1984, pp. 33-45. Tenbruck, ‘Die Genesis der Methodologie Max Webers’, p. 589. It is to be hoped that Tenbruck’s wish to make the social scientist Weber a man of‘history’ will not lead to any confusions. Certainly Eduard Meyer’s Anthropologie was for Weber a stimulating book. A glance at Weber’s own copy (in the private possession ofDr Max Weber-Schäfer, Konstanz) shows that Weber took from it only factual material relating to antiquity. The anthropological-characterological interest of Weber was developed in the context of the discipline within which the Tenbruck of 1959 still knew how to interpret Weber: Nationalökonomie - and in clear recognition of the debates over method current at the time. At stake here is the specifically ‘economic’ (and this does not simply mean acquisitive) conduct of the whole human being, in contrast with

108 109 110

the calculations of homo oeconomicus in ‘economistic’ theory. Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 87. ibid., p. 89 [my emphasis, W.H.]. ibid., pp. 51—2.

111 112

ibid., p. 52. W. Roscher, System der Volkswirtschaft, Vol. 1, Stuttgart, 1854, p. 33; also Knies, Die politische Oekonomie, pp. 42 ff. The specific task of propagating the doctrine of Nationalökonomie is something that is assumed in all the textbooks. The particular emphasis on the value of statistics can also be explained by the cameralistic-political tradition. Both of Weber’s principal teachers — Knies and Meitzen - were

113

Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 57.

114 115

ibid., p. 86. ibid, [my emphasis, W.H.].

116

ibid.

recognized masters of statistics.

Essay 4 1 2

The story is reported in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 554 ff. A (bibliographical) presentation of the import of Nietzsche’s work is presented by R. F. Krummel, Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist. - Aus¬ breitung und Wirkung des Nietzscheschen Werkes im deutschen Sprachraum bis zum Todesjahr des Philosophen: Ein Schrifttumsverzeichnis der Jahr 1867-1900, Berlin, 1974. See also R. Hinton Thomas, Nietzsche in German Politics and Society 1890—1918, Manchester, 1983. With Ludwig Klages (‘Nietzsche’s psychological achievements’) a useful source for the revelation ofWeber’s interest in Nietzsche is H. Prinzhorn, Nietzsche und

234

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction das 20. Jahrhundert, Heidelberg, 1928 (Prinzhom had access to the Weber circle), and Prinzhom’s ‘preceding foreword’ to A. Seidel, Bewußtsein als

3

Verhängnis, (ed. H. Prinzhom) Bonn, 1927, pp. 7—68. To be exact: the name ‘Nietzsche’ occurs once — in the title of Löwith s well-known book, From Hegel to Nietzsche, which is cited on p. 492. Since Bendix treats as significant the view that his ‘intellectual portrait’ (the subtitle of the American edition of 1960) set itself certain limits, it should be noted that his 1977 edition includes a new Chapter 15 (‘Max Weber’s image of society’) which, in Bendix’s own words, ‘seeks to place Weber’s work - on the basis of the interpretation offered here - in the context ofEuropean intellectual history’ (pp. li ff). Here also Nietzsche is never mentioned. This is a simple observation and no criticism of Bendix’s achievement; although while each new approach to Weber’s work has to begin from the research done since 1945 (American research in particular), such an approach must nevertheless be conscious of the idiosyncratic conditions under which the post-1945 reception ofWeber’s work occurred. Some of the partly conscious, mostly unconscious con¬ cealments, manipulation, abbreviation and inversion that has taken place is dealt with in S. Turner and R. A. Factor, Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value, London, 1984. The most fantastic story that the

4 5

two authors uncover is the role played by Weber in the thought ofHansJ. Morgenthau, the most influential scholar in the domain of American foreign policy during the last fifty years. There is thus a second son of Max Weber (legitimate or illegitimate?) besides Carl Schmitt. Bendix and Roth, Scholarship and Partisanship, pp. 22^1. The sole special study— largely ignored by international research — is that ofE. Fleischmann, ‘De Weber ä Nietzsche’, EuropeanJournal of Sociology, vol. 5, 1964, pp. 190-238, to which recently has been added the impres¬ sive work of R. Eden, Political Leadership and Nihilism - A Study of Weber and Nietzsche, Tampa, 1983. Primarily interested in Weber’s concept of democratic leadership, Eden carefully and skilfully investigates the influence of Nietzsche even on Weber’s religious writings. Nietzsche’s significance for Weber is also exploited in the still unpublished Habilitationsschriftby M. Zängle on Weber’s sociology of the state, as well as in D. J. K. Peukert, ‘ “ Die letzten Menschen”. - Beobachtungen zur Kultur¬ kritik im Geschichtsbild Max Webers’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Jg. 12, 1986, pp. 425—42. Horst Baier also emphasizes the urgency of the thematic influence of Nietzsche on Weber: ‘Die Gesellschaft —ein langer Schatten des toten Gottes. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Entstehung der Soziologie aus dem Geist der decadence’, Nietzsche Studien, 10-11, 1982, pp. 1-22. Important points are made inj. Weiß’s excellent essay, ‘Max Weber’. Nietzsche’s importance is more strongly emphasized in W. J. Mommsen’s latest work, principally in his important essay ‘Die antinomische Struktur des politischen Denkens Max Webers’, Historische Zeitschrift, Bd. 233, 1981, pp. 35 ff., especially pp. 38, 62 f. K. Lichtblau (who has already published an excellent study of the influences of Nietzsche on Simmel, ‘ “Pathos der Distanz” - Präliminarien zur

Notes

6

235

Nietzsche Rezeption bei Georg Simmel’, in H. J. Dahme and O. Rammstedt (eds) Georg Simmel und die Moderne, Frankfurt, 1984, pp. 231—81) is preparing a more thorough study of the influence of Nietzsche on German sociology and social science at the turn of the century. I was unable to examine the dissertation of W. Shapiro, ‘The Nietzschean roots of Max Weber’s social science’, Cornell, NY, 1978. T. Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Frankfurt, 1956, pp. 237 ff.

7

The extent of‘parallelisms’ cannot be introduced here. In principle, this theme goes far beyond present limits. The author here assumes responsi¬ bility for proving this ‘quite fundamental “attuning”, ’ which can only be done in the form of a monograph.

8

See, most recently, M. Riesebrodt, ‘From patriarchalism to capitalism’, Economy and Society, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 476—501. See, for example, Bendix and Roth, Scholarship and Partisanship, p. 23: ‘Albeit we cannot date Weber’s first reading of Nietzsche’. Weber,‘deutsche Landarbeiter’. Weber, ‘deutsche Landarbeiter’, p. 80. Letter of 17 May 1895 (Merseburg collection), cited in Mommsen, Max Weber, p. 39. Amusing examples in the reminiscences of Hermann Glöckner, Heidelberger Bilderbuch, Bonn, 1969, pp. 100 ff. The meeting took place in Frankfurt on 16 and 17 May 1894. F. Boese’s Geschichte des Vereins für Sozialpolitik 1891-1932 informs us of the mode of procedure in these meetings. The contributor and participants in discussion were given the record of the meeting for correction. The report was issued by the publisher on 16 August 1894. (These details are taken from the prospectus for the Gesamtausgabe published by J. C. B.

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18

Mohr in May 1981). Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 138. Printed in entirety in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 644—8. In Marianne Weber’s biography Otto Gross appears as ‘Dr. X’ or as the ‘adherent of Freud’. In the possession of the Max Weber Arbeitsstelle, Munich. In ‘Friedrich Nietzsche. - Eine moralphilosophische Silhouette’, Zeitschrifi für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, Nr. 107, 1896, pp. 202 -15. Without being aware of this formulation the first two essays above (first published in 1982 and 1984) sought to demonstrate that this was the heart of Weber’s work. This ‘core’ grows out of the specifically German question posed by the ‘cultural sciences’, as the last stage of‘practical’ or ‘moral’ sciences, concerning the fate of Man under the conditions of modern ‘civilization’. This then defines the Nationalökonomie of the German Historical School as a ‘science of Man’ just as much as Nietzsche’s concern with the ‘total degeneration of Man’ (Beyond Good

19

and Evil, Chapter 2, Section 26). In Deutsche Literaturzeitung, No. 42, 23 October 1897, cols 1645-51 (Review of Ferdinand Tönmes, Der Nietzsche-Kultus, Leipzig, 1897).

20

Cf. here J. Zander, ‘Ferdinand Tönnies und Friedrich Nietzsche’ in L.

236

21

22

23

24 25

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction Clausen and F. U. Pappi (eds) Ankunft bei Tönnies, Kiel, 1981, pp. 185— 227. A. Riehl, Friedrich Nietzsche. — Der Künstler und der Denker, Stuttgart, 1897, p. 54. During the Freiburg period, Weber had a friendly relation¬ ship with Riehl. He quite certainly therefore had a part in the creation of the book on Nietzsche. The Webers developed a lifelong friendship with Riehl’s niece Frieda, who married Otto Gross. Lawrence Scaff has already illuminated the circle around the Evangelisch-sozialer Kongreß and Riehl as mediator of Nietzsche in his article ‘Weber before Weberian sociology’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 35, 1984, pp. 190—215, 196, 212. We await from Scaff a treatment of the ‘cultural problems’ and the manner in which they determined Weber’s work. I have to thank Professor Scaff for many new ideas prompted by a seminar that we jointly conducted on these questions during the winter semester of 1984—5. An important yet almost forgotten source: E. Hammacher, Hauptfragen der modernen Kultur, Leipzig, 1914 — by ‘the young Bonn philosopher who fell in France, whom I would like to be able to call my posthumous friend’ (Mann, Betrachtungen, p. 232). This change can be located with philological exactitude between Weber’s essay from 1892 ‘Zur Rechtfertigung Göhres’, Die Christliche Welt. Jg. 6, No. 48, 24 November 1892, cols 1104—9, and the contribution to the Evangelisch-sozialer Kongreß in the summer of 1894. In 1892 he states: ‘It is one of the most bitter portions of our generation that at the point of entry to our life’s path there stands that resignation which was imposed upon our fathers at a time oflife more fitting to natural temperament. We are epigones of a great period and it is not possible for us through pre¬ cocious reflection to reawake that impetuous urge of idealism requiring those very illusions destroyed in us by a clear knowledge of the sober laws of social life’ (col. 1109). In 1894, on the other hand, he states the following: ‘In the Welcoming Address given yesterday by Naumann we heard an infinite desire for human happiness which certainly inspired us all, but exactly on the basis of our pessimistic viewpoint we (and myself personally) can attain a perspective which seems to me incomparably more idealistic. I believe that we must renounce the creation of positive feelings of happiness through a particular body of social legislation. We want something different, and can only want something different: we wish to conserve and support that which is valuable in men . . .’ (p. 80). Here the impact of‘strong pessimism’, the emphasis on that which is wished for, the subjectivity of‘evaluation’, the despising of all ‘propping up’ and the responsibility for succeeding generations all play a determin¬ ing role-one year before the Inaugural Address. On the Freiburg period, see the account in Marianne Weber’s biography and W. Hennis’s essay ‘Max Weber in Freiburg’, Freiburger Universitäts¬ blätter, H. 12, 1984, pp. 33-45. Cf. ES, pp. 495—500; GARS I, pp. 237 ff., especially p. 241. The 1913 version is to be found in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 102-39; the 1917 version in WL, pp. 489-540; this passage is in WL, p. 517.

Notes

237

26

Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 127.

27

Cf. ‘Max Weber’s “Central Question”,’pp. 36 ff.

28

PE, p. 182. ThereareclearechoesfromthetitleofNietzsche’s TheBirthof Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (in the 1886 edition, The Birth of Tragedy. Or: Hellenism and Pessimism) in Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ oj Capitalism (the quotation marks were omitted in GARS I). The similarities of these two titles, which were also both complete ‘didactic’ failures, was brought to my attention by Mazzino Montinari, who con¬ tributed to the discussion of this paper when it was presented for the first

29

time on 26 September 1985 at a series of lectures organized at the University ofTrient on ‘Max Weber and the social sciences of his time’. The next summary of the personal and academic background of the Protestant Ethic, but without any mention of Nietzsche, is to be found in Weiß, Max Webers Grundlegung. G. Poggi’s Calvinism and the Protestant Spirit. Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic, London, 1983, follows Weiß. The Nietzschean background is clearly illuminated by Eden, Political Leader¬ ship, pp. 38 ff., 258 f. Just as for Thomas Mann, the background went without saying for Max Scheler. See his ‘Ethik. - Ein Forschungs¬ bericht’, Jahrbücher der Philosophie, ]g. 2, 1914, pp. 81-118. Küenzlen, in Religionsoziologie, makes no mention of Nietzsche. The distance of modern sociology from Weber’s problematic in his sociology of religion (religion as the formative factor in Lebensführung and this on the Typus Mensch) is demonstrated in the Studien zur Protestantismus-KapitalismusTheseMax Webers (edsC. Seyfarth and W. Sprondel, Frankfurt, 1983) in which it is treated as self-evident that Weber’s investigations were devoted to the question: ‘what influence did historical religions have on social development? (my emphasis W.H.] (p. 9). Karl Löwith’s classical study on Weber and Marx, which deals with something quite different from Weber’s central motivation — the consequences of the nature of the world in which we are placed for the idea of Man — is placed at the head of this collection, but edited and abbreviated in such a way that hardly anything of Löwith’s philosophical-anthropological interpretation of

30

Weber remains recognizable. Naturally all the references made by Löwith to the parallels between Weber and Nietzsche are omitted. Cf. here GARS I, pp. 241-9 and ES, pp. 495-500. The critique of Nietzsche’s historical ascriptions says nothing about Weber’s admira¬ tion for Nietzsche’s theoretical achievement: the minting of striking and pregnant concepts. This is exactly the attitude adopted by Weber in relation to Marx - ‘The eminent, indeed unique, heuristic significance of these [Marxian] ideal types . . .’(‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 103).

31 32

Book 1, Aphorism 7 (‘Something for the Laborious’). Particularly the 5th Section, ‘The Natural Flistory

of Morals’.

Especially the fifth part, ‘On the natural history of morals’. 33

Born by the wish ‘to give morality the path to real history’ (Genealogy of Morals, Book 1, Section 17), beginning with the theme of‘academic prize essay titles’: ‘What light does linguistics, and especially the study of etymology, throw on the history of the evolution of moral concepts?’

238

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

We could compare here what must be the longest footnote in inter¬ national social science, that which deals with the development of the 34

35

36

concept of vocation in PE, pp, 204—6. For Nietzsche’s influence on Weber’s definition of a ‘pariah people’, seej. Taubes, ‘Die Entstehung des jüdischen Pariavolkes’, K. Englisch et al. (eds), Max Weber. Gedächtnisschrift der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Berlin, 1966, pp. 185-95; and E. Fleischmann, ‘Max Weber, Die Juden und das Ressentiment’, in W. Schluchter (ed.) Max Webers Studie über das antike Judentum, Frankfurt, 1981, pp. 263-86. The design and intention of the Verein’s survey of workers in large industry is illuminated in relation to this question by a letter from Max to his brother Alfred on 3 September 1907: ‘starting from - for quite obvious methodological grounds not from the characterological qualities as given data, but rather as social life-chances ... as original elements for the selection and-probably-“creation” of these qualities.’ He wrote to Carl Neumann in a letter dated 14 March 1898: ‘Since I am initially con¬ demned by my discipline to burrow into the conditions of antiquity, only being able via this grim material detour to approach ancient humanity, I am at present at a loss for the necessary bridges to the area of your studies— not an objective want, but one determined by the “spirit" of my field’ (Merseburg collection). Might I be allowed to emphatically formulate this as: Weber’s methodological project of a verstehende sociology can only be grasped as an attempt to ‘bridge’ ‘Man’ and ‘conditions’. On the question ofWeber’s ‘empirical’ investigations and plans’ see Essay 1, pp. 54. It can be added here that, to a contemporary as close to Weber as Robert Wilbrandt, the connections between Weber’s ‘programme’ for an economics that above all else questioned ‘the quality of men’ raised up on social and economic working conditions (Inaugural Address) and the investigations of ‘selection and adaptation’ were completely obvious. Wilbrandt, ‘Reform’, p. 367. PE, p. 17.

37

A really obsolete state of research is evident in G. Schöllgen, Max Webers Anliegen, Darmstadt, 1985.

38

‘the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is

39

now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine produc¬ tion, which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilised coal is burnt. ’ PE, p. 181. Book 3, Aphorism 206.

40

Naturally the thought that freedom and equality were not automatically followed by brotherhood, that the personal bond collapsed in ‘bourgeois society’, was not specific to Nietzsche. But to whom was the idea so central, not least for the scientific worker? ‘A defect in personality takes its revenge everywhere . . . the great problems all demand great love’ (The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 345).

41

Cf. ‘Max Weber’s theme,’pp. 133 ff.

Notes

239

42

Seep. 99above.

43

On the influence of Rickert see the summary of the prevailing view in Schluchter, Western Rationalism, ch. 3, passim. At the Stuttgart Historians’ Congress in the summer of 1985, Pietro Rossi characterized Rickert again as the real ‘source’ of Weber’s ‘philosophy’ - ‘Max Weber und die Methodologie der Geschichts- und Sozialwissenschaften’, Rapports I, Internationaler Historikerkongreß, Stuttgart, 1985, pp. 250 ff. Rossi sketches the ‘complex network of relationships’ in which Weber’s methodological work is involved, but Nietzsche is never mentioned. Wolfgang Mommsen, in his essay on ‘Max Weber und die historiographische Methode in seiner Zeit’, Storia della storiografia, 3, 1983, pp. 28 ff., calls Weber’s historiographical standpoint, which, he states, originally depended entirely on Rickert, a ‘perspectivistically employed neo-Kantianism which went radically beyond Rickert’ -

44 45 46

47

without investigating whether this ‘radicalism’ - the brusque rejection of Rickert’s assumption that ‘generally binding universal cultural values’ existed, or also the ‘perspectivism’ of Weber (‘There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective “knowing” ’ states Nietzsche in the Geneaology of Morals, Book 3, Section 12) — might not have something to do with Nietzsche, and if that is actually so, then if the label of‘neo-Kantianism’ still fits. The boundary of Rickert’s influence on Weber clarifies above all Weber’s rigorous opposition to Rickert’s ‘systematic’ ambitions. For Weber, ‘historical-cultural sciences’, and all ‘sciences of action’ in general were inaccessible from the ‘systematic’ treatment that was suited by contrast to the ‘dogmatic’ sciences. In letters to Rickert (2 April 1905, 28 April 1905, and 3 November 1907), he relentlessly criticized this claim to a ‘systematic’ cultural science (Merseburg collection). Marianne Weber, Max Weber, p. 260. Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 213, n. 9. The instrumental fashion in which Weber treated methodological questions is made quite clear by a more or less ‘final note’ announcing the Munich lecture on ‘categories’ of 19 January 1920. ‘It [the lecture] should make clear that sociological method creates usable concepts. Method is the most sterile thing that exists. Ultimately it is, however, a matter of material realization. Method alone creates nothing’. (Merseburg collection). The title of Horst Baier’s Habilitationsschrift in 1969 is characteristic: ‘From epistemology to the scheme of reality. - A study on the foundation of sociology in Max Weber’. With respect to the myth of the origins of Weber’s sociology expressed in this title and which has congealed into the status oflegend I make one point only: it is an open question, and will certainly remain so, whether Weber wished to found his own science of sociology, or did not rather treat his verstehende sociology more as a con¬ ceptual tool for all science of human action, including economics. I read the conclusion of the 1913 report (Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 138 ff.) in this way, with which the Basic Concepts in ES (pp. 3-62) go together well. Weber made clear to his publisher, with unmistakablelucidity, that he did not wish his contribution to the Grundriß der Sozaliökonomik (‘The

240

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction economy and social orders and powers’) to be characterized as ‘sociology’. See the letters exchanged with the publishers concerning the background to ES in J. Winckelmann’s Max Webers hinterlassene Hauptwerk, Tübingen, 1986. The subtitle ‘An outline of interpretive sociology’ with which ES today circulates the world is thus a completely free and arbitrary invention of the editor, presenting a massive obstacle

48 49 50

to impartial understanding of the work. Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, pp. 107—10. Of 16 April 1905 (Merseburg collection). ‘The social science that we wish to pursue is a science of reality’ ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 72 [revised, transl.]. This sentence, and that follow¬ ing it — ‘We want to understand the specificity of the reality of life which surrounds us, in which we are placed - the relation and the cultural meaning of its individual appearances in their contemporary organization, on the one hand; on the other, the bases of their historical formation as this and no other’ - have a massive ‘moral’ dimension (to know what is!) that was clearly recognized in the early interpretations of Landshut and Löwith. To see this Weberian concept of a ‘science of reality’ only in terms of a ‘logical’ contrast to ‘law-based sciences’ is to relapse into long-since superseded perspectives. Weber pursues a science of reality emphatically, with pathos. That is completely lost to view in Tenbruck’s most recent essay, which turns on the problem of the ‘science of reality’: ‘Das Werk Max Webers: Methodologie und Sozialwissen¬ schaften’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 38, 1986, pp. 13 ff. Weber wants to know and to say where we are. With respect to the ‘what is’ the task is to ‘hold one’s ground’. He wrote on 15 July 1902 to Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne: ‘To your friendly question I reply: I am not an augur and do not think myself capable of satisfying the hungry. My decisive inner need is for “intellectual righteousness”: I say what is’ (Merseburg collection). He wrote in a similar mood to Hans Ehrenberg on 10 April 1914: ‘I yearn for straightforwardness and a massive apprehension of realities, not like you by penetrating them with the “idea”, which I must for the time being (unfortunately!) regard as a “luxury” of low marginal utility’ (Merseburg collection). In the letter to Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne, Weber expressed his admiration for the adaptability of Catholicism, ‘to the degree that the capability of the sociological structure is under consideration, since anyway for me “adaptability” is not something I positively value’. The ‘grandiose feature’ of Calvinism is its waiving of attempts to see into the hand held by God, attempts that are at base petty (‘in a religious sense’), and refrains from grounding its unfathomable decrees in human wisdom and thereby seeking forgiveness. ‘ “It is written” - and that is the end of it. When I encounter these attempts it is for me a fatal symptom of the transformation of Catholic piety into an entirely modern ethic of adapt¬ ability, and I find this striving for “elasticity” uncongenial and it impresses me little when I should be frank.’ Compare Nietzsche on the

Notes

241

‘scientific’ critique of the concept of adaptation (‘It’s home is in biology’): WL, pp. 513-17, and Nietzsche (Will to Power, Aph. 866).

51 52 53

54 55

56

57

For Nietzsche’s critique of an ethic of‘ideals’ and ‘wishfulness’ and the ethical superiority of the ‘determination of what is, how it is’, see Will to Power, Aph. 333. We can also find there a direct connection to the ‘value relation’ of Weber’s ‘universal-historical’ question. ‘On the other hand, it is only this desire “thus is ought to be” that has called forth that other desire to know what is. For the knowledge of what is, is a consequence of that question: “How? Is it possible? Why precisely so?” Wonder at the disagreement between our desires and the course of the world has led to our yearning to know the course of the world. But perhaps the case is different: perhaps that “thus it ought to be” is our desire to overcome the world-’. Christoph Braun is preparing a decoding of the sociology of music in terms of Weber’s contemporary appreciation of art. Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 677. ‘one might call it (the ascetic ideal) the true calamity (Verhängnis) in the history of European health’ (Genealogy of Morals, Book 3, Section 21). ‘But fate (Verhängnis) decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage’, PE, p. 181. The ‘tragic consciousness’ as the common basic mood of German social-scientific thought at the turn of the century has been examined by K. Lenk, ‘Das tragische Bewußtsein in der deutschen Soziologie’, Kölner Zeitschriftfür Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Jg. 10, 1964, pp.257-87. OnthesignificanceofBurckhardttoWeber, see Bendix, Max Weber, pp. 265-73. Mann. Betrachtungen, p. 489. He goes on: ‘although his intellectual and political supersession by democracy is posted at every street corner, I still today find everywhere the trace ofhis life’. In the sphere of the Wissenschaftslehre, Weber’s concepts of‘objectivity’ and ‘value relation’ (despite the evident remaining connection with Rickert) as well as the entire question of what science can do - all this, down to the finest details, can only be properly read against the back¬ ground of Nietzsche. Rickert’s chamade became, with the influence of Nietzsche, an ethical fanfare. Helmut Schoeck has already drawn attention to the influence ofNietzsche on the conception of the ideal type (.Nietzsches Philosophie des ‘Menschlich-Allzumenschlichen , Tübingen, 1948, pp. 83-6). Karl Löwith, the expert on Nietzsche, regarded the Nietzschean background of‘Max Weber’s position on science’ to be so obvious that only a few references were sufficient (Vorträge und Abhandlungen, Stuttgart, 1966, pp. 228-52). Similarly in his classical essay, Max Weberand Karl Marx. Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 82.

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

242 Essay 5 1

‘Max Weber as teacher’ -it is around this question that arguments circled in the first decade after his death, beginning with the debate between Erich von Kahler and Arthur Salz on Weber’s conception of science, terminating with Karl Jasper’s apologia for the new Socrates in 1932 {Max Weber— Deutsches Wesen im politischen Denken, Oldenburg, 1932). The most important material is now again available in R. König, J. Winckelmann, Max Weber zum Gedächtnis. The problem of the pedagogic intention in Weber’s was renewed expressly by L. A. Scaff, ‘Max Weber’s politics and political education’, American Political Science Review, vol. 67, 1973, pp. 128-41. Hans Staudinger’s memoirs were edited and published by H. Schulze under the title Wirtschaftspolitik im Weimarer Staat. Lebenserinnerungen eines politischen Beamten im Reich und Preußen 1889bis 1939, Bonn, 1982. The passage cited was excluded from the printed version, andean be found on p. 37ofthems. (in possession of

2

the writer). Mommsen, Max Weber, and his Gesellschaft, Staat, Politik, Frankfurt,

3

1974, p.21. W. J. Mommsen, ‘Die antinomische Struktur des politischen Denkens

4 5

D. Beetham, Max Weberand the Theory of Modem Politics, London, 1974. R. Eden, ‘Doing without Liberalism. Weber’s regime politics’, Political

Max Webers’, Historiche Zeitschrift, Bd. 233, 1981, pp. 35 ff.

6

Theory, vol. 10, 1982, pp. 379-407. Since Rudolf Smend’s scholarship has had such a lasting influence on the judgements of the Federal Constitutional Court, and hence upon the ‘public philosophy’ of the Federal Republic, it should be remembered that the ‘theory of integration’, Smend’s ‘material’ theory of the con¬ stitution as a value order, was developed in passionate opposition to the technicist conception of the state that Smend saw in Weber. He argued against Weber (and Friedrich Meinecke) as follows: ‘Here theoretical scepticism is supported by that genuinely German final estrangement from the state which belongs to practical philosophy - these modes of thought are liberal in the sense that they are ultimately detached from the state’. And, more sharply: ‘the state as technique or as ‘enterprise’ (Betrieb), this basic formulation of Max Weber’s political writings, especially his constitutional writings, characterizes the most significant statement in German literature ... as the ultimately fruitless “observa¬ tions of an unpolitical person” (Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen)' — R. Smend, Staatsrechtliche Abhandlungen, Berlin, 1955, pp. 122, 185.

7 8

A. von Schelting, Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 343 ff. Max Weber to Lujo Brentano, 20 February 1893 - printed Baumgarten, Max Weber, p. 85.

9

So Weber wrote on 3June 1908 to Lujo Brentano, who no longer wished to work with Friedrich Naumann: ‘Thirdly, Naumann. Everything that you say is justified, but: one cannot “finish” with Naumann, otherwise one’s finished with Liberalism’. (Merseburg collection).

in

Notes

243

10

L. Gall in the volume edited by him, Liberalismus, 2nd edn, Königstein, 1980, p. 9.

11

V. Leontovitsch, ‘Das Wesen des Liberalismus’, in Gall, Liberalismus, p. 37.

12 13

J. S. Shapiro, ‘Was ist Liberalismus’, in Gall, Liberalismus, p. 30. ‘Geleitwort’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaß und Sozialpolitik, Bd. 19,1904, p. III ff.

14

Wolfgang Schluchter’s thesis concerning the unconditional affirmation of capitalist development by Weber lacks convincing proof. Max Weber, On Universities, ed. E. Shils, Chicago, 1974. Max Weber, ‘Science as a vocation’, in H. H. Gerth andC. W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber, London, 1948, pp. 140 ff. For a brief outline of the planned survey of the press, see Essay 1, p. 55. Further material on the progress of the survey is to be found in the papers ofWerner Sombart (ZA Merseburg). Max Weber to Georg von Below, 19July 1904 (Merseburg collection). Printed in Baumgarten, Max Weber, pp. 644-8. In the‘the month of delight’, May 1916, Weber wrote to Frieda Groß: ‘O, how complicated do beautiful women make the problems of life. But what would life be without them?’ (Merseburg collection). New bio¬ graphical material is to be found in M. Green, Mountain of Truth. The Counterculture Begins: Ascona 1900-1920, Hanover, NH, 1986.

15 16 17

18 19 20

21

Therefore Weber was by no means an opponent of Enlightenment! Long before Horkheimer and Adorno, he recognized the dialectic of en¬ lightenment. His analysis of‘rationalization’ is a critique of rationalism on the basis of rationality. Here is perhaps the most important parallel with Nietzsche. On this aspect ofNietzsche’s thought see H. Ottmann, ‘Nietzsches Stellung zur antiken und modernen Aufklärung’, inj. Simon (ed.) Nietzsche und die philosophische Tradition, Bd. 2, Würzburg, 1985 pp. 9—34, and the book by Ottmann that is due to be published soon, entitled Philosophie und Politik bei Nietzsche. The manner in which we should understand Weber’s relation to the Enlightenment is indicated not least in the closing passage of the sixth section ofhis sociology of domination: ‘This charismatic glorification of “Reason”, which found a characteristic expression in its apotheosis by Robespierre, is the last form that charisma has adopted in its fateful historical course’ (ES, p. 1209). Compare the passage in Nietzsche, The Dawn, as well as the renunciation ofthe possibility ofaugmenting thelaw with trans-empirical virtue via the medium of conceptions based upon Natural Law (ES, p. 873)-here Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, I, Aphorism 459. It remains a complete mystery to me how Wolfgang Schluchter and Guenther Roth manage to overlook the bitter irony and cutting scorn in these texts ofW eber. Can it be the task of science to ‘save’ Weber for the Enlightenment? What would be ‘gained’ in this way?

22 23

Bendix, Max Weber. Guenther Roth has announced a more extensive investigation under the title ‘Max Weber’s developmental history and historical sociology’;

244

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction Wolfgang Schluchter has already published his Western Rationalism.

24

The classical formulation at the beginning of the ‘Vorbemerkung’ to

25

GARS I. What does exist in the history of humanity is ‘epigenesis’, a category which he places in opposition to evolution (cf. above, p. 216, n. 36). The

26

degree to which the thoughtless use of the concept of development annoyed him is very well shown in a passage from a letter to Heinrich Rickert on 2 November 1907: ‘I will occasionally criticise the familiar value-free concept of the biologists: ‘higher’ = ‘more differentiated’, or more simply, ‘more complicated’. As if the embryo and the placenta, etc., were not the most complicated things known to biology’ (Merseburg collection). Max Weber, ‘Der Streit um den Charakter der altermanischen Sozial¬ verfassung in der deutschen Literatur des letzten Jahrhunderts’, GASW, pp. 513, 517. It is absolutely incorrect when Tenbruck again puts the thesis forward that Weber’s insight into the problematic of the theory of stages so modish for the Historical School is a later addition, at any rate post-1902 (‘Das Werk Max Webers’, p. 22). Weberneverjust wentalong with the Historical School; he was and remained a critical adept. The expression ‘youthful sins’ in the report of 1913 in no respect relates to a possible earlier association of Weber with the notion of development, and the same expression (in the plural!), to be found in The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, London, 1976, p. 384; GASW, p. 387 [the term referred to is omitted from the English translation; transl.], is understood more as coquetry, and in any case relates to rather more venial sins such as the ‘transfer of Meitzen’s categories to heterogeneous relations’. The critique of the historist train of thought (‘history is honouring the bills he [i. e. the theorist of development] has drawn upon it’, ‘National State’, p. 441) is central to the Inaugural Address! As far as all basic questions are concerned Weber was ‘complete’ from the beginning -he had need neither of Menger nor of Eduard Meyer, as Tenbruck has variously suggested.

27 28 29

Weber, ‘Streit’, p. 517. Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 229, n. 81. Weber, ‘The Meaning of “Ethical Neutrality’’ ’, p. 27 (cf. the discussion of this distorted translation in Essay 1, pp. 60-61. The problem of the ‘ultimate standard’ for the assessment of the tasks and problems of ‘practical Nationalökonomie' is central to the relevant lectures in Freiburg and Heidelburg. Thus § 5 of the lecture on ‘Economic policy’ deals with ‘the ideals of economic policy’. Weber notes: ‘According to which standard are they to bejudged?’ ‘Not always consciously and clearly which, e.g. reason for love and hate’. All the questions covered in the Inaugural Address emerge: ‘are there specific economic, social ideals? — or does it introduce other — ethical? — ideals into it?’ The basic thesis of the Address (‘can therefore be nothing other than a German policy and a German standard’, ‘National State’, p. 437) can be read in a generalized form: ‘Solidarity can only be restricted, not the solidarity of “Mankind”.’

Notes

245

Finally: ‘ Resultof the ultimate standard. . . ? Mensch: Typus' (Merseburg Collection). 30

Weber, ‘Meaning’, p. 280.

31

Several excellent studies by Lawrence Scaff deal with the background, the problems of the fm-de-siecle, against which Weber’s work has to be considered; it is to be hoped that they will be soon published. A letter to his mother, dated 25 December 1915, indicates his attitude to these problems - the classical sources are ‘Science as a vocation’ and the ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’. The letter relates to a Dr Fischer, a protege of Weber’s mother: ‘He is really one of the those attractive types of young people who are growing up now in Germany to whom the Great War, if it does not consume them, will give a settled seriousness and inner security, along with thejoy oflife; salvation from the eternal “search” for

36

oneself, which is really only an expression of a “self-importance” which develops in the absence of serious material problems for the inner com¬ mitment of men and women. That will make sure that this illness never returns’ (Merseburg collection). Cf. PS, pp. 59, 301. Merseburg collection. Merseburg collection. Cf. here the testimony ofKarl Jaspers in a letter to Hannah Arendt: ‘Max Weber knew hardly anything of Kantian ideas’, H. Arendt and K. Jaspers, Briefwechsel, Munich, 1985, p. 695. To this extent Weber belonged completely to the specific German

37

indifference to thelegitimacy of the ‘pursuit ofhappiness’; see the outline of J. A. von Rantzau, ‘Deutschland und die hedonistische Glück¬ seligkeit’, Die Welt als Geschichte, Bd. 22, 1962, pp. 107—24. Octavio Paz, Zwiesprache - Essays zu Kunst und Literatur, Frankfurt,

32 33 34 35

38

1984, p. 165. Cf. Schluchter, Western Rationalism. Criticism of Schluchter’s interpret¬ ation of Weber has to constantly face the problem of deciding where

39

Schluchter builds in assumptions and imputations for his own purposes and which have hardly any relation to Weber’s texts. But there is a subtle distancing in the specification of the modern ‘acquisitive’ economy (Erwerbswirtschaft) with its rational criteria of efficiency (profitability). Whether the traditional form of‘householding’ was not far more ‘reasonable’ was, as far as Weber was concerned, not an issue — the capitalist economy was an unavoidable ‘fate’. Nevertheless, Weber always kept the original, ‘more natural’ form of human economy

40 41 42

in mind. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book 1, Aphorism 29. ES, pp. 38-40. The formulation ‘dictate of consequences’ (Gebot der Konsequenz) in GARS I, p. 537. The idea that ‘the unconditional striving for “consequentiality” based upon particular prior principles ... is inconsistent with specific social orders and thus involves a [“egoistic”, W.H.] lack of regard for these orders and the external world,’ can be found in a letter

246

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction that Weber wrote to his mother on 6 December 1885; Jugendbriefe, pp.

43

192 ff. In the first few pages of Economy and Society, Weber clearly marked himself off from the ‘tremendous misunderstanding [of thinking] that an “individualistic” method should involve what is in any conceivable sense an individualistic system of values’, ES, p. 18. Weber the ‘individualist’ does none the less appear to be an indestructible figure. He had, in any case, only modelled his methodological individualism on that of economic theory. The concept of'methodological individualism’ is to be found in J. A. Schumpeter, Wesen und Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie, Berlin, 1908; the relevant passages are heavily marked

44

45

in Weber’s own copy and the comment ‘Richtig’ made. But, of course, for individual persons close to him, on whose behalf he could become repeatedly and passionately engaged. In the Merseburg collection his support for Frieda Gross is documented with particular impressiveness. (Frieda Gross, nee Schloffke, niece of his colleague in Freiburg Alois Riehl and wife of Otto Gross, with whom Weber enjoyed a closer friendship than would appear from the renowned letter to Edgar Jaffe). The sense in which Weber saw himself as ‘bourgeois’ is most succinctly formulated in a letter to Robert Michels on 4 August 1908 (Luigi Einaudi Foundation, Weber Archive No. 59). It is a polemical concept for the delimitation of the unserious stance with respect to the world as it now is. Weber forbade himself any thought of flight, a ‘way out’ of the given world - whether it be ethical (Tolstoy), political (syndicalism) or aesthetic in nature. The passage is quite topical: ‘There are two possibili¬ ties. Either: (1) “my empire is not of this world” (Tolstoy, or a thoroughly thought-out syndicalism, which is nothing more than the principle “the final aim is nothing to me, the movement everything” translated into ethical¬ revolutionary, personal terms, but which even you will certainly not think right through! I will indeed write something about that eventually). - Or: (2) Culture-(i,e, objective, a culture expressed in technical, etc., “achieve¬ ments”) affirmation as adaptation to the sociological condition of all “technology”, whether it be economic, political or whatever ... In the case of (2) all talk of “revolution” is farce, every thought of abolishing the “domination of man by man” through any kind of “socialist” social system or the most elaborated form of “democracy” a utopia. Your own critique by no means goes far enough in this respect. Whoever wishes to live as a “modern man” even in the sense that he has his daily paper and railways and trams-he renounces all those ideals which vaguely appear to you as soon as he leaves the basis of revolutionism for its own sake, without any “objective”, without in fact an “objective” being thinkable. You are an honest chap and will apply to yourself (that is shown by the modesty of your arguments in your article) the critique which long ago brought me to the way of thought expressed above and hence stamped me as a ‘bourgeois’ politician, as long as the little, that one can wish for as such, is not shifted into an infinite distance. ’

Notes 46 47

48

247

Here the generational affinity with Thomas Mann is apparent; see p. 235, n. 6 above. ES, p. 868. The msot fruitful presentation ofWeber’s relation to contem¬ porary theories of law and the state is to be found in H. Speer, Herrschaft und Legitimität, Berlin, 1978. How unpopular this made Weber even with his younger contemporaries and in the decade after his death is shown in the bibliography of early Weber literature edited by Mettler.

49

Formulated as such in the title of Robert Eden’s book.

50

In which the fact is ignored that, for Weber, the alteration of the ‘tech¬ nical ’ details of a constitutional order (right of petition, right ofin vestigation, form of election, etc.) alter its character as a ‘life order’ with its specific ‘demands’ and ‘impulses’. Max Weber, ‘Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Rußland’, PS, pp.39 ff. ES, p. 6.

51 52 53

Cf. on this aspect of the work, D. Käsler, Revolution und Veralltäglichung, Munich, 1977.

54

ES, p. 939. From the American perspective, this is the point at which Robert Eden’s critique ofWeber’s theory of democracy begins. But does Weber, and along with him his perceptive student Schumpeter, deserve criticism for that which he really sees - sees as a given of modern democracy? Max Weber, ‘Diskussionsreden auf den Tagungen des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (1905)’, GASS, p. 402. Weber, ‘Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie’, p. 59. Weber, ‘Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie’, pp. 60 ff. Weber, ‘Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie’, p. 63. I would like to draw attention to the similarity with Rousseau’s historical thought: if the opportunity for liberty is once missed, it never recurs. Weber studied Rousseau very thoroughly and certainly read everything of importance by him. He wrote to Marianne from Vevey on 5 April 1911: ‘Reading La Nouvelle Heloise — z thousand pages! It is hard. If one does not apply the standard of history. But much that is still today admirable’ (Merseburg collection).

55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62

63

PS, pp. 61 ff. PS, p. 62. To whom one can most honestly relate to the ‘strange liberalism’ of a Tocqueville. See the fascinating analysis by R. C. Boesche, ‘The strange liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville’, History of Political Thought, vol. 2, 1981, pp. 495-524. Boesche’s study lays the basis, for the first time, of a meaningful comparison of the two thinkers who so decidedly ‘thought against’ their time. Only briefly mentioned in Mommsen, Max Weber, pp. 298-9, 399 ff. The conceptual couple ‘voluntarism/state socialism’ is, however, central to the assessment ofWeber’s substantive conception of politics.

64

The nation never was for Weber a ‘supreme value’. He was too little a

248

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction scholastic to be able to work with such a category. It was true, however, that the ‘nation’ represented the broadest ‘life order’ upon which the ‘personality’ could claim to leave his mark. Weber’s thought was resistant, like that of any real political thinker, to any form of cosmopolitanism. Eduard Baumgarten has already pre¬ sented everything ofimportance here: see his Max Weber, pp. 665 ff, and his contribution to the Heidelberg Sociology meeting reported in

65 66 67

Stammer, Max Weber, pp. 122-7. We can understand the works of J. P. Mayer and Leo Strauss in this way, written as they were under the strong impression of Hitler. P. Honigsheim, ‘Max Weber als Soziologe,’ in König and Winckelmann, Max Weber, p. 82. A. Demandt, Der Fall Roms, Munich, 1984; on Weber, especially pp. 288 ff. The book, a great collection of material, is unfortunately resistant to any attempt to clarify the logical stake in the ‘interpretation’ of such an event. The most important critical appreciation of Weber’s work in ancient

68

history is A. Heuss’s ‘Max Webers Bedeutung fur die Geschichte des griechisch-römischen Altertums’, Historische Zeitschriß, Bd. 201, 1965, pp. 529 ff. This was completely obscured in Friedrich Tenbruck’s contribution ‘Max Weber und Eduard Meyer’ at the London Conference on Weber in September 1984. Even if the historical interest of the Historical School of Economics found expression in countless works of pure history, the economics of that time in no way considered itself (as, for example, legal history) to be a special area of‘history’. Without exception, it regarded itself as a practical science that did not ‘abstract’ from ‘real historical’ data - as the ‘theoretical’ tendency sought to do. The degree to which Weber, for whom the second of Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations was certainly one of the greatest formative ex¬ periences, assumed a distanced posture with respect to the historical enterprise of his time, and how passionately he regarded himself to be a (historically enlightening!) social scientist, is made quite plain by his furious polemic on the occasion of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, weighted as it was towards the historical and philological disciplines. See Marianne Weber, Max Weber, pp. 425 ff.; this outline can be substantially augmented by material in the Merseburg collection. He wrote thus to Windelband for example: ‘All “Academies” of the older type turn their faces, in the non-natural scientific sections, almost exclusively back¬ wards.’ He claimed to have always ‘decisively supported Law and the uniqueness of historical work’. ‘But: as a result of a tangle of circum¬ stances [the Heidelberg Academy was founded by a donation from Lanz, a machine manufacturer, W. H. ], we now have an academy whose own existence is owed to those living powers of the present, the investigation of whose existential conditions and cultural significance is one of the most important tasks of the systematic sciences of state and society, and to treat these disciplines as has happened - this consequence of an

Notes

249

69 70 71

overgrown Historism seems to me such nonsense that I regard it as my duty to characterize it as such. ’ (Merseburg collection). Weber, ‘National State,’ p. 440. PS.p. 1. Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 57.

72

Weber, ‘ “Objectivity” ’, p. 90.

73

Weber, Roscher and Knies, p. 53.

74

Only with the ‘rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ (M. Riedel) after 1945, especially in the work ofjoachim Ritter, did a reconsideration of

75 76 77 78

thelogicofjudgementbegin-aboveallinGadamer’s Truth and Method of 1960. On the historical fade-out of practical judgement see E. Vollrath, Die Rekonstruktion der politischen Urteilskraft, Stuttgart, 1978, as well as the chapter on ‘Topik’ in W. Hennis, Politik und praktische Philosophie, Stuttgart, 1977, p. 112, onjohn Stuart Mill. Weber, ‘National State’, p. 447. Weber, ‘Politics as a vocation, p. 115. In the index of the second edition of Wissenschaftslehre, ‘Urteilskraft’ appears only twice. See my ‘Ende der Politik’ in Politik und praktische Philosophie, pp. 176 ff., as well as my ‘Tocquevilles “neue politische Wissenschaft” ’, inj. Stagl (ed.) Aspekte der Kultursoziologie. Festschrift Jur M. Rassem, Berlin, 1982, pp.385-407.

79

A. Salomon, ‘Max Weber’s political ideas’, Social Research, vol. 2, 1935, pp.368-84.

80

See the interpretation of Franco Ferrarotti, which places Weber entirely in his epoch: L’orfano di Bismarck. Max Weber eilsuo tempo, Rome, 1982. My own view in the 1960s — which today needs revision — found in relation to Weber an admirable presentation in the book by Hella Mandt, a book that has been unjustly ignored by Weber research: Tyrannislehre und Widerstandsrecht, Neuwied, 1974. Thechapteron Weber (pp. 247-92)

81

82

contains the best attempt known to me to compare Weber’s ‘politics’ with his Wissenschaftslehre. See Hennis, ‘Zum Problem der deutschen Staatsanschauung’, Viertel¬ jahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Jg. 7, 1959, pp. 1-23. The distance shared between Weber and Schmitt to Western Liberalism and the deepest reasons for this inner distance (the ‘superficiality’, inadequate ‘depth’ of liberal ‘cultural philosophy’, which means the failure to recognize the ‘seriousness’, the ethical connection between state and religion) is most acutely analysed by Leo Strauss in his ‘Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen’ (1932), now translated as an appendix to Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. Strauss’s later construction of an ‘ancient Liberalism’, which he could then oppose to ‘modern Liberal¬ ism’, offered him the opportunity of placing himself (very esoterically!) against ‘Liberalism’ in the name of a proper liberalism. The degree to which Leo Strauss, on the basis of German cultural philosophy, remained bound to a reserve against the usual ‘Western’ form of liberalism is shown in his correspondence with Karl Löwith; see K.

250

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction Löwith and L.

Strauss,

‘Correspondence concerning modernity’.

IndependentJournal of Philosophy, vol. 4, 1983, pp. 105-19. In view of the importance of Weber for both correspondents, their view of the cultural 83

problematic of modernity casts light on Weber’s view of things. Very rewarding for an insight into the manner in which the book was determined by its time is a comparison of both versions of Plessner’s book, Das Schicksal des deutschen Geistes im Ausgang seiner bürgerlichen Epoche (1935) and his Die verspätete Nation, über die politische Verjähr¬

84 85

86 87

barkeit bürgerlichen Geistes (1959). A. Bergsträsser, ‘Max Webers Antrittsvorlesung in zeitgeschichtlicher Perspektive’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitsgeschichte, Jg. 5, 1957, pp. 209 ff. To reduce it to a formula: Weber’s ordering in the greater context of this tradition must continue the problematic of A. Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests, Princeton, NJ, 1977. Since it is largely unknown I must also mention A. O. Lovejoy’s small masterpiece, Reflections on Human Nature, Baltimore, 1961. To give but one reference here as a starting point: J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton, NJ, 1975. Here a passing note must also be made of the considerable significance of Carlyle in the formation of Weber’s thought.

Index Adäquanz 32-3, 34 Andrian, Leopold 159 anethisch 102 ‘anthropological-characterological ’ prin¬ ciple 46-53 anthropology 91-2, 103 Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaß und Sozial¬ politik 10, 27, 41, 42, 116, 150, 168 asceticism 36, 160 Baumgarten, Eduard 73, 159 Baumgarten, Hermann 109 Bendix, Reinhard 24, 48, 63, 66 Bergstrasser, Arnold 195 Berufsmensch 32, 33, 36, 44, 46, 147, 187 Brentano, L. 28, 38, 174 Burckhardt, Jacob 56, 57, 160, 178 bureaucracy 101 cameralist tradition 120, 144 capital 54, 96 capitalism 30, 39, 78, 92, 93, 97, 153, 155-6, 184 ‘spirit oF 31,35, 39-40, 86 censorship 169 central theme 65, 72 centralism 184 Chicago Department of Sociology 6 Christianity 135-7, 159, 168-9 Christliche Welt 37, 94, 95, 98 Comte, A. 108, 130 cosmopolitanism 118-19, 124 ‘cultural science’ 69 depersonalization 99, 100 Derathe, Robert 25 Diederichs, Eugen 70, 214-15n. Die Gesellschaß 2 Diszipliierung 39 domination 76, 182 Dürkheim, E. 108 East Elba 67, 73-9, 122-3, 149

economics 3, 4, 8, 46, 53, 83-4, 87-8, 95-6, 141 e. as political science 113-25 e. as a science of man 113-17, 125-9 Karl Knies and 119, 129-40 Nationalökonomie 87, 116, 131, 143, 189 Weber’s attitude to 111-13 Eden, Robert 166 empirical research 3 Engels, Friedrich 11 Erwebsleben 31 ethics 98, 102 Evangelisch-soziale Kongress 76, 148, 149 Fachmenschen 36, 46 Fischer, H. Karl 27, 29, 30 ‘forces of selection’ 103 Fragestellung 61 Frankfurt Sociological Congress 69 Frankfiirter Zeitung 167 Franklin, B, 38 freedom 169-70, 183-6, 192, 193 Freiburg Address 2, 52, 116, 117, 119, 120-1, 151, 166 Gall, Lothar 167 German Sociological Society 2, 3, 4, 8, 16n.,55, 56, 73, 81 Germany 24, 71, 115-71, 175, 194 sociology in 2-6, 114—15 National Socialism in 5 Gewaltordnung (compulsion) 98 Gohre, Paul 94 Gross, Otto 150 Gumplowicz, L. 108 Habermas, Jurgen 171 happiness 172, 175-7 Hegel, Georg 141, 171 Heidelberg 121, 131, 141 Hennis, Wilhelm 1,6, 9-10, 13-15, 17n. Henrich, Dieter 47, 199n.

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction

252 ‘heroism’ 159-60

liberal peace 181-3

Hilderbrand 139

1. as abolition 168-70

Historical School of German Political

progress 172-4

Economy 113, 115, 118-19, 126-7, 142, 144-5, 153 history 74-9, 108, 159-60

security 178-80 Weber’s individualism and 175-8 Weber’s logic ofjudgement and 186-93 life order 69—72, 83, 98, 101

Hobbes, Thomas 25, 193, 195 Honigsheim, Paul 187

List, Friedrich 115

human rights 181

Logos 59, 101

humanity 133 see also Menschentum

Lowith, Karl 24, 47, 49, 50, 62 Lukas, Georg 21

impersonality 101, 155 imposition (Zumutung) 101

Machiavelli, Niccolo 188, 193, 196, 197

income 140

Maclver, R. M. 6

individualism 177-8

Mann, Thomas 147, 149, 153, 178, 194

industrialism 131

Marcuse, Herbert 21

information 169

Marx, Karl 11, 12, 64, 93, 97, 99, 146,

Jaffe, Edgar 116, 150, 170

Meitzen, A. 74

155, 160 Jellinek, Georg 169-70, 179, 207

Menger, Karl 49, 56-7, 143

Journal of Political Economy 7

Menschentum 35-7, 40, 43-4, 46, 47, 48,

judgement 190-3

51,68, 69, 73, 93, 147, 205n., 222n. Methodisierung 39

Kant, Immanuel 191

Mill, John Stuart 191

Knies, Karl 49, 114, 117, 119, 126, 128-9,

Morgenstern, Christian 146

155, 157, 230n. contribution to economics 129-31 politisches Oekönomie 131-40, 141, 142 König, Rene 8-9

Mommsen, Wolfgang 10, 79—80, 154, 166, 218 Montesquieu, Charles 188 Mühsam, Erich 70

Kuenzlen, G. 40 Kulturmenschen 72, 101, 222n.

National Socialism 5 Nationalökonomie 87, 131, 143, 221n.,

labour organization 95 Landshut, S. 5, 24, 47, 49, 62

233n.,244n. Naumann, Friedrich 95-6

Lask, E. 107

Neumann, Carl 160

Lauenstcin 70, 71,214n., 215n.

Nichtethisierbarkeit 96

law 86, 89, 103, 109-11

Nietzsche, Friedrich 125, 140, 146-51,

1. and economics 115-16 Lebensführung 28-31,36, 39, 41,44-5, 46, 77-9, 84, 89-90, 91,92, 98, 100, 101, 205-6, 222, 223

174, 175, 176, 178, 182, 188, 234n., 237n.,238n. Nietzschean

experience in

Weber’s

work 151-62

Lebensmethodik 34 lebensordnung 88

objectivity 124, 161, 191

Lebensstil 30, 34, 42 Lebensthema 23, 62

Parsons, Talcott 6-8, 9, 50, 167

Lederer, Emil 4, 5

personality 71-2, 83, 90, 93, 100, 101-2

Leonovitsch, Victor 167

Persönlichkeit 88

liberalism 166-8 belief in time 170-2 freedom and 183-6

Poles 76, 80, 81 political science 113 economics as a p.s. 117-25

happiness 175-7

political sociology 91

liberal achievement 180-1

politics72, 89-90, 109, 111

253

Index Protestantism 6, 30 ascetic P., 36, 44, 86

s. of associations 57 s. of bureaucracy 101

Quarterlyjournal of Economics 6

s. of domination 76, 90

Quesnay, F. 117-18

s. of law 89 s. of the press 55

Rachfahl, Felix 27-8, 30-5, 41, 51

s. of reality 190

Rade, Martin 148

s. of religion 84-7

rationalism 86, 101

special sociologies 84-90, 130

rationalization 23-4, 38-9, 44, 45, 46, 66, 98, 100, 200n., 204n., 222n.

‘verstehende’ s. 91, 100, 108, 141 Sombart, W. 28, 30, 107, 147, 174

Realpolitik 168

Spencer, H. 108, 130, 171

reality 73

Spengler, Oswald 146

Redlob, R. 179

Spiessburger 82

relativism 132

Staatsräson 79-84

religion 66-7, 84-7, 88-9, 93-5,134-7,171

Stammler, R. 10, 66

responsibility 192

Stande 77-9

Richter, Eugen 167

‘state power’ 134

Rickert, Heinrich 157-8, 192

Staudinger, Hans 166, 186

Riehl, Alois 150, 151

Steding, Christoph 166

Rodbertus, K. 78

Stein, Lorenz von 116

Roscher, Wilhelm 49, 115, 118, 126, 128,

Stewart, Dugald 114

140, 157, 172

Strauss, David 137

Roth, Gunther 147, 171

Strauss, Leo 21, 52, 91

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 108, 117, 125

‘struggle’ 176-7

rural labour 73-84, 102, 110-11, 122, 149

syndicalism 183

Salomon, Albert 2, 4, 15n., 193 Schad, S. 3 Schaffle, A. 126 Schelting, Alexander von 142 Schluchter, Wolfgang 171, 175, 204n. Schmitt, Carl 122, 194

‘systematic unity’ 92 Tenbruck, Friedrich 12-13, 23, 36, 38,62, 66, 67, 107, 108, 142, 171, 199-200, 205n.,225n.,233n.,248n. Tocqueville, Alexis, Comte de 75, 117, 197, 217n., 224n.

Schmoller, E. von 49, 63, 127, 139, 143

Toller, E. 70

Schumpeter, Joseph 113, 121, 131, 227n.

Tolstoy, Count Leo 179

science 72

Tönnies, F. 150, 224

s. of man 125-31

Treitschke, H. von 109, 127, 226

s. of the state 115

Troeltsch, E. 107,147, 205n., 225

scientific research 169

Typus Mensch 153, 154,157

security 178-80 Simmel, G. 6, 108, 150, 174

value freedom 120, 161

Small, Albion 6

‘value-relevance’ (Wertbeziehung) 40

Smend, Rudolf242n.

Verein fiir Sozialpolitik 3, 4, 58

Smith, Adam 118, 126, 130, 196

Verstehen 1, 109, 111, 141

Social Darwinism 125

‘vocation’32, 134

social orders 116

Voegelin, Eric 21

social organisation 77-8 social policy 168

wage-labour 75

social relations 59, 154—5

Weber, Marianne 12, 69-70, 85, 111,149,

social research 3 social science 21, 73, 90, 104, 108, 127 socialism 139, 183 sociology 3, 64—6, 74, 103, 107-9, 112 in Germany 4—6, 8

157, 171, 210n., 232n. Weber, Max 1, 5-6, 96-8, 146, 198n., 200-1 n., 208n., 218n., 219n., 220-1, 230n.,231n.,239n.,248n. Adäquanz 32, 34

254

Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction 109, 111, 141, 214n.

biography of 109-13 ‘bourgeois’

political

thought

and

Social Darwinism 125

193-7, 246n. central theme of work 62-9, 102-4, 108

special sociologies 84-90, 130

classical sociologist 13

Staatsräson 79-82

development of Menschentum 35-7, 40,

supreme value of 165

43-6, 52 economics and 53

‘spirit of capitalism’ 31, 33, 35, 40

surveys of rural labour 73-84 theme of association 57-8

economics as a science of man 125-9

Typus Mensch 153, 154, 157

Evangelisch-sozialer Kongress 149

value freedom 120-1

Fischer and 27-30

‘values’ 72

Frankfurt sociological Congress 69

‘vocation’ 32, 71, 72

freedom 184-6 Freiburg Inaugural Address 2, 52-3, 83, 116-17, 119-25, 144, 149, 152, 166-7, 189, 190, 191, 210n. German Sociological Society and 56, 73, 111 happiness 175-7 individualism 177-8 intentions of 73

‘see also Liberalism Weber, Max: works of 1, 9-13, 17n., 24-5, 59-60, 61 Antikritiken 27, 40 articles in Die Christliche Welt 148 Basic Foundations of Social Economics 87 Conceptual

Foundations

Economic

Ethic of World

interpretation of work 107-9

(WEWR) 23,

Knies and 128-40

204n.,206n.

Kulturmensch 207n.

of Economic

Doctrine 87 25,

41,

Economy and Society

Religions 45,

151-2,

(Wirtschaß und

Lebensthema 23

Gesellschaß 7-8, 9,10, 11-12, 13, 23,

logic of judgement 186-93

25,66, 68, 77,86-7,88, 111-12,141,

Marx’s influence upon 155-6, 209n.

206n., 246n.

modern sociologist 9-10

General Economic Flistory 6-7

Nietzsche and 125, 140, 146-51, 174,

Gesammelte

175, 176, 178, 182, 188 Nietzschean experience in W’s works 151-62

Aufsätze

zur

Religion-

sozialogie (GARS) 154 ‘Grundriss’ (1989) 114, 120, 141 Methodological introduction . . . 54—5

opinions of 21-2

Methodology of the Social Sciences 8, 10

Orient and Occident 41-2

Nachlass 114

periods of work 65-6, 79

objectivity essay 124, 161, 192, 143-4,

person and cause 90-101 ‘personality and life orders’ 69-72, 83,

100, 101

161-2, 240n. 'Preliminary Report’ 55-6 Protestant Ethic 7, 10, 23, 26, 31, 36,

place of his work 114

44-5,

‘problematic’ 2, 24, 25-6, 56, 60, 68

157, 237n.

progress 172-4 Rachfahl and 27-8, 30-5 ‘rational Lebensführung' 27, 28, 30, 41, 43-5, 46, 58 rationalization 23-4, 38-9, 66-7 relationship with Marx 24 research into 48-50 ‘research programme’ 37-8 social organization 77, 78

52,

66,

68,

99-100,

153,

Roscher and Knies essay 114, 128-9, 140-2, 157 Sociology of Law 8 The

Theory of Social and Economic

Organisation 1 Wissenschaßslere9,10,47,48, 58,142-3, 189, 190, 201 n., 241n. Winckelmann, Johannes 12-13, 16n., 26, 47, 201 n.

sociology of 24, 46, 54, 207n., 210n. sociology of domination 76

Zingerle, A. 67

sociology of Verstehen 66, 68, 74, 100,

Zwischenbetrachtung 101

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