Max Weber, Nazi?
I’ve been reading Weber’s two ‘vocations’ essays recently; there’s some interesting stuff there, but also some very disturbing tendencies. In his argument against an engaged scholarship, says that the scientist can only draw out the logical consequences of particular commitments, never provide any answer to the question, “what shall we do, and, how shall we arrange our lives?” a question which he immediately assimilates to, “which of the warring gods shall we serve?” This religious dimension is important, because it allows him to contrast the scientist to “a prophet or savior,” who “can give the answers.” Shades of Heidegger’s rectoral address, perhaps?
To substantiate the connection to Naziism (particularly as expressed by Heidegger), we can look at the politics essay. Weber argues for an ideal-type of the politician as a “sober hero,” a responsible, cautious political actor who is nevertheless passionately devoted to a cause. Weber does not specify a particular cause. Any cause will do, or, rather, the ’cause’ here is a structural role the content of which, of necessity, cannot be filled in. Why is this? Well, it may relate to the role played by the sober hero in securing politics in the face of rationalization and bureaucracy. If the content of the cause were specified, it would be calculable and so subject to the realm of bureaucracy. The empty space left by the undetermined cause keeps open the political determination of ends, makes politics more than a simple matter of technocratic rationality.
What does this mean, though, when added to the theory of the sober hero? Or, to put it another way, what does the sober hero actually _do_? Weber is clear that there is no way back from our disenchanted bureaucratic-capitalist world, and so the sober hero cannot rescue politics by actually replacing administration with politics. All the sober hero can offer is a kind of redemption of politics. Perhaps a Christ-like redemption. But perhaps, rather, a Fuhrer like redemption: the sober hero redeems by being the one sovereign political moment, vanishing and point-like within the system of bureaucracy.
What’s interesting here is the similarity and difference to a conception of politics like Badiou’s. Both share a desire to defend politics in the face of administration; but Weber seems only able to construe this political moment in a single individual, rather than in a collectivity. Isn’t this precisely the moment where both the fascist and the populist danger arise: when an individual (whether that individual be a single person or a hypostasized unitary people) is substituted for the open collectivity which provides the genericity which makes this incalculable, non-administrative, politics possible?
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I probably miss your point here, but my understanding is that the “Nazi” leader was not a “sober” but a “passionate” type. Calculating, of course, but not a sober, distantiated, reflecting type.
In any case, Weber appears to think that a certain type of reason can mobilise an enlightened and disinterested politcs that is not polluted by affect. Very much the Kantian one would think. But also very much the historian, since Weber usually attempts to outline possibilites to eschew the connection between self-interest and power which he saw as prevailing prior to modernity.
Comment by steff @ 12/11/2005 7:50 pm
As I understand it, Weber’s hero is both sober and passionate, so I’m not sure how much his positive vision can be said to be of a politics “not polluted by affect.”
Comment by Tim @ 12/12/2005 12:56 am