Max Weber

Peter Lassman, Peter Lassman

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351965415
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Social Sciences
• Sous-sujet: Sociology

This volume contains key writings, mainly recent, that define the current debate concerning our understanding of the nature of Max Weber's social and political thought. Topics covered include the interpretation of his central concepts; problems of method; meaning and value; liberalism, nationalism and democracy; and the fate of politics in a disenchanted world. Supplemented by a detailed and thoughtful introduction, this collection will be essential for libraries in social sciences and all scholars and students of Weber.

Part I
Max Weber: Central Themes

[1]

The problem of thematic unity in the works of Max Weber^*

Friedrich H. Tenbruck

I ECONOMY AND SOCIETY – THE ASSUMPTION THAT IT WAS WEBER’S PRINCIPAL WORK

When Marianne Weber brought out Economy and Society (ES) in 1921, she described it in the first sentence of her preface as Weber’s posthumous and principal work (Hauptwerk). Even without this label, the scientific world would have been persuaded of this designation. Whenever a solid work of this extent appears in the literary legacy of a scholar (Gelehrter), it is taken to be his life’s work and this was even more so in the case of Weber whose earlier writings had only been submitted as essays. Here was the product of a lifetime’s labour and hence the principal work. This ambiguous designation attained a deeper significance when it appeared that Economy and Society (ES) provided a summa of the discipline, and undertook to cover and make accessible all areas of sociology. Thus ES was taken to be Weber’s comprehensive and authentic testament to which he had given everything. When, in the opening sentence of the preface of Johannes Winckelmann’s studious edition, the contemporary reader is again told that he is in receipt of the posthumous and principal work, there seems little else to do than treat the statement as indubitable.

Accordingly, one might have expected that the interest in Weber’s works would have centred on ES. That, however, has not been the case. The best known and most widely read text was, instead, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (PE), an early work, which in spite of its peculiar importance cannot be counted as his major work. In contrast, ES is very rarely read as a whole and at no time has it, in toto, been the subject of interpretation.¹ Certainly many sociologists have concerned themselves with chapters of this mammoth work, especially with those on domination, stratification and bureaucracy. A complete interpretation though, has never seriously been attempted. Given the absence of any convincing substantive problematic that could unlock ES and show how all the parts are interlinked and relate to the whole in keeping with a reliable criterion, parts were extracted and ranked in relation to one another according to personal interpretation. To a large extent the parts have been freely used without regard to an overall understanding.²

In fact the presentation of Weber’s sociology has not been the outcome of a debate with his major work but rather has followed other lines. For many sociologists – for example, the neo-positivist school – his main achievement lies in the field of methodology. This school views him as a prophet of a methodology which finds a path through the morass of uncertainties of the human sciences. Uninterested in Weber’s substantive researches, they make him the advocate of a future sociology that would proceed strictly according to the model of the natural sciences. The principal work is not taken into account and the methodology is so imperfectly summarized as to become rather inverted. Small wonder then that it is often doubted whether Weber’s substantive research conforms with his own methodology.³

Another reading has confined itself to the conceptualization of an interpretive (verstehende) sociology and has tied itself to the opening paragraphs of ES, the explication of basic concepts, and at best reckons itself to be concerned with the architectonic structure of ES. However persuasive such analyses might be, they have not been able to explain how the parts of ES are linked to a theme or where the centre of the structure is to be located. As soon as one has passed beyond the basic concepts, one is assailed by an impenetrable diversity of themes and theses which blend to form an infinite net, in which one knot leads on to another without any notion of priority. The basic concepts are unable to uncover a thematic unity within ES, so that any one substantive chapter could be tied in with either a theoretical or a methodological conceptualization.

Thus, in 1949, J. Winckelmann summed up the position as follows: ‘It may be established without exaggeration as communis opinio doctorum that, in its present form, the work is an irregulare aliquid corpus.⁴ In a way he adhered to the view that, since Weber had not been able to complete the masterwork, it must, ultimately, be beyond comprehension. However, unlike others, Winckelmann had not given up on the problem of reconstructing ES in the image of its author. As the new editor he has tried ever since, by transposing and adding material, to create an edition in which ‘ES becomes less fragmentary and a significant degree of completeness and accessibility is established that would bring out Max Weber’s scientific knowledge as well as providing a definitive expression to his intellectual conception.’⁵ However one values his several editions (1956, 1964, 1972, 1976), they have not made the work as a whole readable and intelligible, and indeed they could not; for the major difficulties lie not in the small number of gaps and uncompleted sections but in the unresolved question of the unity of this mammoth work.⁶

From the first publication of ES, opinion has diverged as to whether Weber actually sought a substantive unity for the work, or whether he was unable or unwilling to provide such a unity. With no resolution of this divergence, ES has, for some, been reduced to a posthumous work of reference⁷ and, for others, its author a critic. Belonging to the latter group is Jaspers, who writes, ‘in spite of their span, the massive fragments remain the unused building blocks of a titan’; somewhat obscurely, he locates Weber’s completeness and integrity in terms of his failure.⁸ Neither characterization is satisfactory. Weber’s intellectual passion excludes the possibility that his life’s work should lie buried in a reference work, his intellectual decisiveness must place him beyond the critic, and his intellectual consistency rules out the possibility of a collection of fragments lacking any conscious notion of design.

Given the absence of a key to ES, it has been impossible to complete an exposition of Weber’s sociology in terms of this major work and the way out of this dilemma was to opt for methodological and theoretical conceptualizations. Those who remained dissatisfied with these conceptualizations felt compelled to replace the writings with the man. For no other sociologist has biography played such an extensive and commanding role in interpretation. Those who knew him all report coming under the force of his authority by virtue of his personality rather than his writings.⁹ With regularity later analyses too have sought the unity of the oeuvre in terms of the man, his fundamental outlook and his attitudes, so as to tie together the otherwise unrelated texts and to serve as a substitute for the indecipherable major work. Even Bendix in his search for a meaningful interpretation has entitled his book An Intellectual Portrait.

More than half a century of commentary confirms the paradoxical conclusion that the interpretation of Weber’s sociology is not based upon the work that is commonly regarded to be his major work. This applies equally to current interpretations. By alternating between the man and his work, Bendix’s reading has improved upon the numerous shortcomings of previous interpretations and has brought to light a unity within Weber’s sociology, though not without incurring a cost. Bendix has eschewed reductionism to either methodological or theoretical conceptualization and has boldly grasped the substantive research work. The unification he seeks is accomplished by resurrecting from an old supposition the question: ‘What were the origins of rational culture in the West?’ which he treats as the central theme of Weber’s work. However, an important consequence of this is that ES and the GARS collection are merged together to establish a new direction. [Translator’s note: The German acronym is retained since there is no equivalent English language edition. GARS stands for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, 1st ed., 1920–1. Listed at the conclusion of the article are the contents of this collection with the dates of their first appearance.] The price may appear small in relation to the gains. But a conscientious interpretation poses the inescapable question that, had Weber wished to explain the origin of occidental rationality, why didn’t he make it the central theme of his principal work. For it is obvious that he did not do so. Certainly within ES there are significant fragments and observations, and the question often remains just below the surface, but the work exhibits no compulsion to acknowledge or develop the question. No interpretation, therefore, can adopt this position. If ES is Weber’s principal work and if ES like the Economic Ethic of World Religions (WEWR) [translator’s note: again to avoid confusion the German acronym is retained, see previous translators’ note] can stand alone by itself, then it is unsatisfactory to produce a new work out of two already existing – particularly as only a few segments are crucial to the rationalization thesis – and thereby reduce the major part of ES and WEWR to merely contrasting studies. Bendix’s interpretation, in other words, still cannot be considered the last word.

No one, since the publication of Bendix’s text, has managed to extract more from ES other than additional contributions to specialist areas of sociology. Given the acceptance of its status as the principal work, the question then arises as to whether ES has been pushed into a blind alley. What is a principal work (Hauptwerk)? Perhaps this ambiguous term has so prejudiced interpretation that an impartial view of the work is almost unobtainable. It is time to return to the sources, to read the texts without preconceived ideas and intentions, so that a fresh light may be cast on the individual works and their relation to the whole.

II THE HISTORICO-RELIGIOUS PROCESS OF DISENCHANTMENT (ENTZAUBERUNG)

[Translator’s note: The term disenchantment should be read not so much as the final state of a world purged of illusion, but as an actual process, literally, of dis-enchantment.]

In an attempt to locate the PE within the system of Weber’s writing, W. M. Sprondel uses the following quote: ‘That great religious historical process of disenchantment of the world, which disavows all magical ways to salvation as a superstition and sacrilege, found its conclusion here.’¹⁰ However, if one turns to the 1904 publication of the PE one will not find the cited passage which Weber inserted in 1919/1920 when he was preparing PE for the GARS collection.

Considering its scope and radicalness, the bold insertion clearly goes beyond the original thesis, and anyone familiar with the PE could not fail to notice this. Since the PE is exclusively concerned with the origin of the spirit of capitalism, where in this work does he refer to the historico-religious process of disenchantment, and how could Calvinism be represented as the concluding stage of a process when only its particularity and effects were being debated? And on the authority of what argument could Weber have referred the reader of the PE to the further propositions that the disenchantment of the world ‘commenced with ancient Judaic prophecy’ and that it terminated ‘in association with Greek scientific thought’ in the inner-worldly asceticism of Protestantism?¹¹ There is no mention of this in the PE, and Weber’s insertion, taken solely in the context of the PE, must have appeared as some amazing personal brainwave which far exceeds the permissible limits of scientific statements. One thing is clear: the section is completely alien to the rest of the PE. The insertion was not part of the original and it never could have been, as it breaks loose from the initial format and surveys completely new dimensions.

First let us establish that the GARS collection reproduced neither the original text of the PE, nor that of the WEWR essays. In the Author’s Introduction (Vorbemerkung) Weber had deliberately spoken of ‘the following collected and enlarged essays’,¹² a statement which has never received serious attention by commentators. All the editions have simply printed the final versions of the PE and WEWR; despite an otherwise lavish commentary they did not mention, let alone draw attention to, the changes.¹³ For 55 years we have been reading and interpreting the GARS under the erroneous assumption that it reproduced the original texts of the PE and WEWR. Under this deception a satisfactory exegesis is scarcely possible, since no clean demarcation has been established between the earlier and later versions; nor has it been possible to relate the separate works to each other, norto reliably gauge the progress of ideas.¹⁴

The passage quoted above belongs to the enlargements that Weber made and it clearly goes beyond the boundaries of the PE; therefore greater importance should be attached to it. These additions provide the reader with an adumbrated version of a more extensive process, the historico-religious process of disenchantment, in which the PE is to be understood as the final act. Since this idea was not even hinted at in the original text, it follows that it must have been conceived at a later date. But this then prompts the question: when and where did Weber develop this idea? Furthermore, why did he introduce the additions at a later date, despite the fact that even the later edition of the PE is not concerned with the historico-religious process?

Now it is known that similar passages can be found scattered in Weber’s later works, that is, in both ES and WEWR. All these passages are in agreement that the process starts with Judaism and terminates in the inner-worldly asceticism of Puritanism. The intermediary stages remain relativel...