Modernity and Politics in the Work of Max Weber

178 Pages·1992·1.34 MB·English

by  Charles Turner

Modernity and politics in the work of Max Weber
‘This is an exciting book with a strong thesis about the way in which Max
Weber conceived the modern personality and its relation to politics.
Turner provides us with an analysis of Weber that is both scholarly and
original.’
J.R.R.Thomas, Head of the School of Sociology, University of the We
England at Br
In the last decade an increasing amount of Anglo-American scholarship has been devoted
to the importance of politics within Max Weber’s work. While broadly sympathetic to
this approach, the author argues that none of its representatives have dealt adequately
with Weber’s concept of the political. In particular, some have attempted to demonstrate
the centrality of politics by reading Weber as a neo-Aristotelian, and playing down the
role of neo-Kantian value philosophy. This book argues that while Weber’s work should
indeed be seen in the light of the neo-Aristotelian critique of modernity, the analytical
and ethical centrality of politics is quite consistent with the manner in which he drew
upon the neo-Kantian philosophy of his contemporaries. The key to this, believes Turner,
is an understanding of what Weber means by ‘personality’ and by the tragedy of culture.
One of the most distinctive features of the book is that it encourages Weber specialists
to situate their work within a wider range of debates about modernity and post-modernity,
and suggests that contributors to those debates reconsider Weber’s significance for them.
Charles Turner studied at the Universities of Durham and London. He teaches in the
faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Modernity and politics
in the work of Max
Weber
Charles Turner

London and New York
First published 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1992 Charles Turner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library
of Congress
ISBN 0-203-41419-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-72243-4 (Adobe e-Reader Format)
ISBN 0-415-06490-2 (Print Edition)
For my parents

Contents
Preface ix
Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
1 The coherence of the concept of modernity 5
2 The theory of culture 23
3 The illusion of the epoch 43
4 The Zwischenbetrachtung I: theory of modernity or theory of

culture? 62
5 The Zwischenbetrachtung II: a dual theory of tragedy 86
6 Dogmatism, vanity and vocation: the political personality 105
Conclusion 122
Notes 124
Bibliography 150
Name index 158
Subject index 161

Preface
It is regarded as the mark of a cultivated intellectual sensibility to care whether Gadamer
or Habermas, Popper or Adorno, Freud or Jung, phenomenology or Marxism, or Foucault
or Derrida got it right, to get hot under the collar when reading Bloom or Rorty. Perhaps
the reason is that, beyond their substantive differences, these thinkers, even the ones who
worry about ‘the role of intellectuals’, share a belief in the enduring relevance of what
they do, so that by devoting oneself to the study of any one of them one can find oneself
on the cutting edge of social and political debate.
As a graduate student my initial interest in these people was based on the same belief.
Yet it was precisely because of this that that interest waned. My reading kept being
disrupted by the thought that these types of questions had all been raised before, by Max
Weber. In itself this was no argument for going back to him, especially if his problems
are merely identical to theirs. What made me go back was the thought that while many
contributors to contemporary debates seemed to be engaged in an indefinable,
interdisciplinary exercise known as ‘theory’, Weber had forced himself constantly to ask
himself about the status of what he called his science, about the limits of that science and
what lay beyond them. So much so that Leo Strauss accused him of reducing science to
the same dignity as stamp collecting, of giving us no reason to listen to its results. That he
could produce the work he did and lay himself open to such a charge seemed like the best
reason to listen to him.
For comments on earlier versions of parts of the manuscript, I would like to thank:
Paul Filmer, Phil Manning, Irving Velody and members of the BSA Max Weber Study
Group. I have benefited from conversations with Chris Clark, Patrick Dassen, Felicitas
Dörr, Sven Eliassen, Tapani Hietanieni, Andreas Hirseland, Yolanda Ruano and Rüdiger
Suchsland. I am also grateful to Dr Karl-Ludwig Ay of the Arbeitstelle und Archiv der
Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, Munich, for his assistance, and to the German Academic
Exchange Service, who provided a grant for the time I spent there.