German Social Thought, Notes

8/10/2019 German Social Thought, Notes

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9/2/2014 8:03:00 AM

German Social Thought (Nietzsche Habermas)

- Nietzsches4-Fold Social Critique of Modernity belief that problems of

the modern world have philosophical/structural foundation (no a problem of

distribution or arrangement)

- Nietzsche contra Christian metaphysics (Foundationalism); skeptical view

of grounding of norms in reason, in theology

- Theorists qualify traditional conception of human reason toward

instrumentalization of reason (reason no longer pure, following Kant)

- Habermas tries to redress critique of reason; reformulations reason as a

resource for social and political life

- Involved in Kulturkritik

- Disenchanted theorists born to eh Bildungsbrgertum

(Kulturprotestanismus)

- Frankfurt Schools critique of bourgeois culture also is critique of

commodity culture (Culture Industry); Habermas extends and modifiescritique with idea that modern (occluded) forces are robbing moderns of

autonomy (the colonization of the lifeworld)

- last third of the 19thcentury: Nietzsches Fourfold Critique comes at time of

greatest confidence of the bourgeoisie with national unification for Germany

as Zweites Reich; German liberals (of 1848, Paulskirche, etc) had initial

primacy, but Bismarck distorts into imperialism; after unification, non-liberal

parties took off (anti-semitic parties, socialists, illiberal nationalism)

developed into nationalist clashes of WWI

- Crisis of Civilization (vs Kultur); Weil, Grundlagenkrise;

- Nazism as a philosophical crisis must plumb philosophy to its Hellenic

roots to root out


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- following WWII, flourishing of neo-liberalism (Adenauers keine

Experimente); Habermas enters scene as someone interested in

resuscitating the Enlightenment, contra left-wing extremists

- Organizational Question, the Big Q: in the absence of conventional

metaphysical-theological norms (terms of agreement, consensus), what

resources remain for us today to forge for ourselves a truly consensual social

arrangement (non-authoritarian, non-coercive) Theres something rotten

in the state of Denmark

- Nietzsche (1844-1900), son of Lutheran pastor who died when Nietzsche

was young (death of the father, memorialized in Nietzsches psyche); 1872:

Birth of Tragedy, a lot of contention around it; 1874: Untimely Meditations,

incl. Adv. and Disadv. Of Historyfor LifeDeclares intention to be

Kulturkritik; too much history vitiates our own vitalism, need to re-enter

immanence (away with monumental history)evokes longing for a new

myth, a common purpose/purposiveness


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Nietzsche, Unzeitgeme Betrachtungen (1876)9/2/2014 8:03

Recap: Major themes (what grounds are there in modernity, with its dearth

of conventional norms or metaphysical certainty, to secure a non-coercive

social consensus?)

Hermann Weil: Grundlagenkrise der Neuzeit crisis to be traced to

Nietzsches anti-foundationalism (God is dead)/ Nietzsches father died whenyoung, perhaps sparked his anti-authoritarianism

Birth of Tragedy, received as insult against German institutionalism

next texts were the untimely meditations

Brahms ein deutschesRequiem, composed not with Latin text, but with

German (Luthers) text; text of German nationalism, but also toward

universal humanism?

On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life(1874)

Context: Germanys national unification of 1871

Nietzsche aware of historical contingency of his thoughts (or of contingency

as the sense of history)

Genre: scholarly polemic; cultural critique of the Spiebrger; also

philosophical argument (goes on to excel at aphorism, philosophizing

with a hammer); Nietzsche respected Montaignes essays

Deep-seated fear on Nietzsches part of decline/decadence, the loss of

cultural depth (Bildungsphilister); loss of Germanys vitality(Leben)Great ambivalence about science (Wissenschaft) runs through the text;

sciences rob subject of life and self-maturation, but theres also a certain

necessity to them dialectic must be achieved

Falls closely in line with late-19th-century Social Darwinism (Spencer) ---

similar to Nietzsches claim that vitality must negotiate science

Opposes the idealist/romantic historicism of Hegelianism, rejects Hegel for

making History the God over Life; life should instead come first.

Also opposes Historismus (Ranke, Dilthey), with its concern for

objectivity, historical culture as one in inheritance (but, a la Nietzsche, not

greater, necessarily lesser for its derivativeness)

Celebrates unmediated experience (experience of the flesh, Erlebnis), and

fears that its being lost; true art too is being lost

Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that the German need a National Myth


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Both individual and collective identities are being lost at this point,

Nietzsche is not fully the champion of heroic individuality that he will become

Animal life is wholly ahistorical, pure life, a being of complete candor and

sincerity (ideal of authenticity and, thereby, of CONSENT); human being cut

off from pure life by its capacity to remember and to live historically, nolonger can live in the moment

Human being is one of artifice, of dissimulation, self-destructive criticism

3 Types of Historical Understanding, all three of which must be balanced:

monumental: promotes reverence for great men/deeds of past; but

this historicism idolizes past figures at the sake of our own capacity

and identity (Let the dead bury the living.)

antiquarian: preservation of merely trivial facts; makes people to

comfortable with what they are, inhibits discretion and progress

critical: breaks up and dissolves the past; passes ruthless judgment

on the past, in the service of life; allows for the alteration

(transvaluation) of all values; but also dangerous, as it verges on a

kind of science (Critique implies a type of detachment, in service of

objectivity) makes the past mean nothing, if one is objective;

instead, affectivity is needed

Solutions: being unhistorical; being suprahistorical (berhistorisch) are

compatible to Nietzsche would mean achieving state of complete self-

mastery, authentic, independent (eigen)Tension between being very critical (dont think of historical inheritance

positively; must fight against inheritance and age) --- and holistic model (of

sociality) the uncritical collective and the hyper-critical individual must

achieve harmony

What will change: Nietzsche realizes COLLECTIVE LIFE STIFLES

AUTHENTICITY in favor of the bermensch

Genealogy to inquire into origins of collective myths that structure

contemporaneous society.


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Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals/Morality (1887) 9/2/2014 8:0

At this point, see a break in Nietzsches thinking about consolation and

collective fusion (Birth of Tragedy, cult of Wagnerism and his indeterminate,

dissonant, unsettling, modernist Gesamtkunstwerk) broke from Wagner

when, with Parzival, Wagner adopted Christian themes, attacks Parzivalin

the third section of Genealogy of Morals, associated critically with Germannationalism

Nietzsche turned his back on all the myths of consolation;

anti-democratic opponent of the German liberals and socialists/Semites, as

well as the Anti-Semites(at time of the start of the Anti-Semitic League in

2ndhalf of 19thcentury)

He opposed anything he perceived as life-inhibiting in culture

Part of culture that decries decline/degeneration in the 19thcentury --- while

at the same time thinkers (Fliessmann) embraced degeneration

Also concern for population decline, regeneration in the face of foreign

influence (study of sexual decline, degeneration)

Influenced by Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer

Nietzsche became spokesperson of intellectuals dissatisfied by the bourgeois

culture of the Second German Empire

GENEALOGY OF MORALS (1887) has had lasting impact on scholarship;

allowed his penchant for aphorism flourish

- three essays: (1) good and bad/evil; (2) understanding of psychological

conditions of morality; (3) On the meaning of ascetic ideals

Negative task deploys genealogy (tracing values back to their origins) to

undo conceptions of values (called the genetic fallacy by rhetoricians) and

trace them back to hidden origins, which often bear ironic relation to present

value system; genealogy in a sense works ironically, as its definition is an

undefinition, a hermeneutics of suspicion morality as a result

Finds that values of morality are in fact bids for power/part of the Wille zur

Macht (quasi-scientific, defines humanity as sign-system for underlying life

force influences Freud); looks at cultural mores to show their inherent


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limitedness and interestedness; the Big danger metaphysical nihilism, the

will to destroy reality itself

Positive task adopt new position of candor, of world affirmation, of animal

vitality (overcome position of wanting to destroy the world); eventually wellembrace the will to power genuinely

Genealogy begins with etymology of significant words (gut/schlecht

high/base); contrast classical values with contemporary culture

Slave revolt in morality Christianity born of revolt of the low-born, who

resented those who had power, invented new moral code in which weakness

is a virtue (transvalued weakness into higher good) and distinguishes now

between the doer and the deed are you being moral? is the question that

arises and out of this question, this turning of morals from outside to inside,

creates the soul

Slave revolt of morality inaugurates new regime of individuals who have

metaphysical as opposed to material designs the highest reality is divinity,

whose revelation knows nothing of the immanence of the bermensch and

instead is a denial of life

Religious asceticism is the origin of non-religious, scientific objectivity, which

nonetheless bears within it the old hate/distrust of the scenes; therefore,

scientism leads onto nihilism, which is itself only an expression of the will to

power (it is easier for man to will nothing, than it is not to will: lieber will

noch der Mensch das Nichts wollen, als nicht wollen)

Will to Power = Will to Truth; Genealogy is itself a form of nihilism as it

abandons its faith in truth in favor of a politics of immanence (embraces the

paradox of the nihilism-program); this willingness inflects the whole history

of the philosophical tradition there are no facts; only interpretations

(Nietzsches perspectivalism: there is only perspectival seeing; there is only

perspectival knowing, the expression of any stable metaphysical reality

cannot refer to a totality); Returns Nietzsches thinking to the pre-Socratics

(all is flux)


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Wagners Gtterdmmerung becomes Nietzsches Gtzendmmerung

assaults philosophical idols ---philosophizing with a hammer

Employs the aphorism to get across the point more effectively


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Nietzsche, Genealogy Pt. 2 and Gay Science9/2/2014 8:03:00 A

Strausss Also sprachZarathustra (1899) Nietzsche taken up by younger

generation, carried in small paper-back editions into war

3rdessay of Genealogy critiques general value of asceticism (nihilism) in

the West; Nietzsche was a Kulturkritiker, but widens his target to encompassthe very roots of Christianity/Judiasm as both a practice and a philosophical

doctrine and thereby reflects on general normative problems (idols of

modernity)

[1. Smashing Idols

There are more idols than realities in the world: that is myevil

eye for this world; that is also my evil ear. For once to pose

questions here with a hammerand perhaps to hear as a reply that

famous hollow sound...what a delight for one who has ears even

behind his earsfor me, an old psychologist and pied piper before

whom just that which would remain silent must become outspoken.

This essay, toothe title betrays itis above all a recreation...the

idleness of a psychologist...This little essay is a great declaration of

war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they are

not just idols of the age, but eternal idols which are here touched

with the hammer as with a tuning forkthere are none older than

this...And none more hollow.(Gtzendmmerung, or, How one Philosophizes with a Hammer,)]

Nietzsche critiques ascetic mode in which one represses ones instincts (life-

denyng) argues that this distain for life is still active in contemporary

practices (of denying the world, nihilism)

Nietzsche slave revolt in morality, making humility into a virtue, but also a

bid for power (revaluation of weakness as a strength (Umwertung aller

Werte)) anchor humans with guilt; also resulted in ascetic will to deny the

world (lieber will der Mensch das Nichts wollen, als nicht wollen); final

irony science itself as a will to truth is nihilistic, and the genealogy itself as

a scientific method is a will to power


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[What compels one to this, however, this unconditional will to truth,

is the belief in the ascetic ideal itself,even if as its unconscious

imperativedo not deceive yourself about this,it is the belief in a

metaphysical value, a value in itself of truthas it is established and

guaranteed by that ideal aloneOur faith in science is still based ona metaphysical faith,even we knowers of today, we godless anti-

metaphysicians, still take our fire form the blaze set alight by a

faith thousands of years old, that faith of the Christians, which was

also Platos faith, that God is truth, that truth is divine

(Genealogy, 112)]

Origin of problems lies with Platonism Nietzsche critiques traditional

epistemology; facts are not surely attainable through human knowledge, no

truth is attainable purely (There are no facts, only interpretations, i.e.

perspectivalism)

[letus be more wary of the dangerous old conceptual fairy-tale

which has set up a pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of

knowledge, let us be wary of the tentacles of such contradictory

concepts as pure reason, absolute spirituality, knowledgeas

such: here we are asked to think an eye which cannot be thought

at all, an eye turned I no direction at all, an eye where the active

and interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, butthrough which seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an

absurdity and non-concept of eye that is demanded. There is only

a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival knowing.(Genealogy,

87)]

Does Nietzsches argument still hold out for a stable truth or does it entirely

subvert the conditions of its possibility? Is there any assurance that the

genealogy itself is accurate? its a will to truth and thereby to power,

Nietzsche seems to agree with pre-Socratics ---everything is flux --- he

thinks the theres no one way that the world is

The Gay Science (Die frhliche Wissenschaft)

- includes The Madman (i.e. God is dead), its problem is general and

metaphysical (anti-foundationalist)


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How the Real World at Last Became a Myth (Twilight of the Idols)

[How the Real World at Last Became a Myth, History of an

Error: (from Nietzsche,Twilight of the Idols, or, How one

philosophizes with a hammer, 1888):

the real world attainable to the wise, the pious, the virtuousman--he dwells in it, he is it.

progress of the idea, it grows more refined, more enticing, more

incomprehensible--it becomes a woman.

the real world, unattainable, undemonstrable...but even when

merely though of a consolation, a duty, and imperative.

(Fundamentally the same old sun, but shining through mist and

skepticism; the idea grown sublime, pale, northerly,

Knigsbergian.)

The real world--an idea no longer of any use...let us abolish it!

(Broad daylight; breakfast; return of cheerfulness and bon sens,

Plato blushes for shame; all free spirits run riot.

We have abolished the real world: what world is left? the

apparent world perhaps?...But no! with the real world we have also

abolished the apparent world! (Mid-day; moment of the shortest

shadow; end of the longest error; zenith of mankind; Incipit

Zarathustra)]

The idea of another reality (made in Kant into the Ding an Sich) eventuallycauses the idea of reality to dissolve; in the end, this worldly being is the

only thing left to affirm at the end of history (or does history continue?)

Zarathustra hero of strong human subjectivity, rich aesthetic personality

(related to Goethian genius, living ones life as a work of art); Nietzsches

claim: highest justification for life is aesthetic justification

[Their right to be there,the priority of the bell with a clear ring

over the discordant and cracked one, is clearly a thousand times

greater: they alone are the guarantors of the future, they alone

have a bounden dutyto mans future. (Genealogy, 91)]

Aesthetic elitism --- those who are able to live aesthetically have greater

claim to life/authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), gaining control and autonomy

[What does your conscience say? You shall become the person

you are. (Aphorism, 270, Book 3, The Joyful Science)]


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Like all foundations, does Nietzsche want to dispose of the individual self?

(with his emphasis on conscience) Heidegger: Nietzsche is the last great

metaphysician, as he believes in the human subject as the last stable ground

(but its a vitalism that extends beyond and conflicts with subjectivity)

Zarathustra is not a model, a paragon ---

[Disciple: I believe in Zarathustra; Zarathustra shook his head

and smiled. Faith does not make me blessed, he said, especially

not faith in me. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1882)]

Nietzsche is so worried about social conformity, that he does not enjoin us to

follow Zarathustra (its impossible to BE a Nietzschian); however, Nietzsche

does acknowledge (Genealogy, pg. 100) that the community plays a

necessary role in the development of the individual capable of becoming the

Over-man; Zarathustra is not to be the grounding of a new order---

[Laughable! Look! Look! He is running away from people, but

they follow after him because he is running ahead of them: they

are a herd through and through. (Aphorism 195, bk.3,Joyful

Science)]

bermensch is not an individual who comes to a stable subject-position; its

a role of perpetual self-overcoming; hes powerful enough to embrace these

conditions

[Life confided this secret, Behold, it said, I am that which mustalways overcome itself [mu sich selbst-berwinden].

(Thus Spake Zarathustra;A Book for Everyone and No-one, 1882)]

[A will to the thinkability of all beings: this I call your will. You

want to makeall being thinkable, for you doubt with well-founded

suspicion that it is already thinkable. But it shall yield and bend for

you. Thus your will wants it. It shall become smooth and serve the

spirit as its mirror and reflection. That is your whole will, you who

are wisest: a will to powerwhen you speak of good and evil too,

and of valuations. You still want to create the world before which

you can kneel: that is your ultimate hope and intoxication. ...Your

will and your valuations you have placed on the river of becoming;

and what the people believe to be good and evil, that betrays to me

an ancient will to power.]


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The will to power is the new metaphysical (immanent) principle --- open to

your own interpretation (as opposed to the objects interpretability, in the

Kantain mode) Self-Overcoming should be the principle of the world

Centerpiece of the Philosophy: central principle is the eternal return of thesame (ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen); you should live your life such that

you would repeat the same choices again and again

- in a conversion of Kant, every instant of the individual life takes on as

much significance as each other moment, categorical imperative applied to

vital life (not subjective experience)

[The Convalescent (fromThus Spake Zarathustra, 1885):

Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the

advocate of the circle...

There is no outside

O Zarathustra, the animals said, to those who think as we do,

all things themselves are dancing: they come and offer their

hands and laugh and flee--and come back. Everything goes,

everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being.

Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year

of being....Everything parts, everything greets every other thing

again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In everyNow, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The

center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.]

All things themselves are dancing: they come and offer their hands and

laugh and flee---and come back. (the dialectic applied to vital life itself, as

opposed to Geist)

Nietzsches Legacy: Prosemius: might is right skepticism can impede

attempts to formulate moral code; implies that will (power) is at the center

of the modern world (not God, not Geist, not Justice, but Willing Vitality);

doctrine of decisionism (the ultimate singularity of the act); criticizes reason

for its bent toward asceticism as life-denying, toward sensual understanding

(haunts later German social thought of Weber, Frankfurt School: what is the

place of reason? Adorno and Horkheimer: asceticism/domination of nature at


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the source of modernitys problem; Weber world rationalization

(disenchantment); anti-foundationalism comes to the fore with Heidegger,

and also Frankfurt School

Nietzsche did not bequeath to us a viable social theory (no normativity); theBig Q of non-coercive social contact Nietzsche dreams of negative

freedom in which the bermensch can thrive; but has no normative

suggestions for the betterment of the social

I. The Critique of Priestly Asceticism (Genealogy 3) and the

Problem of Nihilism

A. From Kulturkritiker to philosopher

too much beer: a critique of his German contemporaries

thecritique of Christianity as a philosophical opportunity

Twilight of the Idols (Gtzendmmerung): against Wagners twilight of the

Gods (Gtterdmmerung) [quote 1]

B. The inauguration of other-worldly ideals: the ens realissimum, or God

a critique of ascetic practice and a critique of its underlying doctrine

C. Otherworldly ideals as practice: from asceticism to science to nihilism

Nietzsches paradoxes: the irony of origins: the slave revolt in morality extols weakness but was

actually a sign of, and a bid for, power

a further irony: the will to nothingness (nihilism) is in fact a will to power

lieber will noch der Mensch das Nichts wollen, als nicht wollen...

(Genealogy, 118)

science, as a will to truth (genealogy itself) may be nihilistic [quote 2]

D. Otherworldly ideals as doctrine: epistemology and metaphysics

1. Epistemology: facts, reason, knowledge, truth

There are no facts, only interpretations. (Notebooks, 1886-1887)

Perspectivalism and the problem of relativism

Genealogy, 87: There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival

knowing. [quote 3]

2. Metaphysics (Nietzsche as anti-foundationalist)


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a multivalent assault on: soul, God, Platonic Ideas, i.e., all stable grounds

of meaning

return to thepre-Socratics: Heraklitus, Democritus, all is flux

II. An end to metaphysical certitudes: two classic texts from the1880s

A. Atheism and its Problems

The Joyful Science, 1882: the madmans statement, God is dead. [quote

4]

God living and dead; historicity and untimeliness or Unzeitgemigkeit;

madness

B. Anti-Foundationalism

Twilight of the Idols, 1888: How the Real World at Last Became a Myth,

History of an Error. [quote 5]

the hero of pure immanence: the Greek ideal of unity

therise of transcendent realities, from Plato to Kant

the abolition of the reality/appearance distinction

Zarathustra as the new hero of uninhibited humanity

III. Smashing Idols for the Sake of Life (towards Zarathustra)

A. the method of aphorism: how one philosophizes with a hammer

B. the positive image of humanity:life as art or Goethes ideal of personality: is aesthetic value the only

remaining value? [quote 6]

the longing for authenticity [quote 7]

a possible objection: individual subjectivity as a metaphysical ground

C. The Superman Problem: heroism and the problem of a model (is

Zarathustra a model?) [quote 8]

Nietzsches resistance to any concept of a social norm: a cultural-social

critique, but for the sake of the individual

(Aphorism 195, Book 3, The Joyful Science) [quote 9]

D. The Overman solution: perpetual self-overcoming (ber- is not super)

Not a stableposition but a capacity to do without a stable position [quote

10]

But isnt this to reinforce a radically inflationary subjectivity? [quote 11]


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E. Interpretations of the Eternal Return: die Philosophie der ewigen

Wiederkehr des Gleichen

1. a normative stance

The Heaviest Burden,Joyful Science, 1882 [quote 12]

2. a metaphysical condition The Convalescent, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1885 [quote 13]

IV. Nietzsches Legacy

A. The Modern-Day Thrasymachus? (Platos Republic)

Normativity as Power and Will (Decisionism): Weber, Heidegger

B. The Critique of Modern Reason as

Asceticism (personal and social disposition): Weber, Frankfurt School

Rationalization (human history): Weber, Heidegger, Frankfurt School

Metaphysics (model of human being and template of reality): Heidegger,

Frankfurt School

Citations for Lecture

1. Smashing Idols

There are more idols than realities in the world: that is myevil eye for

this world; that is also my evil ear. For once to pose questions here with a

hammerand perhaps to hear as a reply that famous hollow sound...what adelight for one who has ears even behind his earsfor me, an old

psychologist and pied piper before whom just that which would remain silent

must become outspoken. This essay, toothe title betrays itis above all a

recreation...the idleness of a psychologist...This little essay is a great

declaration of war; and regarding the sounding out of idols, this time they

are not just idols of the age, but eternal idols which are here touched with

the hammer as with a tuning forkthere are none older than this...And none

more hollow.

(Gtzendmmerung, or, How one Philosophizes with a Hammer, )

2. From the Ascetic Ideal to Metaphysics: The Will to Truth

What compels one to this, however, this unconditional will to truth, is the

belief in the ascetic ideal itself,even if as its unconscious imperativedo not

deceive yourself about this,it is the belief in a metaphysical value, a value


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in itself of truthas it is established and guaranteed by that ideal aloneOur

faith in science is still based on a metaphysical faith,even we knowers of

today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire form the blaze set

alight by a faith thousands of years old, that faith of the Christians, which

was also Platos faith, that God is truth, that truth is divine (Genealogy,112)

3. Perspectivalism

let us be more wary of the dangerous old conceptual fairy-tale which has

set up a pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge, let us be

wary of the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as pure reason,

absolute spirituality, knowledge as such: here we are asked to think an

eye which cannot be thought at all,

an eye turned I no direction at all, an eye where the active and

interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which

seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an absurdity and non-

concept of eye that is demanded. There is only a perspectival seeing, only a

perspectival knowing.(Genealogy, 87)

4. God is Dead

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we,

the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? ...What festivals ofatonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the

greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods

simply to seem worthy of it?

Icome too early, he said then; my time has not yet come. This

tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling--it has not yet reached

the ears of men.

(The Madman(from The Gay Science, 1882)

5. How the Real World at Last Became a Myth, History of an Error:

(from Nietzsche,Twilight of the Idols, or, How one philosophizes

with a hammer, 1888):

the real world attainable to the wise, the pious, the virtuous man--he

dwells in it, he is it.


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progress of the idea, it grows more refined, more enticing, more

incomprehensible--it becomes a woman.

the real world, unattainable, undemonstrable...but even when merely

though of a consolation, a duty, and imperative. (Fundamentally the same

old sun, but shining through mist and skepticism; the idea grown sublime,pale, northerly, Knigsbergian.)

The real world--an idea no longer of any use...let us abolish it! (Broad

daylight; breakfast; return of cheerfulness and bon sens, Plato blushes for

shame; all free spirits run riot.

We have abolishedthe real world: what world is left? the apparent world

perhaps?...But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent

world! (Mid-day; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error;

zenith of mankind; Incipit Zarathustra).

6. The Positive Image of Humanity: Aesthetic Elitism

Their right to be there, the priority of the bell with a clear ring over the

discordant and cracked one, is clearly a thousand times greater: they alone

are the guarantors of the future, they alone have a bounden dutyto mans

future. (Genealogy, 91)

7. The Longing for Authenticity

What does your conscience say? You shall become the person you are.(Aphorism, 270, Book 3, The Joyful Science)

8. The Superman Problem (I)

Disciple: I believe in Zarathustra; Zarathustra shook his head and

smiled. Faith does not make me blessed, he said, especially not faith in

me. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1882)

9. The Superman Problem (II)

Laughable! Look! Look! He is running away from people, but they follow

after him because he is running ahead of them: they are a herd through

and through. (Aphorism 195, bk.3,Joyful Science)

10. The Overman Solution: A Capacity for Self-Overcoming


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Life confided this secret, Behold, it said, I am that which must always

overcome itself [mu sich selbst-berwinden].

(Thus Spake Zarathustra;A Book for Everyone and No-one, 1882)

11. On self-overcoming (fromThus Spake Zarathustra, 1885):A will to the thinkability of all beings: this I call your will. You want to

makeall being thinkable, for you doubt with well-founded suspicion that it is

already thinkable. But it shall yield and bend for you. Thus your will wants

it. It shall become smooth and serve the spirit as its mirror and reflection.

That is your whole will, you who are wisest: a will to powerwhen you

speak of good and evil too, and of valuations. You still want to create the

world before which you can kneel: that is your ultimate hope and

intoxication. ...Your will and your valuations you have placed on the river of

becoming; and what the people believe to be good and evil, that betrays to

me an ancient will to power.

12. The heaviest burden (from Nietzsche,The Gay Science, 1882):

do you want this again and again, times without number? would lie as

the heaviest burden upon all your actions...

13. The Convalescent (fromThus Spake Zarathustra, 1885):

Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocateof the circle...

There is no outside

O Zarathustra, the animals said, to those who think as we do, all things

themselves are dancing: they come and offer their hands and laugh and

flee--and come back. Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally

rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again;

eternally runs the year of being....Everything parts, everything greets every

other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In

every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The

center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.


19/91

Weber, The Protestant Ethic 9/2/2014 8:03:00 AM

Brahms, Academic Festival Overture (1881) (repurposes popular songs,

parodically, pokes fun at academic pomp (of the sort of Weber))

Weber saw himself as addressing themes of enormous consequence, a

scholar with a Beruf; reason, to Weber, was the world-historical device ofprogress

- Q: what values are left to us after the death of God? (similarity to

Nietzsche); like Nietzsche, Weber also interested in asceticism/withdrawal

from worldly enjoyment. However, unlike Nietzsches gay science,

Webers science was political economy, focused on betterment of social

organization (at the time of industrialization, the creation of the 2ndReich)

With the dissolution of traditional authority, what kind of social

organization can take shape? charismatic personality, bureaucracy

Weber is in the tradition of Fichte (descends from Anglo-Saxon model of

entrepreneurship/liberal capitalism has ambivalent consequences for

German social life (Marx is also a famous Nachfolger, but also - )

- Ferdinand Tnnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft(1887)

thematizes the ambivalence of modern social life; community

dissolved by (the artifice of) society

- Georg Simmel, develops complicated attitudes toward capitaleconomy

- Werner Sombart, Modern Capitalism (1902), The Jews and

Modern Economic Life (1911)

Sociology (Ab Sayez, What is the Third Estate?) uses first, but first

published by Comte, the founder of positivism; Emil Durkheim, founds as

modern discipline,

Following Comte and Durkheim, the Germans interpret Soziologie as a

science that cannot be pursued positivistically; there is something about

human social organization than cannot be understood in the same manner

as nature; the Germans graft Soziologie onto Hermeneutics

(Schleiermacher, Dilthey), the understanding that knowing itself happens

through a mediated act, the flesh


20/91

Neo-Kantianism has hold on 19thcentury Windelband two sciences,

distinguished between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften;

Two modes of explanation: Naturwissenschaften aimed toward explaining

laws, nomothetic explanation (according to nomos, law); however, in thehuman world, we are instead interested in the unique, individual

phenomenon, its particularity; contra nomothetic explanation, instead

ideographic explanation --- the sociologist needs to understand how each

person relates to the world as an individual attempting to grasp at meaning

in the world becomes Webers general method, with girding from the

hermeneutic tradition (Verstehen vs Wissen) --- Webers verstehende

Soziologie (interpretive sociology), which piles up details in order to

understand motivations (~almost a science of the will, the libido), as

opposed to uncovering nomoi

Weber (1864-1920), born in Erfurt, his father was involved with the

moderate, German liberals, who supported German nationhood and

Kulturkampf (against Catholicism); grew up in bourgeois family, with deep-

seated resentments toward the Junckers and their desiccating influence on

Germany; studied law at Heidelberg, where he first shows concern for

relationship between economy and law; teaches at Freiberg and Heidelberg

(with Wimbelbad, Sombart and Troeltsch); after expelling father from home,has nervous breakdown; returns to academy, involved in founding theArchiv

fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; helped to found a democratic party

in Weimar, party to the deliberations that went into writing the Weimar

constitution

Weber, published in journal in two parts in 1904 and 1905, Die

protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus; traveled to US after

its writing, to see capitalism in its most concentrated form;

Weber, Science as a Vocation; Politics as a Vocation

The Protestant Ethic traditional(cyclical, agricultural, static in size,

produces no long-term accumulation) vs. capitalist economy(constant,

trade and industry free from the cycles of nature, expansive, works through

the reinvestment of profits, accumulates over time)


21/91

then Weber notices that early-modern merchant economies flourished in

northerly, Protestant regions (spheres of culture), based on a practical ethic

which would appear irrational to traditional economists, from which there is

no immanent enjoyment (worldly asceticism)paradigma of Benjamin

Franklin whose irrational, obsessive-compulsive ethic of time=money (not tobe wasted)

how to explain the paradox of the irrational core of the rational economy?

Weber thinks that the ethos of Protestant religion furnished motivational

energy for early-modern merchant behavior, in comparison to Catholic

southern Europe, where merchant activity is seen as sinful (cupiditas), and

even to Luthers theology;

but with Calvinism, the hope of the purpose of this worldly life is gone

its a doctrine of hopelessness as God is wholly obscure (deus absconditis)

and not to be petitioned for (pre-determined) grace later receptions of

Calvinism modified pre-destination to suggest that (restrained, but

focused; ascetic)worldly action could be a sign that you are redeemed

This idea took off in culture of emergent capitalist behavior

Weber is not trying to establish a nomos to explain the protestant ethic (not

causal understanding of its development); instead, he argues that the

protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism have a

Wahlverwandschaft

therefore, although Protestantism did not found capitalism, it has certainaffinities with capitalism as an economic form that allowed them to take on a

particular form (not nomothetic; instead, ideographic)

- Weber is not substituting a one-sided idealist explanation for a one-sided

materialist explanation his ideograph, his genealogy, resists any sort of

mono-causal explanation

After Capitalism begins to take off, in conjunction with doctrinally

modified Calvinism (a rational religion), capitalism begins to turn

irrational (Weberian dialectic), dissolves its own spiritual foundation

and reaches, by the beginning of the 20thcentury, a crisis point;

transformation of thin cloak of early modern cloak tostahlhartes Gehuse

the calling no longer option, but compulsory

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5):

Closing Paragraphs:


22/91

The Puritans wanted to be men of the callingwe, on the other

hand, must be. For when asceticism moved out of the monastic

cells and into working life, and began to dominate innerworldly

morality, it helped to build that mighty cosmos of the modern

economic order (which is bound to the technical and economicconditions of mechanical and machine production). Today this

mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style

of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every

individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue

to do so until the day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been

consumed.

In Baxters view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly

on the shoulders of his saints, like a thin cloak which can be

thrown off at any time. But fate decreed that the cloak should

become a shell hard as steel. AS asceticism began to change the

world and endeavored to exercise its influence over it, the outward

goods of this world gained increasing and finally inescapable power

over men, as never before in history. Today its spirit has fled from

this shellwhether for all time, who knows? Certainly, victorious

capitalism has no further need for this support now that it rests on

the foundation of the machine. Even the optimistic mood of its

laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems destined to fade away, andthe idea of a duty in a calling haunts our lives like the ghost of

once-held religious beliefs. Where doing ones job cannot be

directly linked to the highest spiritual and cultural values

although it may be felt to be more than mere economic

coercionthe individual today usually makes no attempt to

find any meaning in it. Where capitalism is at its most

unbridled, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth,

divested of its metaphysical significance, today tends to be

associated with purely elemental passions, which at times

virtually turn it into a sporting contest.

No one yet knows who will live in that shell in the future. Perhaps

new prophets will emerge, or powerful old ideas and ideals will be

reborn at the end of this monstrous development. Or perhapsif

neither of these occursChinese ossification, dressed up with a


23/91

kind of desperate self-importance, will set in. Then, however, it

might truly be said of the last men[Nietzsches influence

here] in this cultural development: specialists without

spirit, hedonists without a heart, these nonentities imagine

they have attained a stage of humankind never beforereached.(Penguin edition, pp.120-121).

For Weber, the question of his own time is what to do in a world with God

is dead, disenchantment has set in, labor, divorced now from spirituality,

becomes an irrational end in itself

I. Introduction: The German Tradition of Social Analysis

A. A Tradition of Ambivalence: German Theories of Capitalism J.G. Fichte,

Der geschlossene Handelsstaat [The Closed Commercial State] (1800)

Karl Marx, Das Kapital [Capital: A Critique of Political Economy] (1867)

Ferdinand Tnnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [Community and Society]

(1887) Werner Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902); Die Juden

und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911) Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental

Life (1903); and The Philosophy of Money (1907)

B. The Interpretive Tradition in German Sociology French Positivism

(Comte), British Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill), Positivistic Marxism (aspects

of Engels and Marx) The German Hermeneutic Difference: from Friedrich

Schleiermacher (1768-1834) to Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)

The neo-Kantian revival in Germany: Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915) at Heidelberg

-Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft (the natural sciences and the

human sciences)

-the two modes of explanation: nomothetic versus idiographic

methodological individualism and the notion of a holistic Weltanschauung:

the primacy of Verstehen Weber as a pioneer of verstehende Soziologie, or

interpretive sociology

II. Max Weber (1864-1920): A Biographical Sketch

1864, born in Erfurt, eldest of seven children: father active in Germanys

National Liberal Party 1882, enrolls in law at University of Heidelberg

1889, doctoral dissertation in law, The History of Medieval Business

Organizations 1891, Habilitation: Roman Agrarian History and its

Significance for Public and Private Law


24/91

1893, marriage to Marianne Schnitger 1894, Professor of Economics at

Freiburg University 1896, Heidelberg Chair in Law and Economics

The Heidelberg School: Ernst Troeltsch (historian), Wilhelm Windelband,

Werner Sombart 1897, nervous breakdown 1903, accepts position as

editor for theArchiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (with EdgarJaff and Werner Sombart) 1904, Travels in U.S and sees New Yorks

fortresses of capital 1904-5, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of

Capitalism published in two installments in theArchiv 1904, The

Objectivity of Social-scientific and Sociopolitical Knowledge (1904)

Science as a Vocation (Free-student Movement, Munich, 1917; again 16

January, 1919);

Politics as a Vocation (Free-student Movement, Munich, 28 January 1919)

1919, Summer; Accepts position in Munich, Bavarian Republic, helps to

found DDP (German Democratic Party) 1920, death from pneumonia.

III. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, A

Reconstruction A. The Problem

the distinction between traditional and capitalist economy the

geographical and cultural particularity of flourishing merchant economies:

Netherlands, Britain, North America the seeming irrationality of capitalist

behavior: worldly asceticism as anethos peculiar to capitalist merchants

an ideal type of the capitalist ethic: Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards

Almanac

paradox of a seemingly rationalized economic system thatdemands this ethic

B. The Interpretation the motivational-religious ethos of early modern

religion the problems of Catholicism and Lutheranism: merchant activity

and profit as cupiditas the peculiarities of Calvinism: the burdens of

predestination and the inscrutable judgment of the deus absconditus

Calvinist doctrine and its modifications: absolute certainty vs. later lay

preachers self-assurance gained through labor carried out in the proper

spirit of inner-worldly asceticism labor as a calling (Beruf), i.e., a religious

duty

C. Methodological Considerations causality vs. interpretative-idiographic

understanding the notion of an elective affinity (Wahlverwandtschaft)

between Protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism


25/91

Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1808) two distinctive and

idiosyncratic historical-cultural formations that find satisfaction (meaning)

in each other idealism and materialism

D. The Dissolution of the Protestant Ethic and the Modern Predicament

Calvinism as a rationalized religion

process of rationalization turns againstits supports modern capitalism without spirit: from Baxters thin cloak

to a shell hard as steel (stahlhartes Gehuse) the last men (Nietzsche)

closing lines

Quotation for Lecture Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the

Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5): Closing Paragraphs:

The Puritans wanted to be men of the callingwe, on the other hand, must

be. For when asceticism moved out of the monastic cells and into working

life, and began to dominate innerworldly morality, it helped to build that

mighty cosmos of the modern economic order (which is bound to the

technical and economic conditions of mechanical and machine production).

Today this mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style

of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual

who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the

day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed.

In Baxters view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly on the

shoulders of his saints, like a thin cloak which can be thrown off at anytime. But fate decreed that the cloak should become a shell hard as steel.

AS asceticism began to change the world and endeavored to exercise its

influence over it, the outward goods of this world gained increasing and

finally inescapable power over men, as never before in history. Today its

spirit has fled from this shellwhether for all time, who knows? Certainly,

victorious capitalism has no further need for this support now that it rests on

the foundation of the machine. Even the optimistic mood of its laughing heir,

the Enlightenment, seems destined to fade away, and the idea of a duty in

a calling haunts our lives like the ghost of once-held religious beliefs. Where

doing ones job cannot be directly linked to the highest spiritual and

cultural valuesalthough it may be felt to be more than mere economic

coercionthe individual today usually makes no attempt to find any

meaning in it. Where capitalism is at its most unbridled, in the United

States, the pursuit of wealth, divested of its metaphysical significance, today


26/91

tends to be associated with purely elemental passions, which at times


No one yet knows who will live in that shell in the future. Perhaps new

prophets will emerge, or powerful old ideas and ideals will be reborn at the

end of this monstrous development. Or perhapsif neither of these occursChinese ossification, dressed up with a kind of desperate self-importance,

will set in. Then, however, it might truly be said of the last men in this

cultural development: specialists without spirit, hedonists without a heart,

these nonentities imagine they have attained a stage of humankind never

before reached.

(Penguin edition, pp.120-121).


27/91

Weber on Vocation, Objectivity, Disenchantment 9/2/2014 8:

Josef Mathias Hauer, Nomos (1913)part of Bauhaus, famous for theory

of synesthesia (W. Kandinsky), associated with Schnberg in Vienna in his

late-romantic or expressionist phase; Hauer, working against romanticism,

developed scientific style of 12-Ton system (dodecaphonic system) into

Neue Sachlichkeit (against expressionism)

Weber on Reason and Science

- its difficult to place Weber on political spectrum: reluctant modernist, born

into family with imperialist-nationalist trend, but also opposed to old landed

aristocracy (Juncker) --- caught between modernity and tradition: his work

longs for charismatic leader (becomes Weberian legacy of authoritarian

democracy --- insisted on Emergency Clause (Artikel 48))

[Parsons at Harvard first American reception, cleansed Weber of

Nietzsche]

Webers complicated attitude toward politics (Science as a Vocation(1917),

Politics as a Vocation); he believed that Marxism could be employed in

sociology, but materialism is not absolute --- did not allow direct politicizing

into the classroom; he cherished the scientific institution

[Case of Ernst Toller: communist playwright, took part in Bavarian Republic,

arrested and tried for his participation, M. Weber comes to his defense, asToller was one of his students (Weber cherished the circle of social

sciences)]

Weber was charismatic teacher (passion and restraint, embodies Calvinist

this-worldly asceticism) --- students from across the political spectrum, all

cherished Weber as charismatic leader (Toller, Lukach, Bloch; Carl Schmitt)

Wissenschaft als Beruf (November 7, 1917, just following Russian October

Revolution, but still during WWI; moment of great political passion and fear;

academics felt unrestrained in commitment to nationalist cause/ or pacifism)

Background: I. Birnbaum had invited Weber to participate in a

public forum on geistige Arbeit als Beruf (by Free Students

League); Webers brother, Alfred Weber, had Alexander Schwab as

a student, who had written Beruf und Jugend/idea of calling was


28/91

incompatible with scientific research; Webers lecture is a rejoinder

to Schwab

Webers reference to warring gods evokes atmosphere of disillusionment in

1914; evocative of Webers anxiety that the classroom will become

politicized; at this time, there were frequent riots of students both inside andoutside of the classroom

Protestant Ethic was part of Webers big project to create comparative

study of world religions, to appreciate ways in which world religions helped

to nourish a certain ethos/manner of behaving/general attitude toward

worldly engagement --- Paradoxical theme: this-worldly asceticism

(withdrawal, but still invested in the world) --- thinks of world religions as

markers of the path toward modernity (from Judaism (rational/ethical

religion against sensualist pagan religions, with focus on the pariah, the

outsider) through Protestantism/Calvinism (God is completely sublime and

unknowable)) the process of rationalization turns against its prior

supports and the world becomes completely rationalized but

disenchanted (no longer animated)

The rationalization of human conduct has left behind the religious norms that

gave our lives meaning:

[] the idea of a duty in a calling haunts our lives like the ghost of once-held religious beliefs. Where doing ones job cannot be directly linked to

the highest spiritual and cultural valuesalthough it may be felt to be more

than mere economic coercionthe individual today usually makes no

attempt to find any meaning in it (Q 1)

Protestant ethic informs his theory about place of religion in history

toward a theory of human historical-social development, creates narrative of

the rise of reason over all; philosophy of history: rise of reason, but of

reason as an instrument

Science as Vocation(against Schwabs idea of the incommensurateness

of calling and vocation) science requires one to avoid ethos (normative

worldview); however, committing oneself too heartily to any particular

science is itself an ethos --- how to resolve?


29/91

Weber has ambivalent attitude in comparison of German and US

universities: US has no nobility, universities free from tradition; but the

university lacks the ethic/dignity of nobility leads to mediocrity,

bureaucracy; thinks America is Europes future (typical conceit), its foiblesare also those that could plague Europe

Rationalization --- Disenchantment (Die Entzauberung der Welt)the

spirits animating nature are evacuated, magic is purged; Reformation

attacks the metaphysical premises of the mass; action is now totally

explicable, available to being controlled:

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and

intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.

Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public

life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the

brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that

our greatest art is intimate and not monumental, nor is it accidental that

today only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal human

situations, inpianissimo, that something is pulsating that corresponds to the

propheticpneuma, which in former times swept through the great

communities like a firebrand, welding them together (Q 2)

All of community used to be cohesive with enchantment (addressed majorquestion)

Rise of new principle: everything is available for technical control,

for rationalization/instrumental reason

Platos theory of ideas (Republic): Plato first discovered that a concept

(Begriff) is a type of tool (according to Weber ~ not in Plato), which does

not hold within itself any directive of how it should be applies/no normative

orientation (instrumental rationality)

Occidental rationalization: Weber thinks the West is unique, insofar as

rationalization has progressed the farthest; its strength is a cultural ethos

that might not be reproducible elsewhere, as its based on idiosyncrasies

If reason is an instrument, what are the ethical ends to which this can be

applied? --- not as in WWI, where reason led to mass slaughter:


30/91

instrumental reason helps us understand what happens to be the

case, but it cannot give us any value orientation it explains, but

fails to give moral purpose; part of larger distinction: theoretical

reason is different from practical reason

As a consequence of disenchantment (as opposed to enchantment, which

preserves fact and value in the magic of the matter), the gap between fact

and value had only widened relativity of value (Weber: situation where all

the gods are at war)

Besides we can and we should state: In terms of its meaning, such and

such a practical stand can be derived with inner consistency, and hence

integrity, from this or that ultimate value position. Perhaps it can only be

derived from one such fundamental position, or maybe from several, but it

cannot be derived from these or those other positions. Figuratively speaking,

you serve this god and you offend the other god when you decide to adhere

to this position. And if you remain faithful to yourself, you will necessarily

come to certain final conclusions that subjectively make sense. This much, in

principle at least, can be accomplished. Philosophy, as a special discipline,

and the essentially philosophical discussions of principles in the other

sciences attempt to achieve this. Thus, if we are competent in our

pursuit (which must be presupposed here) we can force the

individual, or at least we can help him, to give himself an account ofthe ultimate meaning of his own conduct.This appears to me as not so

trifling a thing, even for one's own personal life. Again, I am tempted to say

of a teacher who succeeds in this: he stands in the service of 'moral' forces;

he fulfills the duty of bringing about self-clarification and a sense of

responsibility. And I believe he will be the more able to accomplish this, the

more conscientiously he avoids the desire personally to impose upon or

suggest to his audience his own stand. [] Life is an unceasing struggle

of these gods with one another. Or speaking directly, the ultimately

possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their

struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus it is

necessary to make a decisive choice (Q 3).


31/91

All that remains in the disenchanted world is CHOICE, almost

irrationalist, with quasi-religious irrational core (dieEntscheidung,which

Schmitt will take up in his work on sovereign politics; evocative of Nietzsche)

Weber notes those his students have deep desire for Erlebnis--- newmonuments that can in modernity result in kitsch; Weber doesnt like

prophets or demagogues, especially when they are academics; yet,

nonetheless longs for a genuine leader

What remains is the Beruf, the calling, the dedication that comes from within

(and relates to the choice):

If we attempt to force and to invent a monumental style in art, such

miserable monstrosities are produced as the many monuments of the last

twenty years. If one tries intellectually to construe new religions without a

new and genuine prophecy, then, in an inner sense, something similar will

result, but with still worse effects. And academic prophecy, finally, will

create only fanatical sects but never a genuine community.

To the person who cannot bear the fate of the times, one must say: may he

rather return silently, without the usual publicity build-up of renegades, but

simply and plainly. The arms of the old churches are opened widely and

compassionately for him. After all, they do not make it hard for him. One

way or another he has to bring his intellectual sacrificethat is inevitable.If he can really do it, we shall not rebuke him. For such an intellectual

sacrifice in favor of an unconditional religious devotion is ethically quite a

different matter than the evasion of the plain duty of intellectual honesty,

which lacks the courage to clarify one's own ultimate standpoint and rather

facilitates this duty by feeble relative judgment. In my eyes,such religious

return stands higher than the academic prophecy, which does not

clearly realize that in the lecture-rooms of the university no other

virtue holds but plain intellectual honesty (Q 4).

Science is the domain of uninterested intellect and rationality, both

passionate and restrained; peculiarities of academic life also show their own

forms of irrationality/ the personal experience of science

Science as a Calling:


32/91

And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to

come up to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not

he makes the correct conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as

well stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the

personal experience of science. Without this strange intoxication,ridiculed by every outsider; without this passion, this thousands of

years must pass before you enter into life and thousands more wait

in silenceaccording to whether or not you succeed in making this

conjecture; without this, you have no calling for science and you

should do something else. For nothing is worthy of person as person

unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion (Q 5).

Max Weber and Germany: From 1904 to the First World War

A. A Reluctant Modernist

hostility toward atavistic social forces in Germany: Junkers and Prussian

militarism

imperialist ambitions and the persistent longing for a charismatic leader

the many facets of Weber: inspiration to existentialism and American

sociology and Frankfurt School Marxism

B. The Asceticism of the Scholar anti-Marxism combined with defense of scholarly autonomy

the case of Ernst Toller

the charisma of anti-charisma: Weber and his students, Georg Lukcs,

Carl Schmitt, Ernst Bloch

Weber as an existentialist: Karl Jaspers, Carl Schmitt, et al, in the 1920s

C. Wissenschaft als Beruf [Science as a Vocation], Nov. 7, 1917

invitation by Immanuel Birnbaum, University of Munich: Intellectual Work

as Calling

Alexander Schwab (student of Max Webers brother, Alfred): Vocation

and Youth

Freistudentische Bund( the free students league; a left-liberal student

association)


33/91

II. Background Recapitulation: The Dissolution of the Protestant

Ethic

A. The Rationalization of Religion

Webers comparative historical sociology of religion: Buddhism, Hinduism,

Judaism, Christianity, etc. ancient Judaism as the ur-type of an intellectualized or rationalized-ethical

religion, but bound to the Pariah-Volk idea

Calvinism as the modern paradigm of a rationalized religion

B. Rationalization against Religion

process of rationalization turns against its supports

modern capitalism without spirit: from Baxters thin cloak to a shell

hard as steel (stahlhartes Gehuse)

C. A World without Meaning

the last men (Nietzsche)

closing lines [quote 1]

III. Webers Philosophy of History: The Rise of Instrumental

Reason

A. Science and its Ethic: Webers Wissenschaft als Beruf [Science as a

Vocation]

the irony: that science requires not merely refraining from an ethos but

itself exhibits an ethos the contrast with America: absence of quasi-feudal inheritances,

mediocrity & professionalism

B. The Disenchantment of the World (die Entzauberung der Welt) [quote 2]

dissolution of meaning (Tolstoy)

de-magification, i.e., logical premise is that there are no mysterious forces,

all things explicable and for technical mastery

C. The Rise of Instrumental Reason

Webers image of Plato, the concept as a tool

Webers image of the modern sciences: the experiment as a tool

ramifications of the tool-idea: a tool may be applied to anything, as a

technical instruments

Webers project: tracing out rationalization in all precincts of life, e.g.,

religion, music, law, economics, politics

Occidental rationalization: is the West unique?


34/91

D. The Limits of Instrumental Reason

fact and value

the absolute relatively of value: a war of the gods [quote 3]

the burdens of value-decision

rational accounting for the inner rational-coherence of ones value-choiceE. The Modern Predicament: modes of retreat or reenchantment

a hunger for experience, holism, meaning

aesthetics monumental and modern

personal relations

academic prophets, demagogues, genuine leaders, and the problem of

charisma

religious regression or a heroism of religious commitment?) [quote 4]

F. A Passionate Asceticism: Science [scholarship] as a calling, both ascetic

and passionate:

a calling to withhold any ultimate value-commitments

asceticism: modern sciences the ultimate stage in the Western process of

rationalized inner-worldly asceticism

that commenced with Calvinism (Nietzsches return)

a passion, as irrational in its own way as the Calvinist-religious disipline of

worldly-asceticism was irrational [quote 5]

the new notion of objectivity (next lecture)

Quotations for Lecture

1. The Dissolution of the Protestant Ethic

The Puritans wanted to be men of the callingwe, on the other hand, must

be. For when asceticism moved out of the monastic cells and into working

life, and began to dominate innerworldly morality, it helped to build that

mighty cosmos of the modern economic order (which is bound to the

technical and economic conditions of mechanical and machine production).

Today this mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style

of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual

who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the

day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed.


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In Baxters view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly on the

shoulders of his saints, like a thin cloak which can be thrown off at any

time. But fate decreed that the cloak should become a shell hard as steel.

As asceticism began to change the world and endeavored to exercise its

influence over it, the outward goods of this world gained increasing andfinally inescapable power over men, as never before in history. Today its

spirit has fled from this shellwhether for all time, who knows? Certainly,

victorious capitalism has no further need for this support now that it rests on

the foundation of the machine. Even the optimistic mood of its laughing

heir, the Enlightenment, seems destined to fade away, and the idea of a

duty in a calling haunts our lives like the ghost of once-held religious

beliefs. Where doing ones job cannot be directly linked to the highest

spiritual and cultural valuesalthough it may be felt to be more than mere

economic coercionthe individual today usually makes no attempt to find

any meaning in it. Where capitalism is at its most unbridled, in the United

States, the pursuit of wealth, divested of its metaphysical significance, today

tends to be associated with purely elemental passions, which at times


No one yet knows who will live in that shell in the future. Perhaps new

prophets will emerge, or powerful old ideas and ideals will be reborn at the

end of this monstrous development. Orperhapsif neither of theseoccursChinese ossification, dressed up with a kindof desperate self-

importance, will set in. Then, however, it might truly be said of the last

men in this cultural development: specialists without spirit, hedonists

without a heart, these nonentities imagine they have attained a stage of

humankind never before reached.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5),

Penguin edition, 120-121.

2. The Disenchantment of the World

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and

intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.

Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public


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life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the

brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that

our greatest art is intimate and not monumental, nor is it accidental that

today only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal human

situations, inpianissimo, that something is pulsating that corresponds to thepropheticpneuma, which in former times swept through the great

communities like a firebrand, welding them together.

3. The Struggle of the Gods and the Burden of Decision

Besides we can and we should state: In terms of its meaning, such and such

a practical stand can be derived with inner consistency, and hence integrity,

from this or that ultimate value position. Perhaps it can only be derived from

one such fundamental position, or maybe from several, but it cannot be

derived from these or those other positions. Figuratively speaking, you serve

this god and you offend the other god when you decide to adhere to this

position. And if you remain faithful to yourself, you will necessarily come to

certain final conclusions that subjectively make sense. This much, in

principle at least, can be accomplished. Philosophy, as a special discipline,

and the essentially philosophical discussions of principles in the other

sciences attempt to achieve this. Thus, if we are competent in our pursuit

(which must be presupposed here) we can force the individual, or at least

we can help him, to give himself an account of the ultimate meaning of hisown conduct. This appears to me as not so trifling a thing, even for one's

own personal life. Again, I am tempted to say of a teacher who succeeds in

this: he stands in the service of 'moral' forces; he fulfills the duty of bringing

about self-clarification and a sense of responsibility. And I believe he will be

the more able to accomplish this, the more conscientiously he avoids the

desire personally to impose upon or suggest to his audience his own stand.

[] Life is an unceasing struggle of these gods with one another. Or

speaking directly, the ultimately possible attitudes toward life are

irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final

conclusion. Thus it is necessary to make a decisive choice.

4. Attempts at Re-enchantment

If we attempt to force and to invent a monumental style in art, such

miserable monstrosities are produced as the many monuments of the last


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twenty years. If one tries intellectually to construe new religions without a

new and genuine prophecy, then, in an inner sense, something similar will

result, but with still worse effects. And academic prophecy, finally, will

create only fanatical sects but never a genuine community.

To the person who cannot bear the fate of the times, one must say: may he

rather return silently, without the usual publicity build-up of renegades, but

simply and plainly. The arms of the old churches are opened widely and

compassionately for him. After all, they do not make it hard for him. One

way or another he has to bring his intellectual sacrificethat is inevitable.

If he can really do it, we shall not rebuke him. For such an intellectual

sacrifice in favor of an unconditional religious devotion is ethically quite a

different matter than the evasion of the plain duty of intellectual honesty,

which sets in lacks the courage to clarify one's own ultimate standpoint and

rather facilitates this duty by feeble relative judgment. In my eyes, such

religious return stands higher than the academic prophecy, which does not

clearly realize that in the lecture-rooms of the university no other virtue

holds but plain intellectual honesty.

5. The Calling for Science

And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to come

up to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not hemakes the correct conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as well

stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the personal

experience of science. Without this strange intoxication, ridiculed by every

outsider; without this passion, this thousands of years must pass before you

enter into life and thousands more wait in silenceaccording to whether or

not you succeed in making this conjecture; without this, you have no calling

for science and you should do something else. For nothing is worthy of

person as person unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.

Max Weber, Science as a Vocation in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills

(Translated and edited), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology(New York:

Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 129-156.


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Weber on Objectivity (in Social Sciences)9/2/2014 8:03:00 AM

German suspicion of all things French, focus on German Sonderweg,

opposed the idea that social sciences can apply the methods of hard sciences

(between positivism and a neo-romantic intuitionism) --- Weber in between

Webets sociology = Verstehende Soziologie, interpretive sociology (versusVernunft--- understanding, being in between, phenomenological,

hermeneutic)

Neo-Kantian Movement --- excess of 19thcentury needed to be swept aside,

contra positivism and metaphysics in philosophy --- need to reach back to

Kant to amend (zurck zu Kant!) and his rigorous Erkenntnistheorie,

whereby all mods of knowledge are guided by basic rational forms of the

mind, reason is the law giver onto nature --- transcendental idealism to

work out what those underlying rules are --- Kant also embodied the

Aufklrung, which was being eclipsed by 19thcentury --- neo-Kantians used

Kant to promote regeneration of the Enlightenment

Weber too was a neo-Kantian (of Heidelberg/Freiburg) --- distinguished

between pure reason (theoretical, to which world is revealed as full causal

nexus) and practical reason (human action is unique causality, appears as

a sort of self-causation/autonomy) --- sociology should understand

according to practical reason, human action motivated by fundamentalvalues (contra French sociology, which searched for law-like regularities in

human action, through Durkheim)

Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert--- Geschichte/Geisteswissenschaft

(particularity, strives to understand singularity, implies human freedom) vs.

Naturwissenschaft (nomethetical)

What is the role of value/normativity in Webers thought?

On the one hand, Weber: Wertfreiheit(freedom from value, objectivity) ---

in translation into English, much of his tendency is buried/hide his

commitments in his supposedly value-free science; appealed to moderate

liberal American mentality


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However, despite Webers attempt at objectivity, tendencies do emerge:

objectivity to be directed by underlying values and passionate commitment

to a calling (Beruf) --- however, we must acknowledge that in modern world,

values are not absolute (value-relativity of modern world)

What is Webers methodology?

Weber, Objectivity in the Social Sciences --- verstehende Soziologie

attempts to understand human action insofar as it has human meaning (as it

is part of Geist), takes into account the reasons individuals give for actions

(i.e. Methodological Individualism--- although Benjamin Franklin

ideal typein Protestant Ethic)

Weber also committed to multi-causality (dialectics)

Sociology (in the sense in which this highly ambiguous word is

used here) is a science concerning itself with the interpretive

understanding of social action and thereby with a causal

explanation of its course and consequences. We shall speak of

action insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective

meaning to his behaviorbe it overt or covert, omission or

acquiescence. Action is social insofar as its subjective meaning

takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in

its course (Q 1).

Weber thought that a great deal of human action exhibits instrumental

rationality (action directed toward concrete pursuit)/zweckrational---

typically we think of values as joined in purpose, value rational

action/wertrational holds together values rationally (basis of common

law legalism)

Traditional action is action that follows social customs/

Affective action can too be described by sociologist, who works out what

emotional states lead to what actions

Weber, Objectivity in the Social Sciences (1904)inArchiv fr

Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik--- Weber enters on-going debate of

method controversy/ Methodenstreit --- von Menger (Austrian, anti-


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historical, economic laws to be derived by logic) vs. von Schmoller (German,

historical school) --- 1909: Werturteilsstreit ~ contra Schmoller, Sombart

and Weber used the classroom to preach politics: problem = guided by

particular, reformist value commitment.

Weber objectivity is the attempt to understandpurposive and value

rational action; hence, the assessment of rationality are non-normative,

objective descriptions of the coherence of the action, which is only judged by

the actions own internal consistency --- which actions? Choice is directed by

the interest of the sociologist, grounded in ones own values; indeed,

objectivity grounded in the investments of the social investigator

ideal type = utopian constructs that help you pick out the phenomenon

thats of interest to you--- when you use ideal type, remember that it is

constructed; the danger is taking the ideal type as something objective ---

not to be hypothesized/treated as objective

Webers work strikes compromise between the objective and the subjective;

the two are balanced in the Beruf

Weber thought that there is an infinity of knowings --- initial selection of

subject matter is subjective, later work to be objectiveAll knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always

knowledge fromparticular points of view. When we require from

the historian and social research worker as an elementary

presupposition that they distinguish the important from the trivial

and that he should have the necessary point of view for this

distinction, we mean that they must understand how to relate the

events of the real world consciously or unconsciously to universal

cultural values and toselect out those relationships which are

significant for us. If the notion that those standpoints can be

derived from the facts themselves continually recurs, it is due to

the nave self-deception of the specialist who is unaware that it is

due to the evaluative ideas with which he unconsciously approaches

his subject matter, that he has selected from an absolute infinity a

tiny portion with the study of which he concerns himself (Q 2)


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There is no absolute conception of the world --- it cannot be seen from

nowhere --- Weber militates against the Romantic notion of immersion in

reality; there will always be a divide between researcher and the world

There can be objectivity about facts; but there is none in our values; valuesare subjective, but can be objectively described:

Accordingly, cultural science in our sense involves subjective

presuppositions insofar as it concerns itself only with those

components of reality which have some relationship, however

indirect, to events to which we attach cultural significance.

(82)Undoubtedly, all evaluative ideas are subjective. Between

the historical interest in a family chronicle and that in the

development of the greatest conceivable cultural phenomena which

were and are common to a nation or to mankind over long epochs,

there exists an infinite gradation of significance arranged into an

order which differs for each of us. And they are, naturally,

historically variable in accordance with the character of the culture

and the ideas which rule mens minds. But it obviously does not

follow from this that research in the cultural sciences can only have

results which are subjective in the sense that they are validfor

one person and not for others. Only the degree to which they

interest different persons varies. In other words, the choice of theobject of investigation and the extent or depth to which this

investigation attempts to penetrate into the infinite causal web, are

determined by the evaluative ideas which dominate the investigator

and his age. In the method of investigation, the guiding point of

view is of great importance for the construction of the conceptual

scheme which will be used in the investigation. In the mode of

their use, however, the investigator is obviously bound by the

norms of our thought just as much here as elsewhere. For scientific

truth is precisely what is validfor all who seek the truth (Q 3)

Webers theory of modernity --- based on disenchantment and the

disintegration of the objective world which seems to hold within itself value -

--- in modernity, the understanding that all values are subjective (post-


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Nietzschean) is unique --- we cant be sure that our neighbor believes in the

same God, relativity of value (polytheism)

However, there emerges from this the meaninglessness of the idea

which prevails occasionally even among historians, namely, that the

goal of the cultural sciences, however far it may be from therealization, is to construct a closed system of concepts, in which

reality is synthesized in some sort ofpermanently and universally

valid classification and from which it can again be deduced. The

stream of immeasurable events flows unendlingly towards eternity.

The cultural problems which move men form themselves ever anew

and in different colors, and the boundaries of that area in the

infinite stream of concrete events which acquires meaning and

significance for us, i.e., which becomes an historical individual,

are constantly subject to change. The intellectual contexts from

which it is viewed and scientifically analyzed shift. The points of

departure of the cultural sciences remain changeable throughout

the limitless future (Q 4)

But Weber does think that many go about their lives believing that their

values are the objective one --- the Social Theorist is fallen man, expelled

from the garden, must have come to recognize the truth of value relativity --

- allows for proper objective description of the nexus of fact and value (the

role of the total disenchanter)The fate of an epoch which has eaten of the tree of knowledge is

that it must know that we cannot learn the meaning of the world

from the results of its analysis, be it ever so perfect; it must rather

be in a position to create this meaning itself. It must recognize that

general views of life and the universe can never be the products of

increasing empirical knowledge, and that the highest ideals, which

move us most forcefully, are always formed only in the struggle

with other ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours are to

us (Q 5)

Social Scientific inquiry in Webers sense is only possible through the modern

process of disenchantment


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Lecture 7: Weber on Objectivity and Value-Pluralism

I. Recapitulation: The German Tradition of Social Analysis

the interpretive tradition in German sociology

a tradition of dissent: against positivism and romantic-intuitionistic holism

the German hermeneutic difference:

Documents

German Social Thought, Notes