Transcript Max Weber, 1864-1920

Max Weber, 1864-1920
• I. Life
• II. “contribution”
• III. Circumstances of these lectures
– Before and after the end of World War I
• Before: Science as a Vocation (What can I know?)
– German meaning of “Wissenschaft”
• After: Politics as a Vocation (What can I do?)
– The idea of “vocation”
Germans students in Berlin on the way
to enlist
“Big Bertha”: a German 42cm howitzer of the type used to
crush the Belgian fortresses in 1914.
Science as a Vocation
1. What are the conditions of science as a vocation
in the material sense of the term” What are the
professional prospects of university students?
• GENERAL: What does science mean to its
devoted disciples?
2. What does the specialist hope to accomplish by
his works, which are bound to be superceded?
3. What is the practical meaning of progress which
science and technology have generated?
4. Does progress have any meaning besides the purely
practical and technical?
GENERAL: What is the value of science in the total life of
human kind?
5.What is the menaing of science after illusions are
dispersed?
6. Is there such a thing as science free from
presuppositions?
7. Has the contribution of science no meaning at all for a
person who does not care to know about the facts
and thinks only of the practical and technical?
• 8. What does science contribute positively to
one’s personal life?
• 9. What of the warring gods and who are
they?
• 10. What stance should one take to
religion/theology and its claim to be a science
• GENERAL: what of the demands of the day?
Isaiah 21:11-12
• “One calleth to me out of Seir, Watchaman, what
of the night? What of the night? The watchman
said, Even if the morning cometh, it is still night: if
ye inquire already, ye will come again and inquire
once more.”
• Man ruft zu mir aus Seïr: Wächter, ist die Nacht
bald hin? Wächter, ist die Nacht bald hin?
Der Wächter aber sprach: Wenn auch der Morgen
kommt, so wird es doch Nacht bleiben. Wenn ihr
fragen wollt, so kommt wieder und fragt.
Germans, Battle of
Verdun
German cemetery
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen, 1917
•
•
•
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Politics as a Vocation
• I. circumstances
• II. stance to the audience
• III. What do we mean by politics?
– What is a state
• When and why do the ruled obey the rulers
– Custom
– Charisma
– Rational legal
• How do the ruling powers aassert their own domination
– Legitimacy
– Ruling apparatus
• What does the full time politician look like
– Lives for
– Lives off
• Development of need for organization
– Bureaucracy
– Officials vs leaders
• Different form of responsibility
– Dangers of journalism
• What is the effect of the parliamentary system
– UK
– USA: how are leaders selected
• What is the effect of parties on the spoils system
– Tendency towards plebiscitarianism
• What is the boss
– Development of professionalism
• What can one achieve with Parliament in
Germany?
– What is the fate of professional politicians in Germany
• Bismarck and consequences
• What are the inner pleasure and personal
qualification sof a political careeer
– Power
• What qualities should one have to exercise this
• What is the ethical location of poltiics in out
life?
– Danger from the way
– What is the true relation of politics and ethics
• What principles govern the conduct of our life
– Nature of absolutist ethics if they are to amount
to anything
• Ethics of conviction and ehtics of responsibliity
– Satanic powers
– Lutheran stance
• What will become of us spiritually in the present age?
• SONNET 102
My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new and then but in the spring
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song.