![]() Another trait that must be balanced by a politician concerns the two different concepts of ethics: the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility. Without passion, politics is merely “a frivolous intellectual game,” but without proportion, the politician is condemned “to political impotence” (77). Weber calls for a balance between that passion and proportion. He cannot become too passionate about a goal and lose all sense of scope or what really matters. In other words, a politician needs some distance from the people and things he governs. That sense of proportion is “the ability to allow realities to impinge on you while maintaining an inner calm and composure” (77). The crucial trait, however, that Weber points to is the sense of proportion in combination with passion. To be a politician, one needs that sense of responsibility to be the guiding force of action a politician must feel a sense of responsibility for accomplishing that goal about which they are passionate. ![]() He clarifies, however, that only passion is not enough. Weber explains passion as “a commitment to the matter in hand” or “the passionate dedication to a “cause” (76). The three qualities a politician must have are “passion, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of proportion” (76). The final topic Weber covers concerns the ethics that a politician, especially a leader, must possess to govern effectively. Weber then moves into very specific examples of the way various societies work, especially in the cases of Britain, the United States, and Germany. With the transition to a more centralized government, more executive decisions are made nearer to the top of the system, with most low-level administrators simply carrying out these decisions, as they have no personal ownership in the matter. Weber uses as an example the old system of vassals owning fiefs for the older kind of governance, and the modern bureaucratic state as an example of the newer form where those under the leader are separate from (i.e. The means of government become concentrated in one person or body, rather than existing parallel to a leader. The leader that is legitimated through charisma, he says, is most exemplary of one with politics as a vocation, because the qualities of leadership manifest most directly in him.Ĭentralization of Power in the Modern StateĪnother theme that Weber examines is the transition of society from a system in which administrators “own their own means of administration” to one where this class is separate from that which they administer (36-7). A leader can legitimate his or her power as a result of custom, gift of grace, or by virtue of statutes (34). According to Weber, there are three ways in which power can be legitimated. Weber then moves on to the ways in which that power is legitimated. A politician, therefore, is fundamentally concerned with power, “either…as a means in the service of other goals…or… ‘for its own sake’” (33-4). Politics, then, can be defined as striving to share power or influence the distribution of power between different states, or people within a state. ![]() This broad definition, of course, leads him to another central question: What is a “state?” Weber defines the state as “the form of human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a particular territory” (33). He focuses his lecture upon politics as meaning the leadership of (or influence of leadership upon) a state. Weber begins, very broadly, by stating the type of politics he will be addressing. ![]() What Weber covers instead, however, are the broader philosophical questions of what politics is and the general characteristics of people who have politics as their vocation or calling. ![]() Given the recent event of Germany’s loss of the First World War and the resulting political turmoil at the founding of the Weimar Republic, there was almost an expectation, acknowledged by Weber himself at the beginning of the lecture, that he would give his “opinions on topical questions.” This expectation was especially strong given Weber’s status as the most respected intellectual in Germany at the time. These lectures cover the topics of, first “Science as a Vocation” (in November 1917) and then “Politics as a Vocation” (in January 1919). In the late teens of the twentieth century, Max Weber, a sociologist and highly respected intellectual, gave a series of two lectures by invitation at the University of Munich. ![]()
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