Weber - General

Question 1

background

Answer 1

• Weber = 1864-1920
• Trained as a lawyer, also worked in universities
• Scholar with independent means
• Focused on the specific, dismissed the general
• Influenced by Nietzsche, focus on genealogy of ideas
• He offers an account of who we are and why we are the way we are.

Question 2

general

Answer 2

• Moral account of human condition – what ought we do better?
  o Moral account = theodicy, account of human wellbeing.
• Lifts identity in history and evaluates what this implies and its possibility in the future.
• Argues that capitalist economy is a defining factor of who we (Westerners) are
  o There is a characteristic relationship between owners and workers
  o This is a key part of society in 19th century, during Industrialisation
  o Also key to distinguishing West from rest of world

Question 3

Marx

Answer 3

• Exploitation
• Loss of liberty through alienation
• Irrationality of capitalism – ‘opium of the masses’
• Colonial aspect to capitalism – forced on colonised people in order to achieve submission
• Religion
  o The modern world of business and trade appears to be able to work without religion (Marx): religion simply as an illusion.
  o Religion is a cover for inequality
  o Marx placed authenticity in working class. Encouraged revolution and socialist mode of production
• Work
  o Marx made labour relations and the extraction of surplus value is the key to the capitalist mode of production. Weber however took a somewhat different approach: man has to work but, in every society except our own, high status is marked by ceasing to labour. However, this state of affairs is not true of Capitalism, where work is linked to wealth in a positive feedback loop. Here we have a form of production in which work increases steadily for all concerned.

Question 4

weber and Marx

Answer 4

• Apologetic argument
• Not concerned with colonialism or economic exploitation
• It is said that he turns Marx’s theory on its head
  o Could say that he does not refute but extends it
  o Marx is too one-sided
  o Arrow points both ways for W (religion economics)
• Weber inverts means and ends – to get more money = aim in life (see Benjamin Franklin)
• Capitalist rationality = coercive (see Baxter)
• Unlike M, Weber says that struggle was positive and was a natural part of human nature

Question 5

romantic/enlightenment

Answer 5

• Influenced by Romantic or Nietzschean Kulturpessimismus (idea that culture of a nation is in a process of decline)
• Tension between Enlightenment rationalism and Romanticism
  o ‘The writings of Weber are marked by a tension between the requirements of Kantian rationalism and the demands of Weber’s personal value commitment’ (124 – Koch)
• Weber recognises that the world is full of conflicts of reason/emotion etc.
• This led Weber to thesis marked by Kulturpessimismus

Question 6

rationalisaition thesis and process of disenchantment - general

Answer 6

• Disenchantment = term borrowed from Schiller
• Colonial view of rationalisation – only the West are capable (see Introduction)
• Features of rationalisation
  o Knowledge
  o Impersonality
  o Control

Question 7

rationalisaition thesis and process of disenchantment - iron cage

Answer 7

• Apocalyptic ‘iron cage’ = Kulturpessimismus
  o Formal rationality does bring freedom
  o But freedom and agency are jeopardised when people are trapped in the ‘iron cage’ brought about by rationality
  o Depicts future of rationalisation as chaotic and overcome by subjectivism
  o Movement towards enchantment again
• W is less positive than Kant in his view of reason
  o For K, reason = progress, teleology of humanity
  o For W, he was pessimistic about modernity