The Subversive Weber

Subjectivation and World-Confrontation in Max Weber’s Teaching

Authors

  • Carlos Frade University of Salford-Manchester

Keywords:

Desire-bearing conviction, Ethics of Responsibiity, Subjectivation, Existential points, Rationalization, Passion for the Real, Value-freedom

Abstract

That there is a subversive Max Weber may go unrecognized even by Marxist scholars otherwise appreciative, if critically, of Weber, to say nothing of mainstream Weber scholarship. That the subversive side of Weber’s thought and teaching lies in his figure of subjectivation or stance towards the world, is likely to be met with incredulity, even with a smug smile. Yet, it is precisely this claim what this article seeks to probe by bringing out that stance so as to delineate its pure form and disclose the subject carrying it, an operation which will in addition allow us to see how Weber’s social science is both summoned by that subject and specifically suited to study it. Seeking to grasp Weber’s thought and teaching from the standpoint of his stance involves a perspective which is consistent with the subjective disposition that Weber demands from himself and his addressees.

This is a new approach to Weber’s thought which, by prioritising its subjective determinations, is able to demonstrate its fundamental unity, which is not thematic, its consistency, as well as the way in which Weber’s theoretical developments and educational efforts spring from his stance and unfold it. Weber’s thought is shown to be grounded on an unparalleled disjunctive figure of subjectivation whose two components, held together in pure subjectivity in the mode of tension, are deployed at several crucial levels of Weber’s oeuvre. By giving subjectivation its due both structurally and historically vis-à-vis rationalization, the article makes clear that Weber’s social and cultural science is not just a science ‘of Man’, i.e. a humanist science, still less a posthumanist science of human and nonhuman entities in a flattened world, but a science of ‘daemonized’ humans and rationalized daemons. Is not that social and cultural science, or a variant thereof, what we necessitate today?

Author Biography

Carlos Frade, University of Salford-Manchester

Sociology

Senior Lecturer in Sociology

References

Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl (1992) Hannah Arendt-Karl Jaspers: Correspondence 1926-1969. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Badiou, Alain (2005) Le Siècle, Paris: Seuil.

Badiou, Alain (2009) Logics of Worlds. Being and Event, 2, trans. Alberto Toscano. London: Continuum.

Baumgarten, Eduard (1964) Max Weber, Werk und Person. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Siebeck).

Farris, Sara R. (2013) Max Weber’s Theory of Personality: Individuation, Politics and Orientalism in the Sociology of Religion. Leiden: Brill.

Hennis, Wilhelm (2000 [1987]) Max Weber’s Central Question, trans. by Keith Tribe. Newbury: Threshold Press.

Hennis, Wilhelm (1996) Max Webers Wissenschaft vom Menschen. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Henrich, Dieter (1952) Die Einheit der Wissenschaftslehre Max Webers. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Honigsheim, Paul (2000) The Unknown Max Weber, ed. Alan Sica. New Brunswick: Transaction.

Jameson, Fredric (1988 [1973]) ‘The Vanishing Mediator; or, Max Weber as Storyteller’, in Ideologies of Theory. Volume 2: Syntax of History, London: Routledge: pp. 3-34.

Jameson, Fredric (1994) The Seeds of Time, New York: Columbia University Press.

Kierkegaard, Søren (1987) Either/Or, Part II. Kierkegaard’s Writings, IV. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Löwith, Karl (1993 [1932]) Max Weber and Karl Marx. London: Routledge.

Lukács, Georg (1986) Georg Lukács: Selected Correspondence 1902-1920. Selected, edited, translated and annotated by Judith Marcus and Soltán Tar. New York: Columbia University Press.

Mommsen, Wolfgang J. (1984) Max Weber and German Politics, 1890-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mommsen, Wolfgang J. (1989) The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Scaff, Lawrence A. (1973) ‘Max Weber’s Politics and Political Education’, American Political Science Review 67(1): 128-41.

Scaff, Lawrence A. (1989) Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Schluchter, Wolfgang (1979) ‘Value-Neutrality and the Ethic of Responsibility’, in Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter, Max Weber’s Vision of History, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 65-116.

Tenbruck, Friedrich H. (1980) ‘The Problem of Thematic Unity in the Works of Max Weber’, The British Journal of Sociology 31(3): 316-351.

Weber, Marianne (1988) Max Weber: A Biography. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Weber, Max (1910) Antikritisches zum ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus. Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 30: 176-202.

Weber, Max (1920) Gesammelte Aufsaıtze zur Religionssoziologie I, ed. Marianne Weber. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1924) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik, ed. Marianne Weber. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1976) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. J. Winckelmann. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1988) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. J. Winckelmann. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1988b) Gesammelte Politische Schriften, ed. J. Winckelmann. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1988c) Zur Politik im Weltkrieg, ed. W. Mommsen. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1991) Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. Konfuzianismus und Taoismus, ed. H. Schmidt-Glintzer. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1991b) Zur Neuordnung Deutschlands, ed. W. Mommsen. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1994) Wissenschaft als Beruf 1917/1919. Politik als Beruf 1919, ed. W. Mommsen and W. Schluchter. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1996) Zur Russischen Revolution von 1905, ed. W. Mommsen. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (1998) Briefe 1911–1912. 2, ed. M. Lepsius and W. Mommsen. Tübingen: Mohr (Siebeck).

Weber, Max (2008) Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations, ed. J. Dreijmanis, trans. G. Wells. New York: Algora Publishing.

Whimster, Sam and Lash, Scott (1987) Introduction. In S. Whimster and S. Lash (eds.), Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity. London: Routledge.

Žižek, Slavoj (1999) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London, New York: Verso.

Downloads

Published

26-12-2023

How to Cite

Frade, C. (2023). The Subversive Weber: Subjectivation and World-Confrontation in Max Weber’s Teaching. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 19(2), 73–102. Retrieved from http://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1111