Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Max Weber: impliziter Kern seiner These

Kurzinhalt: It seems, then, that what Weber really meant by his rejection of value judgments would have to be expressed as follows: The objects of the social sciences are constituted by reference to values. Reference ..

Textausschnitt: 62a Almost all that we have said up to this point was necessary in order to clear away the most important obstacles to an understanding of Weber's central thesis. Only now are we able to grasp its precise meaning. Let us reconsider our last example. What Weber should have said was that the corruption of Calvinist theology led to the emergence of the capitalist spirit. This would have implied an objective value judgment on vulgar Calvinism: the epigones unwittingly destroyed what they intended to preserve. Yet this implied value judgment is of very limited significance. It does not prejudge the real issue in any way. For, assuming that Calvinist theology were a bad thing, its corruption was a good thing. What Calvin would have considered a "carnal" understanding could, from another point of view, be approved as a "this-worldly" understanding, leading to such good things as secularist individualism and secularist democracy. Even from the latter point of view, vulgar Calvinism would appear as an impossible position, a halfway house, but preferable to Calvinism proper for the same reason that Sancho Panza may be said to be preferable to Don Quixote. The rejection of vulgar Calvinism is then inevitable from every point of view. But this merely means that only after having rejected vulgar Calvinism is one faced with the real issue: the issue of religion versus irreligion, i.e., of genuine religion versus noble irreligion, as distinguished from the issue of mere sorcery, or mechanical ritualism versus the irreligion of specialists without vision and voluptuaries without heart. It is this real issue which, according to Weber, cannot be settled by human reason, just as the conflict between different genuine religions of the highest rank (e.g., the conflict between Deutero-Isaiah, Jesus, and Buddha) cannot be settled by human reason. Thus, in spite of the fact that social science stands or falls by value judgments, social science or social philosophy cannot settle the decisive value conflicts. It is indeed true that one has already passed a value judgment when speaking of Gretchen and a prostitute. But this value judgment proves to be merely provisional the moment one comes face to face with a radically ascetic position which condemns all sexuality. From this point of view, the open degradation of sexuality through prostitution may appear to be a cleaner thing than the disguise of the true nature of sexuality through sentiment and poetry. It is indeed true that one cannot speak of human affairs without praising the intellectual and moral virtues and blaming the intellectual and moral vices. But this does not dispose of the possibility that all human virtues would ultimately have to be judged to be no more than splendid vices. It would be absurd to deny that there is an objective difference between a blundering general and a strategic genius. But if war is absolutely evil, the difference between the blundering general and the strategic genius will be on the same level as the difference between a blundering thief and a genius in thievery. (Fs) (notabene)

63a It seems, then, that what Weber really meant by his rejection of value judgments would have to be expressed as follows: The objects of the social sciences are constituted by reference to values. Reference to values presupposes appreciation of values. Such appreciation enables and forces the social scientist to evaluate the social phenomena, i.e., to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious and between the higher and the lower: between genuine religion and spurious religion, between genuine leaders and charlatans, between knowledge and mere lore or sophistry, between virtue and vice, between moral sensitivity and moral obtuseness, between art and trash, between vitality and degeneracy, etc. Reference to values is incompatible with neutrality; it can never be "purely theoretical." But nonneutrality does not necessarily mean approval; it may also mean rejection. In fact, since the various values are incompatible with one another, the approval of any one value necessarily implies the rejection of some other value or values. Only on the basis of such acceptance or rejection of values, of "ultimate values," do the objects of the social sciences come to sight. For all further work, for the causal analysis of these objects, it must be a matter of indifference whether the student has accepted or rejected the value in question.1 (Fs) (notabene) (notabene)

64a At any rate, Weber's whole notion of the scope and function of the social sciences rests on the allegedly demonstrable premise that the conflict between ultimate values cannot be resolved by human reason. The question is whether that premise has really been demonstrated, or whether it has merely been postulated under the impulse of a specific moral preference. (Fs)