1. Do we need to accept Weber's interpretation of the dilemma facing modern subjectivity and its task of making modern individal life meaningful after the collapse of tradition and other inter-subjectively binding worldviews like religion? Confronting the modern division of labor and the increasing rationalisation of culture with its increasingly sphere immanent norms and rules, Weber opts for the notion of an individual existential choice. The subject must form his or her own life meaningfully within a chosen value sphere around a single value i.e. art, science, politics, etc. Weber resists the temptation to make this choice romantic: he speaks of its rigors in a stoic voice. Such commitment is entirely without glamour. It involves the asceticism that comes with prosaic and Sisyphean specialisation. For example, in the domain of science it involves the total commitment of a large slice of life in training and research in pursuit of an elusive goal that may never be attained. Without an inner drive such a choice can turn into a destructive nightmare of self-waste. Achievement in such a life does not generate ultimate satisfaction. Scientific achievement is transitory with inbuilt obsolescence. Rapidly changing horizons of modern knowledge cannot answer the fundamental question about the meaning of life. This question forever remains beyond the sphere of science.
2. However, despite Weber's efforts to describe such a choice as unglamorous: in the light of its complexities, its prosaic aspects, its ultimate existential dissatisfaction, there remains a compelling romantic element. The very idea of the calling as a sort of redemption (the elevation of the individual to meaning), the scale of the sacrifice and the asceticism of the challenge ensures that only the exceptional and the driven will bear it. Remember Weber's choice of the term “Beruf” (calling) is quite deliberate. He takes over the charismatic connotations of religious vocation into the wider mundane world of science and politics and represents it in absolutist terms: the passion of this total commitment elevates the choice into something that is really meaningful. Here the exception becomes the rule. Total commitment has its own grandeur. This is a wager of life involving a sort of self-abandonment and self-transcendence that brings this value choice into conflict with other important values, creating meaning.
3. Is Weber's vision convincing? While the vision of heroic commitment is, perhaps seductive, I want to argue that it is precisely these romantic elements and the residual quasi-religious absolutism of his notion of vocation that narrows options and result in distortion. Let's start with the exclusivity of the choice. Weber interprets the task facing the modern subject as an exclusive choice of a value sphere (science, politics, art, religion, and eroticism). Weber does not consider everyday life as a sphere because we do not choose the everyday but rather inhabit it by necessity: we cannot help but dwell in it. Furthermore, for Weber, the everyday is not an exemplary way of life that creates meaning. Weber prohibits mixing or crossing spheres because of the conflicting character of the norms they presuppose and also because real achievement demands utter dedication in a specialised area. However, for many, the idea that their life be a singular project devoted to the service of a single value sphere seems at odds with a satisfaction and a meaning derived from close intersubjective bonds and acts of friendship, love and care. These also bestow upon an individual feelings of value, esteem, respect and singularity. There can be little question that Weber valued these bonds. However, he seems to build a wall between them and vocation that could only be humanly crippling for many of us. This seems to be a consequence of his emphasis on the demands of specialisation. In the era of rationalisation, Weber wants to rigorously uphold the notion of specialisation and this proscribes the idea of mixing callings or of mixing the calling with everyday life. As a result, Weber's modern subject become unnecessarily a mono-centred individual who chooses one way of life for good and also denies themselves the possibility of participating in other spheres by a sort of self-imposed rigid specialism and a resulting ethical constraint. Clearly Weber is right that in the modern age of specialisation it is almost impossible for any individual to serve "two deities" with the same devotion. Nevertheless, this is a practical inhibition. There is no good theoretical reason why all individuals should become mono-centred. Clearly it is possible and may well be desirable for many modern individuals to change vocations, to be active in two or more spheres obeying their inner spheric rules and norms depending on interests and talent without chasing for perfection in any single one. Such a solution must be especially attractive to women who typically bear the greater weight of hard choices between specialisation/career and child bearing/rearing. This is clearly an obvious practical and life enriching solution to the problem of choosing between different specialist cultural spheres in a way that is not so absolutely focused on the exemplary personality and the highest level of vocational achievement.
4. Secondly, we could question the consequences Weber draws from the pluralism of values in the modern world. In his view, this leads to the “war of the Gods” because reason lacks the capacity to hierarchies these values and all that is left is the chaotic struggle between them and only the existential choice of the individual to impose a self-chosen hierarchy. However, it could be argued that Weber moves too quickly from the pluralism of modern value standpoints to the impossibility of hierarchising them. Even if many philosophers today are sceptical about the possibility of the absolute basis for rational discrimination between values, most would nevertheless still argue that it is possible to discriminate rationally on the basis of degree of universality. In other words, the relative merits of certain values can be debated on the basis of a consensus that is open-ended and ultimately includes all humanity. Thus while a political value like “American freedom” is likely to gain many adherents this is not as universalisable as certain moral values like “do not kill”
5. Thirdly we must focus on what I shall call Weber's redemptive subjectivism. After the collapse of traditional worldviews, Weber shifts the task of creating meaning on to the exemplary individual. This is a very heavy load indeed and almost beyond the power of the single individual. Weber overcomes this problem by the notion of "calling": the individual must choose a value-sphere and it is the passionate devotion to that sphere which both elevates the subject beyond mere subjectivity and infuses life with meaning. After the decline of religion, cultural spheres are the closest the individual can come to supra-individual meaning. The residual religiousity of this view is clear. It is marked by what Nietzsche called ascetic ideals. Weber asks the individual to bear an unrealistic weight. On the one hand, Weber's uncalled subject is too much like the weak creature of the Christian tradition. On the other, Weber underplays the role of intersubjective relations in the creation of a meaningful life and, as we have suggested, the way in which a range of social bonds and commitments also richly add to the meaningfulness both of an individual life and to social life more generally.
6. To the extent that Weber takes up the problem of meaning on a societal level this finds expression in his political thought on leadership. Modern society is characterized by galloping rationalization and bureaucratisation. Weber’s response is the call to sustain and nurture charisma. Weber recognises the efficiency of bureaucracy in getting things done smoothly, consistently and expertly in mass complex societies. He notes the way in which the politics of the machine and the specialists of the state in war, finance and law proved their superiority over the regimes of notables and dilettantes time and time again. However, he also believes that the bureaucrats for all their devotion to public service and the chain of command have their own interests, logic and a dulling resistance to creative initiative beyond the system, rules and conventionality. Their discipline depends upon individual creativity and autonomy. As already said, for Weber, charisma is the only available antidote to bureaucratic ossification. Weber believed that with the threat of universal bureaucratisation it was crucial to preserve the maximum amount of social dynamism by maintaining social and political competition wherever possible. This general diagnosis was located in his specific critique of recent German political history.
7. With rapid economic modernization the aristocratic Junkers were a decaying ruling class that no longer possessed the capacity to further Germany's real national interests. Yet they remained the dominant political force with great influence in the army and bureaucracy. Bismarck's victory represented a historic defeat of the German bourgeoisie and of German liberalism. He had stifled genuine parliamentary politics and this had left Germany without great political leaders. After Bismarck's demise the aristocratic bureaucrats had been able to manipulate a weak and vacillating Kaiser. The only way to make good this lack in Germany was to activate civil society and introduce aggressive parliamentary democracy that would cultivate real charismatic leaders with a calling for politics. This situation reached a crisis point during the war with the eventual revolutionary overthrow of the imperial regime in 1918. Throughout this whole period Weber was an advocate of the real democratisation of Germany. However increasingly he came to focus less on broad economic and political reforms and more on the creation of conditions that would produce leaders with a calling. For example, to counteract the encroachment of bureaucracy in the civil service and the party machine and its impact on the quality of political leadership, Weber advocated the idea of plebicitarian democracy. Thereby political leaders supported by the mass party machines would gain their authority and legitimacy directly from the consensus/acclamation of the people rather than being the complete servants of these party bureaucracies. This would provide leaders with real political ability with the leverage to really transform political reality, to change society's direction, to foster new values and avoid the twin dangers of progressive bureaucratisation and leaderless modern mass democracy.
8. For Weber, modernity had undercut the conditions that had sustained classical liberal democracy. The real meaning of his thesis of the "loss of freedom" was that the classical ideal of "individual self-determination" and the "popular will” was now virtually obsolete. They had lost much of their practical meaning because modern conditions were so much more complex, the weight of the combined objective logics of economic, technological and bureaucratic processes was so great and inescapable, and individuals were inevitably and necessarily interdependent. Weber acknowledges the Tocqueville point about the atomisation of the modern individual in mass democracy and the need to energise a healthy civil society. But, unlike Tocquevillean, he thinks it naive to believe the mass individual could have much influence on the corporate entities and complex processes of modern mass politics. In any case, Weber is a radical sceptic when it came to the concept of democratisation. His argument was that the demos itself in the sense of an inarticulate mass never actually governs: all that changes is the methods of the selection of executive leaders and the influence which various circles within the demos are able to exert. Democratisation does not therefore necessarily mean a greater active share of the governed in political authority. In this situation, Weber argued the only realistic alternative was the form of constitutional democracy in which people would be able to choose in a formerly free way the leaders who seemed best able to represent their interests and aspirations and robust civil debate would engender the leaders with real political calling. Rather than allow the faceless bureaucrat without a political calling and without real responsibility de facto political power, Weber preferred the presidential style direct election of political leaders. Those who possessed a real political calling, who were sufficiently charismatic to emotionally bind the masses and convince their supporters of their qualifications to rule, could proceed according to their own discretion as long as they maintained the trust of the masses. If they lost that trust, their political career would be finished.
9. In Weber's theorization of democracy we perceive almost the inversion of its classical meaning. In their classical sense the ideas of individual self-determination and popular will represented a process of legitimisation and policy formulation from the bottom up, from the electors to their candidates by a sort of delegation. Weber clearly believed that this model was no longer viable. While he retains the idea of the formerly free election of leaders and a dynamic civil society, he believes that modern politics is a complex arena for specialists-- for those with a calling for politics. If the great threat of universal rationalisation and bureaucratisation are to be met and held at bay, modern society requires leadership and charisma. Modern politics, itself subject to the inroads of bureaucratisation-- the increasing importance of the party machine and the public service, of specialists in various aspects of public business like finance, law, diplomacy--can sustain it own vitality only if openings are preserved and facilitated for charismatic leadership. Yet here again Weber asks the individual in the shape of charismatic leadership to achieve almost the impossible. If bureaucratisation is to effectively be resisted the struggle must be taken up on a wider front than mere leadership. In Germany at this time what was required was a range of institutional changes both economic and political to reduce the power of the Junker's and facilitate the birth of democratic forces and organisations. Ironically, for Weber, universal bureaucratisation becomes the great threat in modernity. He completely ignored what, with hindsight, has turned out to be an equally significant danger-- the totalitarian charismatic dictator -- the individual who takes over or usurps control of the vast bureaucratic machine of modernity using it for criminal sectional or irrational ends. Thus while Weber advocated a vigorous parliamentary democracy and rigorous civil debate, his pre-occupation with charisma and leadership in modern mass society distorts his commitment to, and understanding of, democracy.
