Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society by Sung Ho Kim (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 259 Despite all these critical remarks, the merits of the book are obvious. The reader will find particular value in the observations on Weber's writing process (pp. 173ff.) as well as in Radkau's explanations of the way Weber finds his questions and themes of research. This can be noticed especially in the chapter on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (pp. 316ff.), which is one of the book's best chapters. It has often been stated that Weber's Protestant Ethic contains some biographical aspects. Radkau manages to describe their implications in a colourful way. Not the least important result of this is that he points out two important things. The first one is his hint on Weber's—like everyone's—deepest desire, a 'longing for deliverance' (p. 221). The second is his consideration of an aspect that has mostly been either ignored or mis understood, namely the question of Weber's own religiosity. Radkau is surely right in saying 'Weber's own religiosity is the biggest puzzle of the entire Weber research' (p. 805). There is one final question remaining: does this imposing biography bring Weber closer to us? The answer is both yes and no. Radkau discloses many inaccessible or unknown aspects of Weber, but all the pieces of this puzzle do not or will not fit into a consistent portrait. Maybe this is not possible at all, because Weberis personality is full of ambiguity—like the personality of every great thinker. Andreas Anter Leipzig University Sung Ho Kim, Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 189 + references + index. ISBN 0-5218-205-7X. £45 (hbk). Max Weber's political thought and political sociology have probably received less attention than other well-known aspects of his thought, such as the work on bureau cracy, the sociology of religion, historical sociology, problems in the philosophy of science, or even economic sociology. The great exception to this generalization is, of course, the work of Wolfgang Mommsen, starting with Max Weber and German Poli tics (1959) and continuing with several books and essays. Wilhelm Hennis offered an important alternative political interpretation in Max Weber's Central Question (1987), elaborated on subsequently in a series of essays. Weber's ideas have also attracted attention in political theory and liberal-democratic thought, as with David Beetham's Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics (1974) and Peter Bremer's Max Weber and Democratic Politics (1996). Perhaps because of the unsettled nature of these discus sions and the controversies they have provoked, there is a sense that the field is open to new inquiries and that the entire range of Weber's thinking on political topics has not been fully explored. In his important study Sung Ho Kim enters this contested terrain with a thesis about Weber's little-noted contribution to the 'politics of civil society'. Kim is surely justified in suggesting that this dimension of Weber's thought has been ignored or misunderstood, linking the deficit in comprehension surprisingly to a kind of myopia regarding Weber's understanding of American social and religious life. Professor Kim's argument is that for Weber, a modern liberal-democratic politics depends on creating and sustaining a certain kind of 'moral personality', the Beruf smensch or 'person of vocation'. Socially, this kind of person and the ethos it repre sents is made possible only by a particular form of civil society, not the bürgerliche© Max Weber Studies 2008. 260 Max Weber Studies Gesellschaft of Hegelian thought, but the Sektengesellschaft of Weber's investigations, a civil society based on sects that he found in the social life of ascetic Protestantism. Not just any kind of voluntaristic associational activity characterizes this variant of civil society, but rather activity that involves the selection and moral testing of group members. A robust, authentic civil society thus requires a specific social construction of the modern self, a particular kind of 'characterology'. Much of the discussion in the book's six chapters is concerned with explaining the rationale, meaning, conse quences and political implications of this essential claim. The road to Weber's conception of civil society...