Revisiting Max Weber's Ethic of Responsibility by Etienne de Villiers (review)

Abstract

[MWS 21.1 (2021) 125–138] ISSN 1470-8078 doi: 10.15543/maxweberstudies.21.1.125© Max Weber Studies 2021, Global Policy Institute, University House, Coventry University London, 109 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF. Book Reviews Etienne de Villiers, Revisiting Max Weber’s Ethic of Responsibility (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), xi + 243pp. (pbk). ISBN 9783161558160. €49.00. For better or worse, this is an unusual book. True to its title, the book spends most of its pages revisiting Weber’s ethic of responsibility. Still, the ultimate end of this exercise is not just to offer a new or original reading of it. Its aim is rather to dust off Weber to underwrite the author’s own proposal for an ethical outlook befitting the political, social, economic, and cultural predicaments of our time. For this purpose, the author wants to advocate what he calls a ‘secondlevel normative ethical approach characterized by comprehensive responsibility’ (228). For it would help revitalize our late/postmodern ethical life impoverished by secularization, fragmentation, and bureau­ cratization—or, in short, ‘rationalization’ à la Weber. It is because the author basically accepts this cultural-pessimistic diagnosis of modernity, albeit with reservation, gradation, and modification, that he also turns to Weber’s ethic of responsibility as an inspiration for and prototype of his own ‘ethical approach.’ As such, it is concerned neither with applied virtue ethics for specialized professions and segmented value spheres, nor with the metaethical or moral-metaphysical search for universal principles—thus, its designation, ‘second-level.’ Instead, this avowedly via media ethic touts ‘comprehensive responsibility’ (i.e., both prospective and retrospective) as the cardinal virtue for our ethical modus vivendi. The author believes that it would enable the contemporary moral agents to live richer ethical lives by bracketing out vastly different, even conflicting, ‘thick’ moral principles and sharing ‘thinner’ normative values, the procedural rules of communication, and practical yardsticks for ethical judgment. As a general proposition, this pragmatist ethic of sorts may be promising, potentially agreeable, even attractive once fully developed. Be that as it may, the way this ethical landscape is painted— that is, with very broad strokes, drawing liberally from Aristotle to Levinas, Christian theology to business sociology—would make it hard for any reviewer to assess the proposition at an analytically adequate 126 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2021. level. On Weber’s ethic of responsibility proper, in comparison, this book makes revealing contributions along the way, and those, mostly by way of clearly charting the terrain of questions raised by Weber’s ethic of responsibility. Despite, or due to, the brevity with which it was presented in Politik als Beruf, the meaning of responsibility has been much debated ever since its debut in 1919. Are the ethics of conviction and responsibility value-neutral ideal types for the existing political-ethical orientations or themselves reflective of Weber’s own ethical partialities coming from his subjective values? Do they overlap neatly with the deontological and utilitarian ethical outlooks or otherwise? Is the ethic of responsibility valid in politics only or universally applicable to other value spheres as well? In other words, is it to be taken as a first-order, applied ethic guiding professional practices or a second-order, reflexive moral principle with universal validity? In the final analysis, are conviction and responsibility mutually contradictory or complimentary to each other, and if the latter, how so? Does the ethic of responsibility that Weber advocates involve that towards consequences only or that for the convictions as well? Granted that Weber was deeply stirred by Luther’s dictum at the Diet of Worms, ‘Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders,’ but how is the ethic of responsibility in this existentialist garb at all different from the ethic of conviction that Weber reproaches? For Weber, Luther’s dictum represents an ethic of responsibility in an augmented sense with reference to one’s conviction. Such a (prospective) responsibility means abiding by conviction unflinchingly even while soberly confronting its consequences both intended and not. This ambivalence sounds like a recipe for radical fanaticism wherein lies the vulnerability of Weber’s politico-ethical project. Is Weber prescribing one kind of responsibility or conflating two very different ethical orientations under...