Objectivity, Political Order, and Responsibility in Max Weber’s Thought

Weber’s conception of politics has long been interpreted in relativistic and “agonistic” terms. Such interpretations neglect Weber’s notion of “objectivity” as well as the complex links between politics as “community,” on the one hand, and as “value sphere,” on the other. Seen against this backdrop, Berufpolitik becomes a balancing act in which the pursuit of subjective values is objectively constrained not only by the ethic of responsibility, but more generally by the political imperative to safeguard the preconditions for communal order and, in late modernity, of liberal freedoms. Without them, neither the objective “clarity” generated by science nor the subjective political commitments based on “clear vision” would be possible.