Political leaders need “Passion – a sense of responsibility – a sense of proportion”

Max Weber and his work ‘Politics as a vocation’

by Karl-Jürgen Müller

Living together in a state presents people with highly challenging questions. Above all, there is the question regarding conditions of the common good. What is important? Is the constitutional order the most important thing? What is the role of economy and finance? What room for development leave history and culture? How important are personalities with political responsibility? Last but not least: How important are the citizens?
  The statement that human coexistence – in addition to dependencies on the natural environment and the laws of nature – is man-made and therefore depends on people is correct, but also quite generic. If, for example, the sovereignty of a people or a state is limited, if power and influence are distributed differently, if there are material inequalities and income and wealth are related to power and influence, etc., then there are different degrees of responsibility for the common good.
  The question here is how political leaders can fulfil their responsibility for the common good, because that is the main purpose of the state: to promote the common good. It is therefore important to have a closer look at these political leaders.
  What can be done to improve their contribution to the common good? After all, the loss of reputation of political leaders in our countries is enormous. Confidence in the ability of political leaders has declined sharply. In many political decisions, a majority of citizens no longer feels themselves represented. The fact that the “West is in decline” (according to the French anthropologist and historian Emmanuel Todd) has a lot to do with the failure of our political leaders.

Max Weber

The question of the desirable qualities of our politicians occupies many people and, of course, also the sciences. However, this article will not focus on current research contributions, but on a classic work on this issue, on Max Weber and one of his most well-known writings: “Politics as a Vocation”. This work of less than 70 printed pages is still a very substantial treatise regarding the requirements placed on those with political responsibility. It is a very dense and very knowledgeable treatise – born in its time – on the cultural history and cultural comparison of different forms of state power, political life, the forms of exercising power, the recruitment of civil servants at all levels and the resulting requirements for those with political responsibility.
  Max Weber (1864–1920) was a German sociologist and economist with a good overview of the cultural, social and historical sciences of the time. “Politics as a Vocation” was published in 1919. It was based on lectures Max Weber had given to students in Munich in January 1919. A few weeks after the catastrophic German defeat in the First World War and the armistice in November 1918, as well as nationwide left-wing revolutionary movements, Munich had become a Munich Soviet Republic. Max Weber was an opponent of this revolution. He was a supporter of the parliamentary democracy that was emerging in Germany in parallel to the revolutionary endeavours. In Weber’s view, the revolutionaries in Munich were above all “ethicists of ultimate ends” while he himself favoured “ethicists of responsibility” in politics.

Ethic of ultimate ends
and ethic of responsibility

Weber’s distinction between “ethic of ultimate ends” and “ethic of responsibility” is a core idea in “Politics as a Profession”. However, he only makes the distinction between “ethic of ultimate ends” and “ethic of responsibility” at the end of his writing, introducing it with the questions: “Now then, what relations do ethics and politics actually have? Have the two nothing whatever to do with one another, as has occasionally been said? Or, is the reverse true: that the ethic of political conduct is identical with that of any other conduct?” His answer: “That is the decisive point. We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ or to an ‘ethic of responsibility’. This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that. However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends – that is, in religious terms, ‘The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord’ – and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one’s action.”

State power and
the ‘demonic’ exercise of power

According to Weber, pure ethics of conviction in politics fails to recognise that the main instrument of political leaders is always state power in all its forms, i. e. the exercise of power or force. For him, politics means: “Striving to share power [within the state] or striving to influence the distribution of power [in relations between states]. […] He who is active in politics strives for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as ‘power for power’s sake’, that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives.”
  When Weber uses the word ‘force’, he is referring to state power and the associated state monopoly on the use of force as a legitimate form of exercising state power: “The state is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence.”
  From today’s perspective, we must add: State power is only legitimate if it serves the law and the state power itself is subject to the law. The question of whether there can also be state power without domination (for example, Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider’s “Res publica, res populi” (1994), for Germany, or Adolf Gasser’s “Gemeindefreiheit als Rettung Europas”, (2nd edition 1947), for Switzerland, but also going beyond this) cannot be addressed here.
  According to Weber, power, including state power, has something “demonic” about it that invites abuse. Anyone ignoring the demonic aspect of the exercise of power goes wrong. Even the revolutionaries of his time.

A pure ‘ethic of ultimate ends’
can have fatal consequences

He explains: “Do we not see that the Bolshevik and the Spartacist ideologists bring about exactly the same results as any militaristic dictator just as they use this political means? In what but the persons of the power-holders and their dilettantism does the rule of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils differ from the rule of any power-holder of the old regime? In what way does the polemic of most representatives of the presumably new ethic differ from that of the opponents which they criticised, or the ethic of any other demagogues?”
  Weber’s point was that the “ethically minded” revolutionaries would have high ideals (convictions), but would also be willing to use any means, even the most violent, to achieve those ideals – without considering the consequences. They did not want to take responsibility for their actions.
  Further on in his text, he adds: “If an action of good intent leads to bad results, then, in the actor’s eyes, not he but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God’s will who made them thus, is responsible for the evil.” This is contrasted with “responsibility-ethical” action: “However a man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes account of precisely the average deficiencies of people, […] He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say: these results are ascribed to my action.”

Ethic of responsibility
considers the consequences of actions

Why can’t politicians’ behaviour, which is based on a sense of responsibility, also be 100 per cent in accordance with ethics of moral conviction? “Ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of ‘good’ ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones – and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose ‘justifies’ the ethically dangerous means and ramifications.” The most extreme example of this is a war to defend one’s own country and people – despite the suffering and uncertainties of the course of the war.
  All the more, true is: “Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to realise these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in all violence. The great virtuosi of acosmic1 love of humanity and goodness, whether stemming from Nazareth or Assisi or from Indian royal castles, have not operated with the political means of violence. Their kingdom was ‘not of this world’ and yet they worked and still work in this world. […]. He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence.”

Ethic of ultimate ends
and ethic of responsibility
must complement each other

Despite everything, at the end of his deliberations, he also says: “Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: […] if now suddenly the Weltanschaungs politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword: ‘The world is stupid and base, not I, the responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,’ then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realise what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man – no matter whether old or young in years – is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realise the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in union constitute a genuine man – a man who can have the ‘calling for politics’.”

In every respect
about the matter

A few pages earlier, Weber had asked the question: “What kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?” And he answered: “One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. This means passion in the sense of matter-of-factness, of passionate devotion to a ‘cause,’ […]. It is not passion in the sense of that inner bearing which my late friend, Georg Simmel, used to designate as ‘sterile excitation,’ […] To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a ‘cause’ also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. ‘Lack of distance’ per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. [...]. For the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone. However, that firm taming of the soul, which distinguishes the passionate politician and differentiates him from the ‘sterilely excited’ and mere political dilettante, is possible only through habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The ‘strength’ of a political ‘personality’ means, in the first place, the possession of these qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion.”

The problem of vanity

This is primarily jeopardised by vanity: “Therefore, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one’s self.”
  Vanity, according to Weber, is “a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from it. In academic and scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occupational disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanitym – however disagreeably it may express itself – is relatively harmless; in the sense that as a rule it does not disturb scientific enterprise. With the politician the case is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means. Therefore, ‘power instinct,’ as is usually said, belongs indeed to his normal qualities.
  The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of ‘the cause.’ For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and – often but not always identical with it – irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the demagogue is compelled to count upon ‘effect.’ He therefore is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the ‘impression’ he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoys power merely for power’s sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self-reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of power per se.”
  And further: “The mere ‘power politician’ may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of ‘power politics’ are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture. It is a product of a shoddy and superficially blaze attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.”

On what thoughts
do we want to develop?

The reader may now consider how relevant Max Weber’s remarks, formulated more than 100 years ago, still are today. Perhaps it is worth reflecting on them in greater depth and taking into account the connections between political life and the state that he set out.
  In the run-up to the US presidential election, two political scientists from the University of Bern asked: “What makes successful political leaders?”2 The last paragraph of the text showed the level of today’s debates: “Do Harris or Trump have the character traits for successful inauguration (leadership) in the White House? Judge for yourself which personality traits are better suited to the next US presidency: While Kamala Harris is considered according to personality analyses by experts to be particularly assertive, charismatic, ambitious and outgoing, Donald Trump is extraordinarily extroverted, remarkably intolerant, impulsive and very aggressive. In addition, his strong desire to be admired by others (narcissism), his tendency to show no remorse and to be unfeeling (psychopathy), as well as his manipulative nature (Machiavellianism) are almost typical of the character traits that make up a so-called dark personality.”
  Perhaps it would be better to study Max Weber – consider his thoughts seriously and develop upon them. This could include, for example, taking a closer look at key concepts such as passion in politics, a sense of responsibility and a sense of proportion. What is the importance of empathising with those affected by political decisions? Is it not an indispensable part of a sense of responsibility? And what do ethic of responsibility and ethic of ultimate ends mean in today’s world? Max Weber formulated his terms in the circumstances of his time. If you look up how the two terms are defined today, you will find a colourful mixture and also the instrumentalisation for very specific political goals. Last but not least: Wouldn’t political responsibility for all citizens – as more direct democracy – be the best remedy against the demonic possession of power? •



1 Acosmism is a doctrine that denies the world an independent reality.
2 https://www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2024/politkolumne_9_vatter_freiburghaus/index_ger.html of 19 August 2024

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