Weber counterposed ethics to the iron cage effects of both the hegemony of instrumental reason and the process of rationalization wherein life becomes no more serious than sport and death loses its resonance.
The ethicsof responsbility was linked to a call to politics. By this Weber meant leadership, charisma, elites and responsibility. The responsible political individual must act ethically to seize the wheel of history: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.'
Is there not a latent irrationality here, since the normative content of this political romanticism remains unspecified in this call for the subjective stand of the practitioners of responsibility.?
Is there is not a Ceasarism implied here with this conception of political responsibility. For instance, a parliamentary leader whose conviction, charisma and popular authority can hold the technocrats, bureaucrats and the party hacks without conviction and ingenuity at bay and accountable.
The leader runs the show. The leaders political show can be based on untruths or a cynical pact with the electorat--eg. George Bush and John Howard on the need to invade Iraq.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 13, 2004 11:36 PM | TrackBack