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Socratic Citizenship

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No reviews of this extraordinary book? Very strange. In successive chapters Dana Villa examines Socrates, Mill, Nietzsche, Weber, Arendt and Strauss. This review will focus on the Weber chapter.

Weber can be boiled down to two principles: (1) All politics is conflict and the political actor must be willing to use morally dubious means. As Villa writes "the ethical imperative that guides the political actor is not avoid injustice [Socrates' imperative] but do what must be done." (2) Politics is an autonomous sphere of life. Spheres of life (e.g., politics, religion, art, science, economics) have radically different approaches to the good. It is man's fate to disagree about what is good and what policies will yield the good. For Weber, one chooses one's good and then fights. Villa writes, "the hard part is keeping even the semblance of intellectual conscience alive after one has made the leap."

Weber also has two fears: (1) Increasing bureaucracy leads to dystopia; (2) Men faced with value pluralism might be overwhelmed and default to nihilism. In his chapter on Nietzsche Villa explains why nihilism is not a danger but fear of it led Nietzsche and Weber down dangerous paths.

In the Politics as a Vocation lecture Villa explains Weber's attempt to revive and secularize the Calvinist conception of the calling. Weber's is a conviction politics. Only passionate belief, devotion to an innerworldly cause (not an otherworldly truth) keeps man from falling into nihilism.

Weber points out the disastrous consequences of taking a code of action which govern one sphere and applying it to another. For example, the absolutist ethic of the gospel is the doctrine of nonretalitation, such resignation makes the Christian ethic inapplicable to the political sphere, it would allow evil to flourish. To get results in this all too human world, we need, when necessary, to be hard, to do what must be done. Weber knows the actions of being hard were "soul-staining." He also knew we need men who will do this disspiriting work (the best of these leaders do this work even though they are personally shattered by it, e.g., Lincoln).

Weber contrasts an ethic of conviction where intention is all with an ethic of responsibility which pays attention to actual consequences. According to Weber the heroic politician is not intoxicated with his cause because he is made sober with an ethic of responsiblility. Many critics challenge Weber on this point. Villa points out that Weber's own balance did not derive from taking up a cause but from cultivating independent judgment as explained in the science as a vocation lecture.

One of Villa's main lessons is that the body politic is in need of gadflys, citizens who see politics through the lens of science as a vocation rather than as mere camp followers of ideological armies.