We should note further
how the German Historical School and other early opponents of Neoclassical
Theory objected to it on the ground that “utility” is a “homogeneous” entity
whereas in fact the “motivations” behind “economic action” are quite evidently
“heterogeneous” (see Schumpeter’s account of this in the last chapter of his Economic Doctrines).One of the constant
objections to capitalist enterprise is precisely this – that it “reduces” all
aspects of human social interaction to the “homogeneous” pursuit of “profit”.
Clearly, what these ‘critics’ fail to do is to confront the central question
that we are addressing here – that is, how such a reduction of the
heterogeneity of human activity to “homogeneous” and “rationally calculable
enterprise” or “profit” is at all possible! Here again Weber makes the colossal
Neo-Kantian mistake of assuming that there is a specific “form” of human
“knowledge” or “action” that is singularly “economic” – just as he conceded to
Kelsen that there is a specific dimension of human social activity that is
“legal”! Weber simply mistakes what are mere and highly contingent
“institutions” of human groupings – the “economy” and “value”, the “law”, “the
State” and “power” – for hypostatic and ineluctable “forms” of human knowledge
that a social scientist or “observer” can analyse in their epistemological
specificity and “autonomy” from other “disciplines”! The fact that a great mind
such as Weber’s never even posed itself the question as to how and why
“utility” could be adduced as the “ectoplasm”, the “metaphysical quidditas”
that could constitute the “subject-matter”
of the Economics bears witness to the ability of the social production of
“exchange value” and its politically-enforced transmutation into money, then
money capital, and then profit, to mystify human social relations – as Marx
took pains to emphasise.
In reality, this stance
contradicts both Weber’s own methodological approach to the “objectivity” of
science (his inverted commas) and, of course, that of Nietzsche’s Umwertung,
which is the culmination of the negatives Denken as the ruthless and implacable
application of the “logic of the Wille zur Macht”, of the Rationalisierung, to
life and the world (cf. our Nietzschebuch). Kant’s Transcendental Analytic had
presumed to show how “synthetic a priori judgements” corresponding to “the laws
of nature” are possible in a manner that relies on the passive intuition of
human experience of external phenomena whose ultimate cause is the inscrutable
“thing-in-itself” but whose “ordering” is effected by Pure Reason. Kant
reasoned that the “heteronomy” of the causal nexus, the “dependence” of every
“cause” upon a “prior cause”, could only be “theorized scientifically” by an
“autonomous noumenon”, a Pure Reason that functioned as a causa sui, a causa
causans at the very beginning of the causal chain that supplied a “rational
order or rule” to the “chain” or “sequence” of events that were “heteronomous”
because “effected” by prior “causes”. Already in the Opus Postumum, Kant had
expressed grave concerns on the ability of the Transcendental Logic to found a
Dialectic of Pure Reason “purely” on the formal “per-fection” of
logico-mathematical judgements. What was missing was a Ubergang, a “bridge”
that could connect necessarily logico-mathematical judgements with the
empirically-observable “events” of nature so as to justify the appellation of
this “causal nexus” as “laws of nature”.
It was Kant’s evident
failure to establish such a link – or rather, it was the impossibility to
establish such a link without the positing of an “intuitus originarius”
(Leibniz), of an intuition so “intuitive” as to be “theo-logical”, as to invoke
the “divine” – that prompted Schopenhauer’s pitiless critique of Kant’s entire
philosophy. “Where is it written,” asks Schopenhauer, that the causal chain, already
explicable with Leibiniz’s “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, should be
“initiated” by a causa causans, by an “autonomous Pure Reason”, by a Ratio that
can supply the e-vidence for the existence of an Ordo et connexio rerum et
idearum – a necessary order and connection between things and ideas -, of a “Truth” that can
serve as the adaequatio rei et intellectus?
No such Ratio-Ordo can exist except as a “divine emanation” that reduces
Kant’s critique to a “moral theology” because the “autonomous causa sui” must
be toto genere dif-ferent from the e-vents that compose the causal chain as
well as from their “con-nection”! Consequently, the “phenomena” that we
perceive cannot be ascribed to a “Thing-in-itself” that is literally a “Thing”,
but rather to a noumenon that is the most active and subjective noumenon
perceptible – though not “knowable” – to us of which “the World and its
Representations” are mere “objectifications”:- the Will to Life! For
Schopenhauer, therefore, the World is the endless and inexhaustible
“objectification of the Will”, and human activity, the operari, is subjected to
“the laws of nature” not through the existence of inscrutable “objects” but
quite simply through the principle of sufficient reason which elevates all
“representations” to the status of “subject-object” whilst lowering Kant’s
faculty of “Reason” to that of mere “Understanding”. In Schopenhauer’s critique
of Kantian idealism, “the World” still ec-sists as “objectification” of the
Will. But in Mach’s scientific phenomenology no such “transcendental” reality
need ec-sist, outside of the “phenomena” experienced by observers – the
“sensations” or Empfindungen.
Following this “reversal”
or Um-kehrung of Kant’s transcendental idealism, Nietzsche proceeds then to
effect his own Um-wertung or trans-valuation of Schopenhauer’s “system” and
“pessimism of the Will” by eliminating the dichotomy between operari and will
or “intelligible freedom”, specifically by negating the “trans-scendence” of
the Will – its “freedom” - and turning it into the “immanence” of the
“instincts of freedom” or the “Will to Power”, where “instinct and freedom”,
“will and power” form “poles” of tension the “resultant” of which is human
“in-tention” or “pro-ject” or Entwurf. Once this Entwurf is understood, it will
be immediately apparent how the entire critical and indeed “scientific”
approach to Weber’s oeuvre which has been based almost exclusively on the
“ideal types” and “rationalism” are wholly circumvented and rendered almost
misleading when they are not totally irrelevant. Weber himself is in part
“responsible” (this is written tongue-in-cheek) for this mis-interpretation and
mis-apprehension of his work precisely because of his repeated attempts to
preserve the “scientific autonomy” or “epistemological validity” of various
“fields” of the Geisteswissenschaften in the “interpretative” or “hermeneutic”
mold pursued by Dilthey and Simmel in particular, whilst at the same time
prescinding from the “content” of these “scientific fields” in line with the
Machian obliteration of all “meta-physical” concepts that might seek “to
capture” the “reality” behind the “phenomena” or “sensations” – the “facts” –
of “scientific empirical research”.
As we are about to show
in this section, it is this Weberian attempt to distinguish “logically” the
element of “purpose” from that of “finality” (ends and means, Zweck and Wert or
Ziel) in his affirmation of the “objectivity” of “social science” that leads
him to forget or neglect the “finality” in the “purpose” and the “purposivity”
in the “finality”. Even the early tract on Roscher
und Knies betrays in fact Weber’s early jurisprudential formation in that
the polarity between “freedom” and “irrationality”, the “unscientificity” of
“history” as a subject-matter,
recalling the a-methodon hyle (form-less matter) of early Greek historiography,
was the central tenet of Savigny and his Historical School of Law whose
theoretical premises were adopted and adapted faithfully by the German
Historical School of Economics. Long before Weber replaced Knies at Heidelberg , Rudolf von
Jhering had already applied Windelband’s distinction between “ideographic” and
“nomothetic” approaches in social studies to jurisprudential history, stressing
the “purpose” or causa efficiens of “laws” in serving social needs over the
“ideal aims” of “Law” understood as Neo-Kantian “Norm”. (See on this Jhering’s Der Zweck im Recht and
Windelband’s Normen und Naturgesetzen in Praeludien, both published in
1882-83.) Weber’s great merit in resuming this novel approach twenty years
later was to apply Nietzsche’s revolutionary critique of Western “rationality”
in an original synthesis that turned it from the “formalistic” Kantian notion
indicated by that “substantive noun” into the more Nietzschean “operational
version” of Rationalisierung indicating the “active”, “willful” role of “the
instincts of freedom” and of “the ontogeny of thought” in “intellectualization”
(Freund) of practical historical conduct. (The name “negatives Denken” serves
to emphasize the “negative” approach to Ratio and to Freiheit, but not its
converse, the “passive” approach to the “becoming” of Being and to the operari
instead of opus, facere and agree instead of factum and actus. Again on this,
see Heidegger’s works on Schelling’s Essay on Freedom and on Nietzsche.)
Whereas the Historical
Schools seeks to distinguish between the “natural sciences” capable of
determining “laws” that con-nect phenomena causally, “regularly and
predictably” and the “historical or spiritual sciences” that can merely describe
the contingent and the individual e-vents or “happenings” (Geschehen) in their
“idiosyncrasy”, Weber adopts von Jhering’s and Windelband’s approach that
establishes instead the epistemological “continuity” of all sciences in their
search for objective generalizations based on empirical facts that are never
“deducible” but that rely instead on the “falsifiability” of the existing
scientific generalizations. Like Nietzsche, Weber perceives that there is no
difference between “natural” and “historical” sciences from an epistemological
aspect but only in terms of the practical “aim” (Ziele) or purpose (Zweck)
pursued by each science – not in terms of an “ultimate truth” from which all
future events may be “deduced”! Such “deductionism” or, as Weber calls it,
“emanationism” is yet another version of the “moral theology” of German
Classical Idealism from Leibniz through Kant to Hegel and Fichte that attempts
to en-compass the whole of reality in ever more “com-prehensive” concepts that
end up having little connection with any “reality” whatsoever! (This is, in
essence, the platform of Kierkegaard’s “existential” critique against Hegel’s
“essentialism”.) In similar vein, but from a different tack, Karl Knies pauses
on the impossibility of reducing sciences dealing with “history” to the
predictive status of positive sciences dealing with nature because the former,
though “con-fined” by natural factors or “con-ditions”, rely nevertheless on
the “creative” and therefore “irrational” actions of human beings that are not
open to “scientific” or logico-mathematical “measurement”.
To this position
disputing the “scientificity” of “the social sciences” Weber objects as he did
with Roscher that it will never be possible to deduce the whole of reality
because scientific research constitutes an “infinite regressus” into reality
itself, and that in any case “mathematization” of reality cannot be the
ultimate aim of science nor can it indeed “define” scientific activity or
methodology. The very fact that it is impossible to specify with any degree of
exactitude a “scientific methodology” goes to show that scientific activity
will always be “negative-regressive”, due to the inevitable “falsifiability” of
its “laws”, and that the human sciences, even the most exact, will always be
open to “interpretation” of human action so that they, too, or especially, involve
an infinite regressus. This goes in part
also against Windelband’s ideographic-nomothetic distinction in the sense that
it is incorrect to conclude that what is “irrational” [ideographic] for the
individual case then becomes “rational” [nomothetic] for the “mass”!
Au niveau d'une
interprétation des motifs nous avons affaire non plus à une rationalité
nomologique, mais téléologique, c'est-à-dire elle ne s'exprime plus par un
jugement nécessaire de causalité, mais sous la forme de la causalité adéquate.
Il s'agit de ce que Weber appellera plus tard le comportement rationnel par
finalité 40. Il n'y a donc pas de doute que le comportement motivé est
davantage accessible à l'évaluation rationnelle et au calcul que le phénomène
singulier de la nature : nous comprenons mieux l'attitude de Frédéric le Grand
en 1756 que les variations météorologiques. En conséquence, il est faux d'identifier liberté de la volonté et
irrationalité.Au contraire, le comportement libre, à la différence de celui du
fou ou de celui de la nature, est davantage accessible à l'interprétation,
parce qu'il obéit à la rationalité téléologique déterminée par la relation de
moyen à fin.
(Freund, Intro to Weber,
Essais, p.58).
Clearly, then, Weber
still identifies “rationality” with some form of “explicability” or
“significance” of human action, whether it be of the “purposive-instrumental”
type (Jhering’s causa efficiens or Zweck-rationalitat) or of the “normative-teleological”
type (the causa finalis or Wert-rationalitat). But the problem remains that if
indeed “free behavior is even more accessible to interpretation [than that of
natural phenomena] because it obeys a
teleological rationality determined by the relationship of means to ends”, then
clearly “the ends” come very much into the “scientific interpretation” of
“instrumental rationality” – which immediately “surrenders” this “rationality”
to the very “dictatorship” (it “obeys”) of “the final or teleological
rationality”! But this is precisely
what the natural sciences, unlike the historical studies, need not do! –
Because they have no need whatsoever to invoke a “teleological rationality” to
establish their “instrumental rationality”! They simply rely on their immediate instrumentality in predicting
the regularity of events!
Ce que Weber leur refuse,
c'est leur validité comme vision scientifique du monde, car, étant recherche
indéfinie, aucune science ne saurait se laisser borner par ce genre de clôtures.
On saisit mieux maintenant
la distinction indiquée plus haut entre la validité générale d'un concept et sa
signification universelle qui reste pourtant singulière. Pour Weber la science
est un des moyens, à côté de l'économie, de la politique, de la religion et de
l'art, de prendre conscience du réel. Cette distinction prend tout son sens si
on se réfère à la philosophie wébérienne de l'antagonisme irréduc-tible des
valeurs. Malgré tous ses succès, la
science n'est pas en mesure de se substituer aux autres activités humaines,
telle la politique ou l'économie, car notre intelligence du réel dépend autant
de l'action que de la connaissance. Il n'y a donc point de privilège de la
connaissance, en dépit de la rationalisation et de l'intellecualisation qui caractérisent
la civilisation moderne. Certes la science est indéfinie; il n'y a donc
point de terme pour elle aussi bien dans le domaine des mathé-
Max Weber,
Essais sur la théorie de la science. Premier essai (1904) 51
matiques que dans celui de la
physique ou de la chimie, elle accroît également sans cesse son champ
d'investigation par suite de la constitution d'une histoire scientifique de
l'art, de la philosophie, des religions, etc. En ce sens sa signification est
universelle, car il n'y a pas d'aspect de la réalité d'où l'on pourrait l'exclure.
Néanmoins, cette signification reste singulière parce qu'elle n'est qu'un point
de vue, spécifique certes, mais qui ne saurait remplacer ceux de l'économie, de
la morale ou de la politique. En d'autres termes il y aura toujours à propos de
n'importe quelle question le point de vue du savant, mais aussi celui de
l'homme d'État, de l'économiste et de l'artiste, sans possibilité de les
réduire à un dénominateur commun. Or,
c'est à cette unilatéralité que prétend la validité générale d'un concept, car
elle s'estime capable de déduire toute la réalité à partir d'une loi établie
par la connaissance seule, comme si l'action politique, économique et autres
n'étaient que des manières du connaître. La diversité infinie du réel
s'exprime dans toutes ces activités, mais aucune ne saurait la comprendre
totalement. L'hiatus entre le concept et
la réalité reste insurmontable, c'est-à-dire nous ne sommes pas près de
résoudre l'énigme suivante : alors qu'il ne nous est pas possible de connaître
le monde autrement qu'en construisant sans cesse de nouveaux concepts, pourquoi
aucun concept, ni non plus leur somme ne sont-ils à même de saisir pleinement
tout le réel, c'est-à-dire pourquoi la rationalisation croissante, sous
l'influence prépondérante de la science et de la technique scientifique,
renforce-t-elle chaque fois d'une autre manière, au fur et à mesure de ses
progrès, la puissance de l'irrationnel 32 ?
But the question here is
emphatically not whether the natural sciences can “take the place of other
human activities such as politics or religion”; nor is it whether historical
studies can replace these other activities. The question is whether the
“historical studies” can claim the status of “science”!The way of posing the
question by both Weber and Freund is singularly enlightening because it brings
us to the crux of the entire analysis, of what Freund calls here “the enigma”,
without further ado: what neither Weber nor Freund, nor indeed the
near-totality of the critics and philosophers who have dealt with this question
of “scientificity”, that is to say, of the “essential limits”, the categorical Vollendung of science and metaphysics,
rather than with the “boundaries” of science or of “the sciences” – what
virtually none of them have dared do is to pose the question in its “converse”
form – which holds the whole key to the question of the Rationalisierung. And
the question is:
“pourquoi en depit de la
puissance croissante ou’ de la presence
insurmontable de l’ irrationnel, est-il
possible par l’influence preponderante
de la science et de la technique scientifique de saisir presque pleinement [tout]
le reel sous la rationalization croissante?”
The central problem with
Weber’s formulation of the question of “objectivity” or of “interpretation” is
to assume that the one is “possible” despite
the other (!) without even trying to explain how or why this can be
so! “Despite all its successes,” surmises Freund above, “science cannot take
the place of human activity…because our
intelligence of the real depends as much on action as it does on knowledge. There is therefore no privilege whatsoever
of [scientific] knowledge [over action], despite the rationalization and
intellectualization that characterize modern civilization”! Again, Freund
has the problem in reverse, which is why it must remain an “enigma” for him and
for Weber! The problem must be posed in these precise terms: despite the fact that there is no privilege
or priority of scientific knowledge over human action, still modern
civilization is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization!
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