These are preliminary notes that will form part of the chapter on Weber's Methodology. In the current politico-economic climate, the task of devising new approaches to the re-founding of "constituent power" is ever more pressing and the subject of these reflections.
The problematic of “free will” in terms of the
reconciliation of the “freedom of the will” with the “co-existence” of “many
wills” is already implicit in the Christian eschatology of the fate of the soul
after death whereby human beings are “free” through their earthly actions to
decide whether to be summoned to heaven or to hell. In the words of Saint
Augustine, “it was so that there might be a ‘beginning’ that the human being
was created”. The Scholastic notion of ‘liberum arbitrium’ neatly encapsulates
this problematic of the will that has become central to our own theorization of
the political and economic shape of a free and rational post-capitalist
society.
This problematic may be made explicit through close analysis
of the notion of ‘arbitrium’ with its twin connotations of “arbitrariness” and “arbitration”.
Both connotations involve the supreme element of “decision” in the sense that
all human action, however “arbitrary” or “arbitrated”, involves a form of “autonomy”
of the subject who decides without which no ‘arbitrium’ would be possible. In
this regard, the expression ‘liberum arbitrium’ is clearly pleonastic. But the
notion of the “autonomy” of the “arbitrium” runs into the difficulty that the
other connotation of “arbitrium”, that of “arbitration”, involves the element
of “judgement” that makes the “decision” in its very “auto-nomy”, subject to
the “laws” of judgement, of “rationality” itself! In other words, the very “autonomy”
that in the Kantian systematization of the problematic of the Will (in the
Praktischen Vernunft) rescues the Will from the heteronomy of the operari –
from the “laws of physics” – also threatens to bind the Will to the “law” of
the Categorical Imperative, that is to say, to a “formal” subordination to “the
rule of Reason”. The fact that Kant himself in the Opus Postumum expressed
worried reservations about the validity of even logico-mathematical “laws” as
applied to physical events goes to show that ultimately the only source of the
Kantian Vernunft could be a Leibnizian intuitus originarius or divinus to which
Kant himself alluded in the Third Critique – the one appropriately devoted to “Judgement”.
The negatives Denken from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, through
to Weber, Schumpeter and even Heidegger, approaches the problematic of freedom
from this “negative” angle: the expression “freedom of the will” is understood
in the subjective genitive: it is not “the will” that is “free” – free to
decide whatever it “wills” – but rather it is “freedom” that de-fines the “will”,
that “de-limits” its “sphere of competence”. Thus, for the negatives Denken the
Will is “free” to do whatever it “can” do – the “free will” becomes “will to
Power” where the “Macht” is what defines the will – and the “Macht” is defined
not “trans-scendentally” in the manner of German Idealism, as in the “dialectic
of self-consciousness” whereby the “individual wills” engage in a discursive “diachronic”
process of “reconciliation” leading up to the harmonious “freedom” of a “rational
society”. Instead, “freedom” is now defined “immanently” in terms of the
material “power” of individual wills to exert their “volitions”.
Weber is quite explicit in this regard – [Quote]
It is this inevitable “clash of wills” that determines the “free-dom”
of the individual will. It is certainly not “the will” that “chooses” its own “free-dom”
but rather “free-dom” is the by-product of the “room to manoeuvre” available to
each individual will from its eristic “Strife” (Schopenhauer) or “struggle”
against other wills. And it is this “Strife” that allows individual wills to
ex-ercise their “Macht” instrumentally, in terms of “choosing” means that are “adequate”
to the proposed ends. As Weber calls it, this is “causation in reverse”: in the
physical sciences, the aim is to establish what “causes” lie behind given “effects”,
whereas in the social sciences the aim is to select the effects or means that
will satisfy or be conducive to certain “causes” or “goals”. This is why the “freedom
of the will” can be ascertained or “measured” only from the adequacy of the human
utilisation of certain “means” to achieve proposed goals. In social science we
must assume that the human will is “freest” when it chooses the “appropriate”
means, determined “scientifically” in the pursuit of given goals: “freedom”
here is understood in a wholly “instrumental” sense – as a means to an end -, a
far cry from the German Idealist concept of “freedom” as the apotheosis of the
human spirit.
In this context, “irrationality”, far from being the
hallmark of “freedom” in the sense of “liberation from the laws of nature”, is
actually the clearest sign of the human subjection to these “laws” – the fact
that human action has been “constrained” or “conditioned” by “powers external”
to the Will. Freedom is therefore the “resultant” of the conflicting and
opposing wills striving and struggling against one another in Life and the
World.
In Weber’s own words, “future generations will judge us not
by our discoveries and wealth but by the ‘room to manoeuvre’ that we will have
bequeathed them”. There is no “progress” in the constitution of human
consciousness, no Hegelian “Idea” extrinsicating, unfolding in time and in
space. Even the technical progress of humanity can be assessed as “progress”
only in terms of “technical rationality”, certainly not in terms of “Reason” or
“Civilisation” or “culture” – not in terms of “Aufklarung”. Weber’s concern,
then, is not “freedom of the will”, but rather the ability of a social system
to allow the satisfaction of human wants in a “rational” manner, one that
provides for the selection of means “adequate” to the achievement of given
goals through the ex-ercise of “free individual choice”, not through the
hypostasis of extrinsic “final goals” including that of “rationality”. – Which is
why the Sozialismus is doomed in that it aims at the attainment of an ideal
society of “equality” through the centralisation of political power such that “only
certain dictatorships have ever achieved”.
The danger posed by the Demokratisierung is that the “freedom
of the will” turns into a collective “freedom from the will” in the manner
feared by de Tocqueville – and Nietzsche no less than by Schopenhauer and
Kierkegaard – and that leads to the Schmittian “total state”. In Kierkegaard’s
words, since the idea of “equality” has spread, popes, kings, ministers and
diplomats have not been able to rule society any longer. The idea of “equality”,
as Nietzsche has shown, is incompatible with that of “justice”, that of
Demokratisierung is incompatible with the Parlamentarismus. For the negatives
Denken the State can only seek to govern “the instincts of freedom”, to protect
the disintegration of society into the bellum civium. The question is “how”
this can be done, and indeed it is whether and how it can be done “rationally”.
There is no question that this is Weber’s leitmotiv, the guiding problematic of
his entire oeuvre. And the difference between Weber and Nietzsche is the belief
that this can be done according to a “technical rationality” that does
constitute “scientific progress” in the history of humanity. True it is that
Abraham died in contentment just as much as any modern man, and that Robinson
Crusoe’s adaptation on a desert island is “experientially” similar to that of
any modern entrepreneur. But although the “experience” of life cannot differ
because human instincts remain unchanged, the “technical rationality” of the
means and methods adopted to achieve stated human goals is amenable to “scientific
verification”.
This leads Weber straight into the “evaluation” of various
scientific approaches to social life, chief among them that of the Economics,
and then straight onto the question of the State, whose Vergeistigung is
destined to turn into the Enr-seelung of the Rationalisierung. And this
Rationalisierung, far from constituting a restriction of the will, means only
that the “free” ex-ercise of the will, its “rational” and “responsible” application,
can be ensured ever more “scientifically”. Weber here con-fuses (mis-takes by “fusing”
them) the con-cepts of Rationalisierung and “rationality” – the second being the
“ideological rationalization (apology and justification)” of the first. It is
because Weber seeks to justify the Rationalisierung that he needs to dress it
up in “scientific” terms. But his eventual realisation of the im-possibility of
this task, finally turns Weber to the examination of the “standard of value”
(in the Freiburg lecture) which he finds in the nation-state.
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