Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 2 The Weber's private, sex defined values.
43
'Our officialdom has been brilliant wherever it had to prove its sense of duty, its impartiality and mastery of
organizational problems in the face of official, clearly formulated tasks of a specialized nature. The present writer,
who comes from a civil-service family, would be the last to let this tradition be sullied.
'
50
The attitude of the official though should be the opposite of that of the politician, for he has to
disregard his own inclinations and opinions.
51
As Weber states in PV:
'Sine ira et studio, "without scorn and bias", he shall administer his office. Hence, he shall not do precisely what
the politician, the leader as well as his following, must always and necessarily do, namely, f i g h t.
'
52
According to Weber the 'manly' way to react to the lost war is to allow it to be buried,
'through 'objectivity and chivalry and above all only through dignity'
53
(italics mine):
'Instead of searching like old women for the "guilty one" after the war - in a situation in which the structure of
society produced the war - everyone with a manly and controlled attitude would tell the enemy, "We lost the war.
You have won it."'
These criteria seem to be a minimum standard for manliness, since those who fail them are
called 'old women'. For a politician, a leading man, however more virtues are needed. In
Weber's view - as I reported earlier - a politician has to be passionate; he also has to be
oriented towards an 'ethic of responsibility', and not to an 'ethic of ultimate ends'
54
. In order
to achieve such an 'ethic of responsibility' the politician needs a sense of proportion : an
'ability to let realities work on him with inner concentration and calmness'. 'Hence his
distance to things and men.'
55
The 'ethic of responsibility' is Weber's openly moral version of the juridical concept of
'adequate causality', which is the basis of his scientific work. It forces the politician to hold
himself responsible also for adverse consequences of his actions which he could have
foreseen, instead of to attribute those results to other causes.
56
Also, because 'the decisive
means for politics is violence'
57
, he has to recognize that 'he lets himself in for the diabolic
forces lurking in all violence'
58
, and so has to hold himself responsible for its consequences.
The ethic of ultimate ends, on the other hand, 'apparently must go to pieces on the problem
of the justification of means by ends'
59
. This ethic is therefore inappropriate for politics:
'The great virtuosi of acosmic 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.
'
60
50
ES p. 1417, GPS p. 339.
51
'On the contrary, his pride lies in maintaining impartiality, hence in disregarding his own inclinations and
opinions, in order to adhere conscientiously and meaningfully to general rule as well as special directive, even
and particularly if they do not correspond to his own political attitudes.' See also ES p. 1404, GPS p. 323, quoted
above.
52
FMW p. 95, GPS p. 512.
53
FMW p. 118, GPS p. 537.
54
FMW p. 120/1, GPS p. 539/40.
55
FMW p. 115, GPS p. 534.
56
FMW p. 121, GPS p. 540.
57
ibid.
58
FMW p. 125/6, GPS p. 545.
59
FMW p. 122, GPS p. 540.
60
FMW p. 126, GPS p. 545.
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