Max Weber und die jüdische Ethik: Die Beziehung zwischen politischer Philosophie und Interpretation der jüdischen Kultur (review)

172 SHOFAR Winter 2001 Vol. 19, No.2 Max Weber und die jiidische Ethik: Die Beziehung zwischen politischer Philosophie und Interpretation der jiidischen Kultur, by Michael Spottel. Frankfurt-amMain : Peter Lang, 1997. 151 pp. $38.95. The argument of Spottel's book is that Max Weber wrote from a deeply antisemitic mentality. Weber was not a blatant or crude antisemite, but a subtle and insidious one. In support, Spottel develops several lines ofevidence. Weber sharply criticized the leftwing revolutions and uprisings of his time. Closest to his immediate experience, he opposed the 1919 Bavarian uprising as harebrained foolishness (even though he testified in court on behalfofrevolutionists ofhis acquaintance). Weber also criticized the sexuallibertinism ofcontemporary youth circles (although he helped some ofthem out oflegal scrapes as well). Spottel's charge is that these were to a considerable extent Jewish movements, and that in opposing them Weber was objectively antisemitic. Additionally, Weber said some scornful things about pacifism, which he dismissed as a utopian dream ofintellectuals. Weber's own commitment was to a strong national state and its power-prestige in the world arena. Pacifism was thus not only foolishly unrealistic, but undermined political order. Since Jews were prominent among pacifist intellectuals, according to Spottel, Weber again was singling out Jews as culprits. The plot goes deeper. Weber argued that western civilization was based on the Protestant Ethic, and behind that a tradition ofascetic activism to master and transform the world. Spottel argues that Weber depicted a contrasting Jewish ethic. Ancient Judaism, according to this analysis, was ritualistic, not ethical; above all, its laws endorsed sexuality, in contrast to the puritanical sensual restraint that constituted the path to western rationality and economic development. Thus Judaism was worldhistorically a step in the wrong direction. Spottel [mds Weber adhering to an old cosmology in which the ascetic male spirit, representing culture and acting as instrument ofGod's power, asserts control over matter or nature, identified as female. Thus Weber tacitly expresses not only sexist aristocratic elitism, but moreover a form of racism, since the feminine attitude is exemplified by the tantrism of south Indian Dravidians (p. 121). Spottel examines Weber's discussion ofthe ancient Jewish prophets, whom Weber described as early examples ofpolitical demagogues. Here too is the origin ofthe ethic of ultimate ends, which Weber contrasted (in his political writings) with the ethic of responsibility-uncompromising stands in favor ofpure ideals, as against a pragmatic realism taking account of the necessary evils involved in all use of political means. Spottel seizes on these analytical points to denounce Weber as construing Jews as the archetype ofunrealistic fanaticism, comprising (somewhatinconsistently) bothpacifism and the messianic-prophetic source of modem nationalism. Yet another charge is that Weber drew onNietzsche to describe the Jews as a pariah folk, practicing pariah capitalism in closed enclaves within larger host communities. Once again, this contrasts with the rational, ascetic world-transforming capitalismwhich was to be the main path of Occidental development. Book Reviews ., 173 Spottel is so bent on making out Weber as a closet antisemite that the larger shape and tone ofWeber's work and personality are distorted. Weber was merely analyzing the Protestant Ethic (along with other institutional bases of modem capitalism), not endorsing it; in fact he was explicitly quite critical of its harsh and inhumane ethical stance. Weber would hardly have regarded modem hedonism, sexual and otherwise, as undermining twentieth-century capitalism. He famou:sly depicted the Protestant Ethic as a transitional phase, which has faded away once the structure of rationalized institutions has become the normal framework of modem life. Weber's Zwischenbetrachung foresightfully viewed the trajectory ofmodem life as increasingly divided into autonomous institutional spheres running on their own dynamics, leaving personal life an arena for private and erotic sentiments. To cast Weber as an opponent ofmodem sexual liberation is inaccurate, both as to his scholarship and in his personal life. In politics, as in religion. Weber often expressed his admiration for people who sincerely lived by the ethic ofultunate ends, even though it was not his preferred path. Weber comes across in his writings as unusually tolerant and capable ofseeing all viewpoints, while nevertheless realistically tracing their social consequences. Weber was also a strong...