De Nietzsche a Weber—Hermenêutica de uma afinidade elective (review)

This study offers a valuable study of the Nietzschean background to Weber's thought that goes far beyond tracking mere "influences" of Nietzsche on Weber. Its main thesis is that Nietzsche is a major figure behind Weber, in several respects. First, Rafael Gomes Filipe focuses on problems of method and on the constitution of Weber's Wissenschaftlehre. The Methodenstreit was of ultimate significance to Weber's formulation of his "third way," and it can be characterized as reflexive subjectivity in knowledge, which tries to avoid idealism (represented by Roscher and Knies) on the one hand and natural determinism on the other. The reflexive subjectivity assumes a situated knowledge without renouncing objective claims. Thus, it opens up space for a permanent revision of knowledge, that is to say, cultural perspectivism.

The fictive character of knowledge is a Nietzschean heritage that crystallizes in the Idealtypus as a construct that permits orientation in the data of human behavior, thus retrieving the Nietzschean idea of simplification. In spite of not being absolutely objective, it allows at least a minimum of forecast. The amount of data put together by the author shows how deeply Nietzschean Weber's approach is in his theory of knowledge. Another Nietzschean theme present in Weber is the analysis of the contemporary condition, understood as a variation of the "death of God" and Nietzsche's permanent refusal of compensation, religious or otherwise, for the loss of meaning and credibility of traditional metaphysical concepts. About Wissenschaft als Beruf, Gomes Filipe offers pertinent information on the historical context antecedent to his topic as well as on the reactions it called forth.

Second, but prepared by the preceding part, the author analyzes how Weber read Nietzsche's attack on religion and especially his response to Judaism. Weber knew and praised enthusiastically Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. The Nietzschean reading of Judaism as a product of reactive forces and "resentment" was a determinant for Weber, as was the way in which Nietzsche analyzed early Christianity. The main force behind the early Christian attitude toward Judaism was a reactive force against the Church, against institutions in general, against learning, order, wealth, hierarchy, and privileges—that is to say, a disbelief in the "higher men." Because that was all that remained of the Judean nation, the revolt was an apolitical revolt, an anarchist revolt that was based on love. So Weber engages with the a-cosmism of early Christian attitudes and valuations. Brotherly love, love of one's fellow man, amounts to what Baudelaire called the "sacred prostitution of the soul": thus, to step in the divine realm induces dissolution of individuality, from which nothing that can endure can be born. The early Christian community was a countercommunity, a kind of "political happening," but with a difference: the Christian would be (well-)paid in the future, so he renounced temporal goods in order to receive everlasting ones. These two features, undifferentiated unity in love and heavenly community, account for the conflict between Christianity and the world. The course of history would be the story of Christian accommodation to the world.

In the third part of his book, Gomes Filipe discusses the concept of power in politics. Like Nietzsche, Weber thinks that reality is power and not that power exists in reality. The problem lies in the configuration of power, in its legitimization. This view presupposes a disenchanted way of considering power, something in itself "beyond Good and Evil." In this sense, all power can be good if it is life enhancing; this is perhaps the only true legitimization of the state. But now the state is a cold monster, a diagnosis shared by Weber, who evaluates democracy very critically but also in a disenchanted manner—we have nothing better.