Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber by Reinhard Bendix, Guenther Roth (review)

Reviews GENERAL Scholarship andPartisanship: Essays onMax Weber. REINHARD BENDIX and GUV. NT•ERROT•.Berkeley andLosAngeles, University of CaliforniaPress, •97•. Pp.x,3•3.$•o.oo cloth, $3.•5paper. Thereader whogoes tothisbook insearch ofthehistorical Weber willbedisappointed . Several oftheessays hardly mention hisname at all.Some of these pieces areproducts of thatluxurious self-indulgence the'stars' in ourvarious disciplines permitthemselves. An encyclopedia articleon bureaucracy graces thiscollection, asdoes a forayinto'JapanandtheProtestant Ethic,'wherethe weight ofexpertise sits lightly - andquiterightly so- ontheauthor's shoulders. Stillandall thisisanimportant book. A common theme does unitemanyof theessays. That themeisourcontemporary experience of livingin a timeof 'confrontation andadversity' when'thelegitimacy of scholarship isin question.' BendixandRoth seeWeberasa champion of rationality'in anothertime of confrontation and adversity' - the very firstyearsof Weimar,when Weber wasbeleaguered bytheyouthful irrationalists of theRight (pp.5, 86). Weber emerges hereasthehighest expression of a style of skeptical rationalism that, BendixandRothbelieve, offers inspiration and an armoryof solidand tough conceptualizations to those tryingto uphold thevalues of rationality in the university today. Bendix reminds us,in his•97o Presidential Address to theAmerican Sociological Association reprinted here, thatthebelief in sdence andtheconstructive uses of knowledge is thecentrallegitimation of theuniversity. But the belief in science hasrun amok.What hasbeenlostsightof is the tentativeness of scientific knowledge, andtherathermodest victories intellectual claritypromise usina complex world - least ofallquick solutions toagonizing problems. 'From being a method of inquiry to answer carefully delimited questions, science has 76 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW beenturnedintoa fetish withwhichto interpret theworld,advise politicians, examine thefuture...' (p. IO2).Scholarship haslittletoofferthose impatiently nurturing chiliastic hopes, those forwhomthemoralimperatives of actionand commitment makedispassionate scholarship seem a shameful compromise with evil.'Their[theuniversities] values of dispassionate inquiryandfreediscussion, of tolerance for ambiguity anddiversity, presuppose an ethicof social hope, that means,a freedomto choose and wait, to discuss and deliberate.To the protestor thisappears utterlyincommensurate withthedirethreats confronting us' (p. 98). But it is not only the youthfulpoliticalactivistwho deniesthat the life of scholarship carries moralauthority. Scholars themselves are plagued by ambivalence . In Bendix's viewseveral factors haveconverged to createa crisis of self-doubt amongscholars aboutthelegitimacy of ourenterprise. The mood ofapocalytic crisis at thismoment in history cries outfordecisive action;addto thisintellectual currents thatstress thechaotic subjectivity of knowledge and values, andtheirlinkto self-interest; thenthedashed hopes of ourprogressist faithin scientific knowledge thatwassupposed tomaketheworldmorehumane - all these weaken ourfaithin theintegrity ofthescholarly vocation. Bendixand Roth find in Weber's understanding of the meaning of the scholarly enterprise anintegrity thatgives it precisely thatmoralauthority that scholarship islosingtoday.Thisis BendixandRoth'sWeber,the Weberthat speaks to usacross fivedecades - Weberasthe champion of liberalrational values. A series of pieces on WeberandMarxism,Weberand JacobBurckhardt ,WeberandDurkheim, arereallypolemical attempts to makeof Weber a modelof a certainstyleof scholarship. Whetherit is Weber'smulti-causal approach in contrast to Marx's tendency to be monocausal, Weber'sactivism in contrast to Burckhardt's contemplative mood,or Weber's methodological individualism andless normatively oriented sociology in contrast to Durkheim's theories, whatwealways returntoistheimage of a scholar whose workwasthe purestexpression of the empiricaland scientific attitude.Weber'sdevotionto Realpolitik andGermany's 'historic mission' arealltoobriefly passed over(pp. 27•-3). However, thisisprecisely thestrength ofthebook;it draws fromWeber those ideasweneedtograpplewith ourowntimes. Weber's empiricism attainedits mostcreative conceptualizations with his typological approach. The threepieces onthisapproach will beof interest to historians, especially those whohavebegun tolabour in comparative history. Hereweareagain reminded thattheuse oflogical typologies, such asthetypes of political legitimation (traditional, rational, charismatic), is not thefinal pointbutrather thestarting pointofgood research. Manyhistorians stillmaintainacool indifference tosociology, partly because ofitsinflated arcane jargon, andpartly because oftheexamples ofsuch a-historical forays intohistory as Gideon Sjoberg's ThePreindustrial City,in whichhistorical complexity and varietygives waybeforethesociologist's demand for uniformities. It does seem sometimes thatthesociologist isa victim ofthemind's passion fororder, while thehistorian bows before theheterogeneity andmultiplicity of fact.Butthese REVIEWS 77 historians will findin Weberthesupple conceptualizations of a sociologist steeped in history.Bendixand Roth'sdiscussions of methodology are brilliant. Bendix hasincisive things tosayaboutthelimitedapplicability of concepts likeclass and nation-state to historical reality (p. •8). Here isall thesensitivity of thehistorian to the waysin whichconcepts like 'traditionalsociety' getreified- freeze historicalreality,whichis everimplicatedin change- and give to a historic society theneatappearance of a logicalandcoherent system. Weber'stypologies are heuristic devices, and their usefulness liesin their partial illuminationof particularcases; theyarenotmeanttobeusedto impose uniformities onhistoric variety.Weber himselfwasrebellingagainstthe view prevalentin his youth, expressed by suchdiversethinkersas Spencerand Marx, that historywasa realmof uniformities andsequential stages. What emerges hereisthe...