By Stephen John

Martha Nussbaum’s latest book opens with a chilling warning: we face “a worldwide crisis in education” of “massive proportions and grave global significance”. The crisis is that the arts and humanities are losing their place in the curriculum at all levels of education. Indeed, even “the humanistic aspects of science and social science – the imaginative, creative aspect and the aspect of rigorous critical thought” are being lost. This is to be lamented, according to Nussbaum, because the proper goal of education is the cultivation of citizens who can play a full and active role in democratic societies, and such cultivation requires exposure to the arts and humanities. Such concerns are, she thinks, not reflected in contemporary thinking about education, which stresses the teaching of narrow technical skills, and associated “thin market norms”, in the name of economic growth. Nussbaum proposes an alternative to the market paradigm, according to which education should be child-centred, and include a full and proper understanding of global history and economics, training in Socratic reasoning skills, and creative engagement in artistic activities. Such an education will create citizens who can feel compassion for others, whom they also respect, while making wise judgments about political issues which reflect a broader understanding of global interconnectedness without an exaggerated respect for tradition. As a side effect, such citizens will also be more economically productive.

Clearly, no-one could reasonably hope to prove all of these claims within a book of 170 pages. This volume is, I assume, intended more as a political act, rather than as a scholarly tract. Furthermore, I find myself more-or-less in agreement with what I take to be Nussbaum’s key political aim: to ensure a place for the humanities and arts in schools and universities. As such, it is tempting to overlook this book’s deficiencies in the name of political expediency, or to defend Nussbaum by stressing that her book is polemic, rather than careful study. Unfortunately, the entire point of this book is to defend an ideal of “Socratic critical inquiry”, where “only the nature of the argument counts”. Even taking into account issues of genre, Nussbaum’s arguments are bad. They rest on sweeping sociological generalisations, confuse different concepts, and fail to engage with possible criticism. 

A liberal arts education -- good for those who can afford it, but does it save democracy? (Photo: ECLA, used under a Wikimedia Creative Commons Licence)

One key flaw is Nussbaum’s tendency to speak ex cathedra on extremely complex empirical topics. For example, at one point, she describes the Indian state of Gujarat as “well known for its combination of technological sophistication with docility and group-think”. Not content with stereotyping fifty million people, she later asserts that the deadly anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 were the result of “no critical thinking in the public schools and a concerted focus on technical ability”, combined with “propaganda purveyed … in state history textbooks”. To be fair, this extremely tendentious causal claim is supported by a single reference (to her own earlier work). However, it is surely an egregious simplification of an extremely complex social phenomenon. The sweeping generalisation mentioned above is not, it should be stressed, a slip into Orientalism; we also read, for example, that European academics (all?) “have no training” in teaching and so, “would be horrible” at small group teaching. Similar examples abound in the text. I suppose that such exaggeration might be justified by saying that Nussbaum’s examples are not intended as literal truths, but as vivid summaries, designed to illustrate, rather than support, her more theoretical claims. These more general claims about the declining prestige of humanistic education, and about the proper role and value of education are interesting, and of more general import. In the rest of this review, then, I shall resist the temptation to list implausible claims and focus on two key issues: precisely what Nussbaum thinks the current crisis is and her account of why we need the humanities. 

Nussbaum seems to diagnose three threats to humanistic education: first, an emphasis on the teaching of narrow technical skills in the name of maximising GNP; second, attempts to twist the teaching of history and social science to stoke nationalist and ethnic agendas; third, an increasing emphasis on standardised testing. I agree that a narrow, economically-driven curriculum, a desire to stoke nationalist sentiment and a focus on bureaucratically tractable outcome measures each poses a potential threat to humanistic educational ideals. I was far less convinced by Nussbaum’s apparent assumption that these three threats are all, somehow, inter-related. There might be Marxist arguments that capitalism survives best when the workers are stoked up to their eyeballs on religion and their energies focused on ethnic, rather than class warfare. However, on the face of it, inculcating rampant ethnic nationalism in workers seems in tension with creating workers who will play a docile role in multi-national corporations. Furthermore, it is unclear how either the neo-liberal or ethnic-traditionalist trends which, according to Nussbaum, threaten humanistic education relate to her real bugbear: standardised testing and quantifiable measures of educational “output”. Whether hatred has been inculcated is rather hard to measure; it may be easier to measure whether people have marketable skills, but it is unclear that the market itself demands excessive testing. Distinguishing different trends which might threaten humanistic education is not merely of theoretical interest. Rather, even if Nussbaum’s book is part of a political struggle, it is important to recognise that different societies face different problems: Indian academics who lament the BJP-driven rewriting of textbooks face different challenges to UK academics who wish to resist proposals for allocating research funding on the basis of “impact”. 

Furthermore, in in . Nussbaum herself notes that those who value economic growth might often have reason to value humanistic education. However, she seems to overlook deeper grounds of agreement. Nussbaum draws a very sharp boundary – between an “old”, “growth-based” model of development and society with an associated narrow technocratic model of education – and her proposed alternative, which sees the promotion of capabilities “ranging from life, health, and bodily integrity to political liberty, political participation, and education” as the goal of a good society. One obvious worry about this distinction is that it seems to overlook alternative mixed models of development, which, arguably, actually motivate many policy-makers. Furthermore, and more seriously, Nussbaum also seems to overlook why people might adopt a growth-based model of development, and, in particular, how such a model might be compatible with her own concerns. Even if the main goal of education is to promote citizens who can contribute to political debate, and this requires exposure to the humanities, such citizens might democratically agree on the value of economic growth. Conversely, full democratic participation might be a dream in a country where all are extremely poor. Nussbaum writes as if we are faced with a stark choice, but it is unclear that the choice is as stark as she paints it, and even that we have a choice to make at all. Along similar lines, Nussbaum seems to ignore the fact that even if actual bureaucracies have adopted stupid and self-defeating measures of educational attainment leading to what she calls a “pedagogy of force-feeding for standardised examinations”, there are excellent democratic reasons to seek to measure and assess the success of publicly-funded education. 

In short, even if, as a matter of fact, humanistic education is under threat from a variety of directions, and even if, as a matter of principle we think that growth-based models of development are incomplete or problematic, the threats to humanistic education are not all necessarily motivated by concerns which are deeply incompatible with humanist or democratic values. Again, I stress, these claims are not solely of scholastic interest; rather, they point to a serious problem with using this book for the political purpose of defending the humanities. On the one hand, Nussbaum tells us that training in the humanities produces citizens who “understand other traditions from within” and who can “think well about political issues affecting the nation”. On the other hand, her own arguments seem ill-suited to forming political alliances based on an understanding of others’ concerns. Not only does this tension rather undercut Nussbaum’s own assertions, but it makes it unclear who Nussbaum believes will be convinced by her arguments; were I a supporter of increased technical education, of the BJP or of standardised testing, I would find nothing in this book which spoke to my concerns. 

One resolution of this tension is that Nussbaum is preaching to the converted: rousing humanists to fight their corner, and providing them with tools with which to do so. The tool Nussbaum provides is an argument that the arts and humanities are valuable because their teaching is part of an education for “a more inclusive type of citizenship”. This is an interesting proposal, because many humanists seem tempted to defend teaching and research in their subjects by appeal to something like the intrinsic value of a humanistic education, and, as such, to resist attempts to justify curricula and research programmes in terms of “impact”. Nussbaum seems to suggest, however, that, rather than resist talk of impact, humanists should, instead, challenge prevailing conceptions of what constitutes impact. In general, this strikes me as an excellent proposal: given that continued teaching and research in the arts and humanities depends to a large degree on taxpayers’ money, it seems incumbent on humanists that they can provide a justification for their subjects which clearly relates to political concerns and demands. What worries me, however, is that Nussbaum seems to confuse two different issues. The first issue is whether we should conceptualise the good society in narrowly economistic terms or in broader terms, which include a concern that citizens are able to make reasoned contributions to debate. The second issue is what we should teach in Schools and Universities. Nussbaum’s argument seems, often, to run together these two questions, because she seems to assume that there is some very strong relationship between what we teach and the health of democracy. While I agree that there might be some relationship here, I was uncertain precisely what Nussbaum sees this relationship as, and without further specification of the precise relationship between curricula and democracy, it is unclear how best to use Nussbaum’s argument. 

An obvious worry here is that it seems that we have excellent inductive evidence that those highly trained in the arts and humanities can, often, fall very far short of Nussbaum’s ideal citizens. This is a point she herself notes in a brief aside on the anti-semitism of Wagner and Humperdinck. Furthermore, to choose an example Nussbaum does not mention, we might note that Nineteenth Century English public schools and Oxbridge turned out many men who had an excellent education in the classics, but who went on to administer a brutal Empire. In short, it is unclear that exposure to the arts and humanities is sufficient for crafting good citizens. In response to such concerns, it might be suggested that it is not exposure per se, but the right kind of teaching which suffices for good citizens. However, if this is Nussbaum’s thought, then it is unclear how useful her arguments are for practical purposes, given that, as she herself sometimes seems to acknowledge, there is a huge gap between actual current educational practice and her proposals; even if the curriculum set out in this volume would create a new kind of citizen, we might worry that this does not represent a practicable ideal. 

An alternative way of reading Nussbaum’s arguments would be as claiming that some exposure to the arts and humanities is necessary for maintaining democratic societies; in a rousing phrase, we read that “knowledge is no guarantee of good behaviour, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behaviour”. In a nearby passage, we also read that in the absence of humanistic education human interactions are “likely to be mediated by the thin norms of market exchange in which human lives are seen primarily as instruments for gain”. Leaving to one side the complicated issue of why Nussbaum assumes that we are faced with a stark choice between markets and democracy, the general thought she expresses here may seem plausible. However, they are exceptionally hard to pin down once we recognise that the vast majority of the world’s population has had little education; either Nussbaum must think that most of the world’s population are likely to engage in “bad behaviour” or she must think that the merest touch of a humanistic education can avoid “bad behaviour”. Neither of these claims strikes me as particularly plausible (furthermore, the claim that the particular form which the bad behaviour of those not educated in the humanities must take is a tendency to see others as instruments for economic benefit seems completely implausible: to return to some of the issues mentioned above, whatever else went wrong in Gujarat it was not that Hindus saw Muslims in merely economic terms). 

It is a favourite trick of philosophers to say that X is neither necessary nor sufficient for Y, and, therefore, that there is no interesting relationship between X and Y. This is a bad trick, and not one I want to play here; there might well be a relationship between humanistic education and democratic citizenship, even if that relationship is not simple. Intuitively, such a claim seems plausible – how could people educated in the arts and humanities fail to be better at arguing over policy? – and politically appealing – what even minimally enlightened policy-maker could disagree that strengthening democracy is an important end? My worry is that Nussbaum provides no way of spelling out such concerns. Furthermore, to raise a final worry, it also seems that one aspect of Nussbaum’s approach is likely to be particularly problematic in this regard: her insistence that all education from the kindergarten to undergraduate study should be understood in terms of the creation of better citizens. 

This strategy is, unfortunately, rather ambiguous. It is unclear whether Nussbaum believes that the needs of democracy demand that all citizens receive at least an undergraduate level education (with a strong focus on the humanities, and so on) or that the needs of democracy demand that all those who receive a University education are trained in critical thinking and so on. The first claim seems excessively utopian; were Nussbaum engaged in what political philosophers call “ideal theory”, then the claim that democracy requires that all citizens be educated until 21 might be a valid claim. As a basic assumption in what is essentially a polemical work, however, the claim seems, at best, to engender despair. Even in a developed country such as the UK, fewer than 50% of 18-year-olds attend University. Matters are, of course, even worse in Nussbaum’s beloved India, where female literacy is about 54%. Not only do such facts make the normative claim that all must be educated to University level seem excessively utopian, but they also make it difficult to understand the precise relationship between education and democracy; clearly, if democratic citizenship requires a University education (with a stress on the humanities), we are, and always have been, a long way from democracy. 

Maybe, then, Nussbaum’s argument is intended to be that, for as long as citizens are educated, their education should stress humanistic and humane virtues. This strikes me as a pleasant enough claim, but deeply problematic if the value of such virtues is because of the ways in which they equip citizens to function in democracies. After all, if some do not receive the training in democratic virtues accorded to others, then it seems all too easy to argue that, under real world conditions, it is the well-educated (specifically, those well-educated in the humanities) who should hold greater power in political debate. It is undoubtedly true that in modern societies, it is the well educated who tend to hold real power, and, as such, it may well be true that it is they who most need critical skills and the virtue of tolerance. However, to make such an argument is, in effect, to acquiesce in a form of oligarchy, where what really matters is that decisions made in Whitehall or Wall Street or the World Bank are reasoned and humane. (In this regard, it is a striking feature of Nussbaum’s argument that she thinks that it is a good thing that many US Universities rely on private funds from alumni who appreciate their “liberal arts” training, and a bad thing that UK Universities must rely on government funding. She is also keen to stress how enlightened businesspeople appreciate their humanities education, and employ others with a similar education. A strange undercurrent of the book, then, is that the real dangers to the humanities are posed by small-minded policy-makers and close-minded parents, rather than by big business.) Were Nussbaum asked to clarify her position, I have no doubt she would deny that it has such oligarchic implications. However, it strikes me that there is an important distinction between viewing the ends of compulsory primary and secondary education in terms of the promotion of democratic capabilities, and also viewing University, non-compulsory education in the same way. Even if there is a plausible argument that humanistic training needs to be part of the curriculum all the way through the education system, it seems that we need to be careful that this argument is compatible with the values of democracy more generally. 

This book has an important message: if we think that a good society is one characterised by relationships of democratic equality, rather than merely by the maximisation of GNP, then this should be reflected in debates over educational policy. In turn, such a framework seems to suggest that we should value the arts and humanities, as they can play an important role in shaping citizens’ capabilities. Unfortunately, what Nussbaum fails to provide us with is a clear sense of how we should develop this argument, who opposes it, and how we should respond to such opposition. Furthermore, in failing to do any of this, this book leaves an unsavoury impression that its contents belie its conclusions. 

Martha C. Nussbaum: Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities
Princeton University Press, Princeton 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3422-8
Hardcover, 177 pages, US$22.95 

(c) 2010 The Berlin Review of Books.

by Mohammed Khallouk

Recent polls conducted by a number of polling institutes indicate that, in the minds of Germans and Europeans, Islam – more than any other religion – is associated with negative feelings. The phenomenon of resentment towards Islam, which is widespread in society, has been ignored for a long time and has recently begun to attract some attention; in particular, there have been efforts to investigate, and publicly debate, its origins, heterogeneity, and repercussions, by a number of prominent representatives from various academic disciplines. One such effort has resulted in the present volume, edited by Thorsten G. Schneider, under the title “Islamfeindlichkeit – Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen” (roughly, “Islamophobia: When the Limits of Criticism become Blurred”), which draws a line from the slander of the Prophet Muhammad in medieval Europe all the way to contemporary internet-based incitement against Islam.

As the first chapter of the book, about the historical evolution of the European perception of Islam, makes clear, large parts of the European population have tended to stigmatise the dominant religion of ‘the Orient’ – in spite of the, at times, significant anticipation of cultural achievements in the Near East. From the mid-20^th century onwards, due to the increase in encounters with Muslim immigrants and ‘guest-workers’ (as well as, more recently, the acceleration of globalisation), these sentiments have again surfaced more prominently.

However, as the first of the contributions by the theologian Thomas Naumann shows, by reflecting on the supposedly ‘darkest chapter’ in European-Islamic history – the age of the Crusades –  the direct encounter with Islamic culture sometimes also made it to possible to overcome feelings of resentment. When viewed from this angle, the present volume can also be understood as a manifesto for cultural dialogue with Muslims, with the goal of finding a consensus on values.

Since negative reports tend to have a stronger emotional impact on a non-expert audience than positive reports, some pundits with an, at best, reserved attitude towards Islam, have succeeded, time and again, in reviving historical legends about Islam, even in the context of what are essentially modern contemporary problems – thereby bringing outdated historical ressentiments back into public consciousness.

This might also explain the observation, well-documented by Werner Ruf, an emeritus political scientist, in his contribution based on an analysis of official NATO documents, that both the scenario of an ‘imminent threat’ from the Muslim world (a familiar trope in medieval and early modern Europe) and a feeling of cultural superiority (which has its roots in 19^th-century imperialism) are enjoying renewed popularity in some political quarters and certain mass media.

The second chapter in the volume analyses the deep repercussions of the resentment that persists in European civil society towards the Muslim faith and its adherents. In particular, it creates barriers for the – politically desirable – integration of Muslim immigrants into German society, and for the recognition of legitimate religious demands, as far as the educational system, professional life and legal system are concerned.

The contribution by Navid Kermani, the Iranian-German scholar of Islamic studies, emphasises that the prejudice-laden image of Islam in parts of German society is, to a large extent, fuelled, and perpetuated, by the use of selective quotations from the Quran, which are taken out of context and then related to specific social problems or developments. As a result, any negative occurrences may then be blamed on Islam itself, whereas other attendant circumstances, such as political conditions, educational backgrounds, or the immigrant status of those involved are often ignored.

The role of the media in perpetuating and cultivating negative connotations of all things Muslim, is analysed in detail in chapters 3 and 4 of the book. What is especially problematic is that some, originally left-leaning, liberal intellectuals, have adopted a tone of wholesale criticism of Islam and ‘the Muslims’. The contribution by the editor, Thorsten G. Schneider, a political scientist and scholar of Islamic studies, unmasks the unsavoury methods by which some of those intellectuals (many of whom have never pursued degrees in Islamic studies or Orientalistik) pass off their warnings against an undifferentiated Islamic threat as an exercise in ‘casting light on the nature of Islam’.

In addition to these mildly depressing findings about the attitudes and behaviour among German civil society towards Muslims – who, after all, by now have become an integral part of it – the papers in the volume also present some reason for hoping that Islam might one day be recognised as on an equal footing with Christianity and Judaism. Several contributors point to the painful, but eventually successful, path towards equal treatment that, historically, was part of the Jewish experience in Christian societies and which might now serve as an inspiration for Muslims.

Even though the number of papers included in the volume – the total of which runs to 28 – might seem a little daunting to the layperson and casual reader, the diversity of disciplines and approaches represented by the contributors shows clearly the relevance of the phenomenon of “Islamophobia”, and its consequences, across society as a whole.

Thorsten G. Schneider (ed.): Islamfeindlichkeit. Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009.
ISBN-13: 978-3-531-16257-7
Softcover, 485 pages, EUR 39.90

Mohammed Khallouk was born in Morocco and works as a political scientist and scholar of Islamic studies at the Phillips University of Marburg. His work analyses Islamic fundamentalism in Northern Africa and the Middle East, as well as the history of the Jewish community in Morocco. He also works as a translator of German contemporary literature into Arabic.

The German version of this article first appeared in Gazelle Magazin; translated and reproduced with permission. Translation: The Berlin Review of Books. All rights reserved.

by Daniele Archibugi

Anyone who thought that the history of piracy was now something out of a Hollywood movie has had to think twice. The events in the Gulf of Aden lead us to wonder what differences there are between ancient piracy and the modern version. Perhaps if we examine the piracy that reached its peak between the end of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, and preyed on the major trade routes, we may get a clearer understanding of modern piracy. However, opportunity makes men thieves and the cleverly written and witty book by Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook. The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009), enables us to do so.

U.S. navy capturing suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden, May 2009. (U.S. Navy photo, public domain)

According to Leeson, pirates applied economically rational principles aimed at obtaining the maximum result with the least effort and above all minimum risk. They too, in other works, apply the rules of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, or rather the invisible hook. Pirates were not cruel out of sadism but simply because by spreading terror they were able to increment their booty. Flying the infamous “Jolly Roger” served the purpose of generating what economists call the “announcement” effect: the potential victims were warned that any attempt to stave off the attack by a pirate vessel would lead to ferocious reprisals. If, on the other hand, the vessel attacked surrendered without any resistance, everything of value on board would be seized but the crew would be spared. The same applies to the pirates’ widely publicized ruthlessness against prisoners: many of the latter were tortured, others forced to walk the plank. Also in this case the pirates’ intention was to create what economists call the “reputation” effect. Prisoners might try to conceal information about valuable goods or about the routes followed by other trading or navy vessels and would be induced to reveal all their secrets by the terrible reputation enjoyed by the pirates.

Leeson gives credence to the economic interpretation of the pirates’ behavior: mutineers were certainly attracted by high profits; in the early 18^th century a sailor of a merchant vessel earned no more than 25 pounds a year, and a courageous pirate could earn as much as 300. But as well as borrowing from the trappings of economic theory, Leeson does not disdain also casting a penetrating glance at the social and political motives of these odd outlaw communities. Life on board ship, whether a merchant or a navy vessel, was regulated in an authoritarian and hierarchical fashion (and it might be added that things have not changed much since those times). The ship’s commander had the power to inflict very severe corporal punishment, stop crew members’ pay without good reason and demand that the crew perform work not envisaged in the original contract, and more besides. On board the captain had the power of life or death without any checks or balances. It is true that the sailors could sue for justice in the courts on returning home, although the latter usually sided with the commanders, also because the judges came from the same social class.

It is thus not surprising that, far beyond the reach of the dominant authority on land, sailors should set up a completely different social organization. And it is striking to see the extent to which this was based on principles of equality. In the first place, political equality. “Every Man has a Vote in the Affairs of the Moment” runs article one of the Code of Conduct on board the private vessel of Captain Bartholomew Roberts. Furthermore, it was the crew members who elected their own captain. Furthermore, the commander could be deposed by the pirates themselves if judged to be inadequate, corrupt or not bold enough, as happen to the famous Captain Edward England. In the rudimentary system of checks and balances characterizing the pirate republics, also a quartermaster was elected to look after the ship’s management, and who had the power to avoid individual crew members being unjustly punished. Nor must it be overlooked that, in an era in which the European nations were getting rich from the slave trade, many pirate ships granted equal rights also to colored men.

The pirate communities were in other words far from being anarchic: indeed, they developed a democratic system opposed to the autocratic system prevailing in the other vessels. Pirates had even too many rules: their codes of conduct prohibited sailors from gambling and smoking on board, from drinking after sunset and from keeping lamps alight late at night. They were also prohibited from bringing women on board to avoid causing jealousy.

The distribution of the rewards was much fairer than the pay on merchant or naval vessels: the pay of the captain and the quartermaster was only twice as high as that of ordinary pirates. Moreover, in the case of accidents in the “working place”, the pirates’ republics had a much more highly developed welfare system than that applied on the other ships: they meticulously specified how much was due to any crew member who had lost a hand, a leg or an eye. On the other hand, desertion during a boarding operation was punished by death or marooning on a desert island.

If piracy offered so much more to its members than was available to other sailors, the question is not so much why there were so many (it is estimated that there were two or three thousand in the early 18^th century) but rather why so many sailors did not become pirates. Perhaps it is because when captured they were almost always hanged: a count of executions between 1716 and 1726 indicates that about 400 were hanged, about 40 per year on average. But if we consider the high death rate among law-abiding sailors it must be concluded that the “announcement” and the “reputation” effects worked more for the scaffold than for the Jolly Roger.

Peter T. Leeson: The Hidden Economics of Pirates
Princeton University Press, Princeton 2009.
ISBN-13: 978-0691137476
Hardcover, 296 pages, US$24.95

Daniele Archibugi is director of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and professor of innovation, governance and public policy at Birkbeck College.

This article first appeared on openDemocracy.net ; it is here republished under a Creative Commons Licence.

By Sara Farris

Intellectual voyeurism is alive and well, especially when it is permitted to intrude into the private life of a classically repressed personality like Max Weber. Joachim Radkau’s biography accomplishes the task of scholarly snooping well, and will satisfy even the most prurient curiosity. In this 700 page work we are informed in detail of Weber’s emissions “in his sleep”, of which his wife used to keep a detailed record to be carefully reported to Helene, Weber’s mother. The latter, as in the most typical Oedipal circumstances, was Weber’s greatest misfortune and dream, for she instilled in him the “horror of sexuality” while forcing him at the same time to “make young women happy”.

Courtesy of Polity Press

It is through the motif of Weber’s “sexual misery” that we are led to explore his scientific interests, political concerns and difficulty in reconciling the two. The theme is not new, as there have been other attempts to trace Weber’s mental weaknesses and breakdown (which occurred at the action-packed turn of the 20th century) back to his struggle with his father for his mother’s love: from Marianne Weber’s first biography, to Arthur Mitzman’s depiction of Weber’s religious background. Nonetheless, Radkau’s biography goes further and takes great advantage of the archive documentation and of the family correspondence made available by Guenther Roth’s enormous 2001 effort, Max Weber: A Family Portrait 1800–1950.

By means of these new materials, Radkau attempts to answer a perennial question: what role does personal life play in theoretical and public life? Does it influence the formulation of problems and hypotheses? Does it shape their specific configuration? We might be tempted to respond affirmatively when reminded of the legitimate association between Kant’s clockwork routine and maniacal ego-centrism and his philosophical subjectivism, or when we think of Hegel’s Spirit running through history in 1807 (the year of the publication of the Phenomenology), while his son Ludwig – not precisely the fruit of great love, according to biographers – was bursting into life.

Though neither a Weber scholar nor a biographer of intellectuals, Radkau’s psycho-clinical approach is to be framed within his documented interest in the depressive social atmosphere of early 20th century Germany, and the various expressions of intellectual ennui, to paraphrase Fredrick Jameson’s portrayal of Weber. Radkau’s previous book from 1998, entitled The Age of Nervousness: Germany between Bismarck and Hitler, is an extensive examination of the discourse and treatment of “nervous disturbance” under the Second Reich. Here the Bielefeld-based historian argues that it was the failed resolution of this social illness that played a not insignificant role in the Nazification of Germany.

The inquiry into Max Weber’s work and life, “paradigmatic figure in the torments of bourgeois culture” as efficaciously portrayed by Antonio Negri, provides Radkau with a further key to the understanding of German society between the Wilhelminian Era and the Third Reich.

With this driving thesis in mind, Radkau’s main argument revolves around the notion of “nature”. Weber’s work appears as the battlefield of an unresolved tension between an original “nature” and theories of the social. Moreover, the emphasis Weber seems to put upon the concept of “nature” (which appears almost 3,600 times in the digitalised version of Weber’s work) leads Radkau to draw out the intimate link between private struggle and the theoretical work, between society, the individual and nature. “Until now,” Radkau argues, “Weber has been thought of as an enemy of nature … this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding.” Thus, we can reconsider Weber’s most influential theoretical categories, such as “charisma”, “rationalisation”, “understanding” and “value freedom” by means of a focus on Weber’s fixation on human nature and on the centrality of passion. Above all, Radkau’s concern is the passion of conviction and thought, as the subtitle of the German edition of the book suggests (Die Leidenschaft des Denkens – the passion of thought).

Radkau’s journey into Weber’s life and the attempt to reconcile the self and his work by bringing to light unknown details has the merit of remaining very readable, despite its length. Nonetheless, other interpretations could be explored, beyond the focus upon “nature”. After all, the work of Weber was particularly sensitive to current events and his social background and political consciousness was explicitly rooted in and committed to a very specific political agenda: namely, a struggle against both feudal residues and radical leftism, particularly the Marxism of his time.

Weber’s political commitment can also be explained in relation to his personal life. Son of Maximilian Weber senior, prominent member of the National Liberal Party (NLP) and civil servant, Max jr. was profoundly influenced by the nationalist and class demands promoted by his familial environment. Weber’s subsequent academic career, in constant tension between social concerns, a certain fascination for social-democracy and a vicious imperialist conviction, were mixed in a peculiar cocktail that indeed led to path-breaking results in the intellectual and scientific fields, but which were a failure on the political level. Thus, the son of the enlightened German bourgeoisie, hostile to the agrarian-aristocratic block, could engage in patriotic outbursts for German grandeur during the First World War, as well as making passionate calls for a united front between the workers’ aristocracy and the industrialists. His scientific output, in a more complex and intriguing way, develops on this terrain and has made Weber an advocate of agency against the tyranny of the structure. These remarks, it must be said, do not deprive Radkau’s work of any of its importance and originality, though they suggest that one should retain a certain dubious attitude towards solely “naturalistic” explanations.

Joachim Radkau: Max Weber. A Biography
Polity Press, London 2009
ISBN-13: 9780745641478
Hardcover, 700 pages, 25GBP/US$35.00

Sara R. Farris is a research fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht.

This article first appeared in The Philosophers’ Magazine, issue 46; reproduced with permission.