An Ethos of Politics between Realism and Idealism:

Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics

Joshua L. Cherniss, Georgetown University

Recent scholarship has stressed the centrality of ethical concerns to Weber’s thought, while leaving the nature and
implications of his ethical stance, and the relationship between his ethical views and political positions, disputed. This
article shows how Weber sought to analyze the influence of different types of personal character or spirit—or “ethos”—
on politics; and to inculcate an ethos that might save politicians from the dangers of moral purism, ruthless moral
maximalism, and “realist” cynicism. A reconstruction of this ethos, and the accounts of political judgment and re-
sponsibility to which it was connected, reveal Weber to offer a a more complicated and suggestive account of the ethics
of political action—and one with more to contribute to the defense and practice of liberal politics—than portrayals of
him as a champion of political “realism” and value-neutral “instrumental” reasoning, or a forerunner of Schmittian
“decisionism,” allow.

The political thought of Germany is marked by a curious dilemma. . . . Look at one of its sides, and you will see . . . remnants of Romanticism
and lofty idealism; look at the other, and you will see a realism which goes to the verge of cynicism and of utter indifference to all ideals and
all morality. But what you will see above all is an inclination to make an astonishing combination of the two elements—in a word, to brutalize
romance, and to romanticize cynicism.
—Ernst Troeltsch (1957, 214)

M ax Weber’s politics have posed a persistent puzzle

for interpreters, and provocation to critics. Some
have portrayed Weber as “a liberal in despair”
(Mommsen 1974, 1992) or a committed defender of liber-
alism (Ghosh 2014; Jaspers 1964; Kim 2004; Löwith 1994;
Titunik 1995; Turner 1999). Others have depicted him as
rejecting liberalism’s optimism and rationalism (Hennis 1988),
embracing an illiberal, aggressive nationalism, and fostering
the decisionism that would be articulated by Carl Schmitt
1991 (see Ay 1999, Mommsen 1984, contributions by Ha-
bermas, Mommsen, and Aron in Stammer, 1971, Strauss 1965,
and Villa 2001; see also Beetham 1989, Derman 2012, and Villa
2014). Weber’s politics, and the lessons his political thought
has to teach, remain disputed.
I propose to clarify the nature and import of Weber’s
political thought by approaching it from an “ethical” as op-
posed to “institutional” perspective. Weber, I show, staked
out a position opposed at once to “political realism” (often
identified, in his time and ours, with opposition to liberalism);
to puristic “idealism” or “moralism”; and to the blend of
moral absolutism and realism in morally “maximalist” poli-
tics. This stance reflected Weber’s preoccupation with the
powerful human drive for self-legitimation and the varied
forms of self-righteousness and self-justification that this pro-
duced. Weber’s response was to set out an ethos—a model
of personal temperament, sensibility, dispositions, and self-
understanding—that, he believed, was necessary to navigate
between the realities and ideals of politics in the modern age.
By paying close attention to the distinctions that Weber’s
work makes between doctrine, ethic, and ethos, we can see
the “ethic of responsibility” as richer than the simple con-
sequentialism or irrational decisionism that is often attributed
to Weber. Taking seriously Weber’s concern with ethos can
also help to fill out our political theorizing, providing a fruit-
ful supplement to much recent (liberal) theory’s focus on
institutions and general principles; while reckoning with the
merits and problems of the ethos Weber articulated illumi-
nates the ethical challenges and dangers of political life.1

Joshua L. Cherniss (jlc306@georgetown.edu) is an assistant professor in the Department of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057.
1. Thus, what some interpreters regard as Weber’s failure to resolve the tensions between his social analysis and his liberal ideals via institutional
prescriptions (Warren 1988) can be seen to reflect his value in turning our attention from institutions to ethos.

The Journal of Politics, volume 78, number 3. Published online May 10, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/684998
q 2016 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved. 0022-3816/2016/7803-0006$10.00 705
706 / Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics Joshua L. Cherniss
WEBER’S POLITICS: LIBERAL AND/OR “REALIST”?
Despite doubts concerning classical liberalism’s faith in hu-
man rationality and benevolence, and the efficacy of liberal
institutions (representative government, constitutionalism,
the market), Weber remained dedicated to the “vocation” of
liberalism: the nurturing of “the old, fundamental, individ-
ualist notion of ‘inalienable human rights,’” and the defense
of individual independence and “freedom of movement” in
an increasingly regimented world dominated by the con-
formist, unimaginative “men of order” (Ordnungsmenschen)
(1994b, 68, 73; 1994e, 159).2 Nevertheless, many commen-
tators have seen Weber’s thought as undermining liberal-
ism, by asserting a stark separation of politics from morality.
Weber pictured the modern world as divided into sharply
differentiated value-spheres—each with its own standards,
means, and aspirations (1946a, 156). Elusive concerning the
ultimate goal of the political sphere, he was clear on its char-
acteristic means: violence, manipulation, and cunning—
which were impossible to square with the dictates of morality
(1978, 54; 1994c, 78–79; 1994g, 357–64). Weber has thus
been identified with political “realism” or a philosophy of
Realpolitik or Machtpolitik, the core tenets of which Weber
advanced in his 1895 lecture “The Nation State and Eco-
nomic Policy.” This “realism” was defined by the assertions
that (1) politics is separate, or autonomous, from ethics;
(2) the essence of politics is “conflict” over goals, and “com-
petition” for (coercive) power as a means to achieving one’s
goals against others; and (3) the power of the “nation-state”
is the prime criterion and goal of political striving; (4) as
well as by the affirmation of an ethos marked by determi-
nation, clear-eyed recognition of facts, and steady focus on
the pursuit of national power (1994a).
This severing of politics from personal morality, and cel-
ebration of the hard-headed pursuit of power, has prompted
accusations that Weber was a “cold-blooded realpolitiker,” a
“modern Machiavelli,” who rejected liberalism’s positing of
moral norms external to, and limiting, political struggle (Kim
2004, 110–11; cf. Hennis 1988; Mayer 1944; Mommsen 1984;
Owen and Strong 2004, xlviii). Yet throughout his work
Weber was also a critic of “political realism.” He attacked two
facets of Realpolitik: a “doctrine” that saw politics as radi-
cally divorced from morality; and a “disposition” that idolized
power and regarded weakness or defeat with contempt. In the
major political and social struggles of his life—his champion-
ing of academic freedom, and his criticisms of the weakening
2. Citations are to widely available, reliable English translations. In
cases where I have emended these translations, I have included the orig-
inal German words being re-translated, and italicized the word[s] altered
in the translation.
of parliament by the crown, the conduct of the German war
effort, and the behavior of Germany’s wartime leaders after
their defeat—Weber battled worship of power, exploitation of
weakness, and overweening attempts at domination.
Weber attacked three elements in the ethos of Realpo-
litik: an attitude of cynicism and brutality, which sneered at
ethical scruples, relished domination, and fostered “ruth-
lessness”; worship of “success” as a mark of merit; and a
complacent and aggressive chauvinism. As a young man, he
condemned the pervasive “worship of ruthlessness milita-
ristic and otherwise, the culture of so-called realism, and a
philistine contempt for all those who hope to attain their
ends without appeal to the evil qualities of men, in parti-
cular, brutality” (1988, 120). Such outer toughness masked
an inner weakness of character, which sought validation
through domination (1994e, 268). In 1887 Weber decried
the worship of success, “boorish self-conceit” and “singular
crudity of judgment toward all ‘nonopportunistic’ views”
that characterized Realpolitik (1988, 120). Nearly two de-
cades later he attacked the “‘sated’ type of German who can-
not bear not to be on the side of the ‘winning cause’
(whichever it may be), his mind elated and his chest puffed
up with his qualities as a practitioner of Realpolitik” (1994b,
60). Weber returned to the theme a decade later: “On the
whole, people are strongly inclined to adapt themselves to
what promises success, not only—as is self-evident—with
respect to the means or to the extent that they seek to realize
their ideals, but even to the extent of giving up these very
ideals. In Germany this mode of behavior is glorified by
the name Realpolitik” (1949a, 23, 25). At the end of his life,
he was still attacking this ethic of success for its failure to
recognize the “tragedy in which all action” is “enmeshed”
(1994g, 354–55).
Realpolitik’s pursuit of success and power reflected a
“vanity” and lack of a sense of responsibility to a larger cause,
which Weber regarded as the bedeviling flaws of Wilhel-
mine politics (1994d, 82, 91; 1994e, 123, 133, 177, 182, 187,
239, 267; 1994g, 339, 342, 352–54; cf. Titunik 1995). It also
stood opposed to Weber’s value-pluralism, since it measured
all actions and personal qualities along the single scale of suc-
cess or power (cf. Satkunanandan 2014, 173–74). Although
known as a critic of the “ethic of conviction” (Gessinungethik),
which prioritizes purity of intention over the consequences
of actions, Weber maintained that actions should be judged
“not merely by their success-value [Erfolgswert] but by their
convictional-value [Gesinnungswert] as well” (1949a, 24 [trans-
lation emended]). He further insisted that “Not for reasons
of political expediency, but only in the name of “conscience”
does a man have the right to oppose the conscientiously held
different beliefs of others” (1988, 120).

Personal values and ideals thus did have a place in poli-
tics; complete repudiation or neglect of ethical values rep-
resented a failure to live up to the ethical demands of politics.
Weber rejected the idea that morality and politics “have
nothing at all to do with one another” (1994g, 357). Al-
though “politics is not an ethical business,” there neverthe-
less existed “a certain minimum of shame and obligation to
behave decently which cannot be violated with impunity”
(1994d, 83). Having embraced German militarism in 1914,
Weber became a sharp critic of the foolishness and brutality
of Germany’s submarine warfare and its annexations in the
East (Mommsen 1984, 229–38, 268–69). He went so far as
to express the hope that Germany would do “what is honest
and therefore politically right” and insisted on universal suf-
frage as “an elementary obligation of decency” (1994e, 106,
emphasis added; 1995, 265, emphasis added). And while he
famously rejected belief in the ethical homogeneity of ends
and means (such that morally good means must produce
morally desirable ends), he also criticized violence as a
“sterile” means for seeking transformation, which threat-
ened to undermine the ideals that it sought to serve; on the
other hand, he noted that morally exemplary, nonviolent
protest had “quite often been effective” in the face of gov-
ernment repression (1994e, 232; 1994b, 60). Such convictions
guided many of Weber’s political judgments and actions
and shaped his political-theoretical arguments.
Weber sometimes favored moral absolutists over hard-
headed “realists.” More interestingly, he suggested that moral
absolutism shares psychological roots and vices with “real-
ist” worship and pursuit of power. Both tendencies revealed
a deficient sense of personal responsibility (1994g, 352–55;
cf. Satkunanandan 2014, 169), and both reflected the same basic
human drive for “legitimation.”
That Weber was concerned with the legitimation of co-
ercive authority as a social practice is well known. But he
was also preoccupied with the psychological dynamic of self-
legitimation—the effort to prove, to oneself and others, that
one deserves one’s fate (whether this is good or bad) (1946a,
132–36; 1946b, 270–76, 281; 1946c, 350–53; 1994e, 136).
Self-legitimation was one manifestation of the deep human
need to make (rational) sense of the world—and particu-
larly, the longing for a rational, comprehensible cosmos, for
intellectual certainty and emotional security against chance,
suffering, and tragedy (e.g., 1946c, 327). This quest for ra-
tional meaning was, on Weber’s account, the generative
force behind intellectual systems and social practices, from
the major world religions to the modern drive for increased
social legibility through bureaucratic rationalization (see, e.g.,
Weber 1946a, 138; 1946c, 324; 1978, 994–99; cf. Chowers
2004, 59–93; Ghosh 2014 15–16, 67, 141, 164; Satkunanan-
Volume 78 Number 3 July 2016 / 707
dan 2014). While the impulse toward legitimating personal
fate as just, rational, and/or necessary reflected this pervasive
and deep human need, Weber believed it to be both a futile
and delusive—indeed, an ignobly dishonest—way of seeking
meaning; his accounts of the “ethic of responsibility” and the
“vocation” of science were intended to set out nobler and
more honest ways of bringing meaning to life.
This diagnosis of the longing for legitimation represented
a partial dissent from Nietzsche, whose influence on Weber
has often been emphasized (e.g., Eden 1983; Hennis 1988;
Owen 1997; Strong 2012; Warren 1988). Weber judged
Nietzsche’s thesis of a “slave revolt in morality” bred by
ressentiment “completely erroneous” (1978, 498). Where
Nietzsche attributed religious and secular ethics to the res-
sentiment or need for reassurance of the weak, Weber pointed
out that all individuals desire to find justification for their
fate—so that the weak and victimized seek justifications for
their sufferings, while the strong find ways to enjoy both
the spoils of exploitation and a sense of personal righteous-
ness (1946b, 271, 275–77). Nietzsche’s championing of the
naturally strong against the despicable weak marked him,
Weber privately commented, as an ordinary “German phi-
listine,” who bought into the worship of power and identi-
fication of greatness with “domination and brute force”
(Schluchter 1996, 282 n. 36; the latter phrase comes from
Georg Simmel’s Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, while the for-
mer is from Weber’s marginal notes in his copy of that book).
In Weber’s eyes, the proponents of Realpolitik who pro-
liferated in Wilhelmine Germany shared two great ethical
failings with the moral absolutists and utopians they de-
spised. One was a “profoundly unchivalrous attitude” of
“ignoble self-righteousness” toward opponents, who were
regarded as unworthy of respect, fair treatment, or concern
(1994g, 355–56). This reinforced the other vice, ruthless-
ness. As used here, “ruthlessness” denotes the combination
of single-minded intentness on a single goal, which over-
rides all scruples; and an attitude, expressed through action,
of cold disregard for the claims of others. While Weber saw
value in some features and sorts of ruthlessness (as dis-
cussed below), he attacked the ruthlessness that he saw bred
by both Realpolitik and moral self-righteousness. Even in
“Politics as a Vocation,” with its famous attack on morally
absolutist self-righteousness, Weber criticized the deficien-
cies of “realism” and defended a certain sort of moral in-
tegrity and scrupulousness. Indeed, one of the lecture’s main
insights is that, while some elements of both “realism” and
“idealism” are necessary for an individual to have a true
“vocation” for politics, the combination of moral absolutism
with an embrace of harsh Realpolitik could be especially dan-
gerous. And one of its main objectives is to guard against the
708 / Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics Joshua L. Cherniss
confusions and temptations involved in these paths of self-
legitimation.
A THERAPY OF DESIRES: THE EDUCATIVE PROJECT
OF “POLITICS AS A VOCATION”
“Politics as a Vocation” was not only a work of political
analysis or ethical theory. Its goal was therapeutic and pro-
phylactic: to warn and inoculate its audience against dan-
gerous tendencies to which Weber saw them prone amid the
revolutionary ferment following Germany’s defeat in 1918—
a period dominated by “the collapse of Germany, Russian
bolshevism, [and] the chiliastic excitement of youth,” who
“felt called upon to build a new world and hoped to succeed
in establishing, with pure motives, an unprecedented social
order” (Weber 1988, 682, 598). Weber, while bravely con-
demning nationalist folly, also found himself criticizing what
he saw as the naivete of the Left. This two-fronted struggle
was encapsulated by the conferences of German intellec-
tuals held at Burg Lauenstein in May and September 1917,
where Weber spoke out in defense of “democratic individ-
ualism” against the romantic nationalism and authoritari-
anism of the Right. As his widow later reported, many of the
left-wing participants looked to Weber for leadership; one
group of them sought Weber’s approval for “a proclamation
which called, among other things, for the rule of Eros in the
world and for the abolition of poverty. Weber was aghast
at this confused and unrealistic program” (Marianne Weber
1988, 598–601; cf. Derman 2012, 20–24).
As a German patriot and critic of the impulse toward self-
legitimation in its “moralistic” as well as “realistic” forms,
Weber was angered and alarmed by the growing demand for
“moral legitimation” of Germany’s conduct during the war
and what he saw as a tendency of many on the Left to wal-
low in war-guilt (Owen and Strong 2004, xxxvi–xxxvii).
“Impatient” with their hopes and offended by what he per-
ceived as their sanctimony, Weber sought to foster greater
“clarity” and “objectivity” and discourage the “gabbing and
sensationalism” into which he saw left-wing intellectuals
falling (Marianne Weber 1988, 598–601). Yet Weber shared
the longing for legitimation of which he was so critical:
he deeply resented attempts to delegitimize Germany and
sought to deploy categories from his sociological analyses
and ethical thought—values and virtues such as sobriety,
responsibility, honor, chivalry—against his ideological op-
ponents. Weber’s ethical arguments served him as polemical
tools—even as his reflection on where those he opposed were
going wrong informed his ethical insights, which transcended
his immediate polemical purposes.
Weber was initially reluctant to accept an invitation to
speak on “Politics as a Vocation” from the Free Students’
Union (Freistudentische Bund [FSB]) at Munich University,
having already delivered his famous lecture “Science as
a Vocation” in the same lecture series. He only agreed to
speak upon learning that the FSB was considering inviting
Kurt Eisner, leader of the revolution that had overthrown
the monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918. To Weber,
Eisner typified the “littérateur” playing at politics, the ir-
responsible wielder of “charismatic” authority carried away
(and carrying others away) by impassioned but empty rhet-
oric (see Müller 2011, 8; Roth and Schluchter 1979, 113).
The decision to give the lecture thus reflected Weber’s desire
to inoculate his audience against the political pathology that
he believed Eisner represented—and to provide an alterna-
tive ethical ideal to Eisner’s model of moralistic and emo-
tional radicalism. By the time Weber delivered his lecture in
late January 1919, Eisner’s party had suffered electoral de-
feat. Eisner would be assassinated a month later; this pre-
cipitated the violent establishment of the short-lived Bavarian
Soviet Republic (April–May 1919). The impending violence
would have been anticipated by Weber and his audience: Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht had been murdered weeks
earlier.
Not only the occasion but the audience of Weber’s lec-
ture is significant. The left-leaning FSB advocated academic
freedom and an autonomous, politically heterogeneous and
academically (rather than ideologically) focused student body.
Weber sympathized with this but was disturbed by the in-
creasing influence of pacifism in the FSB. His lecture was
accordingly crafted as a warning against the errors of po-
litical extremism—and particularly the moral absolutism of
pacifism (1988, 628; Schluchter 1996, 25–27), which We-
ber had long regarded as typical of the outlook that he now
called the “ethic of conviction.” The one individual he sin-
gled out as representative of this ethic, the pacifist F. W.
Foerster, typified the main error of purist “politicians of
conviction.” This was “cosmic-ethical rationalism”: the re-
jection of the “ethical irrationality of the world,” or the facts
that morally good means may produce morally repugnant
ends, while morally repugnant means may produce morally
good ends; and that there can be tragic conflicts between
genuine moral demands (1946a, 147–78; 1994g, 361–62).
Weber’s critique of “politicians of conviction” was di-
rected at both moral purists who insisted that personal righ-
teousness could guarantee social transformation; and moral
“maximalists” who, in order to achieve morally exalted goals,
entered into the ruthless struggle for political power. Weber’s
concern was largely with the way in which a “puristic” moral
scrupulousness could be transformed, in the face of increas-
ingly polarized political struggle, into a ruthless embrace of
violence and deviousness, because it saw itself as doing the

Lord’s (or History’s, or Morality’s) work. While the ethic of
conviction logically should “reject any action which employs
morally dangerous means,” “in the real world . . . we repeat-
edly see the proponent of the ‘ethics of conviction’ suddenly
turning into a chiliastic prophet. Those who have been
preaching ‘love against force’ one minute . . . issue a call to
force the next; they call for one last act of force to create the
situation in which all violence will have been destroyed for
ever” (1994g, 361). This tendency was fostered by the im-
pulse toward self-legitimation: as the moralistic political ac-
tor engages in violent or unscrupulous action, he will feel
the need to legitimate such action in “moralistic” terms—to
prove the legitimacy of his methods by appeal to the purity
of his intentions or the justice of his cause (1994g, 355–57).
This insight helps to explain Weber’s inclusion of the
avowedly “realistic”—and indisputably devious and violent—
Bolsheviks, alongside moral purists and idealists, as exam-
ples of the ethics of conviction. This juxtaposition has puz-
zled some interpreters (e.g., O’Donovan 2011). It may merely
reflect Weber’s dubious stretching of his analytical catego-
ries beyond their proper bounds, for the sake of political
polemics—as he sought to lump together all of the tenden-
cies he opposed under one critique. Yet it also reflects a pow-
erful insight: that moral “purists” (e.g., pacifists), those who
sought to transfigure violence or politics through the purity
of their intentions (e.g., some anarchists, syndicalists, and
socialists), and those who combined absolutism about ends
with “realism” about means (e.g., the Bolsheviks) shared
several political-ethical tendencies. One was “absolutism”:
a refusal to compromise, to recognize their ultimate goals
or principles as factors among, and needing to be weighed
against, other valid factors. Another was “ruthlessness”: a
readiness to sacrifice both human beings and values or con-
siderations, without reservation or remorse, in the pursuit of
their ultimate goal (whether this was inward purity or out-
ward social transformation).
Many proponents of “conviction-politics” also shared a
political “romanticism,” which judged politics by the stan-
dards of, and embraced political action as a means to, aes-
thetic satisfaction and emotional elation. This inspired a
“politics oriented exclusively toward ultimate values, pure
convictions, and ‘last things.’” Political romanticism was mis-
taken, Weber believed, not only in seeking salvation along
the path of politics but in subjecting the question of the
relations between means and ends, politics and morality, to
“aesthetic” criteria (Scaff 1987, 175). This was doubly erro-
neous and pernicious: first in confusing ethical and aesthetic
criteria, and second in identifying the combination thereof
as a political criterion. Weber judged political romanticism
irresponsible and shallow in treating politics as a vehicle for
Volume 78 Number 3 July 2016 / 709
“sterile excitement” and intoxication with “romantic sen-
sations” (1994g, 353, 367). Political romantics tended to
replace “economic and political thought and action” with a
“‘hysterical enjoyment of emotion.’ ” Their preference for
grand gestures and dramatically radical doctrines made it
“extremely easy [for them] to leap” from radicalism “into the
authoritarian and reactionary camp,” which offered more
certainty and emotional release than moderate liberalism
(1994b, 55–56, 71).
Adherents of conviction-politics were also disposed to
“sectarian small-mindedness,” which led them to focus their
attacks, not on the ruthless forces of reaction but on “the
‘rival’ bourgeois democratic parties.” Such sectarian intol-
erance “destroy[ed] all attempts to educate people in the
ways of effective political action,” and allowed “the forces of
reaction to gain the upper hand entirely.” It also immunized
its adherents to self-questioning, allowing them to hold fast
to their illusions while enjoying “the intoxicating thought
that ‘the world is full of such dreadfully bad people’ ” (1994b,
62–63). This represented a failure of both realism and “re-
sponsibility.”
These reflections read prophetically, given the disastrous
failure of the forces of the Left to unite against Nazism in
Weimar Germany. But the vice of sectarianism was not re-
stricted to the revolutionary Left (or the nationalist Right). It
was also apparent in the “moderate” social democrats whose
hatred for those further to the Left of them led them to call
upon the right-wing paramilitary Freikorps in 1919. Weber
did not condemn this case of “sectarian small-mindedness”;
he applauded it—revealing the sometimes tendentious use to
which he could put his political-ethical analysis in the course
of his political engagement (1988, 632–35). Yet he was also,
at crucial junctures, able to stand back from his own politi-
cal passions, to recognize the presence of ethical faults he
identified in parties and ideologies he opposed within those
movements to which he was sympathetic. He thus came to
condemn the “congenital folly” of “all ideologically oriented
[i.e., sectarian] politics of any kind ” (1994b, 65; emphasis
added), wherever it appeared.
The appeal of political romanticism and sectarian intol-
erance reflected not just moral or aesthetic aspirations, but
the intoxication with power which marked political actors
generally. Had they not desired power on some level, polit-
ical romantics and sectarians would not have become “po-
litical” at all. Conversely, many “realists,” notable for their
apparent “pragmatic rationalism,” shared a political-romantic
longing to “‘act’ in the service of some absolute social-ethical
norm” (Weber 1994b, 55–56). Radicals such as Eisner who
loudly proclaimed their selfless dedication to higher ideals
were not free from the adulation of power; soi-dissant “re-
710 / Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics Joshua L. Cherniss
alists” who saw the pursuit of power as a self-affirming quest
for greatness were not free from political romanticism.
“Politics as a Vocation” was an effort to combat both
idealistic or romantic folly, and certain vices of “realism.”
Weber’s warnings were intended to protect against both the
violence and ruthlessness of ardent revolutionaries, and the
bitter cynicism and surrender to opportunism that he feared
would be produced by the failure of unrealistic goals irre-
sponsibly pursued. He sought to disillusion his audience in
order to protect against the effects of excessive disillusion-
ment; and to encourage in them that “steadfastness of heart
which can withstand even the defeat of all hopes,” and pre-
vent an individual from being “broken when the world, seen
from his point of view, is too stupid or too base for what he
wants to offer it” (1994h, 368–69). This required a rejection
both of political romanticism, maximalism, and purism—
and the cult of success. But in addition, it required “positive”
ethical guidance for the would-be politician.
THE “ETHIC OF RESPONSIBILITY”
AS POLITICAL ETHOS
Weber strove to counter puristic, moral-maximalist, and
“realist” approaches to politics, and the pathologies of ro-
manticism, sectarianism, irresponsibility, and ruthlessness
that they shared, by propounding not a doctrine or political
program but a certain “ethos”:3 the combination of a par-
ticular conception of politics with a set of linked and in-
grained dispositions, which together shape the way in which
political action is undertaken. While Weber was not always
consistent in his usage, his work can be understood as
distinguishing between explicit, propositional doctrines held
by agents; and the (a) action-guiding rules and (b) related
dispositions that accompany these rules, both of which
grow out of these doctrines. Deploying this distinction
allows us to understand responsibility as both “object-
oriented” or relational (having responsibilities to others)
and “subject-oriented,” referring to an agent’s desire to be
responsible in demeanor and thought-processes. The “ethic
of responsibility” is thus both theoretically looser, and more
ethically demanding, than a simple consequentialism, con-
cerned only with maximizing desirable outcomes: it requires
a practice of close attention to decision-making, and care
for its outcomes, that goes missing if we see Weber as a
consequentialist, technocrat, or decisionist.
Weber’s long-standing analytical preoccupation with
ethos is manifest in his famous analysis of the relationship of
the “Protestant ethic” to the “spirit” of capitalism. While it
3. Satkunanandan (2014) indicates this, without explicitly defining
this crucial term or analyzing Weber’s conception of ethos.
did not distinguish clearly or consistently between an “ethic”
(Ethik), a “spirit” (Geist), and an ethos (Ethos), this work
does suggest a way of characterizing and tracing the rela-
tionship of these concepts. The spirit of capitalism is marked
by “a peculiar ‘ethic’” (“eine eigentümliche ‘Ethik’”), the in-
fraction of the rules of which is “treated not as foolishness
but as forgetfulness of duty.” In the way of life inspired by
this ethic “It is not mere business astuteness . . . [but] an
ethos [Ethos],” reflecting the underlying commitments and
self-conception fostered by the ethic, which manifests itself
(1930, 51). A “spirit” or “ethos” thus involves a certain con-
ception of oneself and one’s role, which is informed by—but
not identical with—the rules of an ethic. The latter, but not
the former, can be encapsulated in a propositional doctrine.
An ethos may be detached from the doctrine from which it
first arose: thus, while the ethics and ethos of Protestantism
arose from a theological “body of ideas,” both the ethic and
ethos were habituated in many who did not adhere to Puritan
theology (Weber 1930, 97; cf. Ghosh 2014, 63–64, 225–28).
In his writings on the “ethics” of the world religions, how-
ever, Weber uses “ethic” to indicate not theories prescribing
conduct but the particular sort of character and spirit man-
ifest in a religious way of life, which encompasses explicit
ways of thinking about values and “attitudes toward the
world,” tacit assumptions and judgments, emotive reactions,
and deliberately cultivated habits and qualities of character
(e.g., Weber 1930, 51–52; 1946b, 267–68, 280). This use of
“ethic” should be understood as referring not to a code of
conduct but to a larger “ethos” as explicated above. The same
is true of the “ethics” discussed in “Politics as a Vocation.”
Weber at one point refers to these ethics as “maxims”
(1994g, 359); and it is possible to translate either ethic into a
theory of moral value. But something is lost in the transla-
tion. This loss is particularly significant if the “ethic of re-
sponsibility” is identified with moral consequentialism—the
view that all that matters in ethical evaluation is the “actual
consequences” of that action—as it still is by even distin-
guished and insightful commentators (e.g., Owen and Strong
2004, xli). Unlike a purely consequentialist theory, the ethic
of responsibility stresses the “relationship” between actor
and action, rather than merely looking to outcomes. What
defines the politician with a “vocation” is the mode of her
devotion, the way in which she engages in politics—and the
underlying dispositions and self-understanding that this
reflects. The “ethic of responsibility” demands that politi-
cians concern themselves not only with the ultimate conse-
quences of their actions, but with the process of bringing
those consequences about; and a proponent of an ethic of
responsibility judges politicians not only by the consequences
of their actions, but by the way in which they bring about,

and respond to, those consequences. The ethic of responsi-
bility further recognizes that “responsible” action will often
be unsuccessful, and that action that is both “responsible”
and successful will still be “tragic” in involving violations of
personal morality which properly leave regret.
In expounding an “ethic of responsibility,” Weber ad-
vocated the cultivation of a sense of responsibility among
politicians and would-be politicians. The distinct but (for
Weber) intertwined personal qualities that mark an “ethos
of responsibility” include not only a sense of responsibil-
ity, but commitment, good judgment, honesty with oneself
(which encompasses self-criticism and contrition), and in-
tegrity; this last is linked to notions of honor or chivalry,
sobriety, and self-control.
Weber used “responsibility” to invoke a number of dif-
ferent ideas. Aside from causal responsibility for producing
some outcome, we may draw out two broad normative con-
ceptions of responsibility in Weber. On an “object-oriented”
conception, responsibility is a matter of having responsi-
bilities in relation to others; to be responsible is to uphold
duties one has to others by acting in certain ways. But re-
sponsibility can also be seen as a feature of an agent’s char-
acter. On this “subject-related” view, we may speak of an
agent not as responsible to any other individual(s), or for
any particular outcome, but as simply being a responsible
person—a person who is disposed to think and undertake
action in a way that reflects a strong sense of personal re-
sponsibility for those actions and their consequences for
others. Such an agent’s sense of responsibility is a feature of
the agent’s sense of herself—of the sort of person she is, and
seeks to be, and the way in which her conduct contributes to
being such a person. An agent characterized by both con-
scientiousness in upholding responsibility to others, and a
sense of herself as responsible for the effects of her actions,
will think and act in certain ways; it is these settled dispo-
sitions and quality of conduct that mark her as a responsible
person.
The most significant object-oriented conception of re-
sponsibility advanced in Weber’s writings is responsibility
to a cause (Sache). Weber saw a sense of responsibility-to-
a-cause as protection against both mere opportunism born
of avidity for power, and the “intoxication” of ideologists
whose devotion to their cause was detached from concern
with its actual fate in the world. Both opportunism and
ideological intoxication displayed the “two deadly sins of
politics:” “lack of objectivity and irresponsibility.” If politics
is to be more than a “frivolous intellectual game” or a base
scramble for “success,” politicians must be motivated by a
sense of calling, a self-disciplined commitment and sense of
responsibility to a larger purpose. But the responsible poli-
Volume 78 Number 3 July 2016 / 711
tician is not only guided by a sense of responsibility to a
cause. She also regards herself as bearing responsibility for
the results of her actions (even if these are unintended, and
not fully within her control): she feels compelled to “take full
responsibility” both for the fate that befalls the cause in
political struggle, and for the costs to others demanded by
the cause and the use of force on the cause’s behalf (Weber
1994e, 161; 1994g, 353–54). In being conscious of her re-
sponsibilities to and for others—and, particularly, of the spe-
cial responsibility involved in acting in ways that affect the
fate of the nation as a whole, and in using force on others—
she cultivates a disposition of responsibility which goes be-
yond responsibility for her actions, or for the fate of her cause.
To cultivate a disposition of responsibility is to take great
care in attempting to foresee and control the consequences
of one’s actions, and to seek to guard against possible neg-
ative consequences—while acknowledging that such attempts
can never be certain to succeed (cf. O’Donovan 2011). It thus
requires striving to make realistic judgments about the like-
lihood that a proposed course of action can achieve the aims
which (putatively) justify it. For Weber, judgment was not
just a perceptual skill, but a “psychological quality,” the “abil-
ity to maintain one’s inner composure and calm” while be-
ing receptive to realities. This involves maintaining “inner
distance and reserve in . . . personal bearing,” a distance “from
things and people”—including from oneself and one’s cause.
A politician should be able to step back from his own com-
mitments and ambitions, to see his own fate and cause within
a broader perspective (Weber 1994d, 122; 1994g, 353). To
sustain and live up to a sense of responsibility thus involves
both attachment, and distance. A sense of responsibility for
what will become of one’s cause provides a motivational
bridge from “hot passion”—the heat of commitment to a
cause—to the exercise of that “cool judgment” which is nec-
essary to serve the cause well. Thus passion, responsibility,
and judgment, mutually serving and restraining one an-
other, are the three qualities “pre-eminently decisive for a
politician” (1994g, 352–53). Possessing this trio of qualities
makes it more likely that a politician will act in ways that
produce desirable consequences, rather than disaster. But
even if they do not ultimately yield success, they are still ad-
mirable—and still necessary, on Weber’s account, to render
a politician “worthy” of leadership.
As other interpreters (e.g., Breiner 1996, 169–71; Löwith
1982, 46–47) have argued, the ethics of responsibility and con-
viction may be linked to Weber’s “ideal types” of “purposive-
rationality” (Zweckrationalität) and “value-rationality” (Wer-
trationalität), respectively. “Value-rationality” identifies goals
as worth pursuing for their own sake, independent of success;
the agent guided by value-rationality acts out of “conviction,”
712 / Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics Joshua L. Cherniss
in accordance with unconditional laws or imperatives (We-
ber 1978, 24–25). Value-rationality thus corresponds to the
sort of judgment involved in the ethic of conviction; if a
similar correspondence holds for purposive-rationality and
the ethic of responsibility, what light does this throw on We-
ber’s conception of political ethics? At first sight, it appears
to commit Weber to a picture of politics as pure technique:
purposive-rationality cannot establish which ends one should
pursue, but can only determine the efficiency of the “avail-
able means” for achieving a given end. But such an approach
is at the heart of a technocratic model of politics, which We-
ber feared. Weber may then be seen as calling for a restoration
of value-rationality to political deliberation (Warren 1988);
or a rejection of rationality in politics altogether, in favor of
arbitrary decision, or an acceptance of responsibilities which
cannot be rationally specified (O’Donovan 2011; Satkuna-
nandan 2014).
Such interpretations rest on a misapprehension concern-
ing purposive-rationality. It is true that purposive-rationality
cannot determine whether the values human beings pursue
are valid: the process of purposive-rational reasoning cannot
get going without making prior value-judgments. Purposive-
rationality nevertheless can—and, on the view at the heart
of the ethic of responsibility, should—play an integral part
in determining what values to pursue in action. The mode of
judgment enjoined by the ethic of responsibility requires
weighing “the end, the means, and the secondary results” of
a given course of action, considering not only “alternative
means to the end,” and the “relations of the end to the sec-
ondary consequences,” but also “the relative importance of
different possible ends.” This allows agents to answer the
question “what will the attainment of a desired end ‘cost’ in
terms of the predictable loss of other values?” Because in “the
vast majority of cases,” there are such costs, “the weighing
of the goal in terms of the incidental consequences of the
action which realizes it cannot be omitted from the delib-
eration of persons who act with a sense of responsibility.”
Purposive-rationality thus makes it possible to “indirectly
criticize” an actor’s choice of end, as being either “meaning-
less,” because present conditions make its attainment pre-
dictably impossible; or as imposing too great a cost in the loss
of other values. Purposive-rationality can also reveal the place
of the pursuit of a particular value within a larger way of life,
which may impel us to pursue this value, or decide to reject it
(Weber 1949b, 52–53 [emphasis added]; 1978, 26).
For Weber, purposive-rationality is not only relevant for
making ethical judgments; it is also necessary for doing so.
Reason cannot identify the proper course of political conduct
based purely on the identification of the values that politics
should serve: first, because there are clashes of values within
politics, which reason cannot resolve; second, because even
if there is a clear, correct, definite answer to the question of
what values should be served, this does not settle the ques-
tion of how those values will best be served in action. This is
where purposive-rational judgment is crucial, setting defi-
nite limits (contra the perceptions of those who charge We-
ber with relativism or decisionism) on what choices of both
ends and means are appropriate (or honorable) in political
conduct. While it depends on prior value-commitments,
purposive-rationality can allow political actors to reject cer-
tain values as practical objectives or standards, based on the
cost (or internal contradictions) involved in, or the impos-
sibility of, their realization. As Peter Breiner has argued in an
important interpretation, while purposive-rationality cannot
“prove” the ideals of equality and fraternity or the under-
standing of justice which lie at the heart of socialism to be
either “true” or “false,” the exercise of such rationality may
lead us to decide whether these values should be adopted as
goals worth pursuing—and what policies, in turn, should be
employed in their pursuit (1996, 145–67). These judgments
will involve not just instrumental calculations of efficiency
or necessity. They also involve evaluative judgments about
the costs of policies and actions—that a particular policy, or
means of getting the policy enacted, will cost too much in
suffering, or loss of freedom, or loss of social cohesion. In this
way, Weber advances an account of judgment which does not
leave political decisions to mere arbitrary whim, even as it
eschews claims to demonstrably establish the obligatoriness
of goods independent of human will.
We can see the critical and prescriptive work that
purposive-rationality can do by looking at Weber’s own
political judgments. One example is Weber’s charge that,
notwithstanding their avowed realism, the Bolsheviks failed
to recognize the gulf separating the ends they claimed to pur-
sue from both the means they used, and the ends they realis-
tically could achieve. Recognizing that successful revolution-
ary movements required mastery of political “technique” and
“iron steadfastness of nerves” (Scaff 1987, 168, 180), the
Bolsheviks failed to recognize that adopting such means—
and such a spirit—would undermine the ultimate ends at
which they aimed, while destroying many other legitimate
goods in the process. Authoritarian, elite-led mass politics
could only produce an “ordinary military dictatorship,” not a
socialist utopia (Weber quoted Mommsen 1992, 83). Such an
outcome could not justify the means used: the result would
fail when judged by the standards invoked to justify it. The
course adopted by the Bolsheviks thus failed to meet the
requirements either of an ethic of conviction, since it failed
to abide by their own announced values and principles; or
an ethic of responsibility, since it produced results that did

not serve, but undermined, their cause. “Purist” radicals, on
the other hand, adopted means that were logically consistent
with their ends, but that either would predictably lead to
results contrary to those ends (the triumph of more bellig-
erent or reactionary forces, or of cynical power-politicians,
who were not constrained by moral scruples); or would be
too damaging to other values, to which morally purist po-
litical radicals did not give proper weight, but which they did
not disavow and to which they were often tacitly committed.
This last was also a failing into which even more “pragmatic”
reformers fell. Thus, both syndicalists committed to a vision
of active democracy, and social democrats who embraced
state bureaucracy and elite leadership, failed to grapple with
the costs such means might inflict on ideals of individual
freedom and self-development, to which they were (mostly)
committed (see Mommsen 1992, 53–105).
Purposive-rationality can thus guide decisions about what
ends to pursue, as well as how to pursue them. Its difference
from (and, Weber suggests, superiority to) value-rationality
consists in its ability to recognize potential conflicts between
values, and the need for trade-offs and choices between them;
and its focus on the relationship between intentions, actions,
and consequences—rather than the isolation of any one of
these factors as solely significant (cf. Breiner 1996, 41; Jaspers
1964, 72–73; Roth and Schluchter 1979, 65–116). Purposive-
rationality—with its careful comparative weighing of differ-
ent considerations, and recognition of the complex, often
conflictual, relations between different values in an ethically
irrational world—constitutes a “bridging principle” (a prin-
ciple that guides how an agent connects particular value-
commitments to both other value-commitments, and prac-
tical decisions) of “balance,” as opposed to the ethic of
conviction’s “bridging principle of hierarchy,” in which other
values are subordinated to a primary ethical ideal, and prac-
tice is determined in relation to this ultimate ideal (Schluch-
ter 1996, 88–89, 94–95).
The difference here is not between alternative principles
or decision-procedures, but between different dispositions of
judgment. As such, purposive-rationality provides more than
a tool for making judgments about what to do in particular
cases. It also serves as an ethical ideal—a model of the sort of
dispositions needed to grapple with conflicts between values
in an ethically serious way. In its stress on the need for bal-
ancing, and its rejection of absolutist (and deductive) ap-
proaches to ethical reflection, Weber’s conceptualization of
purposive-rationality, combined with his (ethical) conception
of its proper use in living well,4 discourages both deontic ab-
4. To live well, the young Weber reflected, required acting so as to
incur “the least possible losses of human dignity, of the ability to be good
Volume 78 Number 3 July 2016 / 713
solutism about means, and a ruthless consequentialism in
which all considerations are subordinated to the achieve-
ment of one ultimate end. It also relies on, and fosters, a
temper of scrupulous scrutiny and respect for multiple fac-
tors and considerations, which protect against monomania,
impatience, and intolerant simplifications.5
The ability to effectively apply purposive-rational judg-
ment required the virtue of self-discipline. “Cool self-
control,” the ability to bear and withstand adversity, was the
defining quality of a new model hero: the modern “man of
vocation,” defined by methodical devotion to a chosen cause,
and marked by the courage of strong “nerves,” able to with-
stand the fury of opponents and the vicissitudes of fate
(Weber 1994e, 231–32; cf. Ghosh 2014; Goldman 1991, 1992;
Hennis 1988; Portis 1983; Schroeder 1991; Weber 1930, 235–
36). Self-discipline was closely linked to an attitude of so-
briety, and the achievement of maturity—which Weber de-
fined as the capacity to “look at the realities of life with an
unsparing gaze, to bear these realities and be a match for them
inwardly,” and associated with taking responsibility for what
one makes of oneself. Maturity was necessary for politicians to
be able to serve their cause and their subjects prudently and
responsibly, while preserving their inner integrity and psy-
chological health. Only those who can recognize and accept
the inevitable disappointment and guilt—the tragedy—of life,
and remain dedicated to striving “‘Nevertheless’ in spite of
everything” truly have a vocation for politics (Weber 1994g,
369; cf. Owen 1997; Turner 1999). This acceptance of tragedy
and of the moral burdens imposed by responsibility to and for
values, this awareness of inner and outer imperfections and
incompleteness, was what was signally lacking in both abso-
lutist idealists (whether moral purists, or uncompromising
maximalists), and in venal opportunists and proponents of
power-worshiping Realpolitik.
and to love, of the ability to fulfill obligation.” This often involved “dif-
ficult calculation,” which could not be reduced to or replaced by appeal to
absolute principles (quoted Schluchter 1996, 283 n. 40). Satkunanandan’s
(2014) depiction of Weber as attacking “calculation” thus requires re-
finement. For Weber, calculation could serve a useful ethical role, pro-
vided that it was not understood as involving the application of absolute
principles or rules.
5. Thus Leo Strauss’s criticisms of Weber appear to be (partially)
misguided. Strauss was correct that Weber believed reason incapable of
“solving” conflicts between values, or proving some values “superior” to
others (1965, 36, 41–42). But it does not follow that we cannot make
rational decisions about what ultimate values to pursue, or rational judg-
ments about what sorts of character or conduct are superior to others,
provided that the alternatives are competitors in the same sphere. It is,
e.g., possible to identify some ways of being a political actor as preferable to
others, but not to “prove” the superiority of politics to scholarship (or vice
versa).
714 / Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics Joshua L. Cherniss
The spirit of sobriety and maturity was associated with a
clear-eyed “matter-of-factness” (Sachlichkeit), which resolutely
resisted wishful thinking and “priggish self-righteousness”
(Weber 1994g, 356; cf. 1994b, 55; 1994e, 222; 1994f, 275).
Attaining and sustaining matter-of-factness required both
“conscious self-scrutiny” (1994a, 19) and the adoption of a
concretizing approach, which asked “in connection with ev-
ery social ‘ideal,’ ‘by what means and at what price it was
attainable?’” (quoted in Marianne Weber 1988, 599). This fo-
cus on the concrete reflected a certain orientation to politi-
cal time: the politician who feels a sense of responsibility to
and for his country will “think in terms of the next two or
three generations,” and not further; he will be absorbed in
questions that the visionary regards as “ephemeral” but
which for him are crucial (1994e, 270). In this way, the “ethic
of responsibility” does not involve mere consequentialism;
and the consequentialist component that it does embrace
is concerned with a particular set of consequences, defined
by a particular time-frame.
The ethos of responsibility thus encompasses a distinct
model of judgment; a conception of the responsibilities and
possibilities of politics in relation to a certain time-horizon;
and those qualities of character that are necessary for mak-
ing, and acting on, judgments within these constraints. It
also stresses the importance of taking responsibility for—
and taking care in forming—one’s judgments; this includes
acknowledging and accepting blame, or other penalties, for
mistakes (cf. O’Donovan 2011). This sense of a duty to sub-
ject oneself to scrutiny and criticism provides an antidote
to the tendency to hold “the world, not the doer, responsible”
if “evil consequences flow from an action done out of pure
conviction.” The political actor who thinks in this way is
inclined to undertake courses of action without due con-
sideration for their likely consequences; to be irresponsible
as a matter of affect or relation to the world—to not feel re-
sponsibility for the negative consequences of his actions.
This encourages folly and prevents learning from mistakes.
It also fosters an intolerant, uncharitable, and ignoble atti-
tude toward others. He who lives according to an ethic of
responsibility, on the other hand, will “make allowances” for
the shortcomings of others; he recognizes that he has “no
right” to “presuppose goodness and perfection in human be-
ings” and “does not feel that he can shuffle off the con-
sequences of his own action . . . and place them on the
shoulders of others.” He is not concerned with always being
seen to be in the right; he is concerned, however, to rightly
judge his own actions by the ethical standard he has adopted
(Weber 1994g, 360).
Honesty-with-oneself requires confronting the risks and
sacrifices inherent in political action—and deciding what
price one is willing to pay. No ethic can “determine when
and to what extent the ethically good end ‘sanctifies’ the
ethically dangerous means and side-effects.” All that an ethics
of politics can demand is that one be clear-eyed about the
dangers (1994g, 360–61). Honesty and clarity about one’s
commitments, the choices before one, and one’s responsi-
bility for making them, is thus a condition for acting with
integrity.
Weber’s ideal of integrity consists not in rigid conformity
to principle or purity of intention, but in a sense of honor
and chivalry. These conceptions involve attention to the re-
lationships between actors and the consequences of their
actions, and between actors and others. Honor for Weber
consisted in a “minimal sense of shame and dignity which
cannot be violated without punishment” (quoted in Breiner
1996, 175). Chivalry mandated respect and concern for one’s
opponents, and for anyone over whom one has an advantage
of power or status. This attitude of concern and respect—
expressed in courtesy (not condescension) and solicitude
(not paternalistic prying), and a willingness to stand up and
advocate for victims of injustice or callousness—stood op-
posed to brutal power-worship. Chivalry condemned bru-
tality, and denied that mere power was admirable. A sense
of chivalry could also support commitment to democratic
pluralism, insofar as the former encouraged, and the latter
depended on, respect for opponents.
Weber’s persistent concern for underdogs, and his ob-
servance of an “ethical imperative . . . to protect the adver-
sary” (Honigsheim 2003, 115) reflected this sense of chivalry.
Weber stood opposed to the widespread, institutionalized
anti-Semitism of his society because of his “feeling of chiv-
alry and his well-developed sense of justice;” during the war
he “showed a chivalrous concern for every prisoner who was
accessible to him and did not hesitate to oppose the then
prevailing nationalistic instincts, hatred and spy phobia. He
never ceased to regard every man as a man, endowed with
inalienable rights” (Jaspers 1964, 263; Löwith 1994, 18). His
sense of chivalry also inspired Weber’s attacks on wartime
chauvinism: “Abusing the enemy? That does not win wars.
The fighting men out in the field are not doing so, and this
wave of abuse, which grows in intensity the further its au-
thors are from the trenches, is hardly worthy of a proud
nation” (1994e, 131). This sense of chivalry motivated and
shaped his liberalism—a distinctly “chivalric” liberalism,
which did not seek to deny imbalances of power or act as if
they did not exist, but rather identified the use of one’s power
to combat injustices arising from inequalities as crucial to
one’s sense of self and ethical well-being.
Self-discipline, sobriety, and self-critical honesty were
needed to prevent noble sentiments from giving rise to a

futile “politics of gesture;” dispositions of integrity, honor,
and chivalry were necessary to save self-discipline from co-
agulating into the mechanistic ethos of the “men of order.”
Weber’s objections to the wrong sort of political moralism
thus reflected a very demanding ethical ideal—a picture of
the sort of character needed to meet the ethical demands of
political leadership in a modern world at once fragmented
and oppressive. These demands required both willingness to
engage in unglamorous and frustrating effort—and to make
use of “diabolic” forces of violence and charisma (which, in
exerting irrational control over followers, reduced them to
rapt, obedient subjects); and, at the same time, sustain stren-
uous notions of responsibility, integrity, honor, and decency.
Weber did not expect many to live up to these demands.
But he insisted that only the cultivation of “that very prosaic
moral ‘decency’” and “sense of shame,” the erosion of which
had been “our most grievous loss” in the war, could restore
“poise” to a political life dominated by “loathsome exhibi-
tionism” and “mysticism”—in the form both of Realpolitik,
and different strains of political moralism (quoted in Ma-
rianne Weber 1988, 636–38).
CONCLUSION
As reconstructed here, Weber’s thought contributes to re-
flection on politics, first, by focusing our attention on the
ethos of political agents. This stress on the importance of
personal character in defining politics is a useful corrective
to those who, whether practitioners of “ideal” or “non-ideal”
political theory, focus on institutions (e.g., Rawls 1971; Wal-
dron 2013). Second, Weber trenchantly points to the dangers
of three tempting ethical attitudes toward political action:
“puristic” impulses of uncompromising adherence to strict
moral rules, and withdrawal from the pollution of politics; an
end-oriented moral “maximalism,” which seeks to purify the
world through force, appealing to the purity of intentions and
aims to excuse base actions; and an amoral “realism” which
values only power and success. Finally, his work highlights
a type of personality, and an account of evaluative political
judgment, that might be able to resist or counter-act these
tendencies.
The account of political ethics I have sought to recon-
struct from Weber’s writings, and the political interventions
to which his theories were tied, pose difficulties—particu-
larly for proponents of liberal politics, who seek to impose
firm limits on the acceptable imposition of coercion on in-
dividuals. Weber’s way of thinking about the ethical re-
sponsibilities of politics seems not to provide any firm basis
for establishing concrete and stable limits on what types of
political action may be countenanced. And the ethos he ar-
ticulated, while rejecting the ruthless drive for power of the
Volume 78 Number 3 July 2016 / 715
“realist” and the ruthless drive for perfection of the purist,
contained its own element of ruthlessness. The politician,
Weber asserted, must possess “the trained ruthlessness”
(geschulte Rucksichtslosigkeit) to “gaze on the realities of life”
in order to “measure up” to the challenges of politics (1994g,
367; translation emended).6 Such “ruthlessness” shapes both
one’s perception of reality, and response to it: a politician
should be able to view realities without her perceptions be-
ing distorted by hopes or ideals, and should not flinch from
the implications of her perceptions when deciding how to act.
The “ruthlessness” here is directed inward, against hopeful
desires for emotional comfort or ease. But this self-discipline
may also involve suppressing or disregarding thoughts and
feelings (empathy, compassion, fairness, respect, and horror
at cruelty, suffering, and humiliation) that might interfere
with clear vision and resolute decision—and which might
serve as breaks on ruthless action. Training oneself in ruth-
lessness—single-mindedness, dedication, imperviousness to
emotional obstacles or restraints—in one activity (forming
judgments about reality) may foster a general disposition—a
“ruthless spirit”—which easily transfers to others. A proud
sobriety and self-discipline may breed contempt for one’s
own psychic weaknesses; and this may expand to contempt
for the weakness of others—and thence, to brutal treatment
of them when their weakness is incorrigible.
While Weber concentrated on what he regarded as forms
of ruthlessness arising from failure to soberly accept and
“measure up” to reality (by the cynical self-promoter, the
exhibitionistic purist, or the visionary ideologue), there are
other forms of political ruthlessness. The personally selfless
practitioner of Machtpolitik, who seeks to advance not his
own power but that of his state, may exemplify Weber’s
prescribed ethos (at least, this seems to have been Weber’s
own view). And he may be just as inclined to launch himself
and his nation into a river of blood as the revolutionary fa-
natic, or become as cynically manipulative as the merely self-
seeking politician. Far from warning of the dangers of such
a political type, Weber’s approach—with its admiring em-
phasis on personal dispositions of commitment to cause,
responsibility, sobriety, integrity, and honor—tends to en-
courage these dangers. It may degenerate into a fetishization
of personal nobility, a view that a heavy heart and furrowed
brow can justify offenses against others (cf. Walzer 1973,
177–79), and an admiration for the aesthetic qualities of
personal bearing, which is detached from the validity of its
application and results. In this way, Weber may himself
bring to political ethics something of the mix of romanticism
6. Rucksichtslosigkeit may be translated as “recklessness” or “thought-
lessness,” but it suggests a stronger sense of insensitivity or callousness.
716 / Max Weber’s Enigmatic Political Ethics Joshua L. Cherniss
and ruthlessness identified by his friend Troeltsch as the
characteristic vice of German political life, whereby the per-
sonal nobility (and hence, aesthetic grandeur) of the politi-
cian serves to elevate or redeem costly and cruel action.
Weber’s application of his political-ethical vision in his
personal conduct bears out some of these worries. His bel-
licose attitude toward opponents of Germany’s participation
in World War I, and his advocacy of irredentist opposition
to the allied occupation of Germany (Ay 1999) suggests how
what he regarded as sober confrontation of reality could fos-
ter quixotic, bloody intransigence. His insistence on integrity,
consistency, and honesty-with-oneself sometimes served as
the basis for both dismissing those who failed to conform to
one or another of the drastic “either/or” ethical alternatives
he was wont to pose—and refusing sympathy to those who
had suffered for embracing one or the other alternative. Thus,
he responded to the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg by rightist paramilitaries by commenting that
Liebknecht had flirted with populist violence and been de-
stroyed by it (1988, 642). Those radicals who engaged in non-
violent protest against the government, on the other hand,
found themselves criticized by Weber for failing to choose
between either maintaining moral purity (which, he appar-
ently believed, required that they withdraw from active poli-
tics, and passively accept persecution for their beliefs) or
seeking to achieve their goals, through violence if necessary.7
This intellectually extremist stance, which viewed politics as
requiring an either/or choice between moral purity and ruth-
lessness (and acceptance of the respective costs of each),
would lead some of the younger intellectuals influenced by
Weber to embrace ruthless revolutionary politics—even if
Weber himself bewailed what he regarded as the wasteful-
ness and poor judgment of their sacrifice, as in the case of
his protege Gyorgy Lukacs 1986 (Marianne Weber 1988, 281–
83; Karadi 1989; for a broader analysis, see Derman 2010).
Yet Weber’s commitment to chivalry and fairness, self-
criticism, and self-control sometimes saved him from his
own more intolerant impulses—as evidenced in his respect
and support for some German social democrats and Rus-
sian radicals, his courageous condemnations of nationalist
bloodthirstiness, and his defenses of radical colleagues such
as Robert Michels, Ernst Toller, and Lukacs. His sensitivity
to the dangers of irresponsible self-righteousness and cynical
ruthlessness—and the ways in which these could intersect—
also informed his shifting estimation of Erich Ludendorff,
the architect of Germany’s military policy in World War I.
Weber’s initial admiration for Ludendorff gave way to ve-
7. I thank a reviewer for the Journal of Politics for bringing the latter
case to my attention.
hement opposition to Ludendorff’s brutal policies (embrace
of unfettered submarine warfare, and plans to annex the
disputed area between Germany and Poland), and bitter
disappointment at Ludendorff ’s refusal to take responsibil-
ity for Germany’s war policies after the national defeat. The
self-righteousness, vanity, and hostility to democracy that
Ludendorff revealed following Germany’s defeat provoked
Weber to write that “Now I understand why the world resists
the attempts of men like him to place their heels upon the
necks of others. If he should again meddle in politics he
must be fought remorselessly [rücksichtslos, or ‘ruthlessly’]”
(Marianne Weber 1988, 651–54).8
Weber’s character and conduct both exemplify, and use-
fully qualify, the ethos that he articulated in his writings.
Although he could be contemptuous of what he perceived
as emotional and moral exhibitionism (Loewenstein 1966,
100) and had moments of both fierce dogmatism and brutal
callousness, Weber was also moved by a sense of humanity
that provided a moral ballast that the ethic of responsibility,
as he articulated it, lacked. This humane moral passion—
and his distance from those advocating a coolly “realistic”
stance toward politics—is illustrated by an incident from
1918, when Weber was discussing the new Soviet regime with
Joseph Schumpeter in Vienna. Schumpeter “gleefully declared
that socialism had finally ceased to be a ‘paper discussion’ but
now had to prove its viability.” Weber vehemently responded
that trying out communism in Russia amounted to a “crime”
and gloomily predicted it would end in an immense human
disaster. Schumpeter replied that Russia would constitute a
“good laboratory” for testing theories. Weber retorted: “A
laboratory heaped with human corpses!” Schumpeter pointed
out that the same was true of any anatomy lab. Finally, Weber
jumped up, exclaiming, “This is unbearable!” and stormed
out. Schumpeter dryly wondered how someone could carry
on so in a coffeehouse (Honigsheim 2003, xi–xii, quoting Felix
Somary).
We should attend to such anecdotes, and take them se-
riously, because Weber took his own political-ethical ideas
seriously, seeking to live as well as expound them, applying
them in his judgments of others, and his own conduct. These
judgments and conduct reflected not only Weber’s concep-
tion of the ethical demands of politics, and the particular
qualities of ethos best suited to meet them but also his
larger recognition of the importance of personal ethos in de-
termining the quality of politics—a recognition that makes
sense of Weber’s belief that the qualities of character exhib-
ited in an individual’s conduct can, independent of her ideo-
8. Ludendorff would become a leading nationalist politician, and, for a
time, ally to the Nazis; by then, Weber was no longer alive to oppose him.

logical principles and goals or the known consequences of
her individual actions, serve as the basis for condemnation
or praise, opposition or support. Evaluating an individual’s
ethos—and coming to understand the connection between
her ethical qualities, and the sort of politics she will con-
tribute to making—becomes, on this account, an important
part of political judgment. One of the lessons of Weber’s
account of politics is the importance of attending to the ethos
of political actors as exhibited in their personal conduct.
Attending to his own conduct advances our understanding
of the ethos he articulated—and the ways in which this ethos
may be modulated in ways, and through the cultivation of
qualities (of romantic hero-worship or modest “decency,”
intolerance or personal humanity), that may make it more or
less conducive to cultivating a sober, humane politics against
the dangers of political ruthlessness and extremism.
Weber not only pointed to the place and importance of
ethos in political life. He also articulated and, at his best,
exemplified a distinctive ethos of politics which offers an
alternative to, and fortification against, “realist” embrace of
power-politics, “moral-maximalist” legitimation of ruthless-
ness in the pursuit of noble goals, and absolutist insistence
on personal purity at all costs. His was a sometimes unstable,
conflicted stance. But the problems he identified, and in-
sights he brought to bear on them, remain more instructive
than the one-sided counsels of morally absolutist and amor-
alist visions of politics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Versions of this article were presented at meetings of the
Northeastern and Southern Political Science Associations
(2014 and 2015, respectively). I am grateful to the discus-
sants (Giorgi Areshidze and Faisal Baluch) and audiences
on those occasions, and to Jonathan Allen, Eric Beerbohm,
Ross Carroll, Deborah Cherniss, Kristen Collins, Aurelian
Craiutu, Bruce Douglass, Jeff Poushter, Michael Rosen,
Nancy Rosenblum, Andrew Sabl, Richard Tuck, and Lisa
Ellis and three anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Pol-
itics for their very helpful comments on earlier versions
of this text; and to Aaron Garrett, Micha Glaeser, Yascha
Mounk, and Michael Rosen (again) for advice on particular
points.
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