If only Weber could have applied this analysis to himself. As Wolfgang Mommsen describes in his excellent book Max Weber and German Politics, Weber was a passionate advocate of Germany’s “Place in the Sun” and was furious with the Kaiser for, among other things, not invading France in 1905 when the political turmoil in Russia following its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War would have saved Germany from having to fight a war on two fronts.† During World War I Weber wanted a compromise peace so that Germany could prepare for the “next war,” in which it would finally crush its enemies. Weber affected to believe that there was no such thing as right and wrong in politics, yet he believed it was somehow “wrong” of Great Britain to oppose Germany’s plans for self-aggrandizement, as though Germany somehow deserved to win and Britain deserved to lose.
*Weber worked from the massive research undertaken by German scholars in the late nineteenth century to uncover and define the actual civilization that gave birth to the Bible—a classic activity in “disenchantment” (one of Weber’s favorite words to describe “modernism”). Although these scholars did rely on archeology to an extent, most of the work was done by close analysis of the biblical texts, along with comparisons with other ancient civilizations, Middle Eastern and otherwise. If you know something about the Bible, and something about Weber’s thought, it’s not too hard to read. The underlying scholarship is, of course, quite dated, but there will never be an end to scholarship, especially biblical scholarship, and Weber’s ideas and arguments about the importance of Judaism are still significant.
†The Kaiser, despite all his bluster, had perhaps a better grasp of political reality than Weber, feeling that the Social Democrats in Germany would not support a war of opportunity against the only major county in Europe with a republican form of government.
