Objectivity, Political Order, and Responsibility in Max Weber’s Thought

Weber\u2019s conception of politics has long been interpreted in relativistic and \u201cagonistic\u201d terms. Such interpretations neglect Weber\u2019s notion of \u201cobjectivity\u201d as well as the complex links between politics as \u201ccommunity,\u201d on the one hand, and as \u201cvalue sphere,\u201d on the other. Seen against this backdrop, Berufpolitik becomes a balancing act in which the pursuit of subjective values is objectively constrained not only by the ethic of responsibility, but more generally by the political imperative to safeguard the preconditions for communal order and, in late modernity, of liberal freedoms. Without them, neither the objective \u201cclarity\u201d generated by science nor the subjective political commitments based on \u201cclear vision\u201d would be possible