A General Index to the Monthly Review: A Catalogue of the Books and Pamphlets Characterized,... Book

I’ve read 'politics as a vocation' and 'science as a vocation' so far. I picked this up on a recommendation as a philosopher who does it better than RW Emerson. (Read this and you can’t help but acknowledge that German Idealism is vastly superior to American transcendalism was the recommendation). The similarities and differences with Emerson are mildly striking. First, they are both lectures, most of emerson's writing evolved as speeches, and while I don't know if that’s true for Weber, these two essays make it seem plausible. While the tone is very different, the emphasis on positive action and personal responsibility seems to be at the forefront for both philosophers.

I found both of the essays to be very good, though I did breeze over the middle section of both of them where he compares differing aspects of politics and science in different countries. Someone studying the rise of nazism or the failure of america intellectualism might be very interested in it, but I'm not really.

However there are some truly astounding sections, and his early dissection of political motivation seems very astute. The 2nd and 3rd pages of Politics are full of great lines, Like “the mores sanctified through the unimaginable ancient recognition and habitual orientation to conform” and “obedience is determined by highly robust motives of fear and hope”. 79

In general I found his asides to be highlights. I like that his life philosophy (for lack of a better term) is only viewable in their tangential relationship to the points in the essay; he never engages with them directly. For instance on page 117, he is talking about vain power politicians and says of them, “[they] are a product of shoddy and superficially blasé attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.” This line is buried in the excellent concluding 15 pages of Politics, which stretches back to the discussion of “sterile excitation… . “ is a ‘romanticism of the intellectually interesting’ running into emptiness devoid of all feeling of objective responsibility.” on page 115, which is a pithy summary of some of problems with academic thought .

That’s amazing, as his discussion of Tolstoy and the meaning of death on page 140. With regards to contrasts with Emerson, this passage is the most interesting. What I have found so compelling about Emerson is his exploration of our ties to the natural world, our fundamental alienation forcing us to seek redemption within ourselves. Almost a Buddhist philosophy. Weber gets into something similar here, and I haven’t had the time to parse this section (138-44) adequately.