A Book for this Moment
thinking with Wendy Brown thinking with Max Weber
‘Conflict rages between different gods and it will go on for all time. It is as it was in antiquity before the world had been divested of the magic of its gods and demons, only in a different sense. Just as the Greek would bring a sacrifice at one time to Aphrodite and at another to Apollo, and above all, to the gods of his own city, people do likewise today. Only now, the gods have been deprived of the magical and mythical, but inwardly true qualities that gave them such vivid immediacy.’ —Max Weber, Science as a Vocation
Well, here we are, certainly awash in interesting times—at least in the manner this invented ‘Chinese curse’ (read: not Chinese curse) intended to convey. Honestly, I have neither sage advice nor hard scrabble takes to offer. Rather, I just wished to pass on a recommendation for a book that I have read over the last few days that I believe very much speaks to the moment.
Amidst these sorts of social-historical choke points I always think it is useful to not only take a step forward (in terms of considering the ways one wishes to directly confront assaults on the rights of others and their dignity); but also take a step back (in terms of using it as an opportunity to (re)situate oneself historically, politically, etc.).
In some ways, this captures our dual (or even dueling) attributes as we are perpetually creative enterprises ever-pushing out in new, invented directions and living artefacts who encode and manifest not only our own past experiences but those that played out even centuries before we were born. Of course, very often these steps back and forward are highly entwined, if not symbiotic. Indeed, the book I wish to suggest moves in this bidirectional fashion by taking us back to the thoughts and times of Max Weber to conjure creative ways to think about ways forward.
I bought Nihilistic Times: Thinking With Max Weber by the eminent political theorist Wendy Brown well over a year ago. A good thing about buying physical books is that, as opposed to their digital variant, they become part of your lived environment. They force you to confront them, they challenge you, and perhaps your dithering. I was eager to read this book as I have long been intrigued by the enigmatic thought of Max Weber, I agree that this is an age of nihilism, and Prof. Brown is a profoundly insightful thinker.
Alas, for over a year, I brought this book along on holidays, work trips, to home, back to the office…And yet, I did not read it. Yet, on Tuesday morning (Korea time) as Donald Trump was being feted and fetishized by so many, I cracked it open and proceeded to intently devour it in a day.
Certainly the romantic in me wants to believe that somewhere deep down, forces beyond my apprehension, ‘guided’ me to hold off diving in, ‘knowing’ that I would need the book at a particularly dire moment. At the same time, Occam’s razor would point to the far less enchanted explanation that I am a touch lazy and buy too many books!
Whatever the reason, it is undoubtedly a book exceedingly fitted to the moment. I will spare you a full length review and just offer a brief overview of how the book is framed.
Perhaps a good place to start is with the term nihilism and how it is defined philosophically by Brown. In my understanding, we too often conflate a common response to nihilism (i.e. nothing matters, there is no meaning to life, etc.) with existing in a nihilistic age—i.e. a state or situation defined by the recognition that the values we hold dear or deeply believe cannot be grounded in any sort of ultimate Truth.
For Brown, Nietzsche looms large in our nihilistic epoch as he set out to systematically denude so many of our scared cows of their sacral content—of course including but not limited to religion or a belief in God more generally. But, to be sure, Nietzsche was no nihilist in the sense of its common usage as he held that the ‘death’ of God entreated, perhaps commanded, us to create something new to cohere with, and promote flourishing in, our nihilistic age. In short, now that the cord to our divine and mystical anchors had been severed, what shall we make of value and values?
Certainly, Nietzsche had many answers or proposals for grappling with this state of affairs. Some of which I find interesting or compelling, some I don’t much agree with, some I find disturbing, but this is not the place for for that discussion…Nevertheless, Nietzsche is an important protagonist in the book as Brown frames the works by Weber under discussion as emerging in part as a response to the challenges he set forth.
In short, Weber agreed with Nietzsche’s proclamation that we have entered an age of nihilism, but he draws very different conclusions about the political and ethical imperatives that emerge from this transition. For Weber, politics and the politician, must be ultimately be guided by an ethic of responsibility and employ charisma as a means to breakout of the desultory state of out hyper-bureaucratized lives. In turn, Brown deftly analyzes and develops these concepts in ways that not only paint Weber in a different light but speak to our present condition in direct and illuminating ways.
I honestly just deleted a few hundred words I had written getting into these concepts and Brown’s discussion of them. As I noted, I will spare you a lengthy analytical review. Suffice to say, I truly believe that it would be hard to read this short book and not take away a great deal in terms of understanding and thinking about our present moment, how it emerged, and potential ways to combat the troubling forces gathering momentum.
Brown is not on a mission to lionize Weber, but as the title indicates, to sympathetically think with him. The book focuses particularly on Weber’s famous lectures, Politics as a Vocation and Science as a Vocation. Though it is clear that Brown is far more favorably inclined to the former than the latter, she reads and expounds upon both in ways that help us take a step back in order to think anew about the available paths going forward.