Max Weber and realism

We’ve been talking a lot about the idealism vs. realism debate here at TPP – Is compromise necessary, and how much of it is admissible?  How much should our political values be restrained by immediate possibilities?

Matt Yglesias takes this on here, citing Weber’s Politics as a Vocation to suggest a distinction between an ethic of of “ultimate ends” and an ethic of “responsibility.”  Yglesias says that in our world, responsibility must be the guiding principle:

…a lot of what goes wrong in American foreign policy commentary, I came to see, was a refusal to adopt the ethic of responsibility. Instead, people would want to orient themselves in a way that expresses a sense of moralized outrage.

To be sure,

“Realism” pursued on behalf of purely selfish goals is immoral, but the pursuit of laudable goals in an unrealistic and destructive manner doesn’t help anyone.

And on applying “responsibility” to climate change:

The sensible goal, however, is to avert the collapse. To do the best we can today, and the best we can tomorrow and the best we can the day after that. And next week? To do the best we can. And again next month and next year and next decade.

-Colin

Related posts:

  1. Glenn Beck and Plato
  2. Congress – run by the minority?
  3. The military makes a non-moral case for responding to climate change
  4. “Belief” in climate change
  5. Bloggingheads

December 21, 2009 · Filed Under Colin, Politics, Responsibility

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One Response to “Max Weber and realism”

  1. Political bribery : The Public Philosopher on December 21st, 2009 1:10 pm

    [...] to Marc and Colin’s posts on political “compromise,” Michelle Malkin outlines here and here the [...]

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    Jacob Bronsther is a law student at NYU, a former Fulbright Scholar to Mauritius, and a graduate of Cornell University. He has an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • Sam Gill is a consultant in Washington and a graduate of the University of Chicago. He studied Political Theory at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

  • Marc Grinberg is a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. government and a graduate of Princeton University. He earned an MPhil in Political Theory from the University of Oxford.

  • John Rood is the founder of Next Step Test Preparation and a graduate of Michigan State University. He has an AM in Political Theory from the University of Chicago.

  • Luke Freedman is a student at Carleton College, pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Political Science.


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