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Journal of Philosophy of Education,Vol. 49, No. 1, 2014Journal of Philosophy of Education,Vol. 49, No. 1, 2015

A Course Between Bureaucracy and Charisma: A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory

JOHN FANTUZZO

Philosophers of education tend to mention Max Weber’s social theory in passing, assuming its importance and presuming its comprehension, but few have paused to consider how Weber’s social theory might consciously inform educational theory and research, and none have done so comprehensively. The aim of this article is to begin this inquiry through a pedagogical reading of Weber’s social theory. The basis of my inquiry is Weber’s claim in ‘Science as a Vocation’ that the moral purpose of scholarship is met when it provides persons with ‘self-clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’. Using this claim as guide, I make two arguments. First, I make the interpretive argument that Weber’s descriptive social theory can be reconciled with his normative remarks about pedagogy. Second, I make the critical argument that Weber’s conception of education not only withstands objections, but that it can also help us to discern blind-spots obscured by the objectors’ intellectual positions. Ultimately, I conclude that Weber’s social theory should influence educational scholars, particularly, by serving as a sober guide for persons who would do well to interrogate the purposes of their work in a time and place where the practice of education is stuck between two undesirable purposes, increasing bureaucratisation and charismatic reform.

. . . the two polar opposites in the field of educational ends are to awaken charisma, that is, heroic qualities or magical gifts; and to impart specialized expert training. . . . Between them are found all those types which aim at cultivating the pupil for the conduct of life (Max Weber, 1978, p. 426).

If someone turned to the field of philosophy of education intent on learning something about Max Weber’s social theory, they would learn that Weber

is a name worth mentioning—because his work has particular insights, because he coined memorable metaphors, and because he influenced prominent theorists like Cornell West and Michel Foucault.1 In other words, this person would learn that Weber’s social theory is present but there is still much to be learned, for Weber’s influence on the field is partial at best and superficial at worst. The same lesson likely applies to educa- tional scholarship at large. As sociologist Philip Wexler (2009) remarks, ‘. . . there is no tradition of thinking education socially with Weber’s ideas intentionally in mind . . .’ (p. 97). Although there are a few articles in sources like the Journal of Educational Administration and Educational Management Administration and Leadership (e.g. Samier, 2002a, 2002b) at present, I think Wexler is correct. Weber’s thinking has unconsciously influenced but not explicitly guided educational scholarship. One might object that this is not necessarily a problem. After all, why should educa- tional scholars be consciously influenced by Weber’s social theory? And examining Weber’s voluminous and fragmented corpus—spanning an astounding variety of topics but only rarely touching upon education— where would this project even begin?

I think the clue to beginning this project, which I propose to help launch with this article, can be found in Weber’s lecture ‘Science as a Vocation’ (in Weber, 1958). Herein Weber claims that the greatest practical value of science (or academic research) is that it can be taught in such a manner as to provide ‘self clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’ (pp. 151–152). If we include Weber’s own social theory under the heading of academic research—a categorisation his lecture assumes—then the greatest practical value of Weberian social theory, according to Weber himself, is pedagogi- cal. Now what does that mean? Here is the beginning of the inquiry. I think educational scholars have missed its possibility; and, I think notable phi- losophers have unjustly discounted the practical significance of Weber’s social theory while neglecting its stated pedagogical purpose.2 Accord- ingly, the aim of this article is to suggest that Weber’s social theory can have a vital influence on educational scholarship when its pedagogical purpose is brought to the fore.

To do so, I’ll make an interpretive argument and a critical argument. The interpretive argument is that it is possible to unify Weber’s descriptive social theory with his normative conception of pedagogy; that is, to read the one in light of the other. The critical argument is that a pedagogical reading of Weber’s social theory can contribute to our thinking about the purposes of education today, and thus serve as a guide for educational scholarship.

To make the interpretive argument, I will begin by arguing that an understanding of the poles of Weber’s social theory, the ideal types of bureaucratic domination and charismatic domination, can be read to raise and enliven a profoundly personal, ethical question when their respective types of education (i.e. bureaucratic education and charismatic education) are understood to be in a state of conflict. From this conflict a first-person question arises: How should I become socially? When this question becomes significant it elicits the need for self-determination. I will address this personal question—and Weber’s understanding of self-determination,

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a concept I’ll elucidate along the way—through Weber’s normative con- ception of pedagogy in ‘Science as a Vocation’. I will reconstruct the pedagogical course Weber prescribes to guide persons towards it. To make the critical argument, I will raise and respond to three different objections to Weber’s pedagogy, specifically, that it leads to relativism, that it lacks charisma, and that it lacks bureaucratic order. In doing so, I hope to show that Weber’s social theory offers instructive feedback on these respective positions. I will conclude by suggesting how a pedagogical reading of Weber’s social theory can favourably influence educational scholars today. To start, it will be necessary to briefly introduce Weber’s approach to social theory, and the terms ‘ideal type’ and ‘legitimate domination’.

WEBER’S UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOCIAL WORLD

Weber’s social theory understands the social world in terms of social actions alone, that is, as Weber describes it, ‘ “social” insofar as its sub- jective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course’ (1991, p. 3). By ‘subjective meaning’, as Fredrick Beiser (2011) explains, Weber means, ‘the purpose or norm that the agent ascribes to himself in contrast to that which is ascribed to it from some third-person point of view’ (p. 529). In other words, Weber does not think ‘subjective meaning’ can be reductively explained by the natural sciences. For instance, the purpose or motive compelling a person to commit a crime will not be captured by referring to a tumour in the person’s brain or to the state of their frontal lobe. Although a (neuro-) psychological description may provide a causal explanation of the delinquent behaviour, it will never capture the self-ascribed meaning motivating the person’s social action.

According to Weber, interpretive understanding (verstehen), which aims to grasp the ‘subjective meaning’ of a social action, can be accessed in two ways. First, through an act of empathy that seeks to discern the purposes of another’s social actions through reference to one’s own feelings and experi- ences. For example, a thought like, ‘If I were in his shoes that day, I too may have been mad enough to kill.’ Second, by constructing ‘ideal types’ or which provide an intellectual (versus empathetic) understanding of a social action. If ideal types are successfully constructed, they provide what Weber terms a ‘subjectively adequate’ interpretation of an agent’s purpose or norm. For example, a subjectively adequate ideal type for ‘murder as legitimate self-defense’, as Frederic Vandenberghe helpfully suggests, might be ‘x felt threatened, so x pulled the trigger’ (2009, p. 110). This explanation does not establish causality. For an explanation to become what Weber called ‘causally adequate’ an empirical generalisation would be necessary, for instance, ‘in x% of cases we observe that when a person is threatened, he will shoot his adversary’ (p. 110). Now, Weber’s social theory is not opposed to empirical research. Nevertheless, according to Weber, empirical generalisations are secondary to the project of under- standing social actions.

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 47

To be clear, ideal types are constructions used to understand social actions. They do not amount to a mirror of reality but are a variety of ‘rational course[s] of action’ (Weber, 1978, p. 6) used for the purposes of interpretive understanding. Particular social actions are understood by con- trasting them with ideal types, which provide the interpreter with an ‘intel- ligible and more inclusive context of meaning’ (Weber, 1978, p. 10). Through interpretation, ideal types afford the interpreter with ‘peculiarly plausible hypothes[es]’ (Weber, 1978, p. 9). These hypotheses can be used to guide empirical research; or they can be used to pursue grand historical inquiries (such as a ‘subjectively adequate’ explanation of the purposes motivating the rise of modern capitalism in the West); or, instead, ideal types can be used to help us to understand our own purposes in the social world, where, as Weber describes, ‘In a great majority of cases action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-consciousness or actual consciousness of its subjective meaning. . . . In most cases . . . action is governed by impulse or habit’ (1978, p. 21). This quotation anticipates my pedagogical reading, for the process of defining purposes, which are typically aimless and inchoate, helps the reader to consider the meaning of their own social actions.

To conclude these introductory remarks, it is important to define Weber’s term ‘legitimate domination’. By ‘legitimate domination’, Weber means ideal types that capture ‘the probability that certain specific commands will be obeyed by a given group of persons’ (1978, p. 212). Weber wants to distinguish legitimate domination from the mere exercise of power (e.g. torture) by ascribing to it ‘a minimum of volun- tary compliance’ (p. 212). Typifying the reasons for compliance, i.e. why people accept given commands as valid norms for their own conduct (p. 946), Weber claims there are three ‘subjectively adequate’ ideal types of legitimate domination: (1) legal domination, (2) traditional domination, (3) and charismatic domination. Recalling Vandenberghe’s example, just as ‘feeling threatened’ is a subjectively adequate account of why people kill in self-defence, Weber thinks these three ideal types provide a subjectively adequate account of why people obey and inter- nalise commands as legitimate. Traditional domination, as Weber describes it, is the mode of domination the where ‘inarticulate half- conscious’ resides—the ‘I don’t know?’ or ‘Just because everyone does’ type of response—which Weber thinks motivates most action in the social world. Conceptually, traditional domination can be situated between legal domination (or the ‘rule of law’) and charismatic domina- tion (or the ‘rule of man’).3

Weber’s pedagogy, intent on providing students with ‘self clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’ aims first and foremost at a resistance to traditional domination; it strives to make a person’s purposes more con- scious and more articulate. Yet it is also a resistance to ‘inarticulate half- conscious’ obedience to the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘rule of man.’ In their extremes, the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘rule of man’ are represented in Weber’s theory by the ideal types of bureaucratic domination and charismatic domi- nation. To these extremes we shall now turn.

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LEGITIMATE DOMINATION AS ORDER AND RUPTURE

For Weber (1978), bureaucracy is the most advanced instrument of legal domination, and the most successful instrument of domination. Bureau- cratic domination proves superior to other forms of domination for the following reasons: (1) authority is not concentrated but hierarchically dis- tributed into ‘jurisdictional areas’ (p. 956); (2) all conduct is governed by calculable rules and rational procedures of accountability; and (3) adher- ence to this form of domination does not derive from loyalty to the poten- tially fickle and arbitrary wills of persons, but from loyalty to ‘impersonal and functional purposes’ (p. 959). Historically, as Weber saw it, the organi- sational superiority of bureaucratic domination allowed it to replace pro- gressively the personal commands of yore—‘the rule of man’—for a system of authoritative functions.4

Themes in Weber’s theory have become common sense, so the reader will likely identify the ills of bureaucracy without a problem. Yet it is important to note that Weber’s social theory does not simply bemoan bureaucracy. Evidence of Weber’s impartiality comes from his discernment of its organisational strengths, which provide unsurpassed efficiency, material wellbeing, and psychological security for ordinary people living everyday lives. Indeed, contra a revolutionary like Vladimir Lenin or a totalitarian like Carl Schmitt, for Weber, bureaucracy is not an instrument that can be simply ‘smashed’ by socialism or demised by a charismatic leader. As Weber soberly judged, modern life depends upon bureaucratic domination.

Granting its organisational strengths, Weber’s specific problem with bureaucracy is that the goods it provides come by trading on personality. As modern life is rationally organised according to bureaucratic institutions— bureaucratic commands become the sole source of authority, and other sources of authority, particularly, forms of personal authority are increas- ingly weakened. For instance, the authoritative command of the wise man or the terrible prophet becomes, due to the comfort and routine bureaucracy insures, an increasingly faint alternative. ‘Under the technical and social conditions of rational culture’, writes Weber (1958), ‘an imitation of the life of Buddha, Jesus, or Francis seems condemned to failure for purely external reasons’ (p. 357). Weber found this state of affairs to be particu- larly alarming. As a society adapts to the external organisation of bureau- cracies, such that a person’s well being necessitates internalising a rationally organised form of life, bureaucratic domination starts to feel ‘escape proof’ (Weber, 1978, p. 1401). This was Weber’s specific anxiety about bureaucracy, through he did not condemn the instrument as such.

Shifting to the other extreme, we find charismatic domination. Under charismatic domination, individuals are dominated by a particular leader’s extraordinary personal ability. The ability is manifest as a divine gift of the body or mind, a distinct ability, which is ‘supernatural’, says Weber (1978), ‘in the sense that not everybody could have access to them’ (p. 1112). Insofar as the charismatic leader’s extraordinary abilities are demonstrated, charismatic domination is efficacious. But when the leader’s gift comes up

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 49

short, charismatic domination ceases or is routinised into traditional or legal domination. As Weber saw it, one way or another, it is the fate of charisma to fade as the bearer of extraordinary gifts fade.Yet the ephemeral nature of charisma does not amount to impotence.

Charisma, says Weber (1978), is the ‘specifically creative revolutionary force in history’ (p. 1117). While an entire society may be subscribing to bureaucratic norms and working to secure a livelihood, the charismatic leader defies traditional mores and legal rules, shunning everyday customs and economic demands through the power of their personality. The call of charisma, says Weber, ‘. . . flows from the highly personal experience of divine grace and god-like heroic strength and rejects all external order solely for the sake of glorifying a genuine prophetic and heroic ethos’ (1978, p. 1115). Thus fated to become routine, yet bearing the power to alter routines, charismatic domination can be understood as a personal power which both engenders and ruptures social order.

From what has been said, it may seem as though charismatic domination is the preferable choice over bureaucratic domination. For instance, con- sider an oft-quoted line from Weber’s Protestant Ethic (2003): ‘No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self- importance’ (p. 182). Reading such a line, we may cheer for the ‘new prophets’ and boo the ‘mechanized petrification’. Yet both forms of domi- nation are undesirable from the standpoint of self-determination. Their commands are both heteronymous: You must be this way.

Accordingly, if the extremes of the social world amount to domination— both as the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘rule of man’—then we might infer that Weber saw the entire social world as characterised by obediently domi- nated subjects. Such vision is bleak for those who value self-determination. Yet simply bleak is how Weber’s social theory is typically read; that is, as a story that concludes in inevitable domination. Hans Gerth and Charles Wright Mills (in the introduction to Weber, 1958) remark, ‘Not Julius Caesar, but Caesarism; not Calvin, but Calvinism is Weber’s concern’ (p. 55). In other words, there seems to be a gravitational pull in Weber’s social theory towards eventual domination.

But the social world interpreted as tragically dominated need not be the conclusion of Weber’s social theory—as it has been read (cf. Strauss, 1965, ch. 2). For that would mean pessimistic resignation secures ‘self- clarification’ and ‘a sense of responsibility’—i.e. a measured, consistent and motivating account of one’s purposes—and this seems implausible in the realm of human purposes. Moreover, as Weber himself remarked in his study of the Hebrew prophets ‘the hopeless threat of disaster would not have made pedagogical sense’ (1952, p. 324). But where can we find the need for ‘self clarity’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’ within Weber’s understanding of the social world, which appears to be circumscribed by the purposes of bureaucratic specialists and fanatical leaders? As I will now suggest, we can locate this need when we examine the conflict between bureaucratic education and charismatic education. This conflict,

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I will suggest, leads us beyond domination and towards a first-person question, which begs the need for ‘self-clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibility.’

EDUCATION: THE MEANS BEYOND DOMINATION

To claim that there is such a practice as bureaucratic and charismatic education, as Weber does, implies that bureaucratic and charismatic domi- nation share something in common besides a principle of domination, namely, they both can be taught and learned. The presence of education in Weber’s descriptive social theory reminds us of an obvious but often neglected fact: instead of persons simply being dominated (nihilistic, fanatical, etc., etc.), persons become dominated. And, if there are a variety of forms of social becoming, then social becoming is flexible. People can be trained by educators to become one way or another. At the extremes of Weber’s social theory, people become through bureaucratic and charis- matic educators.

In bureaucratic education, according to Weber (1978), the teacher disci- plines students using rote drills. The drills aim to produce ‘habitual routinized skills’ (p. 1149). If the teacher is successful, these skills ulti- mately become reliable functions. The evaluation of learning in a bureau- cratic education, Weber notes, is accomplished by examinations. And if a series of examinations have been successfully passed, the consummation of the bureaucratic education is to receive an academic credential, what Weber calls the ‘patent of education’. The ‘patent of education’ enables the student to enter a hierarchal workforce with predictability. Based on the results of their examinations, a student can foresee the odds of landing a well-paid and high-status occupation. Indeed, this all should sound familiar. Weber’s remarks on a bureaucratic education closely resemble its contemporary practice.

Shifting to the other extreme, which bears little resemblance to contem- porary practice, in a charismatic education the teacher disciplines students through bodily and spiritual challenges. The site of the education is removed from ordinary experience and everyday economic activity. The purpose of charismatic education is to elicit charismatic capacities—such as extraordinary heroism in the face of great danger. The faith of the charismatic educator (or guide) constitutes faith in the actualisation of these capacities because the educator takes them to be latent in the student. When the student is put through a proper trial, the latent capacities either do or do not emerge. If they emerge, the student reveals her charismatic gift and is reborn as a charismatic agent. As Weber describes charismatic education, ‘. . . the real purpose . . . is regeneration, hence the development of the charismatic quality, the testing, confirmation and selection of the qualified person’ (1978, p. 1143). Hence the culmination of a charismatic education is not a ‘patent of education’ but a ceremonial reception of a person into an exclusive circle—the likes of magicians and heroes—who are qualified by their extraordinary abilities. The student of charisma,

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 51

consequently, does not secure an everyday career (with the prospects of security and comfort), but rather an extraordinary destiny (with the pros- pect of nobility).

As Weber (1978) remarks, ‘genuine charismatic education is the radical opposite of professional training as it is espoused by bureaucracy’ (p. 1144). But these radically opposite forms of social becoming need not proceed on parallel lines. The coterminous presence of charismatic and bureaucratic education in a society can also be understood to be disciplining persons towards conflict.5 Charismatic education produces persons who blatantly defy bureaucratic domination; bureaucratic education produces persons whose ‘long-term’ perspective derides as vain the momentary height of charismatic achievement. How can this conflict between modes of domination inspire a person towards self-determination?

The conflict can do so when it is interpreted to raise a first-person question: How should I become socially? This question is trivial when social action is simply and comfortably governed by the impulse of social habits. But it acquires significance for a person considering the state of their self-determination in the social world stuck between opposed forms of domination. For such a person, asking such a question, there is a need for a course between these two poles of domination, to avoid the pitfalls of the ordinary and the extraordinary. This question, encountered through a con- sideration of social becoming, or education, calls a person beyond the cycle of domination. Indeed, if we take Weber’s pedagogical remarks seriously, we find that giving weight to this first-person question is the only spark of normativity in his sprawling desert of descriptive analysis: the only guiding star, we might say, guiding persons towards self-determination. But the significance of this question is not given, like ‘the good’. It doesn’t fall from the sky. Rather, it achieves significance through an education that guides a person towards it. In light of prevailing domination, how can education help persons become self-determined?

THE WEBERIAN PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

We find Weber’s answer in the lecture ‘Science as a Vocation.’ To provide some background, the lecture was given a year before Weber’s death to a group of politically active students at the University of Munich in 1917.6

The lecture was recalled by philosopher Karl Lowith as follows:

The impact was stunning . . . The experience and knowledge of a lifetime were condensed into these sentences. . . . The acuteness of the questions he posed corresponded with his refusal to offer any cheap solutions. He tore down all the veils from desirable objects, yet everyone nonetheless sensed that the heart of this clear-thinking intel- lect was profoundly humane. After the innumerable revolutionary speeches by the literary activists, Weber’s words were like a salvation.7

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Lowith’s words suggest that ‘Science as a Vocation’ provides a précis of Weber’s social theory. But a deep appreciation of the lecture only comes from reading Weber’ descriptive social theory. Likewise, the ‘profoundly humane’ aspect of Weber’s descriptive social theory can easily be forgotten if ‘Science as a Vocation’ is not borne in mind. For this reason, as I have suggested, interpretations of Weber’s social theory benefit from a peda- gogical reading—one that reads the one in light of the other. To complete my interpretive argument, it remains to describe how Weber thinks educa- tion should provide ‘self-clarification’ and ‘a sense of responsibility’ for a person asking the personal question: How should I become socially? To understand Weber’s pedagogy, it is important to grasp his understanding of the lecture’s context (the university), its audience (students) and its purpose (guiding).

The German university, says Weber, is becoming ‘Americanized’— translation: a profit-driven bureaucracy. The profit-driven aspect of the university involves boosting student enrolment by providing its consumers with alluring educational experiences. The bureaucratic element of the university involves academic specialisation, which divides scholarship into thinly-sliced academic disciplines. Ever careful to balance, Weber sees certain advantages in the university’s specialisation because fleeting moments of perfection can be achieved within the narrow constraints of academic specialisation. However, from a pedagogical perspective, the ‘Americanized’ university fails to guide students towards ‘self- clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’. When students are treated as consumers, they are not exactly paying for ‘self-clarification’, but an experience and a ‘patent of education’. And the ‘sense of responsibility’ within a profit-driven bureaucracy amounts to a responsibility to stick to the advertised script. Like the market’s daily fluctuations, the result of the university’s operation, as Weber understood it, is mad chance begetting mindless necessity—sold, of course, as a fountain of education.

Despite Weber’s critical evaluation of the context, it’s important to note that he does not reduce the purposes of this audience to the products of the ‘Americanized’ university. The ‘profoundly humane’ nature of Weber’s lecture, I think, can be found in his concern for his audience. Weber, who claimed to ‘hate intellectualism as the worst devil’, empathetically understands why the German youth desire experience and despise intellectualism—‘an unreal realm of artificial abstractions . . .’ (1958, p. 141).8 But because Weber (1958) has struggled over the course of his life to intellectually understand his aversion—i.e. has ‘grown old with the devil’ (p. 141) of intellectualism—with some epistemic authority, he can claim that the youth do not understand their desires or aversions. This is evident in their social actions. The youth come to universities (i.e. profit-driven and hyper-specialised bureaucracies) to partake in ‘experi- ence’ as such. Speaking to the German youth, Weber (1958) makes the following trenchant remark worth quoting in full.

They crave not only religious experience but experience as such. The only thing strange is the method that is now followed: the spheres of

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 53

the irrational, the only spheres intellectualism has not yet touched, are now raised into consciousness and put under its lens. For in practice this is where the modern intellectualist form of romantic irrationalism leads. The method of emancipation from intellectualism may well bring about the very opposite of what those who take to it conceive as its goal. (p. 143).

In other words, seeking experience as such in the university—where the irrational elements of life are put under the lens of scholarship—is to half-consciously perpetuate intellectualism in the university as a profit- making device. To claim that the youth’s hatred of ‘intellectualism’ and desire for ‘experience’ is complicit in sustaining the ‘Americanized’ university—which makes a business of educational experiences—is to share an inconvenient truth with his audience. This is precisely Weber’s intention. Unlike the charismatic scholar who plays an ‘ersatz of armchair prophecy’ (1958, p. 153)—and spouts ‘crowd phenomenon’ (p. 137)—the humanity of Weber’s lecture is expressed through the inconvenient truths, specifically, that these inconvenient truths will not guide the youth’s desire for meaningful experience into a state of nihilism, but towards self- determination. How should I become socially? Weber’s normative concep- tion of pedagogy seeks to guide the student towards the significance of this first-person question and help them to answer it for themselves.

Rhetorically pervading his entire lecture, Weber’s pedagogy is explicitly addressed in the following three quotations.

(1) . . . it is true that to present scientific problems in such a manner that an untutored but receptive mind can understand them and—what for us is alone decisive—can come to think about them independently is perhaps the most difficult pedagogical task of all. But whether this task is or is not realised is not decided by enrollment figures. And—to return to our theme—this very art is a personal gift and by no means coincides with the qualifications of a scholar (1958, p. 134).

(2) The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognise inconvenient facts—I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts. I would be so immodest as even to apply the expression ‘moral achievement’ (1958, p. 147).

(3) Philosophy, as a special discipline, and the essentially philosophical discussions of principles in the other sciences attempt to achieve [rational consistency]. Thus, if we are competent in our pursuit [of teaching] (which must be presupposed here) we can force the indi- vidual, or at least we can help him to give himself an account of the ultimate meaning of his own conduct. This appears to me as not so trifling a thing to do, even for one’s personal life . . . I am tempted to

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say that a teacher who succeeds in this: he stands in the service of ‘moral forces’; he fulfils the duty of bringing self-clarification and a sense of responsibility (1958, p. 151–152).

I hope the preceding section has done something to contextualise these extended quotations, which I now turn to interpreting.

First, Weber understands there to be something charismatic about the right educator. The right educator has ‘personal gifts’ and ‘stands in the service of moral forces’. Yet Weber takes pains in his lecture to distinguish his conception of pedagogy from that of said charismatic scholar—the ‘ersatz armchair prophet’. The latter deserve ridicule, because their pur- poses undermine both terms: they are not charismatic, because they com- fortably profess their values within a profit-driven bureaucracy. Moreover, they eschew the vocation of scholarship, because their intellectual service is devoted to ‘crowd phenomena’ (or the latest fads) and not to working ideas. These sorts of professors desire to be overflowing cups. But Weber’s wants the educator to be a ‘furnace sealed’ (Blake, 1988, p. 32)—i.e. a person with an ascetically restrained passion to guide persons towards self-determination without recourse to modes of domination.

Instead of using scholarship to create ‘crowd phenomenon’, Weber understands the right educator to be engaged in precisely the reverse. The right educator uses scholarship to create a charismatic course, constituted, in Weber’s case, by an intellectual understanding of the social world. The university itself, for instance, in Weber’s lecture becomes an unfamiliar place: a dystopian organisation driven by dumb luck yet hopelessly subject to the fate of value conflicts in the economic and political sphere.9 To be sure, Weber’s imagery is bleak and spectacular, but he is not just replacing the university’s duplicitous sales-pitch with his own brooding fiction. His lecture offers a ‘peculiarly plausible’ understanding—remaining as one notable philosopher put it, an ‘immensely instructive’ account of the modern university.10 The charismatic course Weber provides is abstract and remote. It disregards the economy of ‘patents of education’ and does nothing to fulfil the ‘inarticulate’ and ‘half-conscious’ desires for unbounded experience. But it is not purposeless or void of interest. The purpose of the course is to elicit a charismatic capacity, in this case, the achievement of a self-determined response to the weighty question: ‘How should I become socially?’

Aiming to awaken the student to a subjectively adequate understanding of the social world that disregards ‘crowd phenomenon’, the educator thus leads the student to something paradoxical: a charismatic-intellectual course. We can reconstruct this course through the following educational sequence. The educator begins (1) by helping the student to come to an independent position on an intellectual problem; (2) the educator then helps the student to see that their existence—the grounds for their actions—is the intellectual problem; and finally (3) the educator helps the student to clarify and take responsibility for the problem of their personal existence—i.e. ‘How I should become socially’. If the educator successfully guides the student through this course—and the student resolves (with clarity and

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 55

responsibility) to determine their life, then the teacher stands in service of ‘moral forces’.

Here, the plural ‘forces’ (Mächte) is significant. For a social order that heeds an extreme form of the ‘rule of law’ has become ‘disenchanted’. Nothing escapes the calculable law; regulation shackles man and nature; and, so, it becomes possible for experts to ‘master all things by calculation’. Weber thought this was the fate of the times in an age without prophets. And yet, the educator who provides the student with ‘self-clarification’ and ‘a sense of responsibility’ produces an outcome that cannot be determined in advance by expert calculation. There are ‘moral forces’ at work; the outcome is plural. Thus, Weber’s educator seems to guide the student to enchant with purposes an otherwise disenchanted world, where every occurrence is presumed to be governed by a scientific (or third person) explanation. Self-determination becomes enchantment, for third person calculations cannot fix in advance how a person with self-clarification and a sense of responsibility will answer the first-person question at the heart of Weber’s social theory—nor, how a person will ‘find and obey the demon who holds the fibers of his very life’ (1958, p. 156) and thereby resolve to act in a calculated reality.11

OBJECTIONS Objection 1: Moral Relativism

But can we countenance a conception of education that produces indeter- minate moral outcomes? Shouldn’t we be wary of the rampant subjectivity of ‘personal demons’ and the plural ‘moral forces’—especially when Weber’s words sounded ‘like salvation’ a few years before Hitler came to power in Germany?12 The worry here is that Weber’s pedagogy lacks a moral standard. Leo Strauss (1965) carefully critiques it as follows: ‘It would be unfair to complain that Weber forgot the possibility of evil demons, though he may have been guilty of underestimating them. If he had thought only of good demons, he would have been forced to admit an objective criterion that would allow him in principle to distinguish between good and bad demons’ (p. 45). As it stands, Weber’s ‘profoundly humane’ faith seems to align his pedagogy with any conceivable ideology. But can we welcome an educational course that produces bad people, say, like Carl Schmitt, the political theorist, who Jürgen Habermas (1971) famously claimed was the ‘crown jurist of National Socialism’ and the ‘legitimate pupil’ of Max Weber?13

I think this critique oversteps the bounds of Max Weber’s pedagogy, where the true distinction is not between educating good versus bad people, but educating people who understand the ‘subjective meaning’ of their own purposes versus educating people who inarticulately and half-consciously obey the purposes of others. Again, Weber’s pedagogy relies upon a faith that people have the latent capacity to understand the grounds of their own purposes and act accordingly. Indeed, according to philosopher Karl Jaspers (1989), Weber had the ‘strongest faith of our time’. If this is an

56 J. Fantuzzo

admirable faith, a question arises, should we withhold it from our enemies? I think not, if we want to blame them.

Consider Carl Schmitt, an articulate enemy of liberal democracy. Though someone like Schmitt would rightfully pass as a bad person (for being treacherous to friends and a Nazi), people do not abstain from reading Schmitt’s work because he was a bad person. Instead, people read Schmitt because they appreciate his clear critique of liberal democracies—which offers, as Chantal Mouffe (2000) describes it, ‘disturbing questions, usually avoided by liberals and democrats alike’ (p. 36). Mouffe’s remark sounds very much like the inconvenient truths Weber espouses in ‘Science as a Vocation’. So, yes, in this sense, perhaps Schmitt was the legitimate pupil of Weber. The example of Schmitt suggests that even the convictions of our enemies are better off with ‘self-clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibil- ity’, for we are in a better position to understand our own purposes when theirs are clearly expressed.

Moreover, to expand Habermas’ quip, Schmitt was not Weber’s only ‘legitimate pupil’. There are a host of others, including most notable social theorists of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, whose lucid reflections on the purposes of the black person in America called members of a (still) discriminated-against group to raise questions in defiance of legal and traditional domination. It’s a ‘peculiarly plausible hypothesis’ that Du Bois’ intellectual responsibility for the Civil Rights movement, as recognised by Martin Luther King, was foregrounded by a struggle to answer the first-person question: How should I become socially? Du Bois’ answers continue to afford ‘self-clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibil- ity’. These two examples, Schmitt and Du Bois, are not meant to suggest that Weber’s pedagogy is beyond good and evil—but rather that it is before good characters and bad characters. If we assume that bad guys and good guys can be praised or blamed, we must assume that they have achieved some clarity on and responsibility for their own purposes. Thus, one need not endorse moral relativism to endorse Weber’s pedagogy, because there is a moral standard governing it. The moral standards is determined by the self-clarity and responsibility: the more, the better.

Objection 2: Not Enough Charisma

Another objection is that Weber’s descriptions of the social world (espe- cially those captured in his most quoted lines) seem to be inconsistent with his faith in the human personality. If youth are thoroughly disciplined by bureaucratic education and institutions, reared in the ‘iron cage’ as it were, how can we be so confident that they have strong convictions and purposes? This pedagogical faith seems bogus under modern conditions. Many stu- dents do not care about understanding their purposes and welcome the lack of effort required by the strong currents of popular culture. In this case, personal existence will never be a problem because there is no distinct personality. The ascetic restraint of the educator, therefore, does not appear to serve the student. Indeed, given the dark times upon us, what is needed is a strong personality to jolt the nihilistic student onto the course of

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 57

self-determination; in other words, what is needed is a less restrained and more explicitly charismatic personality from the educator—or it’s just more of the same.

This objection is likely unpopular from a liberal perspective, but it is interesting and helpfully raises a problem many teachers encounter, namely, student apathy. However, despite the relevance of this objection, it doesn’t undermine Weber’s pedagogy. First, Weber assumes a robust edu- cator who will ‘force’ or ‘compel’ (nötigen) students to give an account of the ultimate meaning of their lives. The educator who uses her authority to ‘force’ or ‘compel’ apathetic students to consider the course of their own lives need not dominate the student, but, also, need not pretend student apathy is simply an expected disposition to be ignored or overlooked. Distinct but reminiscent of Socrates, the Weberian educator compels stu- dents to become aware of the meaningful course of their lives using lessons whose practical significance is to awaken ‘self-clarification’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’.

Next, as mentioned, the Weberian educator has faith that charismatic capacities are latent in the student. But the Weberian educator need not assume they are present if these capacities do not emerge. Weber would probably be fine with saying, at the end of an educational course, that a particular person, at least for the time being, has an insufficient will or capacity to understand the purposes of their actions. This view suggests that the responsibility for the student’s self-determination doesn’t rest wholly on the educator. That the educator is taken to be the efficient cause of the student’s self-determination is the questionable assumption underlying the critique that ‘more charisma’ from the educator is necessary.

Finally, recall that it is the educator opting to play the charismatic scholar who receives Weber’s harshest critique. These professors do not provide clarity—because they forcefully advance one ‘party line’ or doctrine, without acknowledging its inconvenient truths. And these professors do not provide responsibility, because, from within the academic enclave, they advance positions as pure/natural/real which are conflict-ridden in the social world. So by jolting students towards some alternative conception of the good through the force of their personality, charismatic scholars do not help students count the cost of social and political action. ‘More charisma’, for Weber, means ‘more charisma’ within the student elicited by the edu- cational course—not ‘more charisma’ from the guide.

Objection 3: Not Enough Bureaucracy

Phrased as such, of course, few would make this objection. Yet I think this is the core of several objections that might be lodged against the practical significance of Weber’s social theory today. Weber’s normative conception of pedagogy does not seem to be bothered by issues stirring educational scholars and reformers today, namely, issues of educational access and equity. ‘Education’, as Meira Levinson puts it, ‘is the civil rights struggle of our time’ (2012, p. 292). The ‘struggle’, so described, is not primarily a struggle to achieve self-determination; it is a group struggle to tackle

58 J. Fantuzzo

challenges like educational equity, so that no young citizens are left behind and all students are given the opportunity to receive a high-quality educa- tion that prepares them for college or simply ‘democratic citizenship’.14

The passion behind this struggle for equal conditions springs from a liberal understanding of social justice; put roughly, the worry that primary or secondary education does not (equally or adequately) prepare all students for college, and this is unjust, because one needs more education to survive today’s economy.

Weber’s pedagogy (at best) doesn’t helpfully inform the ‘civil rights struggle of our times’ and (at worst) distracts our attention from the press- ing demands of educational equity. Moreover, those with Weber’s ‘calling’ for scholarship may turn out to be (after some third-person scrutiny) the sons and daughters of bankers—i.e. those who can afford to put on the airs of non-instrumental, self-determination because they are not being beaten down by economic necessities. For precisely this reason, as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron argue in their masterful study The Inheritors (1979), perhaps education should become more rationalised— more calculable, more accessible—because the ‘charismatic elements’ in education—such as weighty questions that take carefree time and leisure to answer—are predictably a smokescreen for social reproduction.

I interpret these critiques as a desire for more bureaucratic domination. If bureaucracy is the instrument for providing the most efficiency and pre- dictability in the everyday economy, bureaucracy is the choice instrument of justice-driven agents seeking fairness. Thus, the pressing struggle of education today—the ‘civil rights struggle of our time’—can be expressed as the struggle for just bureaucratic domination; put figuratively, as clearing the onramps to, fixing the ditches upon, and disciplining persons along a broad bureaucratic course. Tom Brunzell, a former dean at the charter KIPP Infinity (USA), describes this educational practice succinctly, ‘At KIPP we are teaching the professional code of behavior, the college code of behav- ior, the culturally dominant code of behaviour . . . and we have to teach that every moment of the day’ (quoted in Tough, 2012, p. 89)

Weber’s response to the critique that his pedagogy does not lend itself to the struggle for more just bureaucratic domination might be three-fold. First, Weber might take issue with the assumed ‘party platform’—the particular conception of social justice—which animates both dominant educational theories and the disciplinary practices described by Brunzell. This ‘party platform’, under the dream-inducing auspices of opportunity, may avoid inconvenient truths. While the hopes of liberal social justice advocates do glow brighter as the least advantaged student makes it to the best college, the least advantaged student may be disciplined to adopt the ‘culturally dominant code of behavior’ ignorant of its inconvenient truths, or on blind faith, or, to quote the title of Ron Suskind’s excellent book, as a Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner-City to the Ivy League (2005). Add to this the fact that profit-driven universities prosper by serving the wealthy, not the least-advantaged. So, the least advantaged student who is being disciplined to realise social justice through these educational institutions may ironically be obscuring, not challenging,

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 59

economic inequalities and other social ills like mass incarceration. As Michelle Alexander (2012) observes in The New Jim Crow,

The struggle to preserve affirmative action in higher education, and thus maintain diversity in the nation’s most elite colleges and univer- sities, has consumed much of the attention and resources of the civil rights community and dominated racial justice discourse in the main- stream media, leading the general public to believe that affirmative action is the main battlefront in US race relations—even as our prisons fill with black and brown men (p. 9).

This is to say, realising social justice by getting a few of the least advan- taged students into the most elite colleges and university is a ‘party plat- form’ with inconvenient truths.

Next, Weber might point out that the broad bureaucratic course—the highway to the middle class—need not involve self-clarity and a sense of responsibility. As a broad way, it’s plausible that there are ‘half-conscious’ and ‘inarticulate’ purposes corralling people along this road. And it’s also plausible that those designing and reforming the educational road have yet to corner the market on self-clarification and a sense of responsibility. (For example, consider the testing scandals in Washington, DC that were obscured by Michelle Rhee’s fervent effort to ‘clean house’.) Given these plausible hypotheses, the upshot is that a ‘least advantaged’ student who avoids or resists the bureaucratic path need not be classed as educationally reprobate. Such a student may be consciously realising purposes elsewhere—i.e. outside of the ‘professional code of conduct.’ Their pur- poses may undermine the bureaucratic course, but if their purposes are achieved with ‘self-clarity’ and a ‘sense of responsibility’, then they are fair enough according to Weber’s pedagogy.

Finally, recalling a point made above, Weber’s theory reminds us that bureaucratic domination comes by trading on personality. Today, the capac- ities of teachers and students are increasingly reduced to scores. And education increasingly commences as a disciplining for examinations. This state of affairs is old news. Weber’s remarks suggest that the purpose of these increasingly important examinations is not about education, but about heeding the commands of some bureaucracy. The reign of a bureaucracy in education is positive, some may say, because it lends credence to a meri- tocracy and thus (in theory) opportunities for upward mobility for the fittest: either the most intellectually gifted teachers/students or those with the most ‘grit’ (Tough, 2012). Yet a more bureaucratic education, even if more just, comes at a price: as society proceeds in such a manner it becomes increasingly difficult to understand education as meaning any- thing else. This situation is not simply a problem for teachers and students being disciplined along a bureaucratic course. It is also a problem for those who think education should mean something other than this course. Yet more bureaucratic education means that alternative conceptions of educa- tion will increasingly ‘seem condemned to failure for purely external reasons’ (Weber, 1958, p. 357).

60 J. Fantuzzo

CONCLUSION

The aim of this essay has been to give Weber’s conception of pedagogy a prominent place in his social theory. I’ve done so by reading Weber’s descriptive social theory and his conception of pedagogy in light of each other. My interpretive argument suggests that Weber’s social theory amounts to more than a pessimistic description of modern domination. Instead, on my reading, it raises a first-person question, which, informed by Weber’s pedagogy, can help persons realise the question’s significance, and answer it for themselves. My critical argument is that Weber’s conception of pedagogy does not so much overcome the above three objections but that it can prove instructive to their positions—helpfully locating assumptions and blind spots. The majority of this essay has been dedicated to providing and defending a pedagogical reading of Weber’s social theory. I hope that this study is the beginning of a larger inquiry. Nevertheless, I want to conclude by offering a brief response to the first question raised in this essay: What can educational scholars learn from Weber’s social theory?

I think my reading of Weber’s social theory can favourably influence educational scholars in the following ways. To start, Weber’s approach to social theory can help educational scholars to better describe the purposes shaping the practice of education. Today, the practice of education seems to be eerily stuck between the extremes of Weber’s social theory: between bureaucratic efforts to further rationalise educational practice and charis- matic efforts to reform educational practice from the outside.15 Rather than uncritically dismissing, bemoaning, or trying to escape from one extreme or the other, Weber’s social theory can help educational scholars to navi- gate a course between the extremes in order to achieve understanding. The editors of a recent anthology on Weber’s Economy and Society refer to this as a ‘middle way’ (Camic, Gorski and Trubek, 2005, p. 4).16

Next, Weber’s social theory can remind educational scholars how the study of education can stoke disinterested curiosity. As Robbie McClintock explains in his excellent book, ‘[knowledge] of most worth in an academic department is disinterested, value-free with respect to practice, which means neither uninterested or irrelevant . . .’ (2005, p. 10). Finally, beyond the academy, Weber’s social theory can guide educational scholars to align their personal understanding of the practice of education with purposive social and political action, because whatever is personally at stake will not rest assured amidst prevailing ignorance and misguided purposes. For educational scholars, this might mean that engaging in some practical work off the bureaucratic radar—some guerrilla educating—is in order.

Although it’s tempting, I can’t end by suggesting a pedagogical under- standing of Weber’s social theory will lead to ‘new prophets’ heralding sweeping educational change. I don’t think this outcome is in the cards. Unlike so much educational literature today—heralded in the name of half-articulate values like ‘democracy’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘opportunity’, or ‘equality’—Weber’s social theory does not utilise but resists crowd phenomena. On the one hand—rather modestly—Weber’s social theory stops short of swaying crowds and faithfully serves the person. On the other

A Pedagogical Reading of Max Weber’s Social Theory 61

hand—rather immodestly—Weber’s social theory offers persons the pos- sibility of finding personal distinction and nobility in an educational field made strange. This pedagogical reading of Weber’s social theory invites educational scholars to consider the possibility of Weber’s influence afresh.

Correspondence: John Fantuzzo, Department of Philosophy and Educa- tion, 525 W. 120 St., New York 10027, USA. Email: [email protected]

NOTES

1. See Hammersley, 2006, the most substantial recent work on Weber in the field, for a particular Weberian insight. See Higgins, 2011, for use of Weber’s ‘iron cage’ metaphor; see Knight-Abowitz, 2002, and Papastephanou, 2004, for quoted remarks on Weber as an influential theorist.

2. To do justice to this point would exceed the scope of this article, but the philosophers I have in mind are Strauss (1965), Habermas (1984), MacIntyre (2007).

3. For more on this distinction see Bobbio, 1984, p. 139. 4. It is worth noting that Weber uses the bureaucratic ideal type throughout history, for instance, in

ancient Egypt and ancient China as well as the modern West. While modern bureaucracy is far more pervasive and durable in the modern West, equipped with far more sophisticated instruments of communication, Weber did not think there was a qualitative difference between the forms of domination in these cultures. Meaning, bureaucracy is not simply a phenomenon of the modern West. This is helpful to recall, I think, because it checks interpreters who cast Weber as wholly a pessimistic or tragic thinker. If bureaucracy existed in ancient Egypt, which has passed away, the modern West need not be the final act.

5. For different reasons and using a different text, Fischer et al. make a similar observation: ‘These types are opposites and Weber [in the Protestant Ethic] sees them as a basis for conflict on the educational field’ (2012, p. 276).

6. For informative sources on the historical and political conditions surrounding this lecture see Goldman, 1992, ch. 2 and Schulchter, 1996, ch. 1.

7. Quoted in Derman, 2010. This is an excellent essay on reactions to Weber’s ‘anti-utopianism’. See Derman, 2012, for the full story.

8. Cf. Horkheimer’s reaction after attending Weber’s lecture: ‘It was all so precise, so scientifically exact, so value-free that we all went sadly home’ (quoted in Derman, 2010, p. 484).

9. What Weber (1958) calls a war between disenchanted gods (p. 148). 10. As Bernard Williams remarks on ‘Science as a Vocation’: ‘. . . though dated in some of its

assumptions remains immensely instructive’ (2002, p. 295). 11. Of course, the person who responds to the question at the heart of Weber’s theory and begins to

act in the world will become more (not less) interpretable according to Weber’s account of social action. In his essay ‘Roscher and Knies’, Weber scoffed at the notion that a person’s incalculability (read: erraticism) was a sign of a genuine freedom: ‘. . . “incalculability”, in the sense of inac- cessibility to interpretation, is, in other words, the principle [governing] the actions of the “madman” (Weber, 2014, p. 44).

12. Incidentally, Karl Löwith was of Jewish decent and had to flee Germany when the Nazi’s came to power.

13. Interested readers unfamiliar with Carl Schmitt would do well to start with The Concept of the Political (2007). The premise of the book is captured in the following line: ‘the specific political distinction . . . is that between friend and enemy’ (p. 26).

14. Cf. Gutmann, 1999, ch. 7; Satz, 2007. 15. See Mehta, 2013, especially chapters 2, 6, 9 for greater detail. 16. The ‘middle way’ these authors refer to is between what they call ‘generalizers’ and

‘particularizers’ in the social sciences, that is, ‘those for whom social science is an effort to build robust explanatory generalizations that apply across time and space and those whose primary

62 J. Fantuzzo

interest is to understand human actors and social processes by situating them in the contests of particular times and places . . . [in consequence] the divide has so hardened that the two sides can simply ignore each other if they choose’ (p. 4). These authors refer specifically to two camps in the social sciences. In future work, I hope to consider what divides exist in contemporary educational theory, and whether Weber’s pedagogical ideal might offer a ‘middle way’ for these divides as well. The distinctions between ‘ideal’ and ‘non-ideal’ theory comes to mind, as well as the distinction between ‘critical thinking’ and ‘critical pedagogy’.

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