Tradition and Innovation in Max Weber’s Political Thoughts (2019.12)

• Authors : Chiwon Choi
• Journal : Zeitschrift der Koreanisch-Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Sozialwissenschaften
• Publisher : K-G Association For Social Sciences
• Volume : 29(4)
• Publication Date : December, 2019
• Abstract : This paper re-presents ‘Max Weber’ as a political scientist and political thinker in the context of German intellectual and academic traditions. For Weber, politics is culture in a comprehensive sense. From Weber’s confrontation of ​the ‘autonomous logics’(Eigengesetzlichkeiten) of cultural modernity, a concept of political thoughts consisting of five elements, is derived. The core ls the third and fourth element. As the value domains within the ‘cultural modernity’ collide and conflict with each other while developing their own ‘autonomous logics’, so do the value domains within Weber’s thoughts. This is inevitable because Weber’s thoughts were influenced and shaped by various disciplines such as law, philosophy, theology, history, and economics. Weber’s theoretical and practical experience with real politics characterizes his thoughts of politics. Above all, Weber’s political thoughts, which were formed through his confrontation with the German Historical school of economics as an ‘older form of political theory’, develops its own ‘autonomous logics’. It has a dual moment of tradition and innovation. ‘Value-freedom’ is only one representative form of the full expression of this ‘autonomous logics’. The real essence of the ‘autonomous logics’ in Weber’s thoughts are hidden, are pulsed in the German intellectual and academic context. In West’s intellectual history, Weber’s political thoughts have the meaning of reflection of the problem within the tradition of Western politics since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.