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For their immensely helpful comments on drafts of this article I thank Julie Cooper, Cosmo Houck, Jimmy Casas Klausen, Karuna Mantena, Sanjay Narayan, James Read, John Scott, Michelle Schwarze, Sharon Stanley, Robert Taylor, Douglas Thompson, and Yves Winter, as well as participants in the University of California-Davis Political Theory Workshop and the 2012 annual meeting of the Association for Political Theory. I am also grateful to Kirstie McClure, Steven Forde, and the anonymous reviewers of this article for their careful engagement and guidance. For inspiration, I thank the late Philip Selznick.
We all already know that in "Politics as a Vocation (Beruf)"1Max Weber argues for a hard-headed political ethos. A Weberian political leader, while deeply committed to a cause, spurns moral absolutism, anguishedly accepts the necessity of violent means and "dirty hands" in politics, and is willing to make consequentialist calculations to help determine the appropriateness of particular political means (Lukes 2006, 3-4; Walzer 1973, 176-8). I argue for a more nuanced view of the Weberian political ethos. Weber's preferred political leader is more accurately described as someone who keeps calculation in its place--both in terms of assessing the consequences of pursuing certain means and, more fundamentally, in terms of a basic framework for viewing responsibility and the world. Given Weber's emphasis on the importance of passionate commitment to a "cause" (Sache) for meaningful political action (PB 76-9), careful readers of Weber have long understood that his preferred political ethic, an "ethic of responsibility" (Verantwortungsethik), cannot be reduced to a consequentialist ethic (e.g., Kim 2004, 114).2But even careful readers have not recognized the extent to which the Weberian ethos quite specifically reflects Weber's concern about the place of calculation in politics (e.g., Maley 2011; Schluchter 1996). Identifying Weber's effort to corral calculative thinking reveals a deep conceptual unity within "Politics as a Vocation" and, more importantly, within his treatment of political responsibility.
I begin by arguing that the underlying, implicit target of Weber's critique of politicians who rule in the uncommitted manner of bureaucrats or who cleave to "an ethic of conviction" (Gesinnungsethik) is their shared, diminished view of responsibility--what I call "calculable responsibility." Both these exemplars...