Reasons of the Heart: Weber and Arendt on Emotion in Politics

Abstract

In many fields of contemporary thought and scholarship, the classical construct of a clean division between “emotion” and “reason” has been revised. As a result, politics is no longer seen as a sphere in need of protection against the dark forces of emotion that might creep in where they do not belong. Against the backdrop of this conceptual shift the article examines the theme of emotion in the political thought of Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. The aim is to gauge the extent to which these thinkers can be read as having prepared the ground for a reassessment of the role of emotion in public life that moves beyond the classical European dichotomy of reason vs. passion. Two claims are being made. Both thinkers were still immersed in a conceptual world in which emotions were irrational, disruptive of appropriate ways of reasoning and as such closely linked to the dark powers of the masses. Yet both also held subtler positions on the relationship between reason, emotion, and democracy, and these positions are less well understood.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Mark Hill, Stephen Kalberg, Christina Tarnopolsky, and two anonymous reviewers for their insights and comments. I am also grateful to my students at McGill University who provided valuable feedback on parts of this paper. Special thanks go to Rodney Livingstone, who some time ago translated large sections of an earlier draft from German.

Notes

Notes

1.  Auguste Comte, La Sociologie (Paris: F. Alcan, 1897), 455–56.

2.  Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1976), 257.

3.  See Keith Oatley, Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

4.  See Axel Honneth, “Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View,” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 26, ed. Grethe B. Peterson (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2006), 114–17. Honneth refers to works by Peter Hobson, Michael Tomasello and Martin Dornes.

5.  See Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 200–1.

6.  See Susan A. Bandes, ed., The Passions of Law (New York: New York University Press, 1999).

7.  See Nancy Sherman, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

8.  See Paul Hoggett and Simon Thompson, “Towards a Democracy of the Emotions,” Constellations 9 (2002): 406–26. See also Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

9.  See Roslyn W. Bologh, Love or Greatness: Max Weber and Masculine Thinking – A Feminist Inquiry (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990).

10.  Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenter Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. Ephraim Fischer et al. (New York: Bedminster, 1968), vol. 1, 25.

11.  See Wilhem Hennis, Max Weber und Thukydides (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 44.

12.  Max Weber, “The Nation State and Economic Policy,” in Political Writings, eds. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 28; emphasis added.

13.  Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des Denkens (Munich: Hanser, 2005), 23.

14.  Max Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order,” in Political Writings, 230; see also “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” in Political Writings, 353.

15.  Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany,” 231.

16.  Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy in Germany,” in Political Writings, 125.

17.  Ibid., 124.

18.  Weber's work on the “psychophysics of industrial labor” bears some resemblance with the views of entrepreneurs and business managers, especially in the United States, whose attention was focused on possible institutions for “anger control” and for “channelling” uncontrolled drives and emotions in conditions of rapid social modernization. See Peter N. Stearns, “Anger and American Work. A Twentieth-Century Turning Point,” in Emotion and Social Change: Towards a New Psychohistory, ed. Carol Z. Stearns and Peter N. Stearns (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), 123–49. For a contextualization of Weber's interest in “psychophysics,” see Radkau, Max Weber, 429–38.

19.  Letter to Michels of February 1, 1907, in Weber, Briefe 1906–1908, MWG [Max Weber Gesamtausgabe] II/5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990), 242. Christina Tarnopolsky has drawn my attention to the fact that such distinctions between high and low emotions can be traced back to Plato, whom Weber knew “like the back of his hand” (Hennis, Max Weber und Thukydides, 51).

20.  Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” 351 et passim.

21.  Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 922. On Weber's high estimation of working class solidarity and comradeship, see his “Socialism,” in Political Writings, 275 et passim, and Volker Heins, “Weber's Ethic and the Spirit of Anti-Capitalism,” Political Studies 41 (1993): 269–83. On his view of feelings of honor as the root of all things human, see Radkau, Max Weber, 176–77.

22.  Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 439–42.

23.  Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, ed. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: Free Press, 1952), 313; Eckart Otto, “Einleitung,” in Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. Das antike Judentum: Schriften und Reden 1911–1920, MWG I/21, 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 97–98.

24.  Weber, Ancient Judaism, 387.

25.  Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 447–50.

26.  Weber, Ancient Judaism, 277, 305.

27.  Ibid., 269, 275, 317; see Julius Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 5th ed. (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1904), 131–32 (on Isaiah). On the context of Weber's reading of Wellhausen, see Radkau, Max Weber, 676–77, 690–98.

28.  Weber, Ancient Judaism, 267.

29.  The critical edition of Weber's works points to Carl Heinrich Cornill, Der israelitische Prophetismus (Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1900) as one of his key sources. See Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. Das antike Judentum, MWG I/21, 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 608, n. 2.

30.  Weber, Ancient Judaism, 319.

31.  Ibid., 271–72.

32.  Ibid., 273.

33.  Ibid., 292.

34.  This term is from Wilhelm Wundt, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1880), 348. Weber partly drew on Wundt's vocabulary to describe the ways in which the prophets experienced and fathomed their own emotions.

35.  Weber, Ancient Judaism, 271.

36.  Ibid., 305.

37.  “Sachliche (angeblich ‘politische’) Bemerkungen am 19.1. [1920 zum Fall Arco],” in Weber, Zur Neuordung Deutschlands: Schriften und Reden 1918–1920, MWG I/16 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 272.

38.  “Deutschlands Vergangenheit und Zukunft”, Speech given in Karlsruhe on January 4, 1919, in Weber, Zur Neuordnung Deutschlands: Schriften und Reden 1918–1920, MWG I/16 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 441.

39.  See Radkau, Max Weber, 777.

40.  See Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany,” 230–31.

41.  Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy in Germany,” 124. Needless to say, Weber had limited and parochial views on the magnetizing effects of the urban. For more on this, see Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

42.  On the difference between immediate and significant causes of emotions, see Amélie O. Rorty, “Explaining Emotions,” in Explaining Emotions, ed. Amélie O. Rorty (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 106–8. Weber, too, speaks of the “pre-formed dispositions” of the prophets that often seemed out of sync with the “situation of the moment.” See Weber, Ancient Judaism, 305.

43.  See also the study of the differing emotional profiles of leading German and British politicians before World War I in Judith M. Hughes, Emotion and High Politics: Personal Relations at the Summit in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain and Germany (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983).

44.  Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany,” 231.

45.  Ibid., 232; emphasis added.

46.  See Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy in Germany,” 115–17.

47.  Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany,” 220; see also ibid., 218–19.

48.  Weber “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” 343.

49.  Weber, “Parliament and Government in Germany,” 220.

50.  Ibid., 219.

51.  See James Madison's remarks on the benefits of cultivating a greater “variety” of parties and sects in “The Federalist No. 10,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (New York: Bantam Classic, 1982), 57–58.

52.  Weber, Ancient Judaism, 278. See also Radkau, Max Weber, 787–88.

53.  Peter Baehr, “Personal Dilemma or Intellectual Influence? The Relationship between Hannah Arendt and Max Weber,” Max Weber Studies 5.1 (2005): 125.

54.  See Hennis, Max Weber und Thukydides. On “soulcraft” in Weber, see also Sung Ho Kim, Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

55.  See Weber, Ancient Judaism, 278; Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 443; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1990), chap. 2 (“The Social Question”).

56.  Arendt, On Revolution, 89.

57.  Ibid., 85.

58.  For Weber on brotherly love, see Robert N. Bellah, “Max Weber and World-Denying Love: A Look at the Historical Sociology of Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67 (1999): 277–304.

59.  Arendt, On Revolution, 94.

60.  Ibid., 96. See Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: Modern Library, 1941), 50.

61.  See Dominique Colas, Le Glaive et le fléau. Généalogie du fanatisme et de la société civile (Paris: Grasset, 1992).

62.  Deborah Nelson, “The Virtues of Heartlessness: Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, and the Anesthetics of Empathy,” American Literary History 18 (2006): 86–101.

63.  Hannah Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, ed. Ron Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 234.

64.  Hannah Arendt, “Thoughts on Politics and Revolution,” in Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 203. Referring to Montesquieu's concept of fear as a “principle of motion” of tyranny, Arendt seems to accept the idea of epochal structures of feeling, although she does not elaborate on the principle of (e)motion that guides democracy. See Hannah Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding,” in Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994), 328–62.

65.  See Max Weber, Gesammelte Werke und Schriften, CD-ROM edition compiled by Karsten Worm (Berlin: Infosoftware, 2001).

66.  Hannah Arendt, “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” in Essays in Understanding, 128.

67.  Hannah Arendt, “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule: Report from Germany,” Commentary 10 (October 1950): 342.

68.  Ibid., 349; emphasis added.

69.  Arendt, On Revolution, 111.

70.  Arendt, “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule,” 343.

71.  Ibid., 348.

72.  See Oatley, Best Laid Schemes, 411–13.

73.  Arendt, On Revolution, 112.