Max Weber, the author of the essay under consideration, admits that the ethos of politics should be considered as a cause and tries to explain what calling politics may fulfil “quite independently of its goals within the total ethical economy of human conduct – which is, so to speak, the ethical locus where politics is at home.” (Weber, 117) Weber does not want to concentrate on politics only in order to present a worth material to his reader.
He analyses ethics and tries to unite it to politics by means of their distinctive features. One of the means, which are inherent to politics, is violence. It is crucially important for power to be backed up by any kind of violence in order to control, to set the necessary rules, and be effective from different perspectives.
Revolutions and wars – this is what can provide the development of power through the whole world. People cannot present and prove their points of view without certain amount of violence. However, all those actions taken to win wars or revolutions should be analyzed from an ethical perspective. Only this way will help to achieve the necessary results properly, without extra sacrifices and even death.
Weber is eager to answer rather different questions in his essay: what differs the rule of the worker’s council from the rule of some other person, who holds power; why the wars, which lead to status quo, are needed; what are the reasons of the revolutions, people have to participate in; what the consequences of all those actions are, and what kind of future our next generation will get. These and many other questions are posed by Weber in his work.
To answer all these questions, Weber offers to take into consideration the standpoints of many people and decide what idea is more appropriate; to become fee from falsification that surrounds us; and to use real life examples as the best evidences. People need to hear and analyze lots of cases in order to be completely sure about the decision made. This is why the author wants to present several ways to persuade the reader and present various arguments in his text.
If he talks about politics in the work, it is possible that he considers men to be the vast majority of the readers. This is why the chosen by him example is good indeed. When a man prefer one woman to another, he does not want to find enough reasons to explain why; just simple phrases like she is not worth my love or something take place.
This is why legitimacy means nothing for men in such cases, and this change does not correspond to any ethical principle. So, in order to be ethically proper and not to be put under a threat, it is better to find several legitimate reasons and present them. If such evidences take place in politics, the chosen way will be approved.
In order to defend his thesis, Weber’s decides to evaluate several spheres of this life: religious, politic, economic, and even family relations. When the reader observes the situation that is more or less familiar to him/her, it turns out to be more interesting and educative to comprehend the material and take into consideration the hints given.
Politics is a thing that may take passion and perspective simultaneously. This is why human emotions and ethical norms should be analyzed to find the answer why and how politics is connected to ethics. And Weber presents a wonderful analysis, grounding on real life examples, personal experience, and already known facts.
Works Cited
Weber, Max. Politics as a Vacation. 2009. Web.