Download Max Weber`s Parliamentary Theory of Knowledge

Max Weber’s Parliamentary
Theory of Knowledge
Workshop on Rhetoric of Innovation,
Helsinki 8.2.2010
Kari Palonen
Rehabilitating forgotten and
neglected thoughts
• Recovery of rhetoric since the 1980s
• There exists and unknown, mainly 19th century,
parliamentary literature on rhetoric and rhetorical
literature on parliaments
• Parliamentarism as the most explicitly rhetorical style
of politics, ”government by speaking” (Macaulay)
• An inherent link between parliamentary politics and
perspetivistic theory of knowledge in the work of Max
Weber
• Weber’s debt to the deliberative genre of rhetoric and
its parliamentary paradigm
Weber on ‘Objectivity’
• Die ‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und
sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis, Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 1, 1904, 2387; Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre,
146-214 (GAW)
• The 'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social
Policy (translated by Keith Tribe), in: Sam
Whimster (ed.), The Essential Weber. London:
Routledge, 2004 359-403 (EW)
‘Objectivity’ and Perspectives
• Es gibt keine schlechthin 'objektive' wissenschaftliche Analyse des
Kulturlebens oder– was vielleicht etwas Engeres, für unsern Zweck
aber sicher nichts wesentlich anderes bedeutet – der 'sozialen
Erscheinungen' unabhängig von speziellen und 'einseitigen'
Gesichtspunkten, nach denen sie – ausdrücklich oder stillschweigend,
bewußt oder unbewußt – als Forschungsobjekt ausgewählt, analysiert
und darstellend gegliedert werden. (GAW 170)
• There is no absolutely 'objective' scientific analysis of cultural life - or
to put it perhaps more precisely, without however materially altering
our meaning - there is no 'objective' analysis of social phenomena
independent of special and one-sided perspectives, on the basis of
which such phenomena can be (explicitly or implicitly, consciously or
unconsciously) selected as an object of research, analysed and
systematically represented (EW, 374)
‘Objectivity’ in disputes (dt)
• Daß das Problem als solches besteht und, kann niemandem
entgehen, der den Kampf um Methode, 'Grundbegriffe' und
Voraussetzungen, den steten Wechsel der 'Gesichtspunkte'
und die stete Neubestimmung der 'Begriffe', die verwendet
werden, beobachtet und sieht, wie theoretische und
historische Betrachtungsform noch immer durcheine
scheinbar unüberbrückbare Kluft getrennt sind: 'zwei
Nationalökonomien', wie einverzweifelnder Wiener
Examinand seinerzeit jammernd klagte. Was heißt hier
Objektivität? Lediglich diese Frage wollen die
nachfolgenden Ausführungen erörtern. (GAW, 160-161)
‘Objectivity’ in disputes (engl)
• No one can evade the fact that the problem exists … this is
clear for anyone who observes the struggle over method,
'basic concepts' and presuppositions, the constant change
of 'viewpoints' and the continual redefinition of 'concepts'
– it is evident that theoretical and historical deliberations
still seem to be separated by an unbridgeable clasm: 'two
sciences of economics!' as a bewildered Viennese
examinee once peevishly complained. What does
objectivity mean in this context? The following discussion
is devoted solely to this question.
(EW, 367-368)
Rhetoric of academic disputes
• Disputes not exception but rule, not to terminate them
but give fair chances to all
• Four genres of rhetoric as alternatives disputes
• Speech ex cathedra – acclamation or rejection
• (epideictic rhetoric)
• No blind judge for the disputes (forensic rhetoric)
• Neither consensus nor compromise a value
(rhetoric of negotiation)
• Debate pro et contra between opposed perspectives
(deliberative rhetoric)
Weber on the value of
controversies
• Das Kennzeichen des sozialpolitischen Charakters eines
Problems ist es ja geradezu, daß es nicht auf Grund bloß
technischer Erwägungen aus feststehenden Zwecken heraus
zu erledigen ist, daß um die regulativen Wertmaßstäbe selbst
gestritten werden kann und muß, weil das Problem in die
Region der allgemeinen Kulturfragen hineinragt. (GAW 153)
• The social and political character of a problem is
distinguished by the fact that it cannot be resolved by the
application of mere technical considerations to fixed ends,
that argument can and must arise over the regulating
standards of value, and because the problem reaches into the
region of general cultural questions. (EW, 363)
Scholarly disputes in the
human sciences
Controversies generally accepted in politics
• In the academic equally omnipresent, should
be equally recognised
• In the cultural sciences everything
problematic, no common agenda of questions
and thematic fields (Fragen und Gebiete)
• The eternal youth (ewige Jugendlichkeit) of
the historical sciences
• The constant re-building of concepts
(Umbildungsprozess der Begriffe)
The dangers of stagnation
• Die Ausgangspunkte der Kulturwissenschaften bleiben
damit wandelbar in die grenzenlose Zukunft hinein,
solange nicht chinesische Erstarrung des Geisteslebens die
Menschheit entwöhnt, neue Fragen an das immer gleich
unerschöpfliche Leben zu stellen. (GAW, 184)
• The points of departure for the cultural sciences are
mutable throughout an endless future, so long as a Chinese
ossification of intellectual life does not render mankind
incapable of posing new questions to the eternal,
inexhaustible life. (EW, 383)
The parliament as the model
for the fair play
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To prevent academic stagnation in academic disputes an
institutionalised prosedure for a fair play is needed
The British Parliament since the late 18th century as the
modern paradigm for the deliberative rhetoric pro et contra
Weber an admirer of British parliamentarism and wanted
to introduce it in Germany
The parliamentary procedure as a an ideal type for a
vision of knowledge consisting of interventions in debate
and the fair regulations of the conditions of debate
Link between the conceptions and persons through the
fair debate
Hamilton, Parliamentary
Logick (1808)
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William Gerard Hamilton, MP 1754-1796
Parliamentary Logick published posthumously 1808
a rhetorical ‘advice-book’ of maximes for the MPs
a logic of debate
everything disputable
rhetorical strategies of conceptual
rhetorical strategies of conceptual revision
(cp. Quentin Skinner)
– paradiastole: devaluationg the vices and disparaging the
virtues
• amplification vs. reduction of the range of reference of
concepts
Westminster in the rhetorical
literature
• Parliamentary government as ”government by speaking”
(Macaulay 1857) or ”government by discussion” (Bagehot
1872)
• Parliamentary oratory an inherent part of the 19th century
Anglophone literature on rhetoric
• A tacit rhetorical dimension in the literature on the British
parliamentary procedure (e.g. Bentham)
• Opposition between parliamentary and platform oratory
– adversaries vs. adherents in the audience
– procedural vs. informal mode of speaking
• The fair play with the distribution of the increasingly scarce
speaking time
James De Mille, Elements of
Rhetoric (1878)
• A Canadian professor of rhetoric
• ”The aim of parliamentary debate is to investigate the
subject from many points of view which are presented
from two contrary sides. In no other way can a subject be
so exhaustively considered. (De Mille 1878, 473)
• links rhetoric and the parliamentary procedure
• a good expression of a parliamentary theory of knowledge
- perspectivism
- debate
- a thorough treatment of the issue
- debate a methodical principle
Weber on the
rule of the officialdom
• Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten
Deutschland (1918)
• Weber’s situational analysis: universal tendency
towards bureaucratisation
• The search for counterweights to the overwhelming
bureaucratisation
• Monocratic knowledge of the officials
• Fachwissen
• Dienstwissen
• Geheimwissen
Weber on the parliamentary
control of officials
• Cross-examinations of both the experts and the officials
themselves by the parliamentarians
• Parliamentarians’ access to files (Akteneinsicht), carrying out
on-the-spot- inspections (Augenscheineinnahme)
• Parliamentary commissions of inquiry (Enqueterecht)
• The rhetorical model of arguing pro et contra present in all
these aspects
• ‘Knowledge’ no possession but intervention in a debate
• The parliamentary control of officials also a confrontation
between monocratic and parliamentary theories of knowledge
Stagnation vs. innovation
• No guarantee for innovation possible, only removing
the obstacles to it
• Controversies as the main impetus for innovation
• The parliamentary procedure the closest
approximation to the fair play
• Parliamentarians facing the opposed points of view
with expectation to debate doomed to ”innovation”
• Skinner: read Leviathan as it would be a speech in
the parliament
• Identity the controversy to which a speech or text
marks an innovation