The State as a 'Chance' Concept
Max Weber's de-substantialisation and neutralisation of the concept
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5949650 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kari Palonen, Кари Палонен (0000-0001-7274-1690, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 99-117 |
| Publication date | 2011-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Max Weber Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1470-8078 • E-ISSN: 2056-4074 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/max.2011.a808798 |
| OpenAlex | W4379745261 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 12 |
The article asks in what ways the recent publication of Weber's last, interrupted lecture series from 1920 contributes to our understanding of his concept of the state? Whereas Gangolf Hübinger in his preface and editorial remarks of MWG III/7 thematizes the political, intellectual, disciplinary and university historical contexts of the lectures, I concentrate on Weber's break with the conventions in the German history of the concept of the state and on his understanding of the state–like all other orders and powers–as a distinct complex of chances. Even more clearly than elsewhere in his work, Weber's lectures, as revealed in his students' notes, oppose every version of the state as a collective subject or substance. As the notes of Hans Ficker put it, the distinctiveness of a state lies in 'Gehorsamschance': insofar as there exists a chance to obey, a state does exist. Such a concept of state is not a sovereign but a fragile and temporal entity, and competing regimes can claim the title of the state. A short comparison of the Weberian concept is made with three expert authors on the state, namely Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt and Quentin Skinner. Both the veneration and the demonization of the state have lost ground, and Weber's neutralisation of the concept has the advantage of not moralizing over the political conflicts around the state by moving those conflicts from the terms of good and evil to ones of judging the openings and closures in the range of possibilities of state-bound politics
Epistemology · Mathematical economics · Neutralization · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Veneration · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Mathematics · Medicine · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory · Virology
Die Kontingenz des Politischen bei Weber
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
The Politics of Limited Times
Legality and Legitimacy
Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy
Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State
"Objektivität" als faires Spiel
Imagining Max Weber's Reply to Hannah Arendt
Max Weber's Rhetoric of 'Objectivity
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,86 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |