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The Structure of Max Weber's Ethic of Responsibility
Author(s) -
Starr Bradley E.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of religious ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.306
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1467-9795
pISSN - 0384-9694
DOI - 10.1111/0384-9694.00025
Subject(s) - conviction , epistemology , value (mathematics) , action (physics) , sociology , context (archaeology) , hierarchy , value theory , moral responsibility , environmental ethics , philosophy , law , political science , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , computer science , biology
Max Weber's distinction in “Politics as a Vocation” between the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility is best understood as a distinction between mutually exclusive ethical worldviews. Interpretations that correlate the two ethics with Weber's distinction between value‐rational social action and instrumental‐rational social action are misleading since Weber assumes that both types of rational social action are present in both ethics. The ethic of conviction recognizes a given hierarchy of values as the context for moral endeavor. The ethic of responsibility acknowledges value obligations, but assumes the absence of any given hierarchy of values and the inevitability of value conflict as the context for moral endeavor. When interpreted in the context of his multilayered understanding of value conflict, Weber's ethic of responsibility emerges as a coherent ethical perspective.