Jurisprudence: From The Greeks To Post-Modernity by Morrison Wayne

Author:Morrison, Wayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781135352813
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published: 2016-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

WEBER, NIETZSCHE AND THE HOLOCAUST:

towards the disenchantment of modernity

PART ONE

MAX WEBER (1864–1920): LEGAL DOMINATION AND THE DIALECTIC OF RATIONALISATION – DISENCHANTMENT

Like the political institutions historically preceding it, the state is a relation of men dominating men. A relation supported by means of legitimate (considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claim by the powers that be (Weber, 1984: 33).

For civilised man death has no meaning. It has none because the individual life of civilised man, placed into an infinite ‘progress’, according to its own immanent meaning should never come to an end; for there is always a further step ahead of one who stands in the march of progress. And no man who comes to die stands upon the peak which lies in infinity. Abraham, or some peasant of the past, died ‘old and satiated with life’ because he stood in the organic cycle of life; because his life, in terms of its meaning and on the eve of his days, had given to him what life had to offer, because for him there remained no puzzles he might wish to solve; and therefore he could have had enough of life. Whereas civilised man, placed in the midst of the continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowledge, and problems, may become ‘tired of life’ but not ‘satiated with life’. He catches only the most minute part of what the life of the spirit brings forth ever anew, and what he seizes is always something provisional and not definitive, and therefore death for him is a meaningless occurrence. And because death is meaningless, civilised life as such is meaningless; by its very ‘progressiveness’ it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness (Weber, 1970: 139–40).

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