politics as a vocation
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
Politics as a Vocation:
Weber's discussion of what politics can do for the individual and what qualities does an individual need to possess who wishes to excel in politics.
Politics offers a sense of power, that results from an individual believing that they exert influence of other's lives and have control over people's lives and also from that fact that they are shaping history.
The kind of person able to excel in politics must possess three characteristics: first is passion, secondly a sense of responsibility and thirdly judgement
Passion is of vital importance but alone is gives nothing, for it must co-inside with a sense of responsibility so that it is directed at a specific cause. The sense of responsibility must rule behaviour. This requires judgement, which is the ability to internal contemplate things before they are allowed to influence behaviour.
The hot passion and cool judgment must co-exist in the personality in order to excel at politics. Politics is born from passion, but it is not a game, its is a human activity, and it is through a disciplined personality that one can excel at it.
It is vital that the politician overcome the vanity that is all too common in people's lives, for it is only for the politician that vanity can interfere with one's work (because of the vital role power plays in politics). When the urge for power becomes detached from reality, and a cause, and is desired simply for personal gain, it is a sin.
Although throughout history we have experience that the outcomes of political activity are not often originally what was desired, this is not bad, only if the original cause is not forgotten
The two kinds of mortal sin in the political world are a lack of realism and a lack of responsibility...