Current Affairs
The Cost of Discipleship
Weber’s Charisma and the Profession of the Humanities
Max Weber, Charisma and Disenchantment: The Vocation Lectures. Edited by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon; translated by Damion Searls. NYRB Classics, 176pp., $16 paper.
According to Max Weber, charisma is the supernatural, or at least extraordinary, power that disciples ascribe to their leader. It may be a good thing or a bad thing. Jesus had it; so did Napoleon. We can see it today in Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump. Academics have had it too: Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, and Edward Said have all been credited with charisma.
But Weber would caution that charisma properly belongs to the sphere of politics, not scholarship. In making that argument, ironically, Weber constructed a new and adaptable model of the charismatic professor: not the gifted seer behind the lectern, but the stoic who faces a disenchanted world and refuses to promise salvation.
Weber’s two lectures on vocation, recently reissued by NYRB Classics under the title Charisma and Disenchantment: The Vocation Lectures, carefully distinguish the work of scholarship from the work of politics. For Weber, politics requires dealing with the devil; the scholar keeps his values out of the classroom, sticking to the facts. Great politicians have charisma; great scholars eschew the cult of personality. Charismatic leaders empty their followers’ personalities; good teachers inspire their listeners to choose their own gods.
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