Wartości i interesy w perspektywie filozofii polityki Maxa Webera

Abstract

This work focuses on Max Weber's philosophy of politics and analyzes the problem of relationship between values and interests. Max Weber was one of the most important scholars of the turn of the XIX and XXth centuries, the initiator of scientific sociology and co-founder of the Neo-Kantian philosophy of values, an analytical philosopher and open-minded political adviser and critic. As a philosopher of politics, Weber turned his attention to the problem of authority and power-politics. Everyone who is familiar with Weber's work will recognize him as a realist thinker. Weber started from Neo-Kantian opposition between what the world of is and the world of should be, between facts (interests) and values. He didn’t reduce the world of should be to a moral system, but made the morality of politics an independent sphere of values. Weber claimed that, although it was worth to pursue personal interests, it was even more appropriate to realize the interests of the nation or those of the state. It is more valuable to do good things for a nation or state than to do good things for an individual. As a result, values are the acts of contributing to a nation or state. Weber classified those values into the following four categories: 1) economic values; 2) political values (which he called political interests); 3) intellectual values; and 4) religious values.