INTRODUCTION: GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG

Again, back to the modern self. To recall, our journey started from the question: What is Weber's understanding of the modern self and its attendant form of sociability? We attempted, in our previous discussion of the Puritan “person of vocation” (Berufsmensch), to reconstruct Weber's concept of the modern self in terms of its possibility for genuine freedom, and the most important categories in this endeavor were his understanding of value and rationality. The reconstruction emphasized that Weber's archetypical modern self reflected one of the central problematics in modern metaphysics – the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity. On the one hand, Weber focused on subjective value commitment as the unavoidable and indispensable precondition for the exercise of the modern self's autonomy and freedom. On the other hand, such an expression of subjectivity, in order to avoid the utilitarian-naturalistic danger of arbitrariness, was seen to materialize in a highly methodical form of life conduct, one based on calm means–end rationality, or simply life as a “duty.” One of the essential preconditions for such a life to come into being was that this world had come to be stripped of intrinsic value and subsequently to exist as an object to be reconstructed and mastered, a process Weber called “demagification” (Entzauberung).