Maturity as a Way of Life and the Contradictions of Freedom in Weber’s Political Ethic of Responsibility

This paper foregrounds the theme of maturity as the way of life of human freedom in Weber’s political thought. It does so to explore how Weber’s ethic of responsibility bears the trace of the religious that it disavows. This trace, the paper suggests, can be seen in the influence that the exemplary lives of certain religious virtuosi exert upon Weber’s ethic of responsibility, lives which capture his hopeful imagination, spur his desire, and thus motivate his call for a politics of limits. Making this claim, however, entails setting aside an intellectualist understanding of religion premised on belief in favour of understanding religion as a desire-driven practice. Shifting to such a register brings into relief how Weber’s notion of maturity as the exercise of human freedom remains tied to the religious virtuosi even when Weber insists that religious belief has become incredible.