Ricerc@Sapienza

Politics as a profession constitutes, a hundred years after its first formulation, the most interesting contribution to a definition of the role of politics in society.
The structure of the essay allows us to reconnect the threads of a discourse that links the reflection on the nature of the political profession to the broader framework of Weber's sociology of power.
In fact, there are several interpretations that can be adopted: 1) the philological reconstruction of the text; 2) framing in the broader Weberian production; 3) the openings that the text makes towards the professionalization of contemporary politics and its relationship with democracy; finally, 4) the relationship between ethics and politics. This last perspective opens up more to the themes that have formed the leitmotif of Weber's work, namely the debate on the process of rationalization of the modern West, addressed by Weber in the Sociology of Religions.
It is in this last part of the conference that, through the famous distinction between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of principles, the Weberian lesson deals with "the ethical irrationality of the world" and the consequent "polythene of values". This confrontation brings politics back to the issue of responsibility for choices and the difficulty faced by anyone claiming ethical superiority who denies reality in the name of a principle superior to it.