One of America’s leading political theorists analyzes the
nihilism degrading—and confounding—political and academic life
today. Through readings of Max Weber’s Vocation Lectures, she
proposes ways to counter nihilism’s devaluations of both
knowledge and political responsibility. How has politics become a
playpen for vain demagogues? Why has the university become an
ideological war zone? What has happened to Truth? Wendy Brown
places nihilism at the center of these predicaments. Emerging from
European modernity’s replacement of God and tradition with
science and reason, nihilism removes the foundation on which
values, including that of truth itself, stand. It hyperpoliticizes
knowledge and reduces the political sphere to displays of
narcissism and irresponsible power plays. It renders the profound
trivial, the future unimportant, and corruption banal. To consider
remedies for this condition, Brown turns to Weber’s famous
Vocation Lectures, delivered at the end of World War I. There,
Weber himself decries the effects of nihilism on both scholarly and
political life. He also spells out requirements for re-securing
truth in the academy and integrity in politics. Famously opposing
the two spheres to each other, he sought to restrict academic life
to the pursuit of facts and reserve for the political realm the
pursuit and legislation of values. Without accepting Weber’s arch
oppositions, Brown acknowledges the distinctions they aim to mark
as she charts reparative strategies for our own times. She calls
for retrieving knowledge from hyperpoliticization without expunging
values from research or teaching, and reflects on ways to embed
responsibility in radical political action. Above all, she
challenges the left to make good on its commitment to critical
thinking by submitting all values to scrutiny in the classroom and
to make good on its ambition for political transformation by
twinning a radical democratic vision with charismatic leadership.
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