Eine liberale Verteidigung des Kommunitarismus

In this contribution, the attempt is undertaken to place Weber’s value theory (Werttheorie) within the controversy between liberals and communitarians. Following Wolfgang Schluchter’s studies to Weber’s value theory, the concept of responsibility is worked out as a communitarian subject in Weber’s thinking. Individual responsibility, so my thesis, functions with Weber as an intersection, in which the freedom of the autonomous personality is connected with its cultural community. Against the background of this thesis, Max Weber’s ethics of responsibility is specified as a ?liberal defense of communitarianism“. It is a liberal defense because it is based on the primacy of the absolutely free personality and its inalienable rights. It is a communitarian concept because it is based on the idea of an situated self connected with cultural values, traditions, and institutions. The specific view on Max Weber’s value theory enables not only a dissociation of voluntaristic and legalistic interpretations, but rather also an updating of the ethics of responsibility as an alternative in the discussion between liberals and communitarians.