Narrative Conventions of Political Discourse: Weber’s Prism

Abstract

The effectiveness of a well-told story cannot be gauged solely by such objective features as plot structure and character development; nor can its achievement be decided by the subjective responses of readers and listeners alone. The skill of a narrator lies both in representing actions and characters convincingly, and in anticipating their reception by readers and their impression on listeners. When the young Weber gave a lecture entitled ‘The Social Causes of the Decay of Ancient Civilization’ in Freiburg in 1896, he began by acknowledging that, although the familiar story (Geschichte) that he was recounting might have a certain appeal to the modern taste for tragedy; its scholarly merit as a history (Geschichte) must rest on its logical structure and empirical rigour. Since his educated listeners were presumably concerned with how modern world powers such as Germany might be defeated or emerge victorious in the struggle between nation-states, his account of the rise and fall of the empires of antiquity could be expected to evoke the sense that ‘this story is told about you’ (de te narratur fabula). But unlike Horace, whom Weber is quoting here, and who is warning readers of his Satires that his portrait of the greedy Tantalus would only require a ‘change in name’ (mutato nomine) to be an account of their own greedy ways, Weber establishes his scholarly good faith (bona fides) by disavowing any direct identification between the events of the past and the conditions of the present.

A storyteller makes a good impression if his audience has the feeling of de te narratur fabula [a sense that ‘this story is told about you’], and if he can conclude with a discite monite [a moral exhortation that ‘you have been warned’]. The following discussion, however, does not find itself in such a favourable situation. There is little or nothing which ancient history can teach us about our own social problems. A proletarian of today and a slave of Antiquity would understand each other little more than would a European and a Chinese. Our problems are of an entirely different kind. The spectacle we are observing possesses only an historical interest, in any case one of the most peculiar known to history: the internal self-disintegration of an ancient civilization.

(1976:390–1; MWG I/6:101–2)