4 - The subject and the State

Summary

Questions of legitimation

At several points in the previous chapters we have seen that the process Weber described as the “disenchantment” of the world manifests itself as a change in the internal structure of the beliefs of subjects as well as in the organization of subjects through social institutions and discourses, but that any account of the culture of modernity must somehow explain the relationship between these two. We may well describe “disenchantment” as the condition of rational enlightenment believed necessary for a true and “objective” grasp of nature; yet this understanding remains empty and abstract unless it also makes reference to changes in social relations and to a restructuring of the values expressed therein. Weber's Frankfurt School followers came to identify the “disenchantment” of the world directly with the process of increasing rationalization, a crucial consequence of which was a reification of social relationships, but I would suggest that the culture of modernity is given shape as a divided whole that can only be unified through the powers of an abstract subject, or its political analogue, the autonomous State. Indeed, it can be said that the State gains power and scope precisely insofar as it provides a means through which the divided subjects of modernity can be made whole.