6 - Nietzsche's Monastery for Freer Spirits and Weber's Sect

Summary

The concept of “elective affinity” is particularly useful in discussing Nietzsche and Weber, and it has been chosen deliberately because it leaves open the question of causality that has recently been discussed so much in the literature. In searching for elective affinities, I would like to use Weber to demythologize Nietzsche. Looking for such affinities implies comparison, and comparing Nietzsche means relativizing his uniqueness. Both Weber and Nietzsche developed ideal types of “sect” and “monastery,” and both were concerned with the process of self-education that produces “strong natures ” (“free thinkers”) or “personalities” (rationalistic “supermen”), in essence, exemplary religious individuals. But they also differed very much methodologically, and Weber’s Sachlichkeit threatens Nietzsche's position. The differences are well known, but they become ever clearer when we look at issues and concepts of Nietzsche's generation and that of his teachers. I would like to follow here Montinari's suggestion by attempting to reconstruct part of Nietzsche's “ideal library” and to present “the contemporaries with whom he engaged in argument as well as his ties to individuals and groups of his time.” Although this brings out the great difference from Weber, it also moves, surprisingly, figures like Jhering, Tonnies, and Simmel closer to Nietzsche and, for all their differences, places them in a paradigm that asserts a successful union of the natural sciences and the humanities in the study of language, at least for the period in question.