ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Jrgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, three very different thinkers, are bound together by Weberian themes, each beginning and largely concurring with his diagnosis of modernity. It explores Max Weber's understanding of modernity and of modern politics. A supreme irony pervades Weber's ideal of political vocation and answer to 'mechanized petrification'. The chapter begins by explaining why modernity emerges in his thought as a predicament that nonetheless has to be affirmed. By modernity' Weber means the unique contemporary constellation of the Western world, and to comprehend the origins of this constellation he introduces the interrelated concepts of rationalization and disenchantment. The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the alternatives offered by Habermas, Arendt and MacIntyre to Weber's 'anti-prophetic prophecy', their view that his thought is both a diagnosis and yet a perpetuation of the iron cage'.
