ABSTRACT
The concept of revolution – one of the most important in modern political thought – was not addressed in depth by Weber: his work lacks a systematic theory of political revolution. However, it is possible to find in Weber’s work various scattered references to the concept and traces of his interest in the subject. The hypothesis of my study is that Weber’s reflections on revolutionary subjectivity are a fruitful perspective to address this issue. The specificity of Weber’s approach consists in investigating social processes from the subjective perspective of the actors: indeed, Weber concerned himself less with the question of what a political revolution is and where it comes from than with that of the subjective reasons and expectations of the people who make the revolution. I will outline the figures of revolutionaries that emerge from Weber’s work – from the Münster Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation to the Spartacist Group in Weber’s own time – focusing on their main features: the structure of their actions, their ethical justification, and the form of their violence. In doing so, I will deal with the connections between ethics and violence, as well as with the definition of the political sphere and its borders.
