Max Weber e il liberalismo Russo. Il dibattito sui diritti fondamentali dell’individuo tra Oriente e Occidente

Abstract

Max Weber’s two essays on the Russian Revolution of 1905, Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Russland and Russlands Übergang zum Scheinkonstitutionalismus, represent a pivotal yet rarely explored moment in the German scholar’s political and philosophical thought. Through the rigorous analysis of these essays and the reconstruction of Weber’s position on Russian liberalism and the biographical, theoretical and political context of its definition, the present text aims to focus on the key elements of Weber’s work starting from the redefinition of the role of the politician in the context of the crisis of the nineteenth-century liberal tradition and the correlated incursion of the totalising dynamics of modern capitalist and bureaucratised mass society. A path that, thanks to the establishment of an accomplished comparison with the leading exponents of the philosophical, political and legal liberalism of the early 20th century, allows us to problematise the image of Weber as a convinced advocate of mere German power politics in favour of a renewed centrality in his thought of the liberal principles of the rule of law and the fundamental rights of the individual.