Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 2 The Weber's private, sex defined values.
51
and instincts are mostly the lot of male human beings; a growing culture and morality can
check them only with the greatest trouble. I will name a few of them: the property-drive
earlier described
101
, the rough and warlike instincts of male nomads
102
, and all sorts of
sexual drives of differing intensity: male sensuality in general
103
- which sometimes takes the
form of 'polygamous instincts'
104
- or the strong sensuality of oriental peoples
105
, of
Arabians
106
, of Greeks
107
, of the southern French
108
in particular. The sexual drive of
woman
109
contrasts a bit weakly with all these male passions, although the 'variety drive'
appears to exist in both sexes.
110
Since the assumption that women have a weak constitution, subjected as they are to all
sorts of instabilities, is a central one in Weber-Schnitger's work, it is not surprising that she
does not claim power, wealth and prestige for them. She does not pay any attention to those
kinds of socially necessary labor, which from earliest times were based on the stamina of
women, pregnant or not. She only claims rights and liberties; she does not claim activities.
Weber-Schnitger asserts human and personality rights for women, not because she is a
woman herself - that would be 'sexual egotism'
111
- but because of the ethical values she
endorses. Her adversaries therefore are those philosophers who - sometimes in violation of
all their other convictions and of their method - tried to derive ethics from nature, Sollen from
Sein, and in this way tried to legitimize the total subjugation and depersonalization of
women. These philosophers injure the high value of marriage: without personality rights and
the possibility to earn an income women cannot enter marriage of their own free will.
Emancipation makes possible 'the elevation of the female sexual love'.
112
She believes that
the origins of a spiritual marriage relationship, the 'seelisch Zusammenwachsen'- the
growing together of the souls - are to be found in England and 'America' where puritans
preached an 'innerweltliche Askese', an ascesis in the world, which compelled the man 'to
check the exclusive overgrowing of the sexual phantasy in literature, society and
conversation'.
113
Rejecting both historical materialism and naturalist ethics as a possible foundation for
feminism, Weber-Schnitger sees ethical individualism - developed in the English protestant
sects - as the only possible basis for it.
114
101
EuM p. 7.
102
EuM p. 46.
103
EuM p. 112 en 181.
104
EuM p. 96, 213.
105
EuM p. 130.
106
EuM p. 133.
107
EuM p. 142.
108
EuM p. 265.
109
EuM p. 6.
110
EuM p. 38.
111
'Geschlechtsegoismus', EuM p. VI.
112
EuM p. 394/5.
113
EuM p. 289. See further below Ch. 9,5.
114
In the Netherlands the right wing of the women's movement at the beginning of the century advocated an
'ethical feminism', see Ekelschot (1982). The difference between 'ethical feminism' and Schnitger's 'ethical
individualism' seems to have been political. 'Ethical feminism' holds women responsible for all functions in society
as a whole which have to do with care. This view corresponds to confessionalist or corporative politics. Weber-
Schnitger, however, restricts her moral claims on women; if she judges that women with children have to stay at
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