What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Max Weber

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

Politics, News, Philosophy, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the third part of our series David and Paul Sagar explore what the German writer and sociologist Max Weber can teach us about the pitfalls of political life and political philosophy. Why is doing politics so hard? Why is it so hard to know what to do for the best when all the options are bad ones? How can we still do our best when the only means at our disposal is violence? And where does all this leave the prospects for lasting political change? Next Time: Learning from Bernard Williams and Judith Shklar You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of our episodes and PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:09.8	Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas
1:14.9	podcast. Today it's the third of my conversations with the political theorist Paul Sagar,
1:21.3	in which we are talking about some of the gaps in political philosophy and some of the ways in which
1:26.9	the history of ideas can help
1:28.5	fill those gaps. Today we're talking about a late 19th, early 20th century writer and thinker,
1:35.6	the German Max Weber, usually known as a sociologist, but he was much more than that. And he
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