The other night I sat in on a new, lively reading group at our university discussing religion and modernity. We picked up Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” as a way into these topics. I read this article in graduate school, but over the past couple of days I have found myself thinking more and more about this puzzling little piece. One passage in particular made me think about the Nobel Peace Prize going to Obama yesterday. Weber states that in an increasingly rationalized society there is a “disenchantment of the world,” as “the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.”

It would appear that the Nobel committee at least partially picked Obama for his renewed faith in public discourse to bring about peace and change in the world. Tim Rutten argues in the Los Angeles Times that the award was rightly given to the President for “words” rather than “deeds.” I would further argue the prize most appropriately went to Obama for finding a midway through Weber’s predicament in the above passage. Obama’s rhetoric has sought to enchant the political realm through sublime values that no human being can live without—for example, through the trope of “hope”. At the same time, these are values that are grounded in direct and personal human relations, or in abductive intersubjectivity rather than deductive, non-contextual assertion. There is much to critique in Obama’s administration, but it has at least evidenced an empirical concern for active listening and diplomacy as consequential in politics.

In one of his speeches, Obama espouses a faith in public discourse: “Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear its self’—just words? Just speeches?” At a minimum, Obama’s prior speech-actions have performed a role to which all those who love peace can aspire—enchanting the world with sublime but accountable words – Don Waisanen