German-American sociologist (1916-1991)
Each life is a history of affinities through which we find ourselves and are "defined" by others.
REINHARD BENDIX
Unsettled Affinities
Power needs ideas and legitimation the way a conventional bank needs investment policies and the confidence of its depositors. Rulers are always few in number and could never obtain compliance if each command were purely random and had to be backed by force sufficient to compel obedience. Likewise, banks rely on the confidence of their depositors, which allows them to retain only a small fraction of their assets in liquid funds in order to meet the expected rate of withdrawal by depositors. All is well as long as depositors believe that the bank will cash their checks on demand, and part of that trust depends on a vague knowledge about the bank's adherence to certain accepted business standards. In the nation-state, all is well as long as citizens believe that the government knows what it is about, has the ability to deliver on some of its promises, and has sufficient force to back up its commands when necessary.... Legitimation achieves what power alone cannot, for it establishes the belief in the rightness of rule which, as long as it endures, precludes massive challenges.
REINHARD BENDIX
Kings or People
Every idea that is articulated becomes a political idea because it is always objectified within an existing community.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
Men make their own history; but they make it under given conditions, and they become entangled thereby in a fate which is in part the result of other men having made their own history earlier.
REINHARD BENDIX
Force
It is in the nature of society to secure and defend the conditions of its own existence even against its members.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
If we want people to think, we must also want their thoughts to be communicated; and we must support a political constitution that confirms the public nature of thought.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
Reason is a necessary instrument, to be used for good or evil, but it has no moral qualities.
REINHARD BENDIX
Embattled Reason
In the classical Greek view, human affairs are subject to the will and whim of the gods. Good and ill fortune alternate in quite unpredictable ways. Hence, knowledge has the purpose of fortifying the soul and assuaging the envy of the gods. The wise man always reflects upon the extreme vicissitudes of fate. In times of the greatest triumph he bears in mind the transitoriness of life; in times of the greatest calamity he reflects upon the unpredictability of fortune, perhaps even the possibility of a renewal. Knowledge is virtue where it helps men attain inner peace in the midst of the fate that is their lot.
REINHARD BENDIX
Force
History is a struggle between the "old" right that intended to be just and the "new" that promises to be.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
Looking backward always presents an overdetermined depiction of fate; by this perspective we leave out of focus the possibilities of action which existed at the time.
REINHARD BENDIX
Force
The autonomy of the state is so great as to suggest a permanent will wholly independent of the will of individuals who are its current members.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
The collective pursuit of private ends, on the other hand, is not necessarily incompatible with an increase of central government, because today voluntary associations frequently demand more rather than less government action in contrast to the medieval estates whose effort to extend their jurisdictions was often synonymous with resistance to administrative interference from the outside.
REINHARD BENDIX
Embattled Reason: Essays on Social Knowledge
An idea that is not expressed, that is not or cannot be communicated, is no idea at all.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology