 This synthetic political virtue seems not only hard to achieve, but also without a promise of felicitous ending. Weber’s synthesis demands a sober confrontation with the reality of politics, i.e., the ever-presence of “physical forces” and all the unintended consequences or collateral damages that come with the use of coercion. Only then may it be brought under ethical control by a superhuman deployment of passion and prudence, but, even so, Weber’s political superhuman (Übermensch) cannot circumvent the so-called “dirty-hands dilemma” [cf. Walzer 1973; Coady 2009]. For, even at the moment of triumph, the unrelenting grip of responsibility would never let him or her disavow the guilt and remorse for having employed the “physical forces,” no matter how beneficial or necessary. It is a tragic-heroic ethic of “nevertheless (dennoch)” [see 2.2] and, as such, Weber’s “tragicism” goes beyond politics [Honigsheim 2013, 115]. Science as a Vocation is a self-evident case in which the virtue of “value freedom” demands a scientist to confront the modern epistemological predicament of incommensurable value-fragmentation without succumbing to the nihilistic plethora of subjective values by means of a disciplined and willful devotion to the scholarly specialization and scientific objectivity [see 5.2]. From this ethical vintage point, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism may as well be re-titled Labour as a Vocation. It was in this much earlier work (1904–5) that Weber first outlined the basic contours of the ethic of vocation (Berufsethik) and a person of vocation (Berufsmensch) and the way those work practices emerged historically in the course of the Reformation (and faded away subsequently). The Calvinist doctrine of predestination has amplified the innermost anxiety over one’s own salvation, but such a subjective fear and trembling was channeled into a psychological reservoir for the most disciplined and methodical life conduct (Lenbensführung), or labour in calling, that created the “spirit” of capitalism. Paradoxically combining subjective value commitments and objective rationality in the pursuit of those goals, in short, the making and unmaking of the Berufsmensch is where Weber’s ethical preoccupations in politics, science, and economy converge [cf. Hennis 1988].