Max Webers Theory of Personality: Individuation, Politics and Orientalism in the Sociology of Religion (Studies in Critical Social Sciences) (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, 56) 9789004254084, 9789004254091, 9004254080

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Max Weber’s Theory of Personality

Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor

David Fasenfest

Wayne State University Editorial Board

Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside G. William Domhofff, University of California-Santa Cruz Colette Fagan, Manchester University Martha Gimenez, University of Colorado, Boulder Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University Karin Gottschall, University of Bremen Bob Jessop, Lancaster University Rhonda Levine, Colgate University Jacqueline O’Reilly, University of Brighton Mary Romero, Arizona State University Chizuko Ueno, University of Tokyo

VOLUME 56

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss

Max Weber’s Theory of Personality Individuation, Politics and Orientalism in the Sociology of Religion

By

Sara R. Farris

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013

Cover illustration: Anonymous, “Fool’s Cap Map of the World”, ca. 1580–1590. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Farris, Sara R. Max Weber's theory of personality : individuation, politics and orientalism in the sociology of religion / by Sara R. Farris. pages cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences, 1573-4234 ; volume 56) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25408-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Weber, Max, 1864-1920. 2. Religion and sociology. 3. Personality. I. Title. HM479.W42F37 2013 306.6--dc23 2013023448

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For Peter

CONTENTS Acknowledgements��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1  1. Max Weber’s Theory of Personality�����������������������������������������������������������1  2. Individuation���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3  3. Politics����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5  4. Orientalism�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������6  5. Organisation of the Book������������������������������������������������������������������������������7  6. Summary of the Chapters�����������������������������������������������������������������������������9 1 From the Historical Individual to the Sociological Personality������������ 15  1. Singularisation and Individualisation of History�������������������������������� 15  2. The Notion of Individuality in 19th Century Historiography��������� 18  3. The Heidelberg School and the Axiological Foundation of the Historical Individual����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 20    3.1. Windelband, Rickert and Lask�������������������������������������������������������� 21  4. Universalism of Values and Anti-Naturalism: Logical Antinomies and Political Implications�������������������������������������������������� 27  5. Historical Individual and Subjective Axiology in Max Weber��������� 30    5.1. Subjectivism and Polytheism of Values. Weber between Menger and Nietzsche������������������������������������������������������ 33  6. Causality and Rationality Versus Unpredictability and Irrationality of Action������������������������������������������������������������������������ 39  7. Towards a Theory of Personality�������������������������������������������������������������� 42 2 A Lexicon of Individuation: Bildung, Religion, Personality������������������� 47  1. Introduction�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 47  2. Religion, between the Individual and Society������������������������������������� 50  3. From Magic to Religion: Disenchantment and Rationalisation��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 53  4. Conceptions of God in the Orient and in the Western World��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 55  5. The Theodicy of Suffering and the Religions of Redemption��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 57     5.1. Exemplary Prophecy and Ethical Prophecy: The Individual as Container and as Instrument��������������������������������� 60

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 6. Ascetic and Mystical Orientation������������������������������������������������������������ 62      6.1. Asceticism, Mysticism and Social Transformation������������������� 65  7. Irrationalisation of Ends, Rationalisation of Means: On Formal Rationality�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 66  8. Religion and Economics: Negative Dialectic and the Birth of Capitalism������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 70 3 Puritan Personality and Political Leadership of Capital������������������������� 75  1. A ‘Partial’ Synopsis��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 76     1.1. The Protestant Diaspora in North America and ‘Political’ Individualism��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 81  2. Criticisms, Condemnations and Misinterpretations������������������������� 83  3. Avant le Déluge: An Anachronic Approach to Interpreting “The Protestant Ethic”�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 88      3.1. First Analepsis: The Freiburg Address������������������������������������������ 89      3.2. Second Analepsis: Kulturkampf and the Journey to the United States���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 93  4. Rationalisation and Specialisation��������������������������������������������������������� 97  5. Weber Versus the Neo-Humanism of Wilhelm von Humboldt������� 99  6. Weber Versus the Realisation of Individuality in Marx�������������������102  7. Puritan Personality and Political Leadership of Capital�����������������105 4 The Roots of Rationalisation: Ancient Judaism��������������������������������������109  1. Social Stratification in Ancient Palestine��������������������������������������������111  2. Jewish Hierocracy: Between Bureaucracy and Charisma���������������114      2.1. The Circle of ‘Yahweh Intellectuals’: The Levites���������������������115      2.2. The “Titans of Holy Curse”: The Prophets of Doom����������������116  3. The Historicity of the World and the Dislocation of Authority����120  4. On the Utility and Liability of Marginality for Judaism: The Community of the Covenant and the Pariah-People��������������123      4.1. Centrality of the Periphery������������������������������������������������������������124      4.2. Ethical Universalism and Religious Particularism of the Pariah-People������������������������������������������������������������������������127  5. Collective Emancipation Versus Individual Salvation: The Jewish “Personality”��������������������������������������������������������������������������129 5 Paradoxes of Religious Individualism: On Weber’s Sociology of India��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������135  1. The Sociology of India. Hinduism and Buddhism����������������������������135  2. Hinduisation, Church and Sect��������������������������������������������������������������135

contentsix  3. The Caste System���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������138    3.1. The Brahmanic Hierocracy�������������������������������������������������������������143  4. The Dharma of Caste, Karma and Samsara���������������������������������������146  5. The Heterodox Religions: Jainism and Buddhism����������������������������150  6. Egotism and Conformism: Religious Individualism in India���������155 6 The Land of The ‘Well-Adjusted Man’: Weber’s Sociology of China��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159  1. From Feudalism to Patrimonialism������������������������������������������������������160  2. State Bureaucracy and Political Capitalism����������������������������������������164  3. On the Sacred Nature of Tradition: The Precarious Equilibrium between Centre and Periphery��������������������������������������167  4. Confucianism as a “Religious Ethic for Cultivated Men”����������������170  5. The Taoist and Buddhist Heterodoxies������������������������������������������������173  6. The Theoretical Challenge of Confucian Rationalism��������������������176    6.1. Rational Accomodation to the World Versus Rational Dominion Over the World�����������������������������������������������������������������������177  7. On the Absence of Personality���������������������������������������������������������������182    7.1. ‘State of Minority’ and Ascribed Roles����������������������������������������186 7 Politics and Orientalism of the Occidental Personality������������������������193  1. The Protestant Sects and the Puritan Personality�����������������������������195  2. In the Beginning was Charisma�������������������������������������������������������������197  3. Homo Politicus and Homo Puritanus��������������������������������������������������201  4. The Asiatic Non-Personality�������������������������������������������������������������������204  5. Homo Asiaticus and Homo Bureaucraticus���������������������������������������207  6. Concluding Remarks: Politics and Orientalism of the Occidental Personality�����������������������������������������������������������������������������210 Bibliography�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������215 Subject Index���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������225 Names Index����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������229

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have incurred numerous debts both to institutions and to people while this book was in the making. I wish to thank the Department of Methodology and Social Sciences of the University “La Sapienza” in Rome for the financial support provided during my doctoral research. Periods of study in the UK and Germany were also possible thanks to the Funding Programme for International Mobility of Phd Students of the University “La Sapienza” in Rome, and to the research scholarships of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). For their support and intellectual stimulus during these periods, I wish to thank Alberto Toscano, who enabled me to use the facilities of the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, becoming a friend as well as a challenging intellectual interlocutor, and Professor Hans-Peter Müller, who welcomed me at the Institut für Sozialwissenschaften of the Humboldt University in Berlin and discussed with me several parts of this book. For their much needed logistic support during my stay in London, I wish to thank Cinzia Arruzza, Sebastian Budgen, Marie-Jose Gransard and Stathis Kouvelakis, Anna Ruju and Yousaf Hassan. I owe special thanks to Marcel van der Linden for his invaluable help during periods of work in Amsterdam, allowing me to use the marvellous resources of the library of the International Institute of Social History (IISH). I am especially thankful to the people who have read and commented on parts of the manuscript or with whom I have had important discussions related to the book’s topics. Here I cannot help but to thank some people twice. It goes without saying than none of them is responsible for any mistakes that might remain in this work, or for the direction it has eventually taken: Gilbert Achcar, Maria Stella Agnoli, Maurizio Bonolis, Enzo Campelli, Gaetano Congi, Dimitri D’Andrea, Leonardo Donnaloia, Antonio Fasanella, Loris di Giammaria, Bart van Heerikhuizen Carmelo Lombardo, Michel Löwy, Christine Moll-Murata, Marcel van der Linden, Alessandro Pizzorno, Jan Rehman Rehmann, Pietro Rossi, Guenther Roth, Manuela Satta, Francesco Truglia, Antonio Regano, Helwig SchmidtGlintzer, and Alberto Violante. I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee who encouraged me not to be afraid of the challenges facing the scholar who continues to dig into the endless literature accumulated on Max Weber: Giuseppe Giampaglia, Antonio Scaglia, and Mario Aldo Toscano. Special thanks are

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also due to Jennifer Delare for her help with the linguistic revisions of large portions of this book. My parents Antonio Farris and Maria Meledina and my sister Elisabetta have provided me with all the support and love I needed in all stages of this process. To them goes my heart-felt gratitude. This book is dedicated to my partner, Peter D. Thomas; there are few words to express the infinite gratitude I owe to him. His constant support, his continuous constructive criticisms and his high standards of intellectual rigour have been simply the most important lesson I have leant from the adventure of writing this book.

INTRODUCTION 1. Max Weber’s Theory of Personality In their famous introduction to the English translation of Weber’s perhaps most well-known essays, Gerth and Wright Mills (1946) recalled a letter Weber wrote to a colleague in 1918. Here he suggested that “Germany should borrow the American ‘club pattern’ as a means of ‘re-educating’ Germany; for, he wrote, ‘authoritarianism now fails completely, except in the form of the church’” (1946, 18). As Gerth and Wright Mills suggest, what prompted Weber to adopt such a view was the fact that he had envisaged a link between voluntary associations and the personality structure of the free man. His study of the Protestant sect testifies to that. He was convinced that the automatic selection of persons, with the pressure always upon the individual to prove himself, is an infinitely deeper way for ‘toughening’ man than the ordering and forbidding technique of authoritarian institutions. For such authoritarianism does not reach into the innermost of those subject to its external constraint, and it leaves them incapable of self-direction once the authoritarian shell is broken by counter-violence (Gerth and Wright Mills 1946, 18, my emphasis).

In its concise way, this passage brings to the fore some key elements of Weber’s theory of personality, which constitutes the fundamental framework for understanding both his idea of the individual vis-à-vis society and the process of individuation, or subject formation (Rehmann 1998), that lie at the heart of his sociology. They are the fact that the Protestantism, or better, the Puritanism of the American sects, constituted the model for Weber’s ideal type of personality; the fact that autonomy from authoritarian institutions and capacity for self-direction are the fundamental traits of such an ideal type; and, finally, the fact that Weber conceived of the American Puritan personality structure as potentially a pedagogical model for the education of the German bourgeoisie. Most readings of Weber’s concept, and problematic, of personality have tended to focus upon these aspects. However, widespread emphasis amongst scholars upon the aforementioned elements has arguably also resulted in the neglect of equally significant facets whose careful consideration could lead to a deeper comprehension of Weber’s theory of personality. These largely neglected facets are the counter-images or alter egos of the Puritan

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personality structure, which Weber identified in his exploration of the Oriental religions. Without taking into account these non-Occidental alter egos, in dialogue, and mostly in confrontation with which Weber ­formulated his theory of personality, the latter cannot be fully grasped, appreciated and productively criticised. This book aims above all to bring to light these ignored elements and this overlooked dialogue and confrontation, all of which are essential to complete our picture of Weber’s theory of personality. Beside Gerth and Wright Mills classical path-breaking contribution, there have been several important works that have emphasised the importance of the concept of personality in Weber’s work, particularly within the key texts Weber devoted to the methodology of the social sciences and to world religions. Beginning with the existentialist reading of Weber by Karl Löwith in the authoritative essay Max Weber and Karl Marx – originally published in German in 1932 – personality has been understood in tandem with the notions of ethics of responsibility and vocation [Beruf]. Thus, it was linked to an entirely Occidental problematic, as a concept belonging to the “ontology” of Weber’s “post-Christian analysis of human beings”, as Bryan S. Turner put it in his introduction to the English translation of Löwith’s book (Turner in Löwith 1993, 8). Likewise, Wolfgang Mommsen defined the idea of personality as the “keystone” of Weber’s thinking (Mommsen 1965, 28) and related it to his admiration for the Puritan pattern of life. This perspective can also be found in Schluchter’s lengthy study Rationalism, Religion and Domination (Schluchter 1989), as well as in Harvey Goldman’s inspired book on Weber’s concept of personality and the ‘self’ in the context of the crisis of the traditional model of Bildung. In his philologically attentive reconstruction of Weber’s work, Wilhelm Hennis insightfully relates the concept of personality to Weber’s “anthropological” interest in the formative factors of different human types (Hennis 1983). Hennis’s in-depth analysis, which is based on the various editions of, and texts generated by, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, implies that, if “this [anthropological interest] is the stake in PE [Protestant Ethic] (…) there is no reason to believe that it was any different in WEWR [Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen]” (Hennis 1983, 158). Hennis, however, did not explore the implications potentially deriving from an extension of Weber’s anthropological interest in the notion of personality beyond the Protestant Ethic.1 Other scholars, on the other 1 More recently see Koch 2006.

introduction3 hand, have paid attention mainly to the concept of personality in Weber’s methodological writings, in the attempt both to relate it to its sources of philosophical inspiration and to discuss its implications for the sociological theory of action (Portis 1978; Hagemann 1979; Schroeder 1991; Hartmann 1994; Mackinnon 2001). Overall, the end result of these readings has been that of assuming, implicitly or explicitly, that personality is a purely Occidental category, a blending of the values of the Puritan virtuoso and of the Goethian Bildungsroman character. In other words, all these works have discussed the concept of personality mainly in terms of its elaboration within his writings on Protestantism, with little to no mention of its function in other studies on world religions. This book proposes a different approach. In particular, it suggests that a close investigation of the category of personality throughout Weber’s methodological writings and within all of his systematic studies of religions,2 and not one limited to his writings on Protestantism, reveals a more complex treatment of this notion and a greater role for it to play within three strictly entangled problematics associated with Weber’s influential comparative historical sociology and theory of social action: individuation, politics and orientalism. Together they shape and constitute what is distinctive in Max Weber’s theory of personality. 2. Individuation The investigation of the category of personality throughout Weber’s methodological writings and his studies of world religions reveals the elaboration of two main personality formations in Weber’s writings on religion. It thus enables us to challenge the diffused idea according to which there is mainly one personality structure to which Weber devoted most of his attention. The concept of personality that Weber outlined in the methodological writings and in the writings on Protestantism functioned as an ideal type to which he compared the different patterns of personality that he saw emerging in his studies of the non-Christian and non-Western ‘civilisations’. Weber, therefore, used personality as a ‘yardstick’ – as 2 Although there are numerous notes and references to Islam throughout Weber’s work, he did not devote a systematic study to it, though he had planned to do so. For this reason, a discussion of Weber’s treatment of the process of individuation within Islam is not included in this book. For a detailed reconstruction and analysis of Weber’s fragmented commentary on Islam, see the classical studies by Turner 1978; Rodinson 1978; Huff and Schluchter 1999.

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Kalberg aptly calls the ideal type’s function in Weber’s comparative historical sociology (Kalberg 1994, 89 and ff.) – in the attempt to test his working concept and to see how different religious doctrines initiated processes of individuation and personality formation. Only at the end of this comparative inquiry, Weber concluded that his ideal type of a “unified personality” – i.e., the Puritan personality, one according to which life becomes “a whole placed methodically under a transcendental goal” (Weber 1951, 236), a whole of which autonomy and anti-authoritarianism are constitutive properties – did not spring from any of the ‘Oriental’ religions. It did not originate in ancient Judaism, which Weber saw as having failed to enhance autonomy from ascribed groups within the individual self. Nor did it stem from religions adopting the doctrine of karma (Buddhism and Hinduism), which, according to Weber, promoted autonomy and egotism at the expense of anti-traditionalism and anti-authoritarianism. Nor, least of all, did it arise from Confucianism, which Weber regarded as fostering gregariousness and conformism rather than self-direction from authoritarian institutions, be it the state or the family. In this comparative journey, thus, the concept of personality became an heuristic tool to ‘measure’ the variations of the processes of individuation taking place in different cultural, socio-economic and religious contexts and the different personality structures that Weber thought originated from those processes. Weber paid enormous attention to the ways in which the Oriental rel­i­ gious doctrines, Hinduism and Confucianism in particular, contributed to shaping different structures of the self in their respective contexts. Each of his monographic studies on religion depicts complex and rich paths of individuation and patterns of the self. This notwithstanding, this book contends that ultimately Weber ended up opposing to the Puritan Occidental personality one main counter Oriental formation: the Asiatic non-personality. In the last chapter of The Religion of India, entitled “The General Character of Asiatic Religion”, Weber portrayed the non-Puritan and non-Occidental personality “at a point negatively evaluated in the Occident” (Weber 1958, 338). In this text, Weber sought to sketch out what he regarded as the main ethical and psychological components of the two great non-Western civilisations – Indian and Chinese – in a compounded manner. Here Weber set the uniqueness of the Occident against the peculiarity of the Orient, both treated as homogenously geo-historical and cultural-political wholes. On the one side stands the Occident, with its rational, methodical and autonomous individuals. On the other side is the Orient, exhibiting fundamentally traditionalist, dependant and irrational human types. Weber thus regarded what he saw as the lack of complete

introduction5 ‘disenchantment’ [Entzauberung] of the world, coupled with a fundamentally disengaged attitude towards mundane matters, as the main obstacles to the development of the type of inner-worldly asceticism that he deemed to be necessary for the rise of capitalism. Moreover, and more fundamentally in the context of this study, he maintained that “Asiatic thought” could not conceive of the “specifically occidental significance of ‘personality’” (Weber 1958, 342) as such. Weber argued that the striving for inner clarity and consistency that he evocatively depicts as the attempt “to take the self by the forelock and pull it out of the mud” (ibid.) was unthinkable in Asia. The individualities nurtured by Asiatic thought were, therefore, by  (Weber’s) definition, incoherent constellations of inarticulate traits that could not develop into proper personalities. 3. Politics As I noted in the first section of this introduction, Weber conceived of the American Puritan personality structure as potentially a pedagogical model for the education of Germany. This element has been emphasised by ­several scholars in their search for an understanding of the political premises and implications of Weber’s theory of personality (Barbalet 2008; Rehmann 1998). In a recent study, Jacques Barbalet (2008) discusses how Weber sketched the outlines of the Puritan personality in his writings on Protestantism in an attempt to find answers for a question he had already dealt with ten years earlier in the Freiburg Address: the problem of the absence of political Beruf in the German bourgeois class. Other scholars have noted how the features of the Puritan personality and of the charismatic political leader overlap, and how they both embody Weber’s ideal of humanity [Menschentum].3 While sharing this perspective and building upon it, this book discloses hitherto overlooked dimensions deriving from an analysis of this overlap. On the one hand, Weber’s description of the qualities of the charismatic political leader, as contained in “Politics as a Vocation”, coincides with the portrayal of the Puritan virtuoso he depicted in his writings on Protestantism. If the type of man who is to “be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history” must possess the qualities of Sachlichkeit, of far-sightedness as a sense of responsibility and distance “to things and men”, of passion as a feeling of true fervour for the cause that guides his actions, this “kind of a man” then is embodied most completely 3 For an overview of this theme, see more recently Kelly 2004.

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in Weber’s portrayal of the Puritan berufliche Persönlichkeit. The Puritan personality was therefore the pedagogical-political model for the German bourgeois class because it possessed the very psychological features that Weber regarded as the epitome of the Occidental personality and the sine qua non for the establishment of true political leadership. This was an issue that Weber felt urgently needed to be solved in the wake of the German Revolution, which constituted the background context for his text “Politics as a Vocation”. To Weber’s mind at that time, the main problem Germany had to solve was precisely that officials and civil servants, rather than gifted politicians, had been “again and again in leading positions” (Weber 1946, 95). This book opens up a new path for scholarly reflection by proposing that parallel to, or underneath, Weber’s established opposition between the charismatic political leader and the bureaucrat lies another binary: an opposition between the Puritan Occidental personality and the Asiatic non-personality. In other words, I contend that not only the political charismatic leader but also the figure of the civil servant is mirrored in one of the personality patterns Weber identified in his studies on world religions. When one compares Weber’s description of the traits of the civil servant with Weber’s portrayal of the features of the Confucian, the similarities distinctly emerge. They point to an implicit and yet discernible conflation. Like the bureaucrat sine ira et studio that Weber describes in “Politics as a Vocation”, the Confucian too lacks passion, personal autonomy and initiative and, above all, vocation [Beruf]. The gregariousness and conformism of the Confucians, in Weber’s reconstruction, meant above all that they lacked “personality per se” (Weber 1951, 230); Weber indeed regarded them as non-personalities. 4. Orientalism Ultimately, by discussing the political premises and implications of Weber’s theory of personality and by disclosing the largely neglected influence that not only the studies on Protestantism but also those on the Oriental religions exercised upon some of the key concepts and problematic of Weber’s political theory, we are also in the position to better understand the Orientalist features of his sociology. As Edward Said aptly noted in his 1978 ground-breaking book, Orientalism, among the operations undertaken by orientalists was, on the one hand, that of depicting the Orient, and oriental civilisations, as homogenous and immobile wholes, whose authoritarian structures impeded the development of historical entities potentially subject to social change. On the other hand, another

introduction7 orientalist operation was that of portraying Orientals as individuals caught in a constitutive “state of minority”, fundamentally lacking psychological autonomy from ascribed social groupings, or devoid of personality altogether (see Said 2003, 154). With the methodology of the ideal type, which Weber used to emphasise one-sided perspectives about different civilisations as well as to classify and compare them, and with his characterisation of the Oriental self as a non-personality, Weber arguably deployed both orientalist dispositives; something that Said did not fail to notice. This book goes further and shows how the clearly orientalist underpinning of Weber’s depiction of Asian civilisations in general and Chinese civilisation in particular were not only developed at the level of a merely biased and Eurocentric description of non-Western civilisations. His charac­terisation of the polar opposite of the charismatic political leader, namely the bureaucrat, which Weber despised as an element of disempowerment of German politics, was also informed by a deeply orientalist rationale. By focusing on the theory of personality as a crucial axis of Weber’s Orientalism, this book can thus be seen as a contribution to a more in-depth understanding of the complex, ‘Westocentric’ roots that so greatly shaped one of the most important paradigms of sociological thought. In particular, it enables us to see that, far from operating as a neutral device, or merely as a ‘yardstick’ by which to compare different religions and civilisations, Weber’s ideal type of personality is construed and operates as a powerful political dispositive. The ‘negative’ traits that he saw as the breeding ground of supposed oriental immobility and lack of personality were also the traits he aimed to exclude, or exorcise, from political life in his own context in Germany. An orientalist rationale was thus operating at the very heart of his political theory and agenda. 5. Organisation of the Book Weber’s body of work known as “Sociology of Religion” refers to the articles and studies on specific religious doctrines as well as on general categories and theories related to religious phenomena that were written and published between 1904, with the appearance of the first part of what became The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and 1922, with the posthumous publication by Marianne Weber of Economy and Society. Thus, the “Sociology of Religion” includes: (a) The “Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion” [Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziolo­ gie],  a  collection of studies and essays on world religions which had appeared initially as separate articles in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und

8

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Sozialpolitik, Frankfurter Zeitung and Christliche Welt between 1904 and 1919 and were then collected in three volumes as “Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion” in 1920 and 1921; and (b) “Religious Groups (Sociology of Religion)” [Religionssoziologie (Typen religiöser Vergemeinschaftung)], a long section included in Economy and Society, devoted to a systematic analysis of the relation between religious doctrines, the organisational and class structures of their carriers, supporters and followers.4 The order of publication and assemblage of the studies included in the “Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion” [Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie] deserves some attention. While detailed information regarding their context of composition and publication will be provided in each chapter of this book, here I will refer only to the order of appearance of the studies in the three volumes that compose the “Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion”. In the 1920–1923 edition of these texts, the order of inclusion of the monographs on world religions followed their sequence of publication throughout Weber’s life, from the oldest to the most recent. Thus, Volume One includes the studies on Protestantism “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” [Die Protestantische Ethick und der Geist des Kapitalismus] and “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism”, the theoretical essays on the “Economic Ethic of World Religions” [Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen] (which is translated into English as “The Social Psychology of the World Religions” in Weber 1946) and the study on Confucianism and Taoism [Konfuzianismus und Taoismus] (translated into English as The Religion of China in Weber 1951). Volume Two includes the study on Hinduism and Buddhism [Hinduismus und Buddhismus] (translated into English as The Religion of India in Weber 1958) and the theoretical text “Intermediate Reflec­ tions:  Theories of the Stages and Directions of Religious Rejections” [Zwischenbetrachtung: Theorie der Stufen und Richtungen religiöser Weltablehnung] (translated into English as “Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions” in Weber 1946). Finally, Volume Three includes the study on ancient Judaism [Das antike Judentum] (translated into English as Ancient Judaism in Weber 1952). Most readings of Max Weber’s “Sociology of Religion” have provided ‘chronological’ journeys through these texts in the attempt to follow Weber’s table of contents, their order of publication over time and, in 4 For a detailed reconstruction of the development and structure of Economy and Society, see the introduction by Guenther Roth to the 1978 English edition. More recently, see Camic et al. 2005.

introduction9 some cases, seeking to relate their sequence of appearance with their role in Weber’s intellectual project and development (Bendix 1960; Tenbruch 1980; Schluchter 1989). Instead, the reader will notice that this book proposes a different order. It starts from a discussion of the conceptualisation of personality in the methodological writings and the section on religion in Economy and Society. It then moves to consider, in order: the studies of Protestantism, ancient Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, and finally Confucianism and Taoism. This order is informed above all by the theoretical proposal to conceive of Weber’s concept of personality as a key ideal type in his historical comparative sociology. Consequently, this book provides both the working definition of the ideal type of personality, which Weber elaborated in his methodological writings and in the section “Religious Groups (Sociology of Religion)” in Economy and Society, and the contextual framework in which the reflection upon this concept matured (Chapter One and Chapter Two). It moves to discuss the studies on Protestantism, in which Weber’s concept of personality appears in its purest ideal typical form (Chapter Three), and then proceeds to an examination of the studies in which the concept of personality appears progressively more distant from the ideal type in its purest form. Thus, we move to the study of ancient Judaism (Chapter Four), which Weber considered the seedbed of Western rationalism and whose personality formation was more closely affine to the Protestant one; we then pass through the study of Hinduism and Buddhism (Chapter Five), in which Weber reflected upon the paradoxes of religious individualism for the process of individuation and personality formation; and we finally arrive at the study of Confucianism (Chapter Six), which stands amongst Weber’s studies on world religions as the one in which he conceptualised the complete absence of personality altogether. In other words, the type of self that Weber saw as originating from Confucianism and the Chinese socio-historical formation was the most distant from the ideal type of the Puritan personality. Hence, the organisation of the chapters follows a thematic and theoretically informed order, in order to disclose hitherto neglected elements, rather than a philological and chronological one. 6. Summary of the Chapters In 1903 when he gradually went back to intellectual work, after the parenthesis of inactivity that kept him far from university rooms, Weber ­published a number of metholodological studies and, in those same years, the famous essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

10

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Chapter One discusses how it is in the methodological writings that Weber delineated the contours of a theory of the rational individual, or personality, able to respond to the theoretical and methodological challenges posed by the Methodenstreiten that traversed the human and social sciences in Germany. Integrating into his thought numerous aspects from the main figures of the neo-Kantian school of Heidelberg – Windelband, Rickert and Lask – Weber went further and radically re-elaborated one of their key-concepts, namely, the notion of the historical individual [historische Individuum]. This concept had both represented the legacy of a long philosophical tradition that conceived of history as a theatre of manifestations of the spirit in individualised forms (Iggers 1975), and emerged from the process of singularisation of the concept of history that was at the origin of the distinction between Natur- and Geisteswisseschaften (Koselleck 2004). This chapter shows that it is the notion of historische Individuum in the thought of the neo-criticists of Baden that became the foundation upon which Weber constructed his theory of personality. As the latter came to be defined by Weber as “a concept that finds its ‘essence’ in the consistency of its intimate relationship to certain ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life (…) values and meanings [that] have their effect by being forged into purposes and thereby translated into rationalteleological action” (Weber 1968, 132), personality ultimately referred to the habitus from which the patterns of individuals’ behaviours and action derived, thereby playing a central role in his overall theory of rational action and agency. Chapter Two discusses the influences upon, and employment of, Weber’s rationalist definition of personality that was outlined in Chapter One. Like all German intellectuals of his time, Weber’s notion of personality was influenced by the debate on education [Bildung]. In particular, the context of Weber’s reflection was one in which the general problematic associated with the notions of personality and of Bildung was going through difficult times. As Goldman argues, “at the end of the nineteenth century the new techniques and practices that had aided in shaping and equipping bourgeois individuals for lives and roles in nation, culture, and class were seriously weakened and persistently challenged by the pressures of a rapidly developing capitalist society” (Goldman 1993a, 163). Weber thus intervened in the debate on the status of the subjectivity of the German bourgeoisie in a moment in which the traditional models of individuation, in particular the religious models, were in crisis. As religion had previously been the primary wellspring of individuals’ identity, Weber thus seemed to surmise that it was there that he had to begin in order to

introduction11 understand the mechanisms of personality formation and consolidation. By focusing upon the text “Religious Groups (Sociology of Religion)” [Religionssoziologie (Typen religiöser Vergemeinschaftung)], a long section included in Economy and Society in which Weber arguably sought to systematise the mass of material he collected in his studies of world religions, Chapter Two aims to lay out the main categories of his theoretical infrastructure on religion and the religious personality, in order to orient discussions in subsequent chapters. Chapter Three focuses on the concept of personality, particularly as it emerged from Weber’s writings on Protestantism, i.e., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and the texts on the Protestant sects in North America. Building in particular upon Rehmann’s (1998) and Barbalet’s (2008) contributions, in this chapter I argue that with his writings on Protestantism Weber implemented a research programme that he had outlined ten years earlier in his inaugural lecture at Freiburg, and to which he was prompted to return and to elaborate further upon the occasion of his trip to the United States. The Freiburg Address of 1895 outlined themes that Weber would reconsider and deepen in the writings on Protestantism: namely, the role of religious factors for the explanation of the different economic behaviours of Protes­tants and Catholics; the critique of historical materialism; the link between political-economic leadership and the concept of Beruf. Fascinated by the dynamics of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Weber argued that the versions of Protestantism that had emerged there (particularly Puritanism) and the personality formation to which they led, were the key for understanding the nature of Western modernity and ­capitalism. Here lies the centrality of the notion of Puritan personality as harmonious unity of the self which develops autonomously from authoritarian societal structures and engages in self-direction: according to Weber, it was the Puritan personality, in the end, that which had demonstrated that it was able to go through and to lead the epochal transition towards a society dominated by capital. Chapter Four considers Weber’s study of ancient Judaism, which was crucial for his understanding of the process of rationalisation in the West. By focusing upon those elements of the structure of the Jewish personality that Weber regarded as being intrinsically inadequate for the promotion of the bourgeois mentality and of industrial modern capitalism, Weber aimed in large part to challenge Sombart’s thesis on the elective affinities between Judaism and capitalism (Sombart 1951 [1902]). Weber emphasised primarily what he termed a double-standard morality within Judaism, one that he saw as having led to a form of particularism in the

12

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economic world, which stood in sharp contrast to the universalism that had been affirmed with western capitalism. From this combination of aspects – gregariousness, economic particularism and forms of pariahcollectivism that failed to develop a proper individualist ideology – Weber saw the Jewish religion as inhibiting the rise of a Protestant type of personality. Chapter Five discusses Weber’s study of India and the religious orthodoxies and heterodoxies developed therein. As with his other comparative studies, the aim of Weber in the Sociology of India was to reconstruct the features of the interior habitus, or the specific type of personality, that had been produced by the socio-economic structures of the subcontinent. In order to analyse the ways in which the type of rationalisation that had occurred within Hinduism contributed to the formation of a distinctive type of personality, Weber concentrated essentially on three elements: caste dharma, and the doctrinary principles of samsara and karma. The reading of the interconnection between these elements, in his view, led to paradoxical results. On the one hand, Hindu doctrine promoted by the priestly bureaucracy of Brahmans oriented individuals’ conduct in extremely corporative terms. On the other hand, beside the promotion of practical action that maintained the characteristic of corporative action, the search for salvation was a private affair. Not only the strict observance of ritual duty, but also the emphasis put by Hinduism on individual responsibility for the achievement of reincarnation, promoted the paradoxes of religious individualism. The structure of the self that was shaped by Hinduism, therefore, was for Weber egotistic and conformist, and thus poles apart from that which structured the Puritan personality. The monograph on China occupies a special position in Weber’s series of studies on world religions. Chapter Six addresses this particularity and links it to Weber’s overall theory of personality. Though Weber had initially thought that Confucianism constituted the religious ethic closest to Puritanism, he finally arrived at the conclusion that it was, rather, the most different one (see Schluchter 1989). By reconstructing the complex equilibrium between centre and periphery and the central role played by Mandarins in imperial China, and by scrutinising the nature of Confucian doctrine in terms of an ethic rather than a religion, Weber portrayed the image of a country that could be the potential theatre of formal rational­ isation and that, instead, had stopped at the level of a state bureaucracy. Weber believed a fundamentally ritualist and conformist self had been produced in such a context. The lack within Confucianism of a tension between God and the world, or of a level of transcendence, in particular,

introduction13 was what, according to Weber, had prevented ab origine any solicitation to the intervention and transformation in and of the world and consequently, any impetus to social change. Only this type of tension, however, could lead to the depreciation of worldly matters and as a consequence to the possibility of thinking their change. There was no psychological reward for the Confucian that was not that of the acquisition of eudemonistic goods through a sober, decorous and exterior conduct. This set of reasons in Weber’s reconstruction, i.e., the lack of a promise for redemption that could orient individuals’ behaviour in the view of its attainment, and the absence of transcendence, had led to the absence of a unitary self, and ultimately of a proper personality formation altogether. In conclusion, Chapter Seven further explores the thesis laid out in Chapter Three concerning the connection between Weber’s politicalpedagogical agenda and the focus upon the type of personality developed within American Puritanism. This exploration reveals that not only was the Puritan personality itself quintessentially political, deriving its defining traits from a configuration of sociality developed in a voluntarily chosen but highly cohesive and controlled community, such as the Protestant sects. A close textual analysis of the writings on Protestantism and of “Politics as a Vocation” also reveals the fundamental conflation between the Puritan personality and the charismatic personality of the political leader. It was the latter that Weber wished to see at the head of Germany on the eve of Weimar; such a leader was the only remedy, according to Weber, against the bureaucrats sine ira et studio who instead had been deciding of the destiny of German politics. In light of the powerful influence that the studies on religion exercised upon Weber’s political categories, this chapter also explores the hypothesis that the figure of the bureaucrat, like that of the charismatic leader, was similarly modelled on an ideal type of personality originating from a religious doctrine. As I argue, it is the ideal type of the Asiatic non-personality in general, and of the Confucian in particular, that seemingly haunts Weber’s detested figure of the political bureaucrat. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how these elements can contribute to our understanding not only of the political but also orientalist implications of Weber’s studies on Occidental and Oriental religions. *** Ultimately, this book aims to show that Weber’s concept of personality was not a peripheral or only one-faceted category of his enormous

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c­ onceptual apparatus. On the contrary, it was a complex and articulated ­theoretical construct that played a crucial role in the development of Weber’s theory of social action. Furthermore, this book argues that this concept, far from being a neutral analytic device, was strongly marked by a political agenda as well as by the presuppositions of the Orientalist discourse. This is the case not merely because Weber saw capitalism and the capitalist spirit, or personality, as entirely endogenous to the West. Nor is it due simply to his portrayal of the West and its process of individuation as the site of all progressive and transformative virtues that set social change in motion, in contrast to what he described as a passive and immobile Orient. Weber’s concept of personality underwrites a precise political goal and is informed by an orientalist rationale fundamentally because it was grounded upon a class-based and Eurocentric understanding of processes of individuation, and the intersection of religion, economy and selves. Weber’s political agenda and orientalism thus also fundamentally penetrated and shaped other aspects, methodologies and concepts of his broader sociology. As we have inherited those aspects, methodologies and concepts as part of the sociological toolbox, the time has come to subject them to rigorous scrutiny and to critically interrogate their origins, their functions and their implications for sociological research. Should this book contribute to this task, it will have achieved its aims.

CHAPTER ONE

FROM THE HISTORICAL INDIVIDUAL TO THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSONALITY Ontological culture theories, which looked upon supra-individual factors as the only motive forces of the historical process – whether the development of the spirit of the age towards consciousness of freedom, the dialectic of economic production conditions, the emanations of a Volksgeist, the morphological and as it were biologically evolving structure of a nation, or whatever – were incompatible with the concept of personality, which was the keystone of Max Weber’s thinking (Mommsen 1965, 28). The idea of personality awakens respect; it places before our eyes the sublimity of our own nature (in its higher vocation) (Kant 1956, 90).

1. Singularisation and Individualisation of History “Ever since the era of neo-Kantianism, our academic field has been caught in a self-definition: history has to do with what is individual and specific, whereas the natural sciences concern themselves with what is general” (Koselleck 2002, 1). Koselleck’s words concisely introduce us to a theme that lies at the foundation of the so-called second phase of Weber’s intellectual production:1 namely, the notion of the ‘individual’ nature of historical research and the concept of the ‘historical individual’. As it is located at the very heart of Weber’s thought regarding the responsibilities and the limits of the historical sciences, it is therefore important to retrace the origins of this concept and understand its role. There were very specific philosophical, historical and political reasons which led to a division of labour among the sciences – a division which led to history being given the task of dealing with its object of inquiry 1 The second phase – defined thus by Marianne Weber’s biography of her husband – began in 1903 with the publication of a paper on the founding fathers of the historical school of economics, Roscher and Knies. Prior to that paper, Weber had interrupted his work for several years due to a nervous breakdown that had led him to abandon his teaching at university. It is not, however, only the space of time but, most importantly, the difference in themes addressed following his return to his research activities in comparison to those he had dealt with before, and the relative continuity of the latter ideas over time, which has given rise to the notion of two Webers (see Ghosh 2008; Radkau 2009).

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‘idiographically’. In retracing the semantic vicissitudes of the term ‘history’ in German-speaking countries, Koselleck showed the way in which the individualisation of history’s object of study was the result of an ongoing process of individualisation of the term ‘history’ itself, which had begun in the eighteenth century. The German word die Geschichte, which today defines history as both a discipline and as the temporal space of human events, has not always been used as it is today in German, in the feminine singular grammatical form, and nor has it always had the same meaning. Prior to the eighteenth century, the Latin term Historie, in the plural form, was used to indicate the historical record. In other words, Historie designated, as Koselleck put it, “an account of what had occurred, and in a specialised sense identified the ‘historical sciences’” (Koselleck 2004, 32). The neuter singular term, das Geschicht, stood for the single event, a thing or action that had happened. What Koselleck considers a terminological revolution begins when the term Historie starts to be “rapidly displaced in the course of the eighteenth century by the word Geschichte” (Koselleck 2004, 32). So it came to pass that the two terms die Historie and das Geschicht were fused into the one collective singular term die Geschichte, which began to denote history as both event and exposition. In Koselleck’s compelling analysis this was a historic turning point. It marked the step that would lead to the ‘subjectivisation’ of history and to the possibility of conceiving of history as a single theatre of events. Moreover, the use of the collective singular permitted yet a further step. It made possible the attribution to history of the latent power of human events and suffering, a power that connected and motivated everything in accordance with a secret or evident plan to which one could feel responsible, or in whose name one could believe oneself to be acting. This philological event occurred in a context of epochal significance: that of the great period of singularization and simplification which was directed socially and politically against a society of estates. Here, Freedom took the place of freedoms, Justice that of rights and servitudes, Progress that of progressions (les progrès, the plural) and from the diversity of revolutions, ‘The Revolution’ emerged (Koselleck 2004, 35).

The process that led to the individualisation of history was, therefore, linked to the increasingly strong assertion of the rising bourgeois classes’ hegemonic ambitions on economic and political-cultural levels. The simplification and universalization of concepts was linked to the progressive deconstruction of the aristocratic class order and to the centralisation at the state level of the unification and conciliation of the interests of the



historical individual to the sociological personality17

new class compositions that were then being established in Europe. The French revolution marked the critical watershed of this phase; after 1789, the past could no longer shed light on the future. At the moment in which the possibility of a interruption found its way into history, and historical time was no longer an ineluctable succession of events each the same as the one before, history lost its ‘pedagogic’ character and acquired instead a ‘teleological’ and ‘objectivising’ dimension.2 Thus the concept of progress, of moving forward, was established, and it made it possible to identify a route or a plan within history. The abandonment of the plural term for history as a chronology of events went hand in hand with the abandonment of history’s moral function, concisely rendered in Cicero’s historia magistra vitae. The field was opened for a linear conception of history or, rather, a ‘philosophy of history’. It was within such a context that historical disciplines and natural sciences parted ways. In contrast with the uniformity and eternity of nature, history was established as a realm of dissimilarities and change that could be explored with new investigative tools and new conceptual apparatuses. As Koselleck writes: The potential similarity and iteratability of naturally formed histories was consigned to the past, while History itself was denaturalized and formed into an entity about which, since that time, it has not been possible to philosophize in the way one can about nature. Nature and history could now separate conceptually from each other; the proof of this is that in precisely these decades the old domain of historia naturalis is eliminated from the structure of historical sciences: for the French by Voltaire in the Encyclopédie, for the Germans by Adelung. Behind this separation, which was prefigured by Vico and might seem to belong only to the history of the sciences, exists the decisive registration of the discovery of a specific historical temporality. This involves what one might call a temporalization of history, which has since that time detached itself from a naturally formed chronology. (…) The exposure of a time determined solely by history was effected by contemporary historical philosophy long before historism made use of this idea. The naturalistic basis vanished, and progress became the prime category in 2 An enlightening example of this shift was provided by Leopold von Ranke (1795– 1886), according to whom the duty of the historian was to tell things “wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist]”, that is, “just as it was” (often translated as: “just as they happened”). Ranke expressed his position by contrasting it with the famous Ciceronian dictum “historia magistra vitae”. Thus, in his Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (1824), he wrote, “The task of judging the past for the benefit of future generations has been given to History: the present essay does not aspire to such an elevated task; it merely seeks to show the past as it once was [wie es eigentlich gewesen]” (quoted in Koselleck 2004, 36).

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chapter one which a transnatural, historically immanent definition of time first found expression (Koselleck 2004, 37).

The idea that was becoming established was one of a ‘properly historical’ time, appropriated from nature, and object of philosophical and scientific speculation in its own right. Over the years this would become the ground on which the major clashes between the diverse philosophical and political viewpoints that had been called upon to shoulder the legacy and calculate the costs of 1789 would take place. From this standpoint it becomes possible to comprehend the singularisation of the object itself of history as conducted by the historiographical schools and by German historicism of the nineteenth century. History was a unified space, a dimension of human knowledge separate from nature insofar as it possessed its own rules and movements. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the historiographical and philosophical schools strove to identify the specifics of those rules and movements, as well as the ways in which they could be encapsulated in a scientific record. In fact, it was at this juncture that the notions of individuality and of the historical individual began to take more solid form; it was at this moment that the idea that history has a duty to record uniqueness in the face of nature’s regularities began to gain ground. 2. The Notion of Individuality in 19th Century Historiography The nerve centre of new historiographical research in the second half of the eighteenth century initially revolved around the School of Göttingen. It was here that those ideas were developed which held firm for a long time: (1) the idea that the selection criterion for historical facts influences the historiographical account, but that there also exists an objective history or, in other words, that it is possible to comprehend actual, true elements of historical development; (2) an awareness of the fundamental differences that exist between historical methodology and the methodology of the natural sciences, insofar as history must take into account the individual component of its object of inquiry and, therefore, necessitates  different evidence to achieve its aim of understanding human relationships. On the basis of these acquisitions, “historical studies”, according to Iggers, were plagued by a certain methodological dilemma, which remained persistently insoluble for future historians, between the insistence of the historian on elevating



historical individual to the sociological personality19 history to the rank of a science by seeking to introduce conceptualizations into history buttressed by empirical evidence and the recognition of the limits of conscious rational thought, particularly of empiricism and induction, in the comprehension of meaningful human relationships which required an element of empathy and sympathetic understanding which resisted strict methodological procedures (Iggers 1975, 16).3

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the historians of the University of Berlin, established by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1810, found themselves facing this dilemma. Under the guidance of Leopold von Ranke, the fledgling university became the driving force behind these studies, setting the canon of historiographical research. The innovations introduced by the Berlin school in the field of historiographical method primarily regarded a more intense pursuit of ‘objectivity’. Despite this fact, the Rankian school did not reject the idea of the study of history as a study of individuality. On the contrary, it confirmed it. This thesis reflected in part the fact that history had been reduced to a record based almost exclusively on political and religious events and powerful personalities, and in part on the clear distinction that had been repeatedly drawn between the natural and the historical sciences. While the former attempted to explain recurring phenomena causally, the latter dealt with human events, which were supposed to be understood through their distinctive individuality. In the words of Iggers, the hermeneutic method as conceived by Ranke was inseparable from certain basic philosophic assumptions. What made historical knowledge possible for Ranke, as it did for the German tradition of hermeneutics for over a century from Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schleiermacher to J.G. Droysen, W. Dilthey e F. Meinecke – was the principle that history was the realm of the spirit; a spirit, however, conceived in a profoundly different way compared to Hegel’s philosophy (…) [In Hegel] the spirit manifested itself in institutions of increasing rationality [whereas] the hermeneutic tradition emphasised the fact that the spirit manifested itself in individualised forms (Iggers 1975, 19–20).

The individualities that were the object of history were characterised by the fact that they were integrated into a narrative that posited that history had a sense of continuity and a direction due to the trends at work within it. Nonetheless, the impossibility of subsuming historical individualities

3 Iggers (1975) identified the principal limitation of the historical school of Göttingen as the fact that it was not able to organise the enormous quantity of compiled demographic, geographic and economic data in a theoretically systematic fashion.

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into abstract, theoretical systems “ruled out any causal analysis” (Iggers 1975, 21). At the turn of the nineteenth century, the theoretical framework for the reflections of the neo-criticists of the Baden or the Heidelberg school was constituted by the search for an objective historiography and the attempt to expel the methods of the natural sciences from the historical sciences. Weber’s methodological thought was developed in this environment.4 From this point of view, historians, insofar as they are ‘scientists of culture’, had to act according to selection criteria that imposed a conceptual structure on the historical subject under investigation. At this juncture, Windelband, Rickert and Lask, the most well-known representatives of that school, became advocates of a return to Kant. Their aim was to elab­ orate the conditions of possibility of historical knowledge as a science [Wissenschaft]. To understand the specificity of the development of the concept of historical individual in Weber’s work, it is therefore necessary to turn to the basic theoretical coordinates of the neo-Kantian school to which he was closest – the Heidelberg school. 3. The Heidelberg School and the Axiological Foundation of the Historical Individual Various commentators have interpreted the Kant renaissance that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century as a response to the crisis of Hegelianism (Köhnke 1986; Oakes 1987) and an attempt to bring philosophical thinking back from the historical-anthological plane to a strictly philosophical-speculative one. In the words of Oakes: The collapse of Hegelianism in the 1840s and 1850s was followed by an apparent chaos of antagonistic conceptions of philosophy, a proliferation of philosophical aims and styles, each apparently making equally inconsequential claims to legitimacy. The resources of independent philosophical thought appeared to be exhausted by the final third of the century (Oakes 1980, 165).

In the context of a revival of the philosophical traditions of the past, Windelband’s and the neo-criticists’ call for a return to Kant endeavoured 4 Although Iggers situates Weber entirely among the neo-criticists of Baden, he nonetheless attributes to Weber an even more “subversive” suggestion – the introduction of the concept of explanation within a still essentially idealistic conception of history (see Iggers 1975).



historical individual to the sociological personality21

to bring about a return to doing philosophy itself, in the face of an evermore widespread tendency to do the history of philosophy. Nonetheless, following in the footsteps of the philosopher from Königsberg, the subject of this new speculative season became knowledge itself, and in particular the conditions of possibility of historical knowledge. The revival of Kantian criticism called for by the schools of Heidelberg and Margburg at this juncture was thus one of the forms in which Germany’s late nineteenth-century philosophical awakening was manifested.5 From the end of the 1870s onwards, the ‘return to Kant’ became the rallying cry of the majority of the new generation of philosophers within German universities, thus confirming neo-Kantianism as the most important academic trend of the late 1800s (see Lübbe 1963). As part of their plan for the transcendental elaboration of historical categories, the neoKantian schools adopted and deepened the division between the sciences of nature and the so-called sciences of spirit [Geisteswissenschaften] – despite the fact that this distinction had been foreign to Kant. As we will see in the sections that follow, the concepts of individuality and, in particular, of the ‘historical individual’ became fundamental theoretical outposts for this endeavour (see Troeltsch 1922; Rehmann 1998). 3.1. Windelband, Rickert and Lask Wilhelm Windelband: It is a well-known fact that it was Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), student of Kuno Fisher and Hermann Lotze, who broke the ground for the introduction of the concept of the ‘historical individual’ [historische Individuum]. The famed Windelbandian distinction between nomothetic natural sciences, which are geared toward generalisation and the formulation of laws, and idiographic historical sciences, which are geared toward individuality, towards the single and unrepeatable historical event, served to formalise the separation of Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften in intelligible terms.6 Differently from the ontolog­ ically grounded principium divisionis of the sciences proposed in ­particular 5 To be more precise, it was characterised in the terms of a new wave of idealism which can be better understood when taking into account the anti-socialist political climate following the attempts made on the life of Emperor William I in May of 1878 and the subsequent passing of laws aimed to weaken German social democracy (Rehmann 1998; Köhnke 1986). 6 As Windelband further notes: “In their quest for knowledge of reality, the empirical sciences either seek the general in the form of the law of nature or the particular in the form of the historically defined structure. On the one hand, they are concerned with the form which invariably remains constant. On the other hand, they are concerned with

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by Dilthey,7 Windelband differentiated between the process of study inhe­r­ent to the Naturwissenschaften and that inherent to the Geisteswis­ sen­schaften on a logical plane.8 From this standpoint, the distinction was not drawn on the basis of the nature of the object of inquiry (ontology) but rather on the basis of the cognitive object. ‘Individuality’ was the cognitive object of history. The reason for which the historical sciences are directed towards individuality lies, in turn, in the fact that “every dynamic and authentic human value judgment is dependent upon the uniqueness of its object” (Windelband 1980, 182–183). As Windelband further explains: Simply consider how swiftly our emotions abate whenever their object is multiplied or becomes nothing more than one case among thousands of others of the same sort. ‘She is not the first,’ we read in one of the most terrifying texts of Faust. Our sense of values and all of our axiological sentiments are grounded in the uniqueness and incomparability of their object. (…) Every dynamic and authentic human value judgment is dependent upon the uniqueness of its object. It is, above all, our relationship to personalities that demonstrates this. It is not an unbearable idea that yet another identical exemplar of a beloved or admired person exists? (…) It has always been painful to me that a people as refined and sensitive as the Greeks could tolerate one of the doctrines which persists throughout their entire philosophy. According to this doctrine, the personality itself – with all its actions, afflictions, and passions – will also return in the periodic recurrence of all things. (…) This point concerning individual human life has even more force when it is applied to the total historical process: this process has value only if it is unique. This is the principle which the Christian the unique, immanently defined content of the real event. The former disciplines are nomological sciences. The latter disciplines are sciences of process or sciences of the event. The nomological sciences are concerned with what is invariably the case. The sciences of process are concerned with what was once the case. If I may be permitted to introduce some new technical terms, scientific thought is nomothetic in the former case and idiographic in the latter case” (Windelband 1980, 175). 7 Following in Kant’s wake, Dilthey put forward the idea of a philosophical foundation for the ‘spiritual sciences’ through his critique of historical reason or, to be exact, by exploring history’s cognitive opportunities in order to establish an autonomous epistemological statute for them. One possible autonomy they might have, according to Dilthey, consists in the object of inquiry itself: namely, human beings and their primal connection to psychic life which is afforded them by the immediacy of his lived experience [erleben], from which follows a precise cognitive process – understanding [verstehen]. While the natural sciences can explain an object and so establish legitimate causal nexuses, the spiritual sciences understand, or comprehend, an object; they grasp it through connections in meaning, whose authenticity stems from direct lived experience. 8 According to several interpretations, Windelband went beyond Kant while still following in his footsteps. In other words, he identified logical forms of historical knowledge while refuting the Kantian idea that history was not a science (see Oakes 1988).



historical individual to the sociological personality23 philosophy of the Church Fathers successfully maintained against Hellenism. From the outset, the fall of man and the salvation of the human race had the status of unique facts situated at the focal point of the world view of the Church Fathers. This was the first significant and powerful insight into the inalienable metaphysical right of historiography: to maintain the past in its unique and unrepeatable reality for the recollection of mankind (Windelband 1980, 182–183).

It was thus that Windelband identified the idiographic foundation of the historical sciences as a psychological-affective element, according to which that which repeats itself – in other words, recursivity, as such – produces an emotional and subjective experience in the face of which we are indifferent. In the passage quoted above, thus, Windelband laid out the rationale behind the purely idiographic scope of interest of the spiritual sciences, putting forward an argument that is dear to the Western theological tradition: the uniqueness and unrepeatable nature of the soul and of each individual life. It was not a coincidence that Windelband found him protesting against theories of metempsychosis and historical circularity, or the eternal return, pitting them against the event-driven concept of history established by the Catholic-Christian culture. As Oakes points out (1987), the Windelbandian idea that values must be ascribed to events that are unique, unrepeatable and incomparable in their individuality, is ultimately grounded in the individualistic conception of value introduced by Christian theology in its polemic against the axiological universalism of Greek philosophy. The Christian idea that values can be ascribed only to individual phenomena has its origins in the conception of the Creation, the Fall, and the events of the life of Christ as unique occurrences endowed with unprecedented significance (…) According to this conception of value, we lose interest in an object if we discover that it is nothing more than a representative case of a general phenomenon. This consideration entails the individuality of values: the attribution of values must always have a concrete and singular referent. The source of our interest in knowledge of individual phenomena lies in this basic fact of philosophical anthropology: that we ascribe values exclusively to individuals (Oakes 1987, 437).

Therefore, for Windelband, the identification of the idiographic method and, thus, of history’s proclivity for the individuality of events and for historical personalities, was founded on a philosophy of values or, in other words, on an axiology. The legitimacy and cogency of historical idiography thus rested upon the extra-scientific and extra-historical postulate of the value of an unrepeatable event per se. That being the case, the innovation introduced by Windelband did not rest solely upon the system of the historical sciences, which he had attempted to establish by founding their

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conditions of possibility upon a logical plane. The true innovation lay most of all in the development of a philosophy of values according to which individuality, qua uniqueness and non-iterability, became the sine qua non condition for the identification of subjects of historical interest. What was unique and unrepeatable was established based upon ostensibly universal and common values. Yet, these values were often no more than expressions of the specific and private values of a particular social milieu. Indeed, the axiology on which the notion of individuality was founded ill-concealed the conservatism of the “mandarins” of the German academy (Ringer 1969) who, at the close of the nineteenth century, were suffering from the typical “Burckhardtian apprehensions about the future and feared for the survival of culture in a technological age” (Willey 1978, 133).9 Heinrich Rickert: It was Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936), a student of Windelband, who, following in the footsteps of the master but in more systematic terms, completed the axiological foundation of history and coined the term “historical individual”. In his most famous work, The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science [Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung], Rickert took it upon himself to further clarify the boundaries between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften. According to Rickert, “the historical in its most comprehensive sense – in which it coincides with the unique, invariably individual and empirically real event itself – forms the limit of concept formation in natural science” (Rickert 1986, 78). This is not to say that history does not employ general­ ities, “for all scientific concept formation does” (Rickert 1986, 79). Yet, the sciences are not characterised by the means they employ, but rather by the goals that they set themselves. The goal of the historical sciences is, in Rickert’s opinion, knowledge of the individual, which defines the ­concept of history per se. In his words, the term ‘individual’ does not have only the meaning (…) of the unique, the specific and the singular. On the contrary, it also includes the indivisible [Untheilbar]. The concept of indivisibility indicates a unity that arouses our logical interest. We know that to qualify as singular, every reality must also be composite, for the simple, like the atom, lacks individuality (Rickert 1986, 81).

In Rickert’s mind, the term ‘individual’ presented two different meanings: the unity [Einheit] of a plurality, but also uniqueness [Einzigartigkeit]. 9 For an excellent account of the political and philosophical implications of the NeoKantian school, see Rose 2009.



historical individual to the sociological personality25

The difference between the individual and physical objects consists in the fact that the latter are not individual insofar as they are divisible. The spiri­tual life, which is history’s object of inquiry, is made up of ‘souls’ that are indivisible, but not in the same way that physical bodies are indivisible, insofar as the unity of souls is linked to their uniqueness. Therefore, in Rickert’s opinion, “our question is only how uniqueness can form the basis of unity, and here the answer must be that in-dividuals are always individuals that are related to a value” (Rickert 1986, 84). He then continues: The historical unity of a personality is not constituted by an ‘experienced’ unity. (…) That is because a value is implicit in the concept of a purpose, and the unity of individuality rests on this value alone. The difference between the corporeal and the mental individual lies exclusively in the fact that there is no person whose individuality is so indifferent to us as that of a lump of coal (Rickert 1986, 85).

Having identified historical interest as lying within interest in the individual, historical individuals are then those individuals who, for mankind, are in-dividual, meaning indivisible and unique. At the same time, as Rickert argued, “assuming that we want to grasp the concept of the science as well, [history] must always strive for a representation that is valid for everyone. (…) This must mean that for history, the value with reference to which objects become historical individuals must be a general value; in other words a value that is valid for everyone” (Rickert 1986, 88–89). In summary, through a complex articulation of the concept of the strictly historical individual in terms of in-dividual, or indivisible entity, Rickert founded the very nature of in-divisibility of that which is historical upon values. Thus, the innovation introduced by Rickert consisted in the fact that such values were not to be predicted subjectively, but were rather universal a priori and therefore binding and intersubjectively recognisable. To which universal values did he refer? Could they be imagined as a priori categories in the Kantian sense of pure forms of apperception? The answer to these questions is far from simple, insofar as Rickert did not offer a detailed analysis. Nonetheless, throughout his works he did supply some of those values on the basis of which the historical individual, whether it be an event or a personality, could be identified and therefore deemed worthy of inclusion in the catalogue of subjects of historical interest: the state, the nation, (Christian) religion and the law.10 Rickert’s ­establishment of the historical individual as both objective and object of 10 In Rickert 1986, restated by Willey 1978, 147.

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the historical sciences, therefore, rested on the aprioristic assumption of ‘universal’ values, which ended up coinciding with the values of the nationalist bourgeoisie and the ‘academic aristocracy’ of Wilhelmine Germany at the close of the nineteenth century. Emil Lask: Alongside the vital influence that these two foremost representatives of the Heidelberg school had on Weber, the work of Emil Lask (1875–1915) also had a significant impact. However, Weber mentions Lask only in the footnotes of two of his methodological writings (Weber 1975). It is in part due to this lack of any public tribute paid by Weber himself to Lask that influence of his work on Weber’s Wissenschaftslehre is often underestimated.11 Nonetheless, it is well recorded how Weber greatly appreciated two aspects of Lask’s thought in particular: his approach to the question of the hiatus irrationalis between concept and reality, and the distinction between analytic reasoning (Kant) and emanatist logic (Hegel) as opposed approaches to concept formation. For Lask, whereas analytic logic does not identify the concept with reality, but rather sees it as an empty form, emanatist logic, on the other hand, identifies the concept with the real. Lask concluded that analytical reasoning was the only logic capable of providing useful indications on individuality as the basis of historical knowledge. To understand fully Lask’s chain of reasoning, it is useful to quote a passage from Tuozzolo, which provides an excellent reconstruction of the central elements of Lask’s thought. For the emanatist, the individual is an ontological nothing. For Lask, this is the consequence of the identification of the individual with the ‘finite’, which, counterposed to the infinite, is considered ‘the negative’, namely, ‘a concept that contradicts itself’. It is clear that the aspect of the emanatist theory of knowledge that makes such a theory inadequate for knowing the historical object is the ontological negation of the individual. It is also clear that the element of the analytic logic that must be safeguarded in order to be able to think the historical-temporal object is constituted, for Lask, by the ontological positivity of individuality. In substance, Lask’s theory of history is based upon the identification of the historical object with the individual, which the generalising sciences – that is, the natural sciences – cannot know. It is due to such an identification that the analytic perspective appears as essential: only such a perspective recognises the ontological reality of the historical-individual object (Tuozzolo 2004, 19–20).

Insofar as emanatism denied the individual ‘real existence’, Lask believed that it also ended up depriving “historical science of its object. What is 11 In her biography, for instance, Marianne Weber described the relationship Weber had with Lask as one of close friendship.



historical individual to the sociological personality27

‘historical’ is instituted instead – as Tuozzolo further argues – as real object only for an analytical perspective that assumes the idea according to which the real is the empirically verifiable individuality. For Lask, the reality of history (the historical material on which to reflect) vanishes for those who see the real only in the universal” (Tuozzolo 2004, 20). As we will see in detail in the following sections, the Laskian historicaltheoretical reconstruction of the distinctions between the Hegelian and Kantian traditions with regard to the relationship between concept and reality provided Weber with the philosophical basis for criticism of the organicistic viewpoints of the German historical school of economics, viewpoints which Weber would criticise exactly on the grounds of their emanatism.12 4. Universalism of Values and Anti-Naturalism: Logical Antinomies and Political Implications The viewpoints developed by the neo-criticists of the Baden school regarding the concept of the historical individual have been the subject of numerous criticisms, both logical-philosophical and political in nature. On a strictly logical and methodological level, Rickert’s attempt to lay out a recognisable criterion for identifying the ‘historical individual’ in terms of its relation to a universal value was plagued by an irreconcilable contradiction. Such a criterion actually presented the paradox of proposing a deductive, or nomothetic, argument, according to which the historical event was individual if it could be related to a universal and superior principle. Moreover, with the assertion that there was a constant element within history – namely, individuality – the Baden school and German historicism in general not only proposed a principle that was even more 12 In his paper devoted to Wilhelm Roscher, Weber concluded his assessment of that representative of the historical school of economics by defining his work as ‘emanatist’. As Weber wrote, “It is not the irrationality of reality which resists subordination under ‘laws’, but rather the ‘organic’ uniformity of socio-historical complexes. The causal analysis and explanation of these complexes is not only more difficult than that of natural organisms. They must remain inexplicable in principle (…) What, therefore, is the source of Roscher’s distinction between the social world and theoretically analysable concrete processes? It does not lie in a methodological limitation upon the extent to which reality can be conceived in terms of generic concepts and abstract laws. On the contrary, it lies in the projection onto reality of forces which transcend the limits of our knowledge at this point, as at several other points in our analysis of Roscher’s work, we find ourselves on the threshold of emanatism” (Weber 1975, 85–86). On the influence of Emil Lask on Weber, see in particular Oakes 1987.

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abstract and structuring than a general naturalistic law, but also ended up invalidating the premise of individuality as uniqueness and non-iterability. If individuality were the intrinsic element of history, the eternal recurring Motiv, then it would actually be the individuality and unrepeatability of the historical event which were negated.13 This impasse was keenly felt by Ernst Troeltsch himself, according to whom Rickert had sliced through the Gordian knot of history by reducing it to a picture book of ethics [Bilderbuch der Ethik].14 On a political level, the concept of the historical individual within the framework given to it by the Baden school was imbued ab origine with evident conservatism and, at least in Rickert’s thought, was not politically innocent. In the words of Gebhardt, from Lotze to Windelband, Rickert and Weber we encounter as Leitmotiv of thought the experience of the cultural man threatened by chaos, the representative of the German cultural experience. The ‘culture of professors’ of the cultivated and liberal bourgeoisie would like to try to conserve this spiritual-cultural world, in the crisis of social transformation, which is taken as a global historical crisis, through the concept of a science of value of cultural historical humanity (Gebhardt 1989, 117).15

13 Rehmann notices the paradox that the real frontlines contradict the labels: “Whereas Naturalism stands for determinate models of societal development, historicism represents the search for eternity in history” (Rehmann 1998, 146). 14 In Troeltsch’s opinion, the Baden school should have asked itself how to obtain “ultimate principles and measures of value” from history itself. This notwithstanding, the fabrication of a system of unchanging and universal values resulted in a construction unable to apprehend the never-ending flow of reality which formed the basic premise for the division between the natural and historical sciences (see Troeltsch, 1922). Furthermore, according to, Rehmann, regardless of whether the philosophy of values is rooted on an objective or a subjective plane, Weber and Rickert’s framework led to the omission of the social and historical context which had produced those values (see Rehmann 1998, 167 and ff.). 15 Both Windelband and Rickert were closer to the nationalistic viewpoints of Fichte than they were to the universalistic liberalism of Kant. In his youth, Rickert had declared that he was ‘appalled’ by the materialistic conception of history. He was remembered by his students as a fierce nationalist and, in his later years, as having been close to the Third Reich. In the words of Willey, “while at Zurich he also came into contact with Russian Marxism and read socialist books then proscribed in Germany. The materialist interpretation of history espoused by the socialists he found as repugnant as Scherer’s naturalistic interpretation of Faust” (Willey 1978, 141). This notwithstanding, neo-Kantian idealism was considered (erroneously) largely apolitical insofar as it tended to break political problems down into spiritual or moral categories. Tenbruch (1989) in particular attacked this interpretation, arguing against the figure of a solely logical Rickert of the historical sciences, contrasting it with an image of an author who, on the contrary, was in pursuit of a specific “Lebens – und Weltauffassung” (Tenbruch 1989, 46).



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Highlighting the political-ideological background that shaped the neoKantian axiology of the Baden school is especially useful for the purposes of this study. The anti-naturalist and anti-positivist roots of the idiographic framework of history, which lies at the base of the concept of the historical individual, had a strong anti-Marxist and anti-socialist component. Already beginning with Romanticism, the notion of historical individuality, the idea of the unrepeatableness and uniqueness of the event which was the object of history and hence the idea of the non-assimilability of its method to that of the natural sciences, were in part the consequence of the conservative reaction that was spreading rampantly throughout Germany following the French revolution. Here, naturalism was perceived as a product of revolutionary France inasmuch as it posed the idea of universal equality based on a supposed natural equality of human beings. Positivism, as an attempt on the part of the naturalist paradigm to colonise the human sciences, was thus regarded with suspicion. It was partly for this reason that it did not attract the same amount of attention, or become as widespread in Germany, as it did elsewhere, especially in France and Great Britain (see Bertolino 1939; Geymonat 1988).16 We can turn again to Troeltsch, for instance, to find an idea of the laws of nature being ineluctably intertwined with the ideals of the French revolution or of socialist brotherhood. Indeed, Troeltsch actually placed the positivism of Comte, Saint-Simon, Mill and Spencer alongside the socialist philos­ ophy of history from Fourier, to Cabet, to Marx.17 Nevertheless, the antiMarxism underlying the anti-naturalism of the Baden historicists was born in reaction to a vulgarised version of historical materialism, reduced to a research paradigm for laws of development, which ended up negating the specific natures of peoples and nations. Without going into the Marxian conception of history in depth – an extremely complex topic to which justice could not be done in the context of this study – we can nonetheless note the extent to which the positivist image of Marxian 16 As Weber himself asserts, German idealist philosophy after Fichte, the studies of the German historical school of law and those of the historical school of economics threw up a mighty barrier “to the infiltration of naturalistic dogma” (Weber 1949, 86). 17 According to Rehmann, the “neo-Kantian opposition between ‘thought’ and ‘truth’, between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ etc. enabled [Weber] to fight against the most diverse variants of developmental thought and at the same time to work on a theory of occidental cultural development that is founded especially on the differentiation of the value spheres” (Rehmann 1998, 158). Tenbruch was likewise surprised by the fact that Weber had spent his life defending the uniqueness and non-iterability of historical events against objective laws of development, while in the realm of his studies of world religion he had proposed an evolutionist interpretation (see Tenbruch 1975).

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historiography was a caricature. Not only are there passages in Marx’s work in which he even seems to outline a quasi-Vicoian vision of history as being in contrast with nature,18 but the whole of his theoretical contribution has been defined as, first and foremost, the opening up of the “continent of history” to scientific exploration.19 For the ‘practical materialist’, the very idea of history being repeatable was unthinkable.20 However, the anti-naturalist and anti-Marxist acrimony of the Baden school, as well as that of other German historicist schools, was largely directed not towards Marx’s theory, but towards the egalitarian and intrinsically anti-nationalistic idea that Marxism inspired. As August Faust, a student of Rickert, reported, Rickert’s lessons invariably turned into heated orations with nationalistic overtones, in which he rejected “the idea of humanity as a pale abstraction” and proclaimed the concept of nation as the only concept worthy of note (see Willey 1978, 142). It was in this climate that Max Weber’s intellectual and political development was taking place. As he was an integral part of the Heidelberg neo-criticist current of thought, his theoretical reflections shared some of that trend’s fundamental elements, in particular its idiographic framework for the human and historical sciences. Nonetheless, his methodological and substantive thought process, as we shall see, progressively freed itself from the grip of his teachers in more areas than one, leading him seriously to reconsider their ideas. 5. Historical Individual and Subjective Axiology in Max Weber It is well-known that Heinrich Rickert’s work The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science had a particularly strong influence on Weber’s methodological writings. As Weber himself stated in his first paper published in 190321 – a piece which marked the beginning of what has been 18 As Marx wrote in a famous passage from his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx 1987, vol. 11, 103). 19 The reference is to Althusser 1969. 20 For an overview of the conception of history in Marx, see in particular Assoun 1978, Riquelme 1980, Bernstein 1981, Schmidt 1981 and Tomba 2012. 21 The text appeared with the title “Roschers historische Methode” in Schmollers Jahrbuch, vol. XXVII in 1903. The faculty of philosophy of the University of Heidelberg provided Weber with an opportunity to take part in the methodological debate by contributing a piece to be published in a Festschrift commemorating the centennial of the faculty’s



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defined as his ‘second phase’ – one of the aims of his studies was “to test the value of [Rickert’s] ideas for the methodology of economics” of the historical and social sciences (Weber 1975, 213, footnote 9).22 It was thus that, from 1903 onwards, Weber set himself to producing a series of methodological texts with which he intended to make his contribution to the Methodenstreit and, in particular, to the debate over the role of the historical individual in the historical and social sciences.23 In these writings, Weber revived some of the central themes of the neo-Kantian school of Heidelberg. To begin with, he borrowed the notion of the historical individual directly from Rickert and presented it as an undisputed differential element between the natural sciences and the historical and social sciences. In Weber’s mind, to history there pertains “knowledge of founding. However, the text was received too late to be included in the collection. Marianne Weber points out that, although Weber had always been interested in methodological questions, the chance to apply himself more seriously to the topic was provided to him in part by this opportunity offered by the University of Heidelberg, but it was also in part the fact that it was impossible for him to return to teaching, which prompted him to closet himself in his “quiet study” and find once more the strength to work. Therefore, “what he did and how things presented themselves did not matter to him as long as he was able to work at all (…) He attached no importance whatever to the form in which he presented his wealth of ideas (…) For him the great limitation of discursive thought was that it did not permit the simultaneous expression of several correlative lines of thought. Thus a great deal had to be hastily crammed into long, convoluted sentences, and whatever could not be accommodated there had to be put in footnotes. The reader ‘kindly’ take as much trouble as he himself did!” (Weber 1988, 307–309). 22 As Weber’s intellectual debt to Windelband and the personal relationship between Weber and Rickert (in addition, naturally, to Rickert’s influence on Weber’s thought) are well-documented, it is not necessary to deal with them at length here. Among the most important works on this topic are those of Signore 1989; Bianco 1989; Oakes 1987 and 1988. 23 The Methodenstreit [debate over methods] referred to here began in 1883 with the publication of Austrian economist Carl Menger’s book, Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences. This work kindled an extremely heated debate with the proponents of the historical school of economics. The controversy between the two schools hinged on the role of theory in economic inquiry, on whether the method of inference employed should be inductive or deductive, and on whether it was possible to abstract from general social factors and consider isolated economic phenomena in ideal-typical terms. To quote Roversi, “the themes they emphasise – the question of the constitutive properties of phenomena, the question of the choice of problems, the question of the method to use and so forth – are issues that soon became regular in the debates between humanities’ scholars; they summarise as a whole the thematic horizon within which the more general controversy between positivism and historicism had been developing – in the broad sense of the terms – in the decades linking the 19th and 20th century” (Roversi 1980, 14; see also Roversi 1985 and 1988). Turchetto (1987), on the other hand, does not believe that Menger’s response to the problems posed by the historical school provides a different conception of the science in question. Both the historicist and the marginalist positions, for Turchetto, share the same field as the positivist, even if the first adopts biology as a model thanks to its affinity with the classical idea of ‘economic development’, while the second harkens back to ‘purer’ sciences such as mechanical physics or atomistic chemistry.

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those aspects of reality which we regard as essential because of their ­individual peculiarities” (Weber 1975, 57).24 In the same vein, he writes: The social-scientific interest has its point of departure, of course, in the real, i.e., concrete, individually-structured configuration of our cultural life in its universal relationships which are themselves no less individually-structured, and in its development out of other social cultural conditions, which themselves are obviously likewise individually structured (Weber 1949, 74).

Moreover, like Rickert and the neo-Kantian thinkers of Baden, Weber also believed that the distinctive criterion for the natural and historical sciences was methodological in nature. Nonetheless, for Weber the historical individual, in its role as an element specific to the historical sciences, also possesses an ontological foundation. In other words, it is based on the assumption of the meaningless infinity of historical-social reality – an assumption that prevents any typological concepts belonging uniquely to the field of the generalising sciences from being employed. In the words of Weber, “the inexhaustibility of ‘its content’ as regards possible focal points for our interest is what is characteristic of the historical individual of the ‘highest’ order” (Weber 1949, 151). It was on the basis of this assumption that Weber introduced the ideal type as an instrument for the formation of individual historical concepts. The ideal type (a term which Weber borrowed from both Georg Jellinek and Carl Menger) is the conceptual instrument he establishes as the suitable method for developing causal nexus hypotheses. As Weber put it, the ideal type is not a description of reality but it aims to give unambiguous means of expression to such a description (…) An ideal-type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct [Gedankenbild] (Weber 1949, 90).

Alongside the elements in common, Weber’s methodological framework nevertheless exhibited a number of significant differences in comparison with that of the Heidelberg school. The distance between the two is 24 Weber employed the term ‘historical individual’ [das historische Individuum] for the first time in 1904, in his paper on the objectivity of knowledge in the social sciences. “Thus far”, Weber wrote, “we have been dealing with ideal-types only as abstract concepts of relationships which are conceived by us as stable in the flux of events, as historically individual complexes in which developments are realized. There emerges however a complication, which reintroduces with the aid of the concept of ‘type’ the naturalistic prejudice that the goal of the social sciences must be the reduction of reality to ‘laws’” (Weber 1949, 101).



historical individual to the sociological personality33

particularly great with regard to the translation of the concept of the ‘historical individual’ into the language of the social and political sciences. Unlike the universalist axiology that characterised the historical individual in Rickert’s work, the ideal-typical conceptualisation of historical individuals in Weber’s work had as a premise a subjective value relation. To quote Weber: “The ‘points of view’, which are oriented towards ‘values’, from which we consider cultural ‘objects’ of historical research, change” (Weber 1949, 159). If the perspectives from which the object of historical research is viewed are changeable, then the validity and objectivity of historical research exist only if the ‘value relation’ [Wertbeziehung] – i.e., the subjective perspective on which the investigation is based – is clearly stated, and if the investi­ gation is followed by an empirical assessment of the results obtained. Weber thus shifted the problem of the objectivity of historical knowledge from the realm of universal and objective values (where Rickert had situated it) to the a posteriori of experience or, in other words, to the level of scientific causal imputation. Weber argued that “the meaning we ascribe to the phenomena – that is, the relations which we establish between these phenomena and ‘values’ – is a logically incongruous and heterogenous factor which cannot be ‘deduced’ from the ‘constitutive elements’ of the event in question” (Weber 1975, 108). The selection of the object of inquiry itself is dependent upon subjective choices that are linked to ‘incommensurable’ values. Indeed, Weber wrote, “it is really a question not only of alternatives between values but of an irreconciliable death-struggle, like that between ‘God’ and the ‘Devil’” (Weber 1949, 17). By linking the moment of selection of the object of inquiry to a subjective process and by asserting the non-universal nature of values themselves, Weber made it clear just how far was his position from one of the cornerstones of the Baden school. For Weber, it was still an axiology that constituted the foundation of the historical sciences; nevertheless, it was a ‘subjective axiology’ or, in other words, it rested upon subjectively established values whose worth remained, precisely, subjective. But what were the theoretical premises of such a position? And what could be seen as its theoretical and political implications? 5.1. Subjectivism and Polytheism of Values. Weber between Menger and Nietzsche The selection of objects of historical inquiry and the ideal-typical conceptualisation of historical individuals, when undertaken from the point of

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departure of a subjective and not universal axiology, constituted, as we have seen, a decisive difference with respect to the Baden school’s neoKantian historicism. The theoretical premises of Weber’s position can be found in two areas: on the one hand, the influence exerted over Weber by Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian marginalist school and initiator of the economic Methodenstreit; and, on the other hand, the impression made on Weber by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose anti-historicist and anti-positivist criticism had made an indelible mark on the historiographical Methodenstreit. To understand how Menger’s influence contributed to bringing about this subjectivist shift on Weber’s part, it is worthwhile to take a brief look at the basic parameters of his work. Setting himself up in open opposition to the German historical school of economics, the dominating force during the second half of the nineteenth century, Menger published his Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre in 1871. The bone of conten­ tion between the German historical school and what would later become the Austrian marginalist school hinged on the role that theory should play and, in particular, on the question of what role the relationship between the individual and society should play, in the explanation of economic and social phenomena. What Menger disputed above all was a certain organicism on the part of the historical school, which viewed institutions, and the state in particular, as sui generis entities. Menger argued that the German historical school of economy was the promoter of an ingenuous inductivist perspective, and thus it was unable to provide an adequate response to Hume’s problem of induction. In his opinion, an economic science should introduce strictly universal assertions – or, in other words, ‘laws’ – by employing a rule of cognition capable of uniting universality and empiricism. Such a rule, wielded as a sort of principle of induction that is valid a priori, defined the precise perspective of historical inquiry.25 As L.H. White wrote: 25 Menger drew a distinction between ‘general knowledge’ and ‘individual knowledge’, ascribing them to the theoretical sciences and the historical sciences respectively. He did, however, insist upon the fact that without general knowledge or, in other words, without theory, neither the historical explanation of events nor the prediction and control of events are possible. Moreover, in the realm of theoretical research, we can make a further distinction between the empiricist-realist orientation, which tends toward phenomenal laws, which allow for exceptions, and the exact orientation, which proposed to establish strict phenomenal laws, which allowed no room for exception. However, these two approaches should be considered hierarchically, meaning that ‘exact’ theoretical knowledge is superior to ‘empiricist-realist’ knowledge (see Turchetto 1987). As Antiseri (1991) observed, the exact orientation set out to construct not falsifiable ideal-type models of



historical individual to the sociological personality35 In seeking the ‘essence’ of economic relationships, Menger sought the necessary characteristics of those relationships, those features which must be present by nature of the relationship involved. In this manner Menger proposed to discover ‘exact’ laws governing economic phenomena: not laws of mathematical precision, but laws which follow necessarily from the essential nature of the factors involved, and thus are invariably true regardless of time and place. For Menger (and for Böhm- Bawerk, who shared in this philosophical orientation) the nature of the physical world (the scarcity of natural resources) together with human nature (the desire for greater satisfaction of wants) determine the essential structure of the economic world (White 1977, 7).

In the now famous words of Menger, “the collectivity as such is not a big unified subject, who has needs, who works and competes. It is rather a peculiar multiplicity of individual economies” (quoted in Antiseri 2006, 114). Having gone back to the theoretical and political problem of the English classical economists and reconsidered the German subjectivist-individualist tradition of H. von Jakob and Hufeland, for Menger it was a question of restating the nature of the state and of economic institutions as unforeseen consequences of individual rational actions. This would help to undermine both collectivist enthusiasm for the state as agent of economic policy and, consequently, the idea that collective institutions possess some intrinsic rationality. Menger thus explained prices, exchange of commodities, private property and the division of labour as social embodiments of individual rationality. Economic theory therefore had to adopt single individual rationalities as its object of inquiry, from which it derived the unquestionable individuality and subjectivity of the viewpoints from which it undertook scientific work. The result was a subjective theory of value according to which the value attributed to an object is entirely subjective and depends upon an evaluation of the object’s ability to satisfy, at a given time, an equally subjective need. Preferences, choices and values thus became ‘incomparable’. The value of commodities is determined trends in economic events and, as Menger himself stated in the Investigations, “those who want to validate pure economic theory through experiment and reality do like a mathematician who wished to demonstrate the theorems of geometry by measuring real objects, without reflecting on the fact that these objects are never identical to the magnitudes that pure geometry presupposes and that each measurement is necessarily imprecise” (quoted in Antiseri 1991, 27–28). Furthermore, the atomistic explanation, which traces its fundamental element back to the homo oeconomicus abstraction, makes use of a certain but not empirically real theoretical category (Turchetto 1987, 111). For an analysis of the Mengerian dimensions of Weber’s sociology see also Clarke 1991.

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solely by their subjective scarceness or, in other words, by the degree to which the demand for those goods is greater than their availability. In opposition to heteronormative theories of well-being, the marginalist revo­lution set out to negate the possibility of an objective universal criterion of social well-being and to affirm the dimension of choice, as the selection of the most suitable means among a range of alternative means in order to satisfy subjective needs.26 Weber was strongly influenced by the Mengerian paradigm. Joining Menger in his criticism of the organicism and emanatism of the historical school, and distancing himself from Rickert’s criteria of universal values, Weber recasted the problem of the selection of the object of inquiry and of the process of scientific explanation in terms of subjective choice of values. It was necessary that this choice be made due to the unlimited availability of values and the cognitive requirements of an explanation of individual social-historical facts. Weber adopted not only Menger’s general theoretical perspective with regard to the responsibilities of the empirical sciences and the role of theory, but also his fundamental perspective regarding the necessary subjectivity of choice criteria. On this topic, Veca argues that the dimension of choice, one of the Weberian Leitmotive at different levels of articulation of his analyses (not only methodological but also substantial ones) assumes in this context the familiar (for pure economic theory) aspect of choice between alternative means, in the presence of scarcity, under the pressure of needs and in the perspective of their satisfaction (Veca 1981, 15–16).

The subjectivist axiology wielded by Weber nevertheless was deeply marked also by the influence of Nietzsche (see Campelli 1999; Turner 1992; Turner 1999). It was particularly the Nietzschean metaphor of the polytheism of values, and the problem of power underlying it, which shaped Weber’s reflections on the topic of value-relation [Wertbeziehung]. As Charles Turner put it, “Weber’s stress on the one-sidedness of historical inquiry is unthinkable without Nietzsche’s second untimely meditation” (Turner 1992, 47). Nietzsche’s influence on Weber’s subjective axiology is also emphasised by is Bryan S. Turner, according to whom 26 The political implications of such a position lay in adopting a liberal perspective that made it impossible to draw comparisons between unequal social situations. Indeed, a comparison could only be subjective, and not objective. This negated the possibility of the state intervening as tertium super partes through the institution of political and economic measures aimed to enforce desired levels of social well-being, which had previously been decided upon by those in power.



historical individual to the sociological personality37 Nietzsche had argued that we can only know the world from some vantage point or perspective, in the current situation these perspectives are in a state of constant conflict, and finally therefore reason has very specific limitations. The authority of these perspectives lies not necessarily in its inherent analytical or moral value, but on the political powers which underpin intellectual authority. Weber’s uncertainty about the ability of sociology ever to know the world unambiguously followed from this lesson of Nietzsche’s epistemology and hence his various analyses of sociological method (ideal types, the principles of hermeneutic understanding, the factvalue distinction and so forth) were thoroughly grounded in Nietzsche (Turner 1999, xiii).

In his On the Utility and Liability of History for Life, Nietzsche gave a voice to the resentment of a certain German milieu by criticising the sad imitation of positivism by German historicism. Nietzsche’s attack against the fascination exercised by positivism on German history would later translate into the irrationalist concerns of Lebensphilosophie, eager to restore value to the investigation of man and the inquiry into the multi-faceted nature of life’s elusive manifestations. Nietzsche opposed what he regarded as the monolithic nature of values in the Jewish-Christian tradition with the polytheism of the ancient Greek civilisation. Monotheism, or the “doctrine of one normal human type”, was for Nietzsche “perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity”. In “polytheism”, on the other hand, “the free-spiriting and many-spiriting of man attained its first preliminary form” (Nietzsche 2001, 128). The polytheism of values, however, did not fit into a relativist perspective at all. This aspect was understood well by Carl Schmitt, in whose opinion the “clearest” answer to the question about values “is to be found in Max Weber’s writings” (Schmitt 1996, 19). According to Schmitt’s interpretation of Weber’s position, “the genuinely subjective freedom of valuesetting leads, however, to an endless struggle of all against all, to an endless bellum omnium contra omnes” (Schmitt 1996, 20). In this interpretation, the Weberian ‘polytheism of values’, if we once more follow Schmitt’s reasoning, did not prefigure a situation where the diverse conceptions of the world all enjoyed equal legitimacy. Terms like ‘standpoint’ or ‘viewpoint’ divert one’s attention and give the impression of an apparently limitless relativism, relationism and perspectivism, and concomitantly, of as great a tolerance, joint to a fundamental neutrality. Before long, however, one becomes aware of the fact that here, too, the points of attack are at work, dispersing the illusions of neutrality (Schmitt 1996, 22).

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Thus, in Schmitt’s interpretation, Weber’s subjectivist axiology in fact constituted a Kampfplatz, a battlefield for opposing values pitted against each other as “points of attack” which carries with it the potential aggressiveness that is immanent in each value-attribution (Schmitt 1996, 22). In Weber’s own words: The fate of an epoch which has eaten of the tree of knowledge is that it must know that we cannot learn the meaning of the world from the results of its analysis, be it ever so perfect; it must rather be in a position to create this meaning itself. It must recognize that general views of life and the universe can never be the products of increasing empirical knowledge, and that the highest ideals, which move us most forcefully, are always formed only in the struggle with other ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours are to us (Weber 1949, 57).

It is subjective values that are considered the ‘supreme ideals’ that motivate individuals’ actions. As they take on a sacred nature for each individual, they therefore inevitably lead to conflict. Thus, if Weber used Menger’s theory to appropriate the scientific procedure of the historical sciences from the organicism of the historical school and from the axiological absolutism of neo-Kantianism, it was nonetheless Nietzsche who provided the philosophical foundation that prevented the Weberian problem of subjective Wertbeziehung from falling into relativism and which revealed its political orientation.27 The affinities, however, end here; ultimately, the distance between Weber’s theoretical, philosophical and political perspectives and those of Menger and Nietzsche turn out to be decisive. Weber’s position differed from that of Menger in at least two senses. On the one hand, Weber did not share Menger’s excessive confidence in the virtues of a regime of economic liberalism, whose lacunae and distortions would have to be limited by the intervention of a state both strong as well as sensitive to a number of the appeals for social and political justice being made by the German workers’ movement. On the other hand, Weber rejected the Mengerian belief in the universality of economic rationality, considering it to be a specific ethical ideal and not a psychological universal. As for Nietzsche, Weber rejected both his anti-historicism and the irrationalist implications of his Lebensphilosophie. The Nietzschean acrimony towards history and, in particular, positivistic versions of it, was incompatible with the intellectual sensibility of Weber, whose background as a historian had 27 On the relationship between Weber and Nietzsche, see also Baumgarten 1964; Aron 1998; Di Marco 1984; Strong 1992; Colliot-Thélène 1992.



historical individual to the sociological personality39

been profoundly influenced by the positions of Schmoller’s German historical school. In addition, in Weber’s mind, the irrationalism typical of Nietzchean Lebensphilosophie constituted one of the greatest dangers facing the historical sciences. Weber believed that the fact of having adopted an anti-rationalist approach to the study of social phenomena and human events was, indeed, the reason for which history was not included within the family of the sciences. As we shall see, it was on the anti-rationalist battlefield that Weber developed his truly innovative notion of the ‘historical individual’. 6. Causality and Rationality Versus Unpredictability and Irrationality of Action At the close of the nineteenth century, the idea of the intrinsic ‘irrationality of human will’ was the common denominator among various schools of a historicist bent. According to this position, the unpredictability of human actions made it impossible to propose a causal explanation within the historical sciences, as it was precisely the actions of those individuals for which they had to give an account. Weber criticised this position harshly, subjecting some of its most influential promoters to extremely detailed criticism.28 In particular, he maintained that the philosophical basis of that which he defined as “the philosophical archetype of all metaphysical theories of culture and personality” (Weber 1975, 118) was nothing other than the Kantian principle of “causality through liberty”.29 28 The wide range of disciplines from which the authors against whom his criticism was directed came, moreover, showed not only the extent to which this area of study had become widespread, but also demonstrated Weber’s audacity in framing the subject of causality in history in completely new terms. Among the authors targeted by Weber’s criticism, we can find the representative of the historical school of economics Karl Knies, the historian Edward Meyer, the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel and the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. Although we cannot here go into detail regarding the criticisms Weber aimed at each of these authors, it is nonetheless opportune to recall briefly the principal targets, as it was through a rigorous comparison with those authors that Weber was able to express and clarify the methodological and substantive guidelines of his own historical-social sciences. Specifically, he criticised Knies’s ontological irrationalism, Meyer’s criterion for causal relevance of historical events, Croce’s methodological intuitionism and the relationship between understanding [Verstehen] and interpretation [Deutung] proposed by Simmel. On this topic, see Weber 1949. On the Verstehen-Erklären controversy, see in particular Apel 1982. 29 Here Weber was referring to the part on The Transcendental Doctrine of Elements in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant stated, “when we are dealing with what happens there are only two kinds of causality conceivable by us; the causality is either according to

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Kant’s position with regard to liberty and causality had been understood as affirming the possibility of interpreting only natural phenomenon according to a principle of causal recursivity or, in other words, based on the possibility of making ‘generalisations’. Weber’s criticism of Kant therefore expressed his desire to “subtract human action to a declaration of irrationality, that would have precluded the possibility to provide an explanation” (Rossi 2001, xvii). In his methodological writings, produced between 1903 and 1913, Weber thus sought to settle accounts with his former neo-Kantian ‘philosophical conscience’,30 and distanced himself even further from the German historicist paradigm. For Weber, it was a question of first and foremost demonstrating that human action, in its role as the driving force of history, was not in the least unpredictable or irrational. When presenting this position, Weber provided examples drawn both from daily life as well as paradigmatic historical examples. In his mind, both of these demonstrated the extent to which every individual, regardless of specific historical or social context, was caught so tightly in a net of social expectations and limitations as to render him or her ‘predictable’ to the same extent to which individual natural phenomena were predictable. Indeed, for Weber, the determination of human conduct from a logical point of view [is not] different from the ‘statical’ computations of a bridge builder, the agricultural-chemical calculations of an agricultural economist, and the physiological hunches of a stock breeder (…) Each of these ‘calculations’ is satisfactory if it produces the empirically attainable degree of ‘precision’ which is necessary and sufficient, given the specific purpose and the condition of the source material (Weber 1975, 120).

Furthermore, “the ‘calculability’ of ‘natural processes’ in the domain of ‘weather forecasting’, for example, is far from being as ‘certain’ as the ‘calculation’ of the conduct of a person with whom we are acquainted” (Weber 1975, 120). Nevertheless, predicting individuals’ actions was possible only nature or arises from freedom. The former is the connection in the sensible world of one state with a preceding state on which it follows according to a rule. (…) By freedom, on the other hand, in its cosmological meaning, I understand the power of beginning a state spontaneously. (…) Freedom, in this sense, is a pure transcendental idea, which, in the first place, contains nothing borrowed from experience, and which, secondly, refers to an object that cannot be determined or given in any experience” (Kant 2003, A532, B560, 464). 30 The allusion here is to Marx’s and Engels’ well-known statement in The German Ideology about settling accounts with post-Hegelian philosophy in general, and Feuerbach’s philosophy in particular (see Marx and Engels 1987, vol. 29, 264). Such an operation has been paralleled to Weber’s settling accounts with neo-Kantianism and to his relationship with Rickert; see, for instance, Rehmann 1998.



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insofar as those actions could be considered ‘rational’, that is to say, reasonable, based upon a reconstruction of the aims that motivated the individual and the means employed to achieve them. In this way, Weber modified Menger’s notion of rationality both by removing the boundaries of the economic sphere where the latter had confined it, and by translating it into methodological and sociological terms (Rossi 1988; Veca 1981). As has already been noted, Menger was a fundamental point of reference for the development of Weber’s theoretical views. The marginalist paradigm offered Weber not only an opportunity to criticise the organicism of the historical school of economy and pose the question of choice criteria in subjective terms, but also to identify more clearly his theoretical field of research in individual rational action, which would allow him to espouse his staunchly anti-Marxist political positions on a broader methodological and substantive plane. As he stated in one of his well-known writings on the categories of interpretive sociology [verstehende Soziologie]: Interpretive [verstehende] sociology (as we have defined it) treats the single individual and his action as its basic unit, as its ‘atom,’ if a questionable analogy is allowed here. (…) Concepts such as the ‘state,’ ‘association,’ ‘feudalism,’ and the like generally indicate for sociology categories of certain kinds of joint human action; it is therefore the task of sociology to reduce these concepts to ‘understandable’ action, meaning, without exception, the action of the participating individuals (Weber 1981, 158).

The rationality of means and aims therefore, within Weber’s theoretical approach, became the basis of social orders. All the same, in the anti-­ rationalist battle in which he was engaged in the early years of the twentieth century, this notion of rationality would be applied to human action as a framework allowing it to be understood [verstanden] and explained [erklärt]. Both demanded an ability to recognise the aim and the means available for carrying out actions, since “the relation between ‘means’ and ‘ends’ is intrinsically accessible to a rational account which produces generalisations, generalisations that have the property of ‘nomological regularity’” (Weber 1975, 186). The explanation of human action became a teleological explanation, where the aim took on the role of the cause of the action. Weber thus maintained not only that it was possible to introduce causal explanation into the sphere of historical consideration, but also that individuals’ actions possessed a higher degree of intelligibility than natural phenomena. The need for causal explanation in an analysis of human behaviour could in fact be satisfied not only beginning with its compatibility with certain rules of experience which were the tacit knowledge of the scientist, just as they were the tacit knowledge of the common

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individual, but also with the ability to ‘understand’ human behaviour or, in other words, to interpret it in a meaningful way. As Weber stated, “because of its susceptibility to a meaningful interpretation – and to the extent that it is susceptible to this sort of interpretation – individual human conduct is in principle intrinsically less ‘irrational’ than the individual natural event” (Weber 1975, 125). Indeed, alongside the causal explanation, the sciences dealing with the study of the individual events which act as the frame for human action can “identify a concrete ‘motive’ or complex of motives ‘reproducible in inner experience’” (Weber 1975, 125). This, for Weber, enables us to determine the meaning of that action. Human behavior, ‘external’ or ‘internal’ exhibits both relational contexts [Zusammenhänge] and regularities in its course, as do all occurrences. Unique to human behavior, however, (at least in the fullest sense), are relationships and regularities whose course can be intelligibly interpreted. An ‘understanding’ [Verständnis] of human behavior achieved through interpretation contains in varying degrees, above all, a specific qualitative ‘self-evidence’ [Evidenz]. (…) The instrumentally rational [zweckrational] interpretation possesses the highest measure of ‘self-evidence’. Instru­ mentally rational behavior is behavior exclusively oriented to means (subjectively) considered adequate to attain goals (subjectively) clearly comprehended (Weber 1981, 151).

It was within this context that ‘interpretive sociology’ would become the discipline expected to provide an appropriate explanation and understanding of historical processes. Its aim would be to identify the ‘subjectively intentioned’ sense of action, the linchpin upon which explanations of historical individuals as constellations of individual rational agents would hinge. 7. Towards a Theory of Personality The Weberian model of causal explanation for action, essential to interpretive sociology, differed from the explicative model of the exact sciences only insofar as it was unable to formulate universal laws. Nonetheless, within the framework of interpretive sociology it was possible to formulate judgements of objective possibility or, in other words, inferences based on observation of the uniformity of individual actions on a social level, which made it possible to trace the facts being investigated within a network of causal connections. In defiance of those views which stated that the historical sciences were possibly non-scientific, basing this assertion on the presumed irrationality of human action, Weber set out to demonstrate the extent to which it was



historical individual to the sociological personality43

possible to trace human action back to the categories of aim and means, which allowed for a rational understanding and therefore a causal and teleological explanation of the said action. Furthermore, unlike those views that equated liberty with irrationality (or unpredictability), Weber believed that it was precisely free action which, more than any other, could be located within a framework of rational action. In this context Weber introduced his concept of personality for the first time. He contrasted freedom and nature, free action and naturalistically compulsory action; while the former indicated action not bound to follow a set course determined by natural constraints, the latter indicated compulsive action, naturalistically determined insofar as it was shaped by psychiatric dynamics. If naturalistically determined action was therefore psychopathic action – the “principle of the madman”, as Weber defined it – free and rational action was then that which allowed the emergence of ‘personality’. In particular such a conception of free action qua personality as the proper object of inquiry for the historical sciences enabled Weber to subtract the concept of personality from the sphere of ‘irrationalist’ speculation. As Weber wrote: Suppose that in the present sense of freedom, an action is more free than would otherwise be the case. It follows that the sense in which this action qualifies as a ‘natural event’ is more limited than would otherwise be the case. It also follows that the ascription of a ‘personality’ to the actor is more appropriate than would otherwise be the case – ‘personality’ [is] a concept which entails a constant and intrinsic relation to certain ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life, ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ which are forged into purposes and thereby translated into rational-teleological action. Consider now the romanticist-naturalistic concept of ‘personality’. In contrast to the foregoing concept of ‘personality’, this concept seeks the real sanctuary of the personal in the diffuse, undifferentiated, vegetative ‘underground’ of personal life; i.e., in that ‘irrationality’ which rests upon the maze of an infinitude of psychophysical conditions for the development of temperament and feeling. This is a sense of ‘irrationality’ in which both the ‘person’ and the animal are ‘irrational’. If an action is ‘more free’ than would otherwise be the case, then it becomes increasingly inappropriate to ascribe this sort of personality to the actor. Treitschke occasionally refers to the ‘riddle of person­ ality’, a fashionable expression. The romanticist concept of personality lies behind this notion. (…) From the viewpoint of historical ‘interpretation’, the ‘personality’ is not a ‘riddle’. On the contrary, it is the only possible object of ‘interpretive’ understanding (Weber 1975, 192–193).

In other words, insofar as the concept of personality referred to the individual’s interiority characterised by ‘constancy’ – that is to say, by the enduring nature and consistency of the “ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life” – such values were the compass with which action was oriented.

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A constellation of central values around which the individual builds his/ her own interiority, therefore, was for Weber that which determined the aims that the individual sets him/herself and, consequently, the problem of the means with which to achieve them. In these terms, when cast as an amalgam of the values that determine the aims and the means of action, the personality, being rational, controls action. Thus personality, far from being a “riddle” – as the romanticist interpretation supposed – was, on the contrary, what Weber in the above quotation emphatically calls “the only possible object of ‘interpretive’ understanding”. We can see, therefore, why in the sphere of interpretive sociology and, more broadly speaking, within the Weberian methodological and theoretical framework, the idea of personality played a central role. Indeed, once subtracted from the quicksand of historicist irrationalism, personality showed itself to be the central element of a framework of study that attempted to unify the idiographic and nomothetic perspectives, understanding and explanation. History and the social sciences still had, in point of fact, the responsibility of explaining ‘historical individuals’, beginning with the actions of the personalities that had contributed to their making. The actions of these personalities could, nonetheless, be seen as rational, that is, as having been driven by interior values and ultimate meanings of life which helped to identify the aims and thus also the means of those actions. For Weber, the explanation-interpretation of historical events and social phenomena, seemed to be inevitably oriented toward the understanding of the sources of the interior elements at the foundation of individuals’ personality. It is in this light that we can understand the extent to which the study of religion became important in Weber’s research programme. As religion was a crucial source of values and meanings of life, the analysis of this subject promised to shed light on the motivations behind individuals’ actions and their (unpredictable) results. Above all, such an analysis became central for Weber’s attempt to understanding the motivations behind his most enduring object of inquiry, that is, the rise and functioning of capitalism. *** Ultimately, while remaining within the theoretical-methodological framework established by the neo-Kantian Heidelberg school, Weber brought a truly original perspective to the methodological statute of the historical social sciences. Generally speaking, this originality can be traced back to two easily identifiable theoretical movements. First and foremost, Weber



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continued to distinguish between sciences of the spirit (historical, or cultural) and natural sciences on the basis of a logical-methodological criterion; that is, on the basis of the idiographic aim of the former and the nomothetic aim of the latter. Nevertheless, in order to be considered science, the historical sciences had to define clearly the subjective-value criterion on which the choice of the object of inquiry was based and to follow a wholly causal explicative process – something that constituted a decisive break with Rickert’s universalist axiology.31 The need to preserve an explicative causal process, within historical sciences as well, was determined, moreover, by the fact that this was the distinctive characteristic of science as such. In Weber’s mind, a science is not a science if it is unable to provide a causal explanation for its object of inquiry.32 Secondly, Weber had identified the conception of history as a realm of irrational individuality – a conception to which the Baden school was not immune – as the principal obstacle to the introduction of causal explanation into the historical record.33 For Weber, on the other hand, history is a stage of historical individuals that can be seen as ‘ideal types’ of individual’s rational actions; precisely because they are ‘rational’, they can be causally explained and understood. In Weber’s mind, the idiographic nature of the historical social sciences – in addition to the implied assumption that their object of inquiry was the cultural world of men and women – required their focus to be on individuals. By introducing the notion of 31 Prior to Weber, the unearthing of causal explanation within the cultural sciences can be traced back to the neo-criticists of the Baden school. However, according to Iggers (1975), it is Weber to whom we must attribute the strength, systematic nature and heuristic practicality of the research process used to introduce this theme within the historical disciplines. 32 As Weber writes: “those empirical disciplines which employ the category of causality and investigate the qualities of reality – history and every ‘science of culture’ of any sort belongs to this group of disciplines – invariably employ the category in its full meaning. They conceive the circumstances and changes within concrete reality as ‘effected’ and as ‘effective’. In part, they attempt to establish ‘causal generalisations’ by abstracting from the concrete properties of a complex. In part, they attempt to ‘explain’ concrete ‘causal’ complexes on the basis of these ‘generalisations’. What role does the formulation of ‘generalisations’ play in such an investigation? What logical form do these generalisations assume? Are these generalisations actually formulated? These questions turn on the specific theoretical aim of the investigation” (Weber 1975, 196). 33 Despite the fact that the merit for substituting the classically romantic concept of individuality with that of the historische Individuum – a theoretical-conceptual construct, developed during the process of historiographical reconstruction, not bestowed during the course of history by divine will or an ideal emanation – lies with the philosophy of value proposed by Windelband and Rickert, their philosophy still retained the idea of an irrationalist and intuitionist divide. For an overview of the concept of personality in nineteenth century Germany see Markard 2004.

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teleological explanation and a framework of rational action, Weber dismantled the irrationalist views and made it possible to conceive of the historical-social disciplines as fully-fledged sciences. As we have seen, one of the obstacles on that path was the conception of the field of history as a realm of unpredictable personalities, based on what Weber defined as a ‘romantic’ idea of personality. In order to clear away this obstacle, one of his principle aims was to appropriate the concept of personality from that realm of irrational liberty, where he believed that Kant had confined it, and to relocate it in the intelligible sphere of sociological understanding and explanation. On the Kampfplatz of the notion of rational action and of ‘personality’, Weber encountered sociology. As a discipline that belonged to the family of the empirical sciences, sociology was undoubtedly a suitable terrain for the intellectual and political views that he had been developing. Unlike history,34 sociology had the potential to be a more proper terrain for the idea of history as the sphere of action of individual rational agents, that is, of personalities which could be understood through a procedure of empathetic understanding and whose actions could be causally explained through a reconstruction of those “ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life, ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ which are forged into purposes and thereby translated into rational-teleological action” (Weber 1975, 192).

34 On this point, Bianco effectively states that, “as an exclusively individualising form of knowledge”, history could not “provide the man of action” with sufficient tools. “The politician cannot learn much from events that are assumed to be unique and unrepeatable. Instead, that which praxis here demands of theory is knowledge capable of extracting, from specific cases in the past, rules which can be applied to the future. Sociology is, in this sense, preferable to history and, as a generalising science, it seems to offer the politician suitable instruments for achieving his practical ends. Sociology thus shows itself to be, in some way, a sort of middle ground between pure theory and praxis, and appears to bridge, at least in part, the gulf the separates science from politics in Weber’s thought” (Bianco 1989, 329).

CHAPTER TWO

A LEXICON OF INDIVIDUATION: BILDUNG, RELIGION, PERSONALITY Beautiful world, where are you? Come back, charming age of nature’s bloom (…) The fields mourn what has died out, No deity shows itself to my eye, Of that life-warm image Only the skeleton remains to me. All those blooms have fallen From the North’s winter blowing (Schiller 1788, 163 and ff., Translation in Morgan 2009, 8).1 [Weber’s] agreement with the Marxian analysis regarding the objective ­representation of development must necessarily come to an end when he confronts its exclusively dialectical and revolutionary implications. It must come to an end because [his understanding of] the value that is the ontological foundation of development is different: for Weber, it is individuality, liberty, in a sense opposed to the solution of Marx’s dialectics, [namely], in the sense of the salvation of the values of individualist humanism (Negri 1967, 451).

1. Introduction Weber employed various terms when referring to the ‘atom’ of sociology:2 namely, the individual and his or her actions. For example, he used the expressions ‘individual’ [Individuum], ‘individuality’ [Individualität] and 1 “Schöne Welt, wo bist du? – Kehre wieder,/ holdes Blüthenalter der Natur! (…) Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde,/ keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blik,/ Ach! von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde blieb nur das Gerippe mir zurück./ Alle jene Blüthen sind gefallen von des Nordes winterlichem Wehn […]” Die Götter Griechenlandes (Translation in Morgan 2009, 8). Weber borrowed the metaphor of the disenchantment of the world [Entzauberung der Welt] from Schiller’s poem. 2 The reference is to Weber’s well-known statement, according to which “interpretive [verstehende] sociology (…) treats the single in-dividual and his action as its basic unit, as its ‘atom’” (Weber 1981, 158). This is the quotation most often cited by supporters of the idea that Weber belonged to the tradition of methodological individualism. For a broader examination of methodological individualism and of Weber’s affiliation with it, see, in ­particular, Udéhn 2001.

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‘personality’ [Persönlichkeit] in different contexts.3 Yet, the concept of ‘personality’ [Persönlichkeit] was more clearly delineated in comparison to the others. By the latter term, Weber meant the central, interior system of values and ultimate meanings that expressed itself through rational actions, with their attendant aims and means (see Chapter One). Weber also referred to the concept of ‘total personality pattern’ [Gesam­ tpersönlichkeit] in order to describe that type of self which is rigorously coherent and unified under a set of strong values and convictions; in this context, individual actions should be understood “as symptoms and expressions of an underlying ethical total personality” (Weber 1978, 533). Weber’s most complete formulation of the concept of personality can be found in his writings on the sociology of religions. There he conducted an in-depth exploration of the origins of these ultimate values, or religious beliefs, and analysed the ways in which, according to him, different religions led to strikingly different types of rational actions. Weber’s ‘rationalist’ conception of personality – as was argued in the previous chapter – was his foundation for opposing methodological irrationalism’s conception of the role of the individual in history. His innovation, ­however, occurred within a specific historical, intellectual and political context, in which the concepts of individuality, personality and Bildung played a special role. The concept of ‘individuality’ in nineteenth-century German culture began to become clearly defined with romanticism, where it stood for an idea of “uniqueness, originality, self-realization (…) in contrast to the  rational, universal and uniform standards of the Enlightenment” (Lukes 1973, 17). At the opposite end of the spectrum from the universalist ideology that it was founded upon in France, the Individualität that pervaded German philosophy and historiography in particular lay at the foundation of “an organic and nationalist theory of community, each unique and self-sufficient” (ibid.), whose influence permeated conceptions of personality, community and the state. The concept of ‘personality’, in this context, was directly linked to this anti-universalist, humanistic ideal, and represented the moment of full realisation of the spiritual ­individuality of the nation in the single individual. To bring about this moment – that is, the edification of the personality of the individual as an embodiment of individuality – education [Bildung] was the most crucial element. Educa­tion had to accompany and bring to fruition the process of 3 Moreover, the term ‘individual’ was often replaced by the terms ‘person’ [Person] and ‘single’ [Einzeln] to indicate either a specific individual or a unit of analysis within the social sciences.



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self-edification, which  ­consisted of bringing the single individual ever closer to that model of humanity that had been set up as an ideal to be achieved.4 For this reason, throughout the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth, the concept of Bildung, to which the German bourgeoisie assigned a role of crucial importance in the development process of the personality of the Bürger, became the centre of a heated debate. Diverse conceptions of Bildung clashed in the philosophical and political arena while, simultaneously, new literary genres inspired by these conceptions were born and began to flourish.5 By virtue of the strategic importance conferred upon it, the concept of Bildung became the axis around which other social and cultural coordinates were plotted, including the concept of personality itself. Inner harmony, unity and coherence, self-control, true self-realisation – these were the key elements for the development of the nineteenth-century bourgeois personality in German-speaking countries. Like most bourgeois German intellectuals of his day, Weber was strongly influenced by the debate on education and the concepts of personality linked to it. His thoughts, however, took form at a time when the broader issue associated with Bildung was going through a moment of serious crisis. If, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one of the reasons for placing emphasis on education and personality was the fading of religious practices, as traditional sources of models for identity formation, “by the late nineteenth century”, as Goldman argues, “the new techniques and practices that had aided in shaping and equipping bourgeois individuals for lives and roles in nation, culture, and class were seriously weakened and persistently challenged by the pressures of a rapidly developing capitalist society” (Goldman 1993a, 163).6 In this conjuncture, when the traditional models for ‘individuation’ were in crisis,7 Weber’s contribution arguably also aimed to understand 4 Etymologically speaking, the German term Bildung comes from the root Bild [sign, image]. This concept refers to the process of reproducing an image, or to the result of such a process. For a historical and philological examination of ways in which the concept of Bildung has been employed in German-speaking nations, see, in particular, Vierhaus (1972). 5 The most important example of this is the Bildungsroman genre, first introduced by Wilhelm Meister Lehrjahre of von Goethe in 1795/6, and enriched over the years by countless works produced not only in German-speaking countries, but abroad as well. 6 Goldman goes on to note that Simmel “warned about the overwhelming of ‘subjective spirit’ by ‘objective spirit’; Troeltsch, (…) feared society was turning away from impersonal ideals to personal masters; and Thomas Mann (…) feared the overcoming of ‘Kultur’ by ‘civilization’” (Goldman 1993a, 163). 7 In this context, the term ‘individuation’ refers to the process of construction of the individuals’ self, or personality, as influenced in particular by religiofns. In this sense my use

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the significance and dynamics of such previous models in order to derive useful insights for the present. If religion had previously been the primary wellspring of identity, he believed that it was there that one had to begin in order to understand the mechanisms of personality formation and consolidation. A historical and comparative examination of religions as primary sources of the processes of individuation therefore promised to provide answers to address those issues that were coming to a head in a time of crisis, in a conjuncture marked by the transition to industrial capitalism and by the social and cultural issues that had arisen from it. This situation was the basis for Weber’s problematisation of the category of personality as a theoretical and political problem.8 2. Religion, between the Individual and Society In 1913, Weber started carrying out a historical and comparative analysis of the principal world religions. Begun nearly ten years after the publication of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and the subsequent debate, the main purpose of this new project was to corroborate the thesis that had been presented in the earlier work. According to that thesis, the type of rationalism to which ascetic Protestantism had given rise had been the key element in the birth of modern capitalism.9 In highlighting the religious roots of capitalism, Weber famously chose vulgar Marxism and its presumed economic determinism as particular of the term differs from the one adopted by Seidman and Gruber in their 1977 study of capitalism and individuation in Max Weber, for they confine the meaning of individuation to the process of formation of individual autonomy and self-determination in the Occident (see Seidman and Gruber 1977, 498). For an examination of the various uses of the term ‘individuation’ in different philosophical traditions see also Jung 1939 and Simondon 1989. 8 In Ringer’s view, the concepts which the idea of Bildung inherited from religious thought were of crucial importance. “For Schleiermacher and even for Humboldt, the self that was to be cultivated was a ‘higher’ self; it stood opposed to a merely natural self that was to be controlled and transcended (…) The Lutheran doctrine of ‘inner freedom’ and the Pietist emphasis on the individual soul’s unique path to salvation have long been regarded as important influences on German Idealism and Romanticism (…) [Humboldt himself saw self-cultivation as] a pursuit of ‘the salvation of the soul’ (…) Fully secularized, the language of Bildung in fact became a rhetoric of privacy … a privileged retreat from ordinary life; the ‘inward’ turn of thought, once emptied of religious significance, took on the character of passive and essentially gratuitous contemplation … Gone was the universality of the great Idealist and Romantic teleologies of an unfolding world-spirit or of a self-contemplating humanity. What was left was the purely individual teleology of Bildung as personal fulfillment” (Ringer 1969, quoted in Goldman 1992, 33–34). 9 For more on this topic, see Chapter Three of this book.



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targets for his polemic.10 Generally speaking, the entire theoretical framework supporting the sociology of religion (and arguably Weberian sociology as a whole) would not make sense without keeping this adversary in mind.11 Weber’s thoughts on the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism and, more broadly speaking, between religion and economic ethics, played instrumental roles in his polemic against Marx’s theory of historical transformation. Weber contested “the idea that historical development goes towards a univocal direction which can be interpreted according to rules which can be traced back to economic laws” (Bosco 1980, 32). The materialist conception of history (though in a rather caricatured and Second-Internationalist mechanistic version) thus became for him a theoretical opponent, as well as a clear and pressing matter of controversy on the political level. This occurred for various reasons. One was the historical and economic phase through which Germany was going at the turn of the century, which was driving historians and social scientists to find answers about how to ensure a suitable, non-conflictual development of capitalism. Another was the soaring growth of German Social Democracy. Finally, there was the curious mixture of the high regard in which Weber held Marx on an intellectual level, combined with the political antagonism he nourished towards Marxism. Weber intended to overturn the simplistic idea, which he erroneously attributed to Marx, that social and economic relations ruled supreme over the conscience, identity and social organisation of individuals. He therefore assigned to religion the role of a  psychological ‘imprint’ [Prägung] capable of conditioning behaviour, and especially economic behaviour, in profound and lasting ways. The imprint made by religions on individuals and on the social relationships they c­ reated was therefore translated into terms of economic ethics [Wirtschaftsethik] and specific kinds of rationality. Insofar as Weber’s criticism of historical materialism focused on the presumed monocausality of the Marxian research programme,12 he 10 For an examination of the relationship that Marx and different Marxist traditions have had with theology and religion, see most recently Boer 2007, 2009 and 2010. 11 “The results produced by an inquiry aimed at demonstrating the dependency of the Weberian structure of thought on the need to criticise Marxism”, as Antonio Negri puts it, “illuminates in particular the specific figure of the Weberian concept of individuality’” (Negri 1967, 451). For more on this topic, see also Salvadori 1990. 12 This is a misinterpretation, fuelled in particular by partial, decontextualised readings of Marx’s famous statement in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness” (Marx 1976, vol. 29, 263). A detailed evaluation of the relationship between structure [Basis] and superstructure [Überbau] in Marx’s works falls outside the scope of this work. For an in-depth examination of this

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­ roposed to overcome it by means of a multicausal model of explanation. p Weber did not, therefore, deny the role played by economic factors in the framework of other social spheres.13 On the contrary, his intention was to reaffirm their cogency along with other factors on the basis of a principle of causal reciprocity.14 It was for this reason that, while in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism he had explored “only one aspect of the causal relationship” – the influence of religion on economic behaviour – his later writings on the economic ethics of world religions took into account “both causal relationships, to the extent necessary for the discovery of points of comparison with the West’s development” (Weber 2011, 247). The objective of this inquiry was thus to demonstrate by comparative means the specific role played by ascetic Protestantism in the birth of the economic rationalism inherent to Western capitalism, and how other religions instead hindered that same type of development.15 Thus, Weber topic, see Furner 2007; Jakubowski 1990; Konstantinow 1955; Lukes 1982; Schmidt 1981 and Smith 1984. 13 Weber attributed to historical materialism the idea that “the specific nature of a religion is a simple ‘function’ of the social situation of the stratum which appears as its characteristic bearer, or that it represents the stratum’s ‘ideology,’ or that it is a ‘reflection’ of a stratum’s material or ideal interest-situation” (Weber 1946, 269–270). He countered this idea with the conviction that religious doctrines are influenced above all by religious sources themselves, rather than by the “social situation” of the strata that are the initiators and/or bearers of religions. As Weber put it, “however incisive the social influences, economically and politically determined, may have been upon a religious ethic in a particular case, it deceives its stamp primarily from religious sources, and, first of all, from the content of its annunciation and its promise” (Weber 1946, 270). 14 As Weber puts it: “Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. From ‘what’ and ‘for what’ one wished to be redeemed and, let us not forget, ‘could be’ redeemed, depended upon one’s image of the world” (Weber 1946, 280). This passage is one of those that most clearly assumes a position in opposition to historical materialism, but also one of the passages that has been most controversial. Various authors (Birnbaum 1973; Cavalli 1968; Löwy 1993; Löwith 1993; Turner 1981) have used this proposition as support for the opinion that Weber’s positions can be reconciled with a materialist perspective, or at least as proof that he did not intend to establish a causal supremacy of ideas over the economic sphere. 15 We do not know if Weber was thinking of conducting a comparative study of this kind when he set himself the task of investigating the origins of the bourgeois spirit. The current of Weber scholarship that Marshall (1982) has defined as ‘teleological’ (to which Schluchter, Tenbruch, Roth and Parsons belong) maintained that it was actually the attempt to construct a systematic theory of social change and social action which lay at the heart of his project. Regardless of his initial intentions, more or less systematic as they might have been, the fact that Weber outlined the studies that followed the Protestant Ethic in an essentially different manner, both methodologically and in substantive terms, is unquestionable. According to Fischoff, the later studies constitute a supplement and a correction compared to his previous work (Fischoff 1991, 63).



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did not deny that religious rationalisations had a social and economic ­origin. Indeed, in his mind, they exhibited the distinctive imprint of the interests that had determined their original proponents. Weber’s theoretical model therefore placed religions at a midway point between social conditions and individual actions. The specific configuration of every religion reflected certain given social, historical and political conditions. Nevertheless, religious beliefs, in turn, act upon the social, historical and political situations, imprinting believers with a distinctive modus vivendi and approach to the world. In a sense, Weber’s treatment of the theme of religion as a ‘connective element’ between social groups, social conditions and individuals is closely reminiscent of the work of Émile Durkheim.16 Particularly in The Division of Labour in Society and in Suicide, Durkheim analysed the role religious beliefs played in societies based on mechanical and organic solidarity. Durkheim called special attention to the extent to which the strength of religious beliefs was proportional to the level of cohesion between individuals. Religions which placed an emphasis on the faith community, as opposed to the single individual, were therefore structurally oriented towards a collective society (as, for instance, in Roman Catholicism or Judaism), and bound the single individual to the community more securely than religions which encouraged a greater individual autonomy (such as Protestantism), with the ­latter type more often leading to situations of anomie. In a similar way, Weber was also interested in religions as a historically central medium between the individual and society. However, Weber developed a much more sophisticated analysis of the process of individuation resulting from the influence of religions. His research focused not only on the role of religion as a ‘bond’ but, most importantly, on the role it played in forging the interior structure of the self, or of the personality. The comparative study of religions therefore became “an effort to seek out and understand the practices of the self that are prominent in other cultures and the type of person they strove to create, in order to make the comparison with Western practices” (Goldman 1993b, 856). 3. From Magic to Religion: Disenchantment and Rationalisation Weber provides a systematic analysis of the ethical and social origins, characteristics and consequences of religious processes in the second part of 16 For more on the specific issue of the relationship between the individual and society in Weber and Durkheim, see Yinger 1957, Abercrombie et al. 1986; Aron 1998.

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Economy and Society.17 He did not, however, provide a definition of religion itself in that text because he held that any scientific definition would have to be found “at the conclusion of the study” (Weber 1978, 399). Nor did he intend to deal with the ‘essence’ of religion. Rather, the clear objective that he set for himself was to investigate the conditions and effects of religiously or magically motivated actions as a “particular type of social action”.18 For Weber, the most important preliminary distinction at the root of the process of rationalisation – understood as the intellectual systematisation of cognitive dominion over the world and the disciplining of religious practices – was the separation between magic and religion. Magically motivated action, in Weber’s interpretation, is characterised by its claim to manipulate the spirits in order to obtain tangible and immediate results ‘in the world’. Magical thought shows us a world populated by enchanted forces that can be bent to human being’s will through the use of specific practices and through the intervention of expert individuals (witchdoctors and magicians, for instance). Religion, on the other hand, rejects such claims. Needs and desires may be religiously expressed and requests made of the divinity through prayers, invocations, devotion and practical action, but the sacrilegious hope or presumption to meddle “autonomously” with God’s will or to affect the order of the world must be rejected. The most important elements of rationalisation inherent in this process were: (1) religion’s progressive dismantling of those animistic or spiritual beliefs that were thought to control the world; (2) the accountability of human action to which this process gave rise (see Weber 1978, 404 et ff.). In Weber’s reading, magical practices attributed to human actions the ability to influence or to manipulate spirits, but in so doing they created confusion about who was the actual author of the magical practice and, thus, an imbalance of power by which the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a given magical practice was attributed either to the spirits themselves or to the individuals. Religious worship, on the other hand, removes individuals’ power to manipulate the divinities, which therefore came to be seen as infinitely more powerful, and whose will remained unknowable. Faith 17 His intention in this section of the work was to achieve a systematic organisation of the material that he had gathered during the course of his comparative studies. It was here that he set out to explain the historical individuality of modern capitalism starting from a specific form of rationality, which, like every process of “signification” in the world, had magical-religious origins. 18 In Weber’s view, “the most elementary forms of behavior motivated by religious or magical factors are oriented to this world. ‘That it may go well with thee … and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth’ [Deut. Ch. VI 4:40J]” (Weber 1978, 399).



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took the place of the hubris inherent to magical practice, and the individual, ignorant of divine will, was forced to reflect on the significance of his or her own actions and shoulder the responsibility for them. On the other hand, the establishment of a religious bond as a fideistic relationship encouraged the creation of a distinction between the religious sphere and the sphere of knowledge, creating the possibility for an ever-greater separation between faith and reason. Nevertheless, religion continued to be imbued with magical elements, which endured as traces of that undiminished aspiration to manipulate nature and destiny. Religious tolerance in the face of some rudimental magical rituals was determined by the recognition that such rituals fulfilled and fuelled the latent hopes and needs that religious intellectualisation could not appease. Alongside the distinction between magic and religion, Weber also analysed the emergence of the distinction between the religious ethic and taboos. In this case, the difference lay in the two different sets of rules that governed action: the taboo dictated the rules regarding individual acts, while the religious ethic provided a more global model for human action. In describing the process of progressive disenchantment [Entzauberung] inherent in the transition from magic to religion – a subject that has been a classic topos of modern Western thought from Hegel to Lévi-Strauss – Weber proposed an ideal-typical interpretation of a historical path upon which, he believed, all the religious constructions had embarked. It was, therefore, a development with universal significance. Nevertheless, the paths this development had taken in different historical and social contexts had produced different results. Indeed, these different contexts had each contributed their own specific and peculiar ‘material’ factors, to which Weber attributed a great deal of influence. 4. Conceptions of God in the Orient and in the Western World When exploring the influences exerted on religious configurations by social and economic factors, Weber interpreted the chthonic deities (those connected to the Earth) as being linked to the development and dominion of agricultural activities, while the dominance of personal, celestial divinities believed to inhabit the clouds or the mountains seemed to have been influenced by the development of a culture based on nobility. Domestic ancestor worship, on the other hand, seemed to have been prevalent in domestic communities with a patriarchal structure, while the rise of local divinities was connected, first and foremost, with permanent settlements,

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especially in concurrence with the development of cities. The figures representing the divine therefore differed based on natural and social conditions of existence, which also altered the possibility of a given god attaining supremacy or a monopoly of power within a given pantheon. Broadly speaking, Weber maintained that the god who prevails is the one “who is deemed to exert the stronger influence on the interests of the individual in his everyday life” (Weber 1978, 416). He saw the birth of monotheism as a sort of ‘regal’ anthropomorphisation of the divinity, that is, as the consequence of the historical and political vicissitudes that had accompanied the rise of the great empires.19 However, he argued that only Judaism and Islam were strictly monotheistic, unlike Catholic Christianity that, with its proliferation of saints surrounding the conception of the Trinity, seemed as though it should be ranked among the spurious forms of monotheism (Weber 1978, 415). Unique economic, social and political conditions had shaped conceptions of the divine into multiple forms, giving rise to a vast variety of religious configurations. Weber, however, divided these into two basic ideal types: 1) The first ideal type included representations that tended to portray the divine as an impersonal entity. In these cases, the object of religious worship was represented as an otherworldly, intangible and ethereal entity. In Weber’s opinion, this was the characteristic ideal type of the Oriental religions. 2) The second ideal type included representations that portrayed the divine in the guise of a personal, otherworldly and ethical god, creator and ruler of the world and, most importantly, omnipotent – a conception which had taken form in the Middle East and later appeared in the West. Hinduism and Confucianism were regarded as expressions of the first ideal type, while Islam, Judaism and Christianity were seen as expressions of the second. Weber believed that at the root of these two ideal types lay different economic, political and socio-historical experiences, which had given shape to determinate magical-religious representations. According to him, the indomitable power of the forces of nature in China and India, 19 Nonetheless, the precursor of universalistic monotheism itself, the Hebrew cult Yahweh, arose from the formation of a confederation. As Weber put it, “[i]n this case, uni­ versalism was a product of international politics, of which the pragmatic interpreters were the prophetic protagonists of the cult of Yahweh and the ethics enjoined by him” (Weber 1978, 418).



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which their rulers could not adequately control, could have contributed to suppressing the development of a personal, anthropomorphic type of conception of divinity. This type of conception of divinity appeared to Weber to correspond “so closely to that of an all powerful mundane king with his rational bureaucratic regime” that a causal connection was undeniable (Weber 1978, 448). Weber became convinced that the roots of these two great categories of divine representation lay predominantly in the importance of water control in such vast geographical areas whose economies were dependent on agriculture.20 In those places where water was a scarce resource – for example, in Mesopotamia and in Egypt – the organisation of technical projects, for which the Emperor was responsible, was essential. The fact that his role was so vital granted him unlimited authority and power, which were transposed into the representation and sacralisation of an omnipotent, divine power. “The monarch even created law”, Weber continued, “by legislation and rational codification, a development the world experienced for the first time in Mesopotamia. It seems quite reasonable, therefore, that as a result of such experiences the ordering of the world should be conceived as the law of a freely acting, transcendental and personal god” (Weber 1978, 448). On the other hand, in those places where the force of nature could not be tamed by human intervention, the representation of the divine did not undergo the process of transposition into an imperial image, and so the divine entity was not anthropomorphised into the guise of royalty, because nature was always more powerful than any king. The next step was the ‘consistent’ representation of a divinity or, in other words, the ordering of its iconography and symbology and the rationalisation of its ethical and religious doctrine. This was a long and tortuous process, but Weber identified at least two decisive elements of this process: on the one hand, the gradual introduction of priests and prophets as architects of the system of doctrine, and on the other, the merging of their interests with those of the laity. 5. The Theodicy of Suffering and the Religions of Redemption “Religiously motivated action”, according to Weber, had a worldly motivation and a rational origin, oriented towards the aim that “it may go well 20 In this respect, Weber was probably influenced also by Montesquieu’s associations between geographical and climatic factors and human beings’ ways of living in different nations, as expressed in The Spirit of Laws. See Kingston 2009.

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with thee … and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth” (Weber 1978, 399). Nonetheless, widespread experience of the difficulty inherent in achieving the goals of worldly wellbeing, experiences of injustice and of pain, led religion to become the locus of questions concerning the causes of these iniquities and, concurrently, of their possible resolution. According to Weber, any attempt to provide a religious explanation for the evil experienced in the world, any ‘theodicy of suffering’, led to forms of religion involving redemption. The roads that historically and ‘psychologically’ led to various ethical solutions, or theodicies of suffering, to religions based upon salvation, were tortuous and varied. It was not sufficient either to attempt to understand them through psychological and simplistic explanations, as Weber believed Nietzsche’s ‘theory of resentment’ risked doing, or to trace the great messianic eschatologies, or saviour religions, back to class origins, as Karl Kautsky had done in his Foundations of Christianity, to which Weber seems to implicitly refer. Resentment cannot be regarded as the primary motivation of Jesus’ doctrines regarding wealth, in view of the Gospels’ impressive indifference to mundane affairs, an indifference based upon the power of eschatological expectations. To be sure, the rich young man was bidden unconditionally to take his leave of the world if he desired to be a perfect disciple. But it is stated that for God all things are possible, even the salvation of the wealthy [Matt. 19:21 ff.] The rich man who is unable to decide to part with his wealth may nonetheless achieve salvation, despite the difficulties in the way. There were no “proletarian instincts” in the doctrine and teaching of Jesus, the prophet of acosmistic love who brought to the poor in spirit and to the good people of this world the happy tidings of the immediate coming of the Kingdom of God and of freedom from the domination of evil spirits. Similarly, any proletarian denunciation of wealth would have been equally alien to the Buddha, for whom the absolute precondition of salvation was unconditional withdrawal from the world. The limited significance of the factor of ressentiment, and the dubiousness of applying the conceptual schema of “repression” almost universally, appear most dearly when Nietzsche mistakenly applies his scheme to the altogether inappropriate example of Buddhism (Weber 1978, 498–499).

In Weber’s mind, it was more plausible instead that the prophets and the guardians of souls who had brought ever-greater order to the complex of rational religious beliefs had struck a balance with the needs of those who wished to find a solution for the suffering being borne in the world. The job of magicians and priests therefore became ‘advising’ forms of con­ duct aimed to alleviate pain and ‘giving meaning’ to injustice. Their ‘material and ideal interests’ were thus placed ever more at the service of ‘plebeian interests’. Due to differences in individuals’ religious capacities



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and material possibilities, the authors of this process of rationalisation were few (and were generally limited to those who could allow themselves the luxury of intellectual speculation on the world). This is reflected in the nature of the fruits of redemption to which the virtuoso and the masses aspired. Indeed, the fruits of salvation promised by religion were not exclusively spiritual. On the contrary, according to Weber they were, for the most part, worldly: health, wealth and long life were promises common to Confucianism, Vedism, Zoroastrianism, ancient Judaism and Islam and to the devout laity of Hinduism and Buddhism as well. Only the truly virtuoso of a given religion – people such as the ascetic, the monk, the Sufi or the Dervish – aspired to otherworldly fruits of salvation. Nonetheless, not even in these latter cases were the fruits of salvation entirely spiritual. On the contrary, “psychologically considered, man in quest of salvation has been primarily preoccupied by attitudes of the here and now” (Weber 1946, 278). In order to find a reasonable explanation for the iniquities of the world, different metaphysical representations of God and of the world were given, depending upon the needs of the masses and the virtuously devout, and the coincidence of their interests. According to Weber, there were ultimately only three conceptual systems that had succeeded in providing rationally satisfactory answers to the problem of the incongruity of destiny and merit: the Indian doctrine of karma, Zarathustra’s theory of dualism and the Puritan doctrine of predestination (see Weber 1946, 275 and ff.). Weber considered the theory of karma to be the most formally perfect solution to the problem of theodicy. Suffering was considered to be a consequence of behaviour in a former life that had not been in compliance with ritual dharma (in other words, not in compliance with the rules that applied to one’s caste). However, the repayment of merits and faults in the following life was promised. Humans’ destiny was therefore entirely their own responsibility. The dualistic theodicy of Zarathustra, on the other hand, saw wrongs and sins as the effects of contamination between good and evil. The struggle between these two was destined to have a positive conclusion, culminating in an ultimate battle where good would triumph, since life, as a worldly process, was nothing more than a step-by-step journey out of darkness. Lastly, ascetic Protestantism’s theory of predestination, according to Weber, also offered a rationally consistent solution. The unique representation of the Christian (derived from the Hebrew) God as an omnipotent being, supreme and perfect, could not easily be reconciled with the observable imperfection of the world that God had created and ruled. The messianic eschatologies resolved this paradox through the

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prophecies of the coming of a saviour, and of a social and political transformation that would reward the deserving based on eternal judgement. Nevertheless, there always remained the difficulty of reconciling the punishment of human acts with the conception of an ethical and at the same time allpowerful creator of the world, who is ultimately responsible for these human actions himself. As people continued to reflect about the insoluble problem of the imperfections of the world in the light of god’s omnipotence, one result was inevitable: the conception of an unimaginably great ethical chasm between the transcendental god and the human being continuously enmeshed in the toils of new sin. And this conception inevitably led to the ultimate conclusion, almost reached in the Book of Job, that the omnipotent creator God must be envisaged as beyond all the ethical claims of his creatures, his counsels impervious to human comprehension. Another facet of this emerging view is that God’s absolute power over his creatures is unlimited, and therefore that the criteria of human justice are utterly inapplicable to his behavior. With the development of this notion, the problem of theodicy simply disappeared altogether (Weber 1978, 522).

Protestant asceticism, with its conception of the inscrutable and immutable nature of God’s design, had taken the problem of reconciling earthly injustice and divine justice to its extreme consequence. It had, in other words, negated the value of the problem of theodicy itself, thus creating an irreconcilable separation between faith and practical action. In analysing the solutions that different religious doctrines had identified in their attempts to reconcile injustice and suffering with conceptions of transcendental divinities responsible for remedying them, Weber entered the domain of the relationship that religion had established between God and the individual. Different religious conceptions had given rise to highly distinct ideas regarding human beings and their role in the world. Weber therefore placed particular emphasis on an analysis of these ideas in order to understand the relationship between religion and the construction of the individual’s ‘personality’. 5.1. Exemplary Prophecy and Ethical Prophecy: The Individual as Container and as Instrument Selective study of the origins and principal characteristics of religious conceptions led Weber to suppose that Hinduism and ascetic Protestantism made it possible to identify the basic separation between religions, as these two were at opposite ends of the spectrum with regard to the relationship between the human and the divine. While Hinduism represented the pure model of a religion founded upon an impersonal conception of



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divinity, ascetic Protestantism was the expression of the type founded upon the idea of an otherworldly, personal and ethical divinity. In turn, these two ideal types presented two alternative types of prophecy.21 The Oriental religions in particular, and Hinduism in primis, advanced an exemplary type of prophecy, while monotheism of Middle Eastern origin, on the other hand, advanced an ethical, or missionary, type of prophecy. In Weber’s words: In the missionary prophecy the devout have not experienced themselves as vessels of the divine but rather as instruments of a god. This emissary prophecy has had a profound elective affinity to a special conception of God: the conception of a supra-mundane, personal, wrathful, forgiving, loving, demanding, punishing Lord of Creation. Such a conception stands in contrast to the supreme being of exemplary prophecy. As a rule, though by no means without exception, the supreme being of an exemplary prophecy is an impersonal being because, as a static state, he is accessible only by means of contemplation. The conception of an, active God, held by emissary prophecy, has dominated the Iranian and Mid- Eastern religions and those Occidental religions which are derived from them. The conception of a supreme and static being, held by exemplary prophecy, has come to dominate Indian and Chinese religiosity (Weber 1946, 285–286).

According to ethical prophecy, or the prophecy of mission, human beings were no more than ‘instruments’ in the hands of God, and their actions could therefore be conceived only as obedience to God’s laws. The exemplary prophet of the Eastern religions, on the other hand, aspired to ‘become God’. In this second conception, the human being was no longer an instrument, but a ‘container’ for the divine, and the contemplative action of the typical prophet of the Eastern religions (Buddha or Lao-Tzu) had the precise aim of advancing interior purification and distancing oneself from the passions and suffering of the world in order to achieve a state of beatitude. The concepts of ethical and exemplary prophecy played a crucial role in Weber’s thoughts on the role of religion in the formation of psychological configurations, or of personality. The types of prophecy inherent to each religious model had fostered a “unified view of the world derived from a consciously integrated meaningful attitude toward life” (Weber 1978, 450). Pointing the way that must be taken to obtain salvation, and imposing a model of conduct that gave the individual a place in the world as an instrument, or as a container of the divine, exemplary and ethical prophecy had 21 Weber defined prophecy in the terms of “the proclamation of a religious truth of salvation through personal revelation” (Weber 1978, 446).

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given the individual the responsibility of adopting a life conduct that was imbued with an inherent consistency, and had as its prerequisite the formation of a personality. Both types of prophecy had therefore played fundamental roles in the development of a concept that became central for Weber’s analysis of personality: the concept of ‘life conduct’ [Lebensführung]. This indicated the direction [die Führung] that earthly actions must follow, actions that are related to “constant and intrinsic relation to certain ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life” (Weber 1975, 193). These meanings, in turn, rested on the hope for salvation, which forged the individual’s path, that is, the specific life conduct by means of which it would be possible to obtain that salvation. According to Weber, when the fruits of that salvation consisted of the absence of pain and the overcoming of the anguish caused by the idea of human frailty, the result was a Lebensführung of a mystical and contemplative variety. When, on the other hand, the fruits of salvation were the promise of eternal happiness, which could be achieved through obedience to divine commandments, or through attention paid to the signs that God sent individuals to reassure them of their state of grace, he saw the resulting Lebensführung tending to be ascetic, or in other words, active. 6. Ascetic and Mystical Orientation Both ethical and exemplary prophecy, insofar as they provided promises of redemption and instructed believers in the means by which the fruits of salvation could be obtained, contributed to the forging of that which Weber called the “unitary dimension of life”, a harmonious interior habitus. In every religion that Weber had studied, it seemed to him that a fundamental element for achieving such a habitus was the sublimation of earthly suffering through the promise of a superior kind of happiness. This type of happiness had to be won, and therefore required the debasement of that surrogate of happiness represented by worldly possessions, as well as a constant defence against the worst instincts that the owning of worldly possessions seemed to bring out in humans. Irrational passions, orgiastic inebriation and all the feelings of earthly pleasure that worldly possessions promised thus had to be bitterly fought by all religions. However, to face down the threat they posed, nothing was more important than the need to wage a pitched ‘interior’ war. Only by truly adopting conduct that was consistent and dedicated to the winning of the fruits of salvation would one receive his reward – so ethical and exemplary prophecy promised. Two different possible types of conduct could be identified,



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each dependent upon a different conception of divinity and on the type of prophecy inherent in that conception: 1) A life conduct shaped by active ascesis or, in other words, a conception of action as a divine instrument; 2) A life conduct shaped by a mystical orientation or, in other words, action oriented towards acquiring a mystical-contemplative type of salvation. These two orientations could lead to different types of relationships to worldly possessions, as the antithesis between the quest for salvation and worldly possessions and the harm they cause could be resolved in different ways. This antithesis became maximal when, on the one hand, ascetic action was carried out in the world in order to mould it rationally to the aim of subjugating creaturely corruption through labouring at one’s worldly profession (intra-worldly asceticism) and, on the other hand, when mystical action reaped all the consequences immanent in a radical rejection of the world (contemplation that shuns the world). However, this antithesis became less acute when ascetic action was limited to resisting the creaturely corruption inherent in the human condition in order to enhance one’s focus on actively performing those acts of redemption which God demanded, to the point of refusing to participate in the system of the world through action (ascesis that shuns the world). Meanwhile, in mystical action, the antithesis between the quest for salvation and the relationship to worldly possessions became less extreme when the contemplative mystic, rather than shunning it, remained within the system of the world as an intra-worldly ascetic (intra-worldly mysticism). Regarding the ascetic orientation, Weber wrote: Salvation may be viewed as the distinctive gift of active ethical behavior performed in the awareness that god directs this behavior, i.e., that the actor is an instrument of god. We shall designate this type of attitude toward salvation, which is characterized by a methodical procedure for achieving religious salvation, as ‘ascetic’ (…) The person who lives as a worldly ascetic is a rationalist, not only in the sense that he rationally systematizes his own conduct, but also in his rejection of everything that is ethically irrational, aesthetic, or dependent upon his own emotional reactions to the world and its institutions. The distinctive goal always remains the alert, methodical control of one’s own pattern of life and behavior (Weber 1978, 541 and 544).

On the other hand, he argued that in the mystical orientation, the distinctive content of salvation may not be an active quality of conduct, that is, an awareness of having executed the divine will; it may instead be a

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By pairing ascetic and mystical types of conduct to the intra-worldly or extra-worldly attitudes to the world, Weber identified four pure types that had been the solutions to the antithesis between God and world: 1) Extra-worldly mysticism, as contemplation that shuns the world and a ‘wholly’ individual inner quest for the divine condition (he found the principal example of this in Buddhism). 2) Extra-worldly asceticism, as a tendency to take action in the world, but with the aim of overcoming the world’s fleeting nature and instead seeking to obtain the fruits of salvation that lay beyond it (Weber put forward Christian monasticism as an example of this type). 3) Intra-worldly mysticism, which did not lead to an attempt to shun the world but nonetheless maintained a practical indifference to it (the main example of this was Hinduism). 4) Intra-worldly asceticism, which led those who practiced it to take conscious and active action in the world, since the only way in which the individual could come to discover his or her state of grace was to have control over worldly possessions (Protestantism, and Calvinism in particular, were the most complete expressions of this type). Based on these types, Weber posited relationships between certain religious conceptions and their practical results, identifying the ultimate root of these results within the psychological structures that religions had helped to forge. He argued: To the extent that an inner-worldly religion of salvation is determined by contemplative features, the usual result is the acceptance of the given social structure, an acceptance that is relatively indifferent to the world but at least humble before it. (…) The typical mystic is never a man of conspicuous social activity, nor is he at all prone to accomplish any rational transformation of the mundane order on the basis of a methodical pattern of life directed toward external success (Weber 1978, 550).

A mystical-contemplative type of action thus seemed to foster an apolitical and adaptive forma mentis and behaviour. “Conversely, to the extent that an inner-worldly religion of salvation is determined by distinctively ascetical tendencies”, Weber argued, “it always demands a practical



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rationalism, in the sense of the maximization of rational action as such, the maximization of a methodical systematization of the external conduct of life, and the maximization of the rational reorganization of the worldly arrangements [Ordnungen]” (Weber 1978, 551). An ascetic type of action therefore, fostered immanently political behaviour, namely conduct embracing involvement in the life of the community inasmuch as it was oriented towards compromise with the systems of the world. 6.1. Asceticism, Mysticism and Social Transformation Talcott Parsons (1963), basing himself upon this classification of the types of orientation, or attitude, to the world – ascetic or mystical – and their interpretation from a political standpoint, interpreted Weber’s ordering of the types of religiously-oriented action as an attempt to identify the religious roots of social transformation.22 As we have seen, in Weber’s mind only the ascetic attitudes fostered the potential for transformation, due to the active aspect inherent in every type of ascesis as a concept of action entailing compromise with worldly possessions. Furthermore, only ascetic action, as an expression of the conception of a personal, otherworldly and supreme God – a God to whom humans must therefore be obedient first, with obedience to other humans becoming subordinate – and the representation of individuals as his instruments, had encouraged the formation of cohesive religious communities. In other words, ascetic action had supported the creation of organisations bound together by a common faith and by the desire to act in the world as instruments in the hands of God. These organisations, therefore, having been formed based upon assertions that were held to be superior to, and which where at times even in conflict with, established social opinions, gave rise to innovative elements that had the potential to provoke rifts and transformations. In connection with this, Weber recalled that ethical prophecy’s first conflict was with the familial group. Indeed, ethical prophecy “created a new social community” by debasing and breaking the mystical bond and undermining the exclusive nature of familial groups. For this reason, Weber believed that 22 The first and most fundamental influence that the world of religious conceptions had on life conduct and economic activity was, as Weber writes, “generally stereotyping. The alteration of any practice which is somehow executed under the protection of surpernatural forces may affect the interests of spirits and gods. To the natural uncertainties and resistances facing every innovator, religion thus adds powerful impediments of its own. The sacred is the uniquely unalterable” (Weber 1978, 406). At the same time, religion, insofar as it was a primary factor of rationalisation, could also have a subversive, transformational power, as had been seen, for instance, in the case of the Protestant Reformation.

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ascetic Christianity, and Protestantism in particular, harboured greater potential for encouraging historical and social transformation than other religions. Judaism and Islam, on the other hand, despite being imbued with an ascetic attitude, had inhibited the development of their own wholly intra-worldly versions of asceticism, “above all because they remained bound by ascription, one to a traditionally defined ethnic, the other to a political community which must be ‘carried along’ as a whole to realize the conception of a Kingdom of God on Earth” (Parsons 1963, liii). Roman Catholicism, however, through its principle of the forgiveness of sins, had contributed to the creation of atomised personalities and types of life conduct. It was therefore unable to show believers the way towards a fully responsible form of life conduct. Only ascetic Protestantism had succeeded in the task of fostering a wholly active and responsible type of action. In its compromise with the ‘affairs of this world’, Protestantism appeared to Weber as the religious movement whose pursuit of salvation (or confirmation of salvation) was most radical. It therefore encouraged a wholly rational form of conduct, driving individuals from deep within to maintain self-discipline in order to be ready at all times to receive a sign of their state of grace. Thus, in Weber’s interpretation, the ascetic attitude became the most important historical vector in that progressive process of disenchantment with the world of magic, the progressive discarding of irrational ritual practices, by means of which methodical action and worldly possessions had become no more than means to achieve the aim of otherworldly salvation. 7. Irrationalisation of Ends, Rationalisation of Means: On Formal Rationality It has often been claimed that the concepts of disenchantment and rationalisation constitute not only the Leitmotive but the very thematic heart of Weber’s sociology of religion, if not of his work in its entirety.23 Nonetheless, as Rusconi, among others, has pointed out, these are concepts that do not easily fit into “a unitary conception of the world” (Rusconi 1981, 189).

23 An abundance of literature has addressed the question of how important a role the concept of rationalisation plays in Weber’s work. See in particular Schluchter 1979 and 1980; Mueller 1979; Kalberg 1980 and 1990; Levine 1981; Eisen 1978 and 1991; Tenbruch 1980; Rusconi 1981; Alexander 1987; Gane 2002; Swedberg 2005; Müller 2007.



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To give an idea of the scope of the polysemic nature of this conceptual whole, consider the following passage from the introduction to the “Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion” [Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie]: We have to remind ourselves in advance that ‘rationalism’ may mean very different things. It means one thing if we think of the kind of rationalization the systematic thinker performs on the image of the world: an increasing theoretical mastery of reality by means of increasingly precise and abstract concepts. Rationalism means another thing if we think of the methodical attainment of a definitely given and practical end by means of an increasingly precise calculation of adequate means (…) The rationalization of life conduct with which we have to deal here can assume unusually varied forms (Weber 1946, 293).

Systematisation of the image of the world and of the methodology of action were, therefore, two of the possible tendencies of the concept of rationalisation, which thus came to designate various levels of control over reality buttressed by religious beliefs.24 The foremost aim of Weber’s studies of world religions was to reconstruct the forms and processes of the ‘rationalisation of life conduct’. For this reason, the concepts of the rationalisation and of the individuation of social entities are intertwined. The rise of religions had marked the world’s first step in the direction of rationalisation. The path towards rationalisation had produced an ‘external’ effect, leading towards a consistent systematisation of the concept of the divine and the relationship between human beings and the spiritual world. Even more importantly, it had effected an ‘interior’ change through the structuring of the self and of consistent forms of life conduct. The apparently paradoxical pairing of religion and rationalisation had thus acted on two levels. First, religion had ushered in an important period of 24 In the interpretation of Rusconi, for instance, “in the first instance and in general terms [Weberian] rationality (…) [is] a procedure of control in order to dominate reality within and outside men. The criteria of such a procedure are calculability, foreseeability, generalizability of the means compared to the end of controlling or mastering the world [Weltbeherrschung]. Rationality is therefore a concept that refers to practical behaviours. It is not knowledge of objective laws of movement of society or revelation of immanent meanings to history of human nature; on the contrary, it is the answer to the lack of meaning of the world. It is disenchantment of the world. In a passage of Science as Vocation, Weber writes: ‘The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not, therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives. It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any time. Hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play: but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted” (Rusconi 1981, 189–190).

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‘intellectualisation’ of the world, insofar as it had progressively displaced magic and encouraged refinement and autonomy in the spheres of human action and knowledge. Weber, as we have already seen, considered religion to have played a greater role than magic in this process of rationalisation, despite the fact that magically-motivated behaviour, insofar as it was conducted for practical ends, falls within the sphere of rational actions. Indeed, religiously-motivated action confined the desire to participate in the world to an abstract plane – that of faith – rather than allowing it exist on the immediately practical plane of magical efforts intended to change its course. Moreover, in Weber’s mind, the ‘passivity’ produced by religion, in taking the place of the ingenuous ‘activeness’ of magic, had marked a crucial step in the path towards the rationalisation of action. As he argued, on the one hand, there is an ever-broadening rational systematization of the god concept and of the thinking concerning the possible relationships of man to the divine. On the other hand, there ensues a characteristic recession of the original, practical and calculating rationalism. As such primitive rationalism recedes, the significance of distinctively religious behavior is sought less and less in the purely external advantages of everyday economic success. Thus, the goal of religious behavior is successively ‘irrationalized’ until finally otherworldly non-economic goals come to represent what is distinctive in religious behavior (Weber 1978, 424).

Therefore, according to Weber, the leap in rationalisation had been brought about by religion as opposed to magic, due to the fact that the former had favoured a greater systematisation of the concept of God and of the relationship between humanity and the divine sphere, more thoroughly establishing the separation between them. This had led to a simultaneous ‘step backwards’, when viewed in comparison to the action aimed at practical ends that was typical of magic. Magically-motivated action set itself immediate practical and economic aims (a good harvest, a cure for a sickness and so forth). Religion, on the other hand, had ‘irrationalised’ the aims of religious behaviour, setting it beyond the reach of practical immediacy. Nonetheless, the ‘irrationalisation’ of the ends had been followed by the rationalisation of the means. The intangible nature of those ends and the difficulty of reaching them set in motion decisive processes, such as the intellectualisation of the world, the alignment of actions and the representation of such actions in instrumental terms.25 25 According to Parsons (1963), intellectual rationalisation (as clarification, specification and systematisation of ideas) constituted one of the three forms of rationalisation developed by Weber in “Religious Groups (Sociology of Religion)” [Religionssoziologie



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Although this process has left its mark on the history of religions as a whole, the combination of that which I have defined as the ‘irrationalisation’ of the ends and the ‘rationalisation’ of the means was most evident in the sphere of intra-worldly asceticism. The participation in the affairs of the world that this ascetic attitude hoped to foster gave rise to another separation of crucial importance: the separation, and the conflict, between religion and reason and between religion and the economic sphere. It was this conflict in particular which had released into the world the form of rationality that Weber held to be essential to understanding the rise of capitalism, namely, formal rationality. The degree of separation between  ends and means lay at the root of the formal-rationality/ material-rationality dichotomy. The most precise definitions of formal and material rationality can be found in Weber’s writings on economic action within Economy and Society. In this context, formal rationality denotes calculability tout court, namely “the extent of quantitative calculation or accounting which is technically possible and which is actually applied” (Weber 1978, 85). On the other hand, “[t]he ‘substantive rationality’, (…) is the degree to which the provisioning of given groups of persons (no matter how delimited) with goods is shaped by economically oriented social action under some criterion (past, present, or potential) of ultimate values, regardless of the nature of these ends” (ibid.). The difference between formal rationality and material rationality, therefore, lies in the fact that the former separates values from goals of a material nature, while the latter first identifies with and then is based upon such material goals.26 The importance of formal (Typen religiöser Vergemeinschaftung)], a long section included in Economy and Society. The transcription of the religious maxims in sacred texts was the most significant example of the process of intellectualisation conducted by religious systems and hierocratic (or intellectual) organisations. 26 On this point, see Rusconi 1981. In these terms, formal rationality is based upon Zweckrationalität, the type of action that is rational in relation to its aim. This type of action is “instrumentally rational [zweckrational], that is, determined by expectations as to the behavior of objects in the environment and of other human beings; these expectations are used as ‘conditions’ or ‘means’ for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends” (Weber 1978, 24). Inversely, material rationality is rooted in Wertrationalität, the type of action that is rational in relation to value. In this case, action is motivated by value-rational [wertrational] assessments, “that is, determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success” (Weber 1978, 25). According to Weber, it was formal rationality that dominated capitalism. It stood in contrast to the material rationality typical of planned economies insofar as material rationality undermined the principle of the free market, of the competitors’ struggle to set prices and the principle of maximisation of profit inherent in an economy based on Zweckrationalität.

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rationality in the context of the study of religions consisted in the fact that, for Weber, that was “the omnipervasive dimension of the Western modern world” (Rossi 1988, 79–80). In other words, for him formal rationality was the key to understanding the Western model of rationality and individuation: calculability and maximisation of profits in economics, depersonalisation of the governance relationship through the establishment of legal systems and of abstract and universalist systems of control, the application of scientific knowledge to control nature and human beings, the rationalisation of life conduct [Lebensführung], starting with the creation of a uniform inner habitus, or personality, as well as a flourishing formal-rational economic ethic [Wirtschaftsethick]. 8. Religion and Economics: Negative Dialectic and the Birth of Capitalism There is a tension inherent in ascetic action: between the ‘noble’ spiritual dimension that humans aspire to attain, and the immanently ‘corrupt’ worldly dimension in which they must participate with the sole aim of doing God’s will. This tension gave rise to an instrumental orientation and created an increasing separation between the spheres of action and, consequently, their growing rationalisation.27 Weber came to see the origin of these violent tensions as lying in the dynamic of the separation between the worldly plane and the plane that transcended it. 27 With regard to the tension between the political and religious spheres, Weber wrote that “[t]he mutual strangeness of religion and politics, when they are both completely rationalized, is all the more the case because, in contrast to economics, politics may come into direct competition with religious ethics at decisive points. As the consummated threat of violence among modern polities, war creates a pathos and a sentiment of community. War thereby makes for an unconditionally devoted and sacrificial community among the combatants and releases an active mass compassion and love for those who are in need. And, as a mass phenomenon, these feelings break down all the naturally given barriers of association. In general, religions can show comparable achievements only in heroic communities professing an ethic of brotherliness” (Weber 1946, 335). The tension with the intellectual sphere lay in the fact that there comes a point when every faith tends to demand “a sacrifice of the intellect”, with especially detrimental effects upon philosophy. Weber believed that this was the reason for which Protestantism had eventually come to favour the empirical natural sciences without, however, realising that in so doing it was touching upon another raw nerve of religious doctrine, which would eventually lead to creationism being called into question. These three spheres entered into conflict with the religious sphere insofar as each of them demanded that the latter disavow a number of its cardinal precepts. On the other hand, there were two additional spheres which, in Weber’s opinion, challenged the religions of redemption on the same ground of the sublimation of suffering through taking earthly pleasure from spiritual assets: the artistic and erotic spheres. Art set itself in direct conflict with religion, because the emotions it inspired could be psychologically akin to those inspired by religion. However, unlike religion, art promoted the divine



bildung, religion, personality71 Prophetic and redemptory religions have lived not only in an acute but in a permanent state of tension in relation to the world and its orders. This goes without saying, according to the terminology used here. The more the religions have been true religions of salvation, the greater has this tension been. (…) The tension has also been the greater, the more rational in principle the ethic has been, and the more it has been oriented to inward sacred values as means of salvation. In common language, this means that the tension has been the greater the more religion has been sublimated from ritualism and towards ‘religious absolutism.’ Indeed, the further the rationalization and sublimation of the external and internal possession of – in the widest sense – ‘things worldly’ has progressed, the stronger has the tension on the part of religion become. For the rationalization and the conscious sublimation of man’s relations to the various spheres of values, external and internal, as well as religious and secular, have then pressed towards making conscious the internal and lawful autonomy of the individual spheres; thereby letting them drift into those tensions which remain hidden to the originally naive relation with the external world (Weber 1946, 328).

Weber addressed these tensions in particular in his essay ‘Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions’ [Zwischenbetrachtung: Theorie der Stufen und Richtungen religioser Weltablehnung].28 Building on the foundation of the analysis of the historical role of the religious phenomenon, of the process of rationalisation it fostered and of its historical geographic differentiations, Weber finally began to reflect on that negative dialectic that had always been characteristic of the relationship between religion and economics.29 While religion had provided the necessary thrust for the creation of the economic ethic, the economic ethic had, in exaltation of earthly creatures, thus establishing itself as a deceptive illusion and rival power. Nonetheless, Weber noted the manner in which, throughout history, alliances between the spheres of art and the religious ethic outnumbered antagonisms, especially during that period in which religion, in its striving to become a religion of the masses, was obliged to use art to promote its ‘emotional propaganda’. Lastly, the erotic sphere, as the “greatest irrational force in life”, came into conflict with the religions of redemption because it competed with them for a sentiment of love and spiritual fulfilment (see Weber 1946, 323 et ff.). 28 Originally published in 1915 in Archiv für Sozialwissensschaft und Sozialpolitik. issue II, volume XLI (1915–1916). 29 In a 1967 essay on Weber Negri captured this aspect of Weber’s negative dialectic. In Negri’s words, when “the history of human action – free and rational – is concluded with the negation in the phenomenological framework of the world dominated by rationality, freedom seems to have disappeared. It disappeared, we need to break this domination. But, constrained in the dialectical representation received by Marxism, this break cannot but, in its turn, be configured dialectically. Weber finds himself obliged to undertake a characteristically dialectical move: in the continuity of rational development, the spontaneity of innovating charisma has to emerge. Let’s be clear: here dialectic does not mean negation ‘and’ sublation, it is not an Aufhebung. It is a dialectic of simple negation that arises out of nostalgia for a value which in turn was negated. Freedom and rationality

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turn, given rise to an organisation of social relations that stripped the religious relationship of its validity. As Weber put it, “the more the world of the modern capitalist economy follows its own immanent laws, the less accessible it is to any imaginable relationship with a religious ethic of brotherliness” (Weber 1946, 331). It followed that, according to him, the more rational, and impersonal, capitalism was, the greater the divide between the economic sphere and the religious sphere inexorably became.30 Weber therefore interpreted the relationship between the religions of redemption and the rational economic sphere in terms of conflict. This notwithstanding, it had been the religions of redemption themselves, and of ascetic Protestantism in particular, that had first prepared the way for this break. Ascetic Protestantism had translated its rationality into practical behaviours and, most importantly, into a truly singular economic ethic [Wirtschaftsethick]. The concept of economic ethic, as an impetus for economic action that could lead towards divergent forms of economic organisation, now became central to Weber’s understanding of individuals’ personality and processes of individuation. Different religious rationalisations gave rise to different, specific economic ethics. In turn, these ethics gave rise to different types of social organisation and specific economic

developed in a system of reciprocal negations. Now individual liberty opposes rationality, it must oppose it. We are again at the origin of the rational-irrational ambiguity of the Weberian discourse, an ambiguity which is based in the individual axiology between rationality and liberty that are the essential components of individuality. Weber opposes to Marxian collectivism his own irreducible concept of individuality: an individuality that founds capitalist development, an individuality that is repressed in capitalist development, but which then re-emerges – miraculously modified as charisma – in order to innovate. Now it is irrational, because it innovates the rational, and by innovating it, it modifies and transforms it. On the basis of this concept of individuality in history and of the heteronomy of its development, Weber attempts to found a general theory of society – within which Marxist science itself can be located as a special case” (Negri 1967, 451–452). 30 As Eisenstadt argued, Weber’s concept of economic ethics involves a general model of religious or ethical orientation. “Such a Wirtschaftsethik is a code, a more general ‘formal’ orientation, which specifies how to regulate the frameworks of concrete social organisations and of institutional settings” (Eisenstadt 2003, 603). A concrete economic ethic could, thus, be a very complicated structure, to the extent to which “externally similar forms of economic organization may agree with very different economic ethics and, according to the unique character of their economic ethics, how such forms of economic organization may produce very different historical results” (Weber 1946, 267–268). An economic ethic is therefore “not a simple ‘function’ of a form of economic organization; and just as little does the reverse hold, namely, that economic ethics unambiguously stamp the form of the economic, organization. (…) the religious determination of life-conduct, however, is also one – note this – only one, of the determinants of the economic ethics” (Weber 1946, 268).



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systems, of which capitalism was one. Weber’s chief interest thus lay in the comprehension of whichever particular form of economic ethic and whichever religious-doctrinal configuration had been particularly well suited to the development of modern capitalism. Ultimately, having embarked upon his voyage of discovery of the ‘continent of religion’ with the aim of understanding the mechanisms that made it the source of individuation, Weber had become convinced that the strength of religion lay first and foremost in its ability to give meaning, unity and consistency to individual consciousness or, in other words, to develop the individuals’ ‘personality’. As I will discuss in the following chapter, Weber saw one religion in particular – namely, Puritanism – as the wellspring of the values, the fount of meaning and the viaticum of the unity that led to formal rationality of action and thence, by tortuous roads, to capitalism.

CHAPTER THREE

PURITAN PERSONALITY AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP OF CAPITAL For what interested me centrally was not what nurtured the expanding capitalism but the developing type of human being [Menschentum] that was created out of the confluence of the religious and economic components (Weber 1910, in Chalcraft and Harrington eds. 2001, 106). For a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous human labour—for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of religion (Marx 1976, vol. 35, 90).

To say that The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is the most internationally renowned and frequently referenced work in the sociological tradition is simply to state the obvious.1 The mass of commentaries, essays, monographs, disputes and controversies surrounding it has reached unmanageable proportions. By virtue of the clear and incisive thesis memorably formulated in its title, and its swift exportation to North America by Talcott Parsons, its basic argument has become so well-known as to render a detailed exposition redundant. A brief, theoreticallyoriented compendium will be useful, however, in order to open our discussion – a discussion that will focus on some of the work’s least discussed topics and, in particular, on the political-sociological concept of personality that developed therein. 1 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was originally published in two parts in 1904 and 1905 in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. The first part, The Problem: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus, I: Das Problem], appeared in Volume 20 of the Archiv in October of 1904, while the second part, entitled, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism II: The Practical Ethics of the Ascetic Branches of Protestantism [Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist der Kapitalismus, II: Die Berufsidee des asketischen Protestantismus], appeared in Volume 21, in June of 1905. According to Marianne Weber (1988), the second part was written over three months of intense work following Weber’s return from America. Weber had gone to the United States in August of 1904 to present a paper at the St. Louis Exposition. His observations on the relationship between Protestant sects and capitalism were inspired in part by his trip to the United States.

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Weber introduced the problem that lay at the heart of this work by presenting some data that had been gathered by professional statisticians in the Baden region and to which his pupil, Martin Offenbacher, had referred in his own work.2 According to Offenbacher, Protestants were regularly found in greater numbers than Catholics among the owners of capital and among the ranks of those who possessed suitable technical qualifications for modern enterprise. Weber thus observed that: A large number of the richest and most economicaly developed areas – favoured by nature or a geographical location that facilitated trade and commerce – turned Protestant in the sixteenth century. This held especially for the majority of the wealthy cities. The effects of this wealth benefit  Protestants in the economic struggle for existence even today (Weber 2011, 68).

On the basis of this information, Weber asked: “how then did it happen that precisely the most economically developed nations of that period, and (as will become apparent) specifically their upwardly mobile middle classes [‘buergerlichen’ Mittelklassen], not only allowed this heretofore unknown Puritan tyranny to encompass them; indeed, they even developed a heroic defense of it?” (Weber 2011, 69). As Weber further noted, it was not the custom of middle classes to submit to what he called “religious tyranny of this degree prior to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” (Weber 2011, 69). So what had occurred to produce such an exception? In order to answer this question, Weber turned to the type of Protes­ tantism that, according to him, had proven not only to have an “elective affinity” with the development of capitalism,3 but also to have inspired an 2 See Weber 2011, 286, footnote 4. 3 Weber does not clearly state what he meant by “elective affinities” [Wahlver­ wandtschaft], despite the fact that it was central to the topic of the relationship between economy and religion. Gerth and Wright Mills, for instance, hold that this concept refers to Weber’s conception of multicausality. They argue that “where Marx and Nietzsche”, for instance, “are quick to see a correspondence between ideas and interests, Weber is also eager to state possible tensions between ideas and interests, between one sphere and another, or between internal states and external demands” (Gerth and Wright Mills 1946, 62). In Stark’s opinion, on the other hand, the concept of elective affinities constituted the theoretical alternative to “mechanistic causalism and quasi-organological functionalism” (Stark 1958, 256). Weber employs the phrase at various points throughout the work, writing, for instance, of the elective affinity between missionary prophecy and the concept of a personal God, but always in a sense that Howe (1978) defines as “informal”. Howe examined closely the use of this concept in Weber’s work, referring it to the legacy he had received from Kant. The concept of elective affinity passed from the realm of chemistry to



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audacity in the bourgeois classes that he complained was lacking in his own time. If it was a religious ethic which appeared to have a recurring connection with a certain type of economic organisation, then it became a question of searching out the reason behind this connection primarily “in the enduring inner quality [in der dauernden inneren Eigenart] of these religions and not only in their respective historical-political, external situations” (Weber 2011, 71). The capitalist ethos and the Protestant ethic, in other words, seemed to be inextricably linked. To understand the reason for this, it was necessary to examine both sides of the equation. As far as the capitalist ethos was concerned, Weber believed that it was possible to find a clear illustration of it in the advice of Benjamin Franklin: the importance of earning money and of money as ends unto themselves; the importance of punctuality when paying and discharging debts; sober conduct as a means to earn the trust of creditors and facilitate future borrowing; honesty and rigorousness; and a logical system of keeping one’s account books, which should always be up-to-date. These were the elements that constituted the summa of the capitalist spirit. In Weber’s view, the ideal-typical expression of this spirit, succinctly described in Franklin’s literature through the work of Goethe, while Kant employed the concept of affinity [Affinität] as a principle, or maxim, of reason in his Critique of Pure Reason (see Howe 1978, 376). Weber had studied Kant through the teaching of Kuno Fischer, who assigned the concept of affinity a place of central importance. Thus, according to Howe, “in the great tradition of German philological scholarship, the order of a language was the virtual order of a society. The elements of that order were the meanings of the words in their ordinary usage by the actors in history. Viewed from within the Kantian bounds of his order of discourse, those actors are free in their choice of actual actions. Thus, history would be a logical chaos were it not for an order in the universe of the meanings to which those actors orient their actions. That order is to be found in the elective affinities of words, the greater or lesser extents to which they possess inner affinity through the intersections of their meanings. It is this order in the universe of possible actions which makes his social science possible” (Howe 1978, 382). Unlike in Howe’s interpretation, which tends to see Weber’s use of the concept of elective affinities as attributing a logical prius to individual actions and meanings, Callinicos (1999) and Löwy (1993), on the other hand, give the concept of elective affinities a central place in the Weber versus Marx debate. They aim to demonstrate the extent to which Weber’s interpretation of the relationship between religion and economy was not incompatible with Marx’s own interpretation. According to Löwy, the concept of elective affinity refers to “a very special kind of dialectical relationship that develops between two social or cultural configurations, one that cannot be reduced to direct causality or to ‘influences’ in the traditional sense. Starting from a certain structural analogy, the relationship consists of a convergence, a mutual attraction, an active confluence, a combination that can go as far as a fusion” (Löwy 1992, 6). One of the reasons why this concept was not given adequate consideration in the Anglo-American discussion of Weber was due, in Löwy’s mind, to the fact that the term Wahlverwandtschaft had been translated into English as “certain correlations”. Thus, while Weber’s concept implied a bond rich in meaning and a strong reciprocal interaction between the two forms, Parsons’s translation impoverished the term, rendering it neutral.

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prescriptions, demonstrated the extent to which the capitalist spirit was not analogous to simple greed for wealth – auri sacra fames. Nor did it stoop to resorting to the unscrupulous use of violent means to obtain wealth. On the contrary, the capitalist spirit had constituted the moment of rationalisation, of the regulation and disciplining of the merely acquisitive drive [Erwerbstrieb]. Its principal adversary was, therefore, first and foremost a traditionalistic economic mentality, which reduced economic activity to immoderate greed and stifled the innovative and methodical spirit that was intrinsic to the most advanced form of modern capitalism. In Weber’s mind, economic traditionalism meant preserving a type of economic behaviour in which economic objectives were permanently fixed. Economic rationalism, on the other hand, called the value of tradition as such into question.4 Weber thus traced the first manifestations of the capitalist spirit back to those occasions when there had been a break with the customs of feudal economic and social organisation – breaks that led to a progressive separation between the domestic economy  of the home and the economics of the business world. He thus highlighted what he saw as the difficulties that the torchbearers of this new mentality encountered during their attempt to challenge the canons of economic behaviour, a task so difficult that it could be undertaken successfully only by ‘personalities’ who were firm in their conduct and in their convictions, devoted to their professions as though they were vocations. Weber argued that our task now is to investigate from whose spiritual child this matter-of-fact form of ‘rational’ thinking and living grew. The idea of a ‘calling’, and of the giving over of one’s self to work in a calling, originated here. As noted, the entire notion of a ‘calling’ must appear fully irrational from the vantage point of the person’s pure self-interest in happiness [eudaemonistischen Eigeninteressen]. Yet the dedication to work in the manner of a ‘calling’ has in the past constituted one of the characteristic components of our [modern] capitalist economic culture. It remains so even today. What interests us here is precisely the ancestral lineage of that irrational element which lies in this, as in every, conception of a ‘calling’ (Weber 2011, 98).

In the capitalist ethos, the individual became a means, and acquisition became an end in itself, “to which people were bound”. This reversal of the relationship between humans and business, which Weber defined 4 When based upon formal rationality, as seen in the previous chapter, the choice of aims and the means to achieve them were subjected to a calculation of costs and possibilities wherein both the means, and economic conduct in general, were freed from that aura of sacredness and subjected exclusively to criteria of technical efficiency.



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as ‘irrational’ from a perspective of eudemonistic interests, was closely connected to certain religious conceptions. For Weber, therefore, it became a question of explaining, first and foremost, the qualities of that Protestant ethic that had fostered the rise of ‘capitalist culture’, and which seemed to constitute the ‘irrational’ origin of the concept of profession as ethical duty. The analysis of the concept of profession [Beruf] allowed Weber to clarify the religious origin of the capitalist economic ethos. The German term Beruf has a double significance: Beruf signifies profession, but also vocation. This double sense is found for the first time in Luther’s use of the term in his translation of the Bible. The achievement of Luther and the Reformation consisted in legitimising professionally organised worldly labour on an ethical level. Nonetheless, it was Protestant asceticism (Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism and the other denominations that sprang from the Baptist movement) that, with the formulation of the theory of predestination and election through grace, lent Beruf a shade of meaning that acted as a type of psychological prod, goading the believer into adopting an entirely rational way of living characterised by a zealous devotion to work. While Lutheran gratia ammissibilis offered the possibility of restoring the state of grace through penitence and a desire for atonement, Calvinism ordained that each person’s fate was already decided, and there was nothing a believer could do to change it. This notwithstanding, the Calvinist’s frustration with powerlessness in the face of a preordained fate could be tempered and relieved by searching for external signs that could reveal a state of grace. Thus, professional success, untiring industriousness and the profession as vocation [Beruf] assumed the status of exoteric, albeit not unequivocal, signs of the state of grace. They therefore became instruments for relieving believers’ anguish in the face of the ineffectiveness of “good works”, which were only “technical means, but not ones that can be used to purchase salvation. Rather, good works serve to banish the anxiety surrounding the question of one’s salvation” (Weber 2011, 127). Lutheranism was unable to provide the individual with a complete rationalisation of his or her conduct in life, insofar as it “left largely unaltered the spontaneous vitality of instinctive action” (Weber 2011, 136). The agonising Calvinist doctrine, on the other hand, demanded constant self-control. Zeal in performing one’s tasks and the aspiration to achieve success in the worldly professions became the only way to sublimate the anguish of an unknown future, thus leading to the strict form of self-discipline that Weber believed lay at the origin of this personality formation:

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chapter three Puritan asceticism (in the everyday language of today) worked to render the devout capable of calling forth and then acting upon their ‘constant motives’, especially those motives that the believer, through the practice of asceticism itself, ‘trained’ against the ‘emotions’. In this manner, and in this formalpsychological meaning of the term, Puritan asceticism socialized the believer to become a ‘personality’ (…) the puritan goal was to be able to lead an alert, conscious and self-aware life. Hence the destruction of the spontaneity of the instinct-driven enjoyment of life [triebhaften Lebensgenusse] constituted the most urgent task. The aim was to bring order into the believer’s way of leading his or her life, and asceticism was the most important mechanism for doing so (Weber 2011, 131).

The ascetic-rational orientation typical of Protestantism of a Calvinist stamp, or Puritanism,5 formed within the believer a core of constant values and motives, an unwavering north star to guide his or her actions. It therefore led to the formation of the personality and allowed Weber to demonstrate how Protestantism lay at the origin of a specific process of individuation. Furthermore, the absolute elimination of the “voluntary pursuing” of salvation and grace constituted, in Weber’s eyes, the final stage of the process of rationalisation and the moment in which instrumental rationalisation became fully established. Removing hope from human actions marked the end of the enchantment of the world. As Weber out it: That overarching process in the history of religion – the elimination of magic from the world’s occurrences [Entzauberung der Welt] – found here, with the doctrine of predestination, its final stage. This development, which began with the prophecy of ancient Judaism in the Old Testament, rejected, in conjunction with Greek scientific thought, all magical means for the salvation quest as superstition and sacrilege (Weber 2011, 120).

The Calvinist ethic fostered rational and ruthless conduct. Weber argued that only the self-inflicted punishment present in strict Puritan discipline had been able to bring about the impersonal character of the economic and bureaucratic systems that distinguished formal Western rationalism. Furthermore, in eliminating hierocratic mediation between the individual and the divine, thus establishing a direct link between the believer and the holy texts and freeing him or her from the sacralised bond with the parental community and political authority (in particular by means of the emphasis Calvin placed on the words of the apostle Peter: “We must obey God rather than men!”), the Reformation had encouraged a greater 5 The term Puritanism, as used by Weber, became a “synonym for ‘ascetic Protestantism’ in its English, Dutch and (in fact) American heartlands” (Ghosh 2008, 8).



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internal and external independence on the part of the individual. Ascetic Protestantism in its Calvinist form, therefore, also lay at the origin of an ideological formation intrinsically linked to the capitalist ethos: bourgeois individualism. 1.1. The Protestant Diaspora in North America and ‘Political’ Individualism Weber analysed the ideological formation of bourgeois individualism very closely in his “Churches and Sects in North America” and in “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism”,6 which comprised a sort of sequel to the essays on the Protestant ethic on which Weber had worked upon his return from his 1904 journey to the United States. It was in these texts that he finished his portrait of the ‘man of a vocation’ [Berufsmensch] and of bourgeois individualism. In the frenzied pursuit of profit in the America of the first decade of the twentieth century, Weber thought to see the inherent connection between the ascetic Protestantism that had fostered the genesis of the bourgeois spirit and the most complete expression of capitalism. The portrait that he paints is both fascinating and contradictory. In the face of the intuitive image of an atomized society, Weber depicted American society as an intricate network of groups, coteries and sects: a Sektengesellschaft. Affiliation with a religious sect was a prerequisite for entering the business world7 The reason for this “sectarian” organisation had, in his opinion, to be sought within the particularistic conception of grace inherent to ascetic Protestantism, according to which all men were equally outcast and inadequate from an ethical standpoint, but not all are equally worthy from a religious point of view. “Only a few of the massa perditionis were called to attain the holy” (Weber 1951, 239). The American Sektengesellschaft that Weber depicted in these essays could be seen as a sort of hybrid of the Toenniesian Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (see Kim 2000, 203 and ff.). The spread of American bourgeois society, 6 “Churches and Sects in North America” appeared in April 1906, in the pages of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Vol. 50, Nos. 102 and 104, approximately seventeen months after Weber’s return from his journey to the United States. Three months later (in June 1906), the revised essay appeared in Christliche Welt, Vol. 20, Nos. 24 and 25. The final version, “The Protestant Sects”, was published in 1920, in the first volume of the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. 7 He goes on to write: “In a country with such tremendous expanse, sparse settlements and mobile population, where, moreover, legal proceedings are anchored in Anglo-Normal formalism, where the laws concerning debt and seizure are so lax and (due to the homestead privileges) favorable to the bulk of the Western farmers as to be inoperable, personal credit has to rely chiefly on the crutch of such an ecclesiastical guarantee as a credit reference” (Weber 1985, 7).

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whose development hinged on the capitalist mode of production, relied upon a system of social relations of a prevalently communitarian nature: “Membership in a ‘reputable’ (in the American sense) Church”, Weber writes, “guaranteed not only the social reputableness of the individual but also, and above all, his reputableness in business” (Weber 1985, 7). These sects were the place where religious fervour was rekindled, and they nurtured a spirit of exclusiveness and proud resistance to worldly systems. Furthermore, “the ascetic conventicles and sects formed one of the most important historical foundations of modern ‘individualism’. Their radical break away from patriarchal and authoritarian bondage, as well as their way of interpreting the statement that one owes more obedience to God than to man, were especially important” (Weber 2011, 225). Indeed, these sects were, most importantly, a place where self-assertion [Selbsbehaup­ tung] was a prerequisite for social cohesion. [The sects] …alone have been able, on the foundation of Protestantism, to instil an intensity of interest in religion in the broad middle class – and especially modern workers – that otherwise is found only, though in the form of a bigoted fanaticism, among traditional peasants (…) this very notion – the individual could testify to his salvation through his righteous behaviour – formulated the foundation for the social knitting together of the congregation. Indeed, the tremendous flood of social groupings, which penetrate all corners of American life, are constituted according to this ‘sect’ model (Weber 2011, 231).

By virtue of a truly singular alchemy the American Sektengesellschaft was not only the arena of capitalist modernisation, but also of the perpetuation of traditionalist bonds. It was an outpost of bourgeois individualism but, at the same time, also of a communitarian conformism that set the rules of economic conduct. The contradictions of American society seemed to Weber to be the key characteristics for understanding the formation of the type of personality that was so strongly intertwined with the birth of the capitalist spirit. In particular, it was the paradox of the coexistence of individualism and communitarianism as the two essential elements in the rise of modern individualism that seemed to Weber to reveal the fundamental characteristics of the ascetic Protestant personality. It found its chief expression in the Vereinsmensch, the ‘associational man’, the individual who defined her- or himself exclusively in relation to the group, albeit an acquired group (the faith community) and not an ascribed one (the family). Weber’s study of the Protestant diaspora in North America was in part motivated by the search for further confirmation of the hypothesis of an



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inextricable connection between Protestantism and capitalism. This study provided him with the chance to seek the fundamental element in the search for the mechanisms of the type of individuation to which religion, and Protestantism in particular, gave rise. First and foremost, the personality forged by ascetic Protestantism coincided with an eminently socio-political formation of the individual. Far from defining bourgeois individualism and its corresponding personality structure (or, in other words, the fundamental values to which that personality was bound) as an atomized condition, a Robinson Crusoe in a state of isolation, the Puritan individuality that emerged from the pages of Weber’s essays on North America was more akin to the Aristotelian zoon politikon. Unlike Defoe’s character, which rose to become the symbol of homo oeconomicus over the course of the nineteenth century, the Aristotelian zoon politikon “is not considered in him/herself but only as a member of a social group, whatever it happens to be (the family, the village, the polis)” (Bobbio, 1997, 32). The bourgeois individualism forged by ascetic Protestantism and its corresponding personalities thus demonstrated their eminently political nature. 2. Criticisms, Condemnations and Misinterpretations Between 1907 and 1910, the first critical reviews of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, written by H. Karl Fischer8 and Felix Rachfal,9 were published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and in the Internationale Wochenschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik. These were followed, in short order, by Weber’s choleric responses. Fischer’s and Rachfal’s criticisms were quite harsh. Both accused the author of The Protestant Ethic of not having clearly specified the object or the aims of his inquiry, of obscurity in his definition of the concept of worldly asceticism, and of lacking independence and originality when juxtaposed with the positions of Ernst Troeltsch.10 Furthermore, they argued that he had 8 Karl Fischer was an important German historian and the author of books and essays on German history and on medieval history and culture (see Chalcraft and Harrington 2001). 9 Felix Rachfahl (1867–1925) was known for his studies of Dutch and German history (see Chalcraft and Harrington 2001). 10 Rachfal and Weber in particular accused each other of deliberate misconstruction, sterile criticism, incompetence, disciplinary patriotism [Ressortspatriotismus], banality, ignorance and pedantry. For an in-depth critical commentary on the disputes between Weber and his critics, see Chalcraft and Harrington 2001 and Ray 1987.

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placed too much emphasis on the concept of Beruf, and of historical inaccuracy in his reconstruction of, for instance, the spread of Calvinism in Holland and the birth of capitalism in North America. That was only the beginning. Later unfavourable reviews in response to the translation and wider circulation of The Protestant Ethic especially following the Second World War not only continued in the same direction taken by Rachfal and Fisher, but they were even more virulent – so much so as to make Weber’s essay not only the most widely read but also the most widely condemned in the history of sociology. Most of the criticisms were particularly disparaging of the hypothesis that the spread of Protestantism had provided the impetus for and, therefore, preceded the development of capitalism. First, the casting of Benjamin Franklin as the ideal-type personification of the capitalist spirit and as the example that demonstrated that the capitalist spirit was historically antecedent to the capitalist mode of production was probably the element which attracted the greatest amount of negative comment. In Weber’s opinion, the ‘capitalist spirit’ “existed before ‘capitalist devel­ opment’ in the colony (Massachusetts) where Benjamin Franklin was born (…) Thus, in this case at any rate, the causal relationship between ideas and economic situations lies in the direction opposite from that which would be postulated by the ‘materialist’ argument” (Weber 2011, 82). Nonetheless, as Löwy concisely stated, It should be mentioned that Franklin did not live in the ‘backwoods of Pennsylvania’ but in Philadelphia, the second or third largest and most prosperous city in America in the eighteenth century, according to all records. Secondly, he was born and reared in Boston (until the age of seventeen), America’s first city and the most capitalist-minded of all. Thirdly, he lived for many years in London, at that time probably the greatest capitalist center in the entire world (Löwy 1993, 50).

Having turned to Franklin as an example had therefore enfeebled as opposed to strengthened Weber’s argument, revealing one of its weakest and most problematic points. Second, the hypothesis that the capitalist spirit was historically antecedent to the capitalist mode of production (a fundamental hypothesis for the structure of Weber’s entire explanatory framework) suffered from another irreconcilable contradiction. In introducing the first of the two essays that comprise The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber asserted that the mass conversion to Protestantism during the sixteenth century had taken place in a “large number of the richest and most economically developed areas – favoured by nature or a geographical location that facilitated trade and commerce”



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(Weber 2011, 68). It therefore followed that Protestantism had been adopted in already wealthy cities, namely, in contexts already heading in the direction of capitalist development. Weber himself thus provided grist for his detractors’ mills. Finally, the idea that the capitalist Wirtschaftsethick and the ‘psychological’ formation, or personality, associated with capitalism, had both preceded and fostered the rise of the economic system in question was considered to be highly idealistic and reductionist. It was against this last criticism that Weber retaliated most fiercely. I emphatically rejected any such ‘foolish’ thesis that the Reformation created the capitalist spirit on its own, ‘or even’ the economic system of capitalism. Important forms of capitalist enterprise do, of course, considerably pre-date the Reformation (…) what I sought to derive from asceticism in its Protestant recasting was the spirit of ‘methodical’ conduct of life, and that this spirit stands only in a relation of ‘adequacy’ [Adäquanz] to economic forms – yet a relation I believe be of the greatest importance for our cultural history (Weber 1907, in Chalcraft and Harrington, 2001, 32 and 35).

Furthermore, he argued that: The lay belief that because history is concerned with ‘mental events’ and so (as people believe, and as they say in today’s popular idiom) ‘starts from psychological presuppositions’, it must therefore be based to a unique degree on ‘psychology’, in the sense of a specialist discipline – this belief is about as poorly founded as the assumption that because the great deeds of ‘historical personalities’ are always bound up with the ‘medium’ of sound waves or ink, the foundational disciplines for history are acoustics and the physics of fluid dynamics (Weber 1908, in Chalcraft and Harrington, 2001, 48).

Despite Weber’s indignant response, this criticism seemed to hit the mark. As far as the accusation of psychologistic reductionism was concerned, Weber had, on more than one occasion, referred to “psychological motivations”. He stated that his interests lay in identifying “which psychological motivations gave direction to the organisation of the believer’s life and held the individual firmly to it” (Weber 2011, 115).11 Further, he had claimed 11 Weber not only referred to “psychological motivations” without clearly stating what he meant by the term but, in doing so, he openly contradicted the numerous critical allusions made about the employment of psychology in historical accounts in his methodological essays (see Weber 2001). According to Runciman (1969), Weber’s explanation of the role that religious beliefs played in turning the historical process in one direction instead of another rested upon “psychological assumptions” that Weber does not clearly explain. For Parsons (1963), Weber had intended to “psychologize” the interpretation of concrete social actions in the context of his analysis of the social system. Birnbaum (1973) pointed out how “Weber gave precise accounts of the location of religiosity in the

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that “economic rationalism” depended also “on the capacity and disposition of persons to organise their lives in a practical-rational manner. Wherever magical and religious forces have inhibited the unfolding of this organized life, the development of an organized life oriented systematically toward economic activity has confronted broad-ranging internal resistance” (Weber 2011, 246).12 Regarding the accusation of idealism, Weber likewise had upheld an argument that had arguably provided the grounds for those criticisms. He had done so with the clear intention of criticising, in particular, the Marxian theory of primitive accumulation. He argued that “the question of the motivating forces behind the expansion of modern capitalism is not primarily one of the source of money reserves that can be used by capitalist firms, but above all a question of the development of the spirit of capitalism” (Weber 2011, 91). In other words, in order to understand the origin of the economic system, Weber suggested starting from an examination of the development of the capitalist “spirit”, or rather, the development of the sphere of ideas.13 In view of the numerous and nearly unanimous criticisms of The Protestant Ethic branding it as historiographically indefensible, sociologically and methodologically confused, glaringly biased despite exhortations to neutrality in science and, from the standpoint of theological and religious studies, inaccurate, Pellicani has peremptorily asserted that it is time to “to put it aside once and for all” (Pellicani 1988, 85). If we were to stratification system. The psychological mechanism by which religion was produced in these circumstances was, clearly, intuited by Weber without his specifying these” (Birnbaum 1973, 32). In Jaspers’s and Schluchter’s interpretations, the fact that Weber had drawn on psychology gave his work added value (cf. Schluchter 1989 and Jaspers 2010). A second set of questions regarding the use of psychological assumptions involves the more complex problem of the indicator relationship and the derivation of motivations for action from behaviour, a central theme in methodological thought after Weber. For more on this topic, see Lazarsfeld and Oberschall (1965). 12 It was for this reason that Schluchter considered “Max Weber’s studies in the sociology of religion and politics” as providing “a kind of psychological and, above all, sociological analysis of Weltanschauungen. It is centered on the concept of world views and especially of life conduct. These are in turn related to the concept of personality – understood in both a theoretical historical and a normative sense” (Schluchter 1989, xiv-xv). 13 As Marshall (1982) noted, the spirit of capitalism is sometimes confused with the capitalist system tout court. At times, it appears to be only one distinguishing characteristic of that system, but also one of its principal causes (see Marshall 1982, 56–57). According to Marshall, by defining capitalism in terms of its preconditions, Weber’s hypothesis became circular on the one hand, and unfalsifiable on the other hand, because it implied that, without those preconditions, that type of capitalism would never have come into being, and vice versa.



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judge this work based upon the aforementioned disciplinary defects, then we could doubtlessly share Pellicani’s conclusions. The problem, however, is that The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is not strictly speaking a scientific work – whether historiographical or sociological – but a primarily political work. In other words, Weber’s study on Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism does not have the rigour and scope of a purely scholarly intellectual endeavour because its aim was above all to make a political intervention in the debates of the time over the role of ideas and material forces in history, and over the historical site of genesis of capitalism.14 From this perspective it is the concept of ‘personality’ that takes on a key role, a concept which, as we have seen in the previous chapters, was the theoretical marker of Weber’s passage from history to sociology – from the irrationalistic pitfalls of the Geisteswissenchaften to the more politically promising and scientifically germane shores of the social sciences. The idea of personality as a complex of ‘constant motives’, united by an inner habitus and obtained by virtue of rigorous self-discipline and methodical action seemed, to Weber, the chief outcome of ascetic Protestantism. This notion also became the key to understanding how an economic and political model could become a model for living one’s life. However, the emphasis on the concept of personality and the study of the ethical-ascetic origins of capitalism in general were not extraneous to the political and cultural objectives that Weber had set himself in 1903, when he had returned to his intellectual endeavours. The study of the Protestant ethic, and of ascetic Protestantism in particular, as we will soon see, served the purpose of showing the German bourgeois class of Weber’s time the virtues of a political and economic leadership shaped by the ascetic personality, especially in the form it had taken in the Anglo-Saxon countries. His research of the Protestant Ethic had, in other words, led Weber to the discovery “of a archetypal subjective figure of the bourgeoisie – of a specific life conduct – with whose spirit” Weber could “finally identify himself” (Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005, XLIII). To understand the nature of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and of his studies of other religions, we will therefore have to shift our perspective. It will prove especially useful to attempt to study the Protes­tant ethic backwards and forwards, beginning from its historical and bio-bibliographic antecedents in order to arrive at the open issues and the real intellectual and political objectives that this work advanced. 14 On this point see also Barbalet 2008 and Rehmann 1998.

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chapter three 3. Avant le Déluge: An Anachronic Approach to Interpreting “The Protestant Ethic”

The personal reasons that ostensibly drove Weber to write his essay on Protestantism and capitalism – a subject that had not appeared in Weber’s field of study prior to that time – are many, and have all been duly reconstructed in the numerous personal and intellectual biographies. While Marianne Weber (1988) and Arthur Mitzman (1970), for instance, highlighted the importance of the role played by the quasi-Calvinist upbringing he received from his mother, Roth (1993) pointed out the influence exerted over Weber in his early years by the political and religious fervour of the Baumgarten family.15 Still more recently, Radkau (2009) traced the birth of Weber’s interest in religion to his journey to Rome during the period of his illness, and the impression made on him during that time by the writings of Werner Sombart and William James.16 Despite these biographical factors and intellectual influences, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism nevertheless defies classification among studies of religion or theological criticism, and does not fit neatly among the historiographical accounts of religion and economy that were so plentiful in Weber’s day. The aim of the essay was to identify in the life conduct inspired by ascetic Protestantism the most suitable form of conduct for the promotion of modern capitalism and, consequently, the behaviour that the German bourgeois class of his day should adopt. It was therefore not only a eulogistic and apologetic essay on Anglo-Saxon capitalism, but also a work of “political education” (see Barbalet 2008; Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005).17 When seen in this light, there appeared to be a 15 The particular reference here is to Otto Baumgarten, Weber’s cousin and an important theologian, and to Hermann Baumgarten, Otto’s father and a professional historian, whose Römische Triumphe (1887) had an especially significant influence on the young Weber. In this work, Baumgarten defended the vital historical function of an ethicalpolitical Protestantism (see Roth 1993). 16 Reference should be made to Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902) by Werner Sombart and to The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902) by William James. The continual intellectual exchange between Weber and his friend Ernst Troeltsch, who was working to finish his Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit (1906) during the same years in which Weber was writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was also particularly influential on Weber’s work. 17 In the words of Ferraresi and Mezzadra, “these writings, in the end, are so important that all of Weber’s subsequent work can be interpreted as an attempt to solve the problems and to face the challenges that are present here: the crisis of legitimacy of a model of political authority and of a social and productive system centered on the ‘community of interests’ between landowners (Junker) and peasants; the question of control and regulation of subjective behaviours of work; the translation into ethical-economic terms of the theme



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continuity with the direction that Weber had already established for his work ten years earlier, in what is known as his Freiburg Address. 3.1. First Analepsis: The Freiburg Address “The Nation State and Economic Policy” [Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik. Akademische Antrittsrede], better known as the Freiburg Address, is the academic paper which Weber delivered upon taking up his full professorship in the faculty of political economy and financial sciences at the university of Freiburg in 1895. This was conceived as an opportunity to present his thoughts on issues that were at the time highly topical. The context was the “epocal transition from patriarcalism to capitalism, from the country to the city, from the ‘agrarian state’ to the ‘industrial state’” (Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005, VIII). Against this background, economic, urban and political questions became inextricably intertwined at the heart of a controversy that drew in the entire political and academic world.18 During the final decade of the nineteenth century, the Prussian agrarian crisis, the repressive measures being taken against the socialists and the more general changes taking place throughout German society became signs of the “crumbling of an entire social structure” (Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005, XIII). All the open issues during those years of Germany’s transition to an industrial mode of capitalist production can thus be found in Weber’s text, in an emotional reinterpretation of ‘life conduct’ in the transition from caste to class, in the context of the irreversible process of ‘passive democratisation’; the definition of a bourgeois ethos as practical instrument of social discipline and education in the work ethic; the problem of method associated with the utilisation of statistical instruments for the monitoring of ‘developmental tendencies’ of the economic-social processes. As can be seen, one can find here the themes that will be at the centre of The Protestant Ethic, of the Sociology of Religion, of the Methodological Writings and of the Political Writings (Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005, VIII-IX). 18 Germany, and Prussia in particular, were going through a particularly difficult economic crisis in the cereal production sector. Bismarck’s successor, Leo von Caprivi (in power from 1890 to 1894), responded to the crisis by putting an end to the protectionist measures his predecessor had adopted and replacing them with free-trade policies, whose aim was to encourage the opening up of German production to international markets. The opposition of Prussian landowners, who united to form the “Agrarian League”, succeeded in re-establishing protectionist policies that would endure until the First World War. On the political stage, in 1894, precisely when Weber was drafting the Address, the new Imperial Chancellor Hohenlohe was putting forward the “Proposal for Legislation against Subversion” [Umsturzvorlage], which consisted of a series of overtly anti-socialist measures aimed against manifestations of political or religious dissent. The proposal was withdrawn in May of 1895 (see Gladen 1974). For a general commentary on Weber’s writings from the 1890s in relation to the political and economic context of the time, see in particular Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005. For more on the agrarian crisis, see Rosenberg 1967; Abel 2006; Wehler 1981 and Corni 1995.

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coloured by the overtly imperialist perspectives of this young intellectual from Erfurt. Weber stated his aims clearly in the first lines of the text. “What I intend is firstly to illustrate, from just one example, the role played by physical and psychological racial differences between nationalities in the economic struggle for existence” (Weber 1994, 2). Here, the analysis of the “physical and psychological racial differences between nationalities” was applied more specifically to the example of German day-labourers (Protestants) and Polish peasants (Catholic) in the region east of the Elbe.19 Weber attributed different economic behaviours to each of these two categories; in the case of the Polish workers, the implications for the German nation were negative.20 The issue that Weber addressed most explicitly in his lecture at Freiburg was the cultural and economic threat to Germanness [das Deutschtum] and German national interests posed by the increase in the numbers of seasonal Polish immigrant labourers settling in eastern Prussia. Polish immigration in that area had been the result of the introduction, in the interests of opening up German production to the international market, of intensive agriculture in the place of traditional cereal cultivation. This new type of agriculture required low-cost, seasonal labour, which the Polish migrants offered, thus leading to the German agricultural labourers abandoning the rural districts. Indeed, German labourers were leaving  agricultural labour and moving towards the urban centres, even though these did not in the least guarantee better living conditions. Weber thus set out to explain why German day-labourers had adopted what could appear to be irrational economic behaviour, even though, according to him, they were intellectually and economically “superior” to the Poles.21 Yet, since in his opinion “the reasons are not material [nicht materielle Gründe sind es]” (Weber 1994, 8), the grounds for such an “irrational” behaviour had to be sought in the Germans’ aspirations to freedom and their discontentment with the typical rural world of the Junkertum, made up only of masters and servants [Herren und Knechte]. “Anyone 19 For more on the issue of “race” and “racism” in Weber, see Liebersohn 1993 and Zimmerman 2006. 20 In using the example of the German and Polish peasants in eastern Prussia in his Address, Weber was returning to, and re-examining, a study that he had conducted a few years earlier for the Verein für Sozialpolitik. 21 In point of fact, Weber writes, “why is it the Polish peasants who are gaining ground? Is it because of their superior economic intelligence or capital resources? It is rather the opposite of both these things” (Weber 1994, 9).



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who cannot decipher this does not know the magic of freedom” (Weber 1994, 8), Weber argued. For this reason, Weber ultimately attributed the reason for the German citizens’ abandonment of these areas to the Poles to what he considered to be irresponsible political and economic policy that worked in favour of the Junker – the only ones who, in his opinion, benefited from the arrival of low-cost labour in the eastern regions. The growing non-Germanic presence in the eastern regions gave rise to what Weber defined, in his Address, as the problem of the “becoming Polish of the German East” [Polonisierung des deutschen Ostens] – a process he considered to be a lamentable contamination of the cultural and ethnic environment. Agrarian and national questions came together against this backdrop. In Weber’s nationalist eyes,22 they demanded a twofold solution: “the German race should be protected in the East of the country, and (…) the state’s economic policies ought to rise to the challenge of defending it” (Weber 1994, 13). As Weber revealingly wrote: “What makes us feel we have a right to make this demand is the circumstance that our state is a nation state” (Weber 1994, 13). The damage caused by the policies favouring the Junker, therefore, had to be repaired. A change in direction was required, a change in turn made necessary by the economic and social restructuring that the country was undergoing. However, the German bourgeoisie, as the class called upon at this juncture to seize the wheel and bring the reversal about, was not up to the task. In one of the central passages of the Address, Weber states: I see no reason why a bourgeois [bürgerlich] scholar like myself should love them [the Junkers]. Despite all this, however, the strength of their political instincts was one of the most powerful assets which could possibly have been invested in the service of the state’s power-interests. They have done their work (…) The last and greatest of the Junkers [Bismarck], stood at the head of Germany for a quarter of a century, and the future will probably consider that his incomparably great career as a statesman also contained an element of tragedy, one which even today remains hidden to many people. This lies in the fact that the works of his hands, the nation, to which he 22 In 1885, Bismarck issued a decree stating that Poles of non-Prussian citizenship were obliged to leave the country. The protests of the landowners, whom the decree had deprived of their greatest labour pool, persuaded Bismarck’s successor, Caprivi, to mitigate the decree, allowing only unmarried workers to enter the country and only on a seasonal basis. It was precisely this softening of the decree’s provisions that provoked Weber’s ire. In Weber’s mind, it was necessary to promote a campaign of “Germanisation” of the eastern regions, severely forbidding the entrance of Polish labourers – in keeping with the plans of the Pan-Germanic League, of which he was then a member.

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chapter three gave unity, gradually and irresistibly altered its economic structure even while he was still in office, becoming something different, a people which was bound to demand other ways of ordering things than those he could give them, or to which his Caesarist nature could accommodate itself. In the final analysis it was precisely this process which brought about the partial failure of his life’s work. (…) But in whose hands is the political function of the Junkers passing, and what are we to make of the political vocation of those who take it over? I am a member of the bourgeois classes [ein Mitglied der bürgerlichen Klassen]. I feel myself to be a bourgeois, and I have been brought up to share their views and ideals. Yet, it is precisely the vocation of our science to say things people do not like to hear (…) and if I ask myself whether the German bourgeoisie has the maturity today to be the leading political class of the nation, I cannot answer this question in the affirmative today (Weber 1994, 22–23).

Weber believed that the immaturity of the German bourgeoisie, its lack of a “political vocation”, could be observed in its underestimation of the importance of colonial businesses for the increase of the nation’s economic and political power, as well as in its still largely traditionalist view of the economy. However, this immaturity in his view did not have economic causes: “the reason”, Weber asserted, “is to be found in its unpolitical past, in the fact that it was not possible to catch up on a century of missed political education in a single decade” (Weber 1994, 25). The fundamental issue therefore became that of bringing about the “political education” of the bourgeoisie, an education that would render them able to acquire the vocation [Beruf] of leading the state. In Ferraresi’s and Mezzadra’s words: Weber calls attention to the issue [of] the temporal gap – at the origin of the crisis – between capitalist development and forms of political legitimacy; between economic history and political history; between economic interests and political values. The problem, then, is to identify a political subject (a leading class) capable of managing this crisis by affirming its own political-cultural hegemony over the whole society; namely, to produce the norm for the convergence between the principle of political authority and the command of capital, between society and politics, between the impersonal domination of capitalist relations and the legitimation of power that is destined to ratify and to defend these relations, thereby realising, after the political unification of Germany, the social unification of the Reich. It is not the residual patriarchalism of the Junker that prefigures, to Weber’s mind, the figure of a coherent ‘capitalist power’, but the German bourgeoisie, that would have, though, to submit itself to a process of political ‘education’ and ‘maturation’, emancipating itself from subjection to the authoritarian Prussian model and, through this movement of hegemonic subjectivation, redefining in its totality the nation-state (Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005, XXXIX).



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The Freiburg Address, therefore, marked a fundamental watershed in Weberian political and scientific thought. From a political standpoint, Weber proudly allied himself with the bourgeoisie, and in particular with the industrial bourgeoisie, against the landed, patriarchal capitalism  of the Junker. In doing so, Weber encouraged the separation of the agricultural state from the industrial state and consequently the breaking  up of the social bloc that they represented. In his opinion, the industrial bourgeoisie needed to ally itself with “the highest strata of the German working class”, a class “economically” – although not politically – more mature than “the self-centred propertied classes would like to admit” (Weber 1994, 25). Weber appears to be saying that the repressive legislation proposed against workers’ organisations was a serious mistake that revealed the immaturity of the German political class, insofar as it did not acknowledge the right of the working-class’s aristocracy to “demand the freedom to stand up for its interests in the shape of the openly organised economic struggle for power” (Weber 1994, 25). The Address thus marked just how far Weber stood from the anti-socialist positions of the agrarian-bourgeois bloc. As he well understood, to avoid a socialist revolution, it was “necessary that the bourgeois revolution affirmed itself against ‘feudal reaction’, putting itself in a condition to ‘integrate’ into the state the large stratum of the mass of workers” (Ferraresi and Mezzadra 2005, XL). The defence of national interests and the German bourgeoisie’s lack of a vocation for political leadership were the two central themes of Weber’s political, and even scholarly, agenda at the turn of the century. Thus, the concept of Beruf – vocation and profession – already played a pivotal role here. The German bourgeoisie had to acquire the Beruf of political leadership. However, it had to be instilled in it through a process of education. This, therefore, was the task that awaited those intellectuals who cared about the fate of the nation. 3.2. Second Analepsis: Kulturkampf and the Journey to the United States As mentioned earlier, one of the bases for Weber’s comparison between German and Polish labourers in the Address was their different religious affiliations. In making this choice, Weber nevertheless adopted an ana­ lytical approach that was reasonably widespread among his peers. The tendency to explain socio-economic and political differences between nations on the basis of religious affiliations – and especially in terms of the influence of religion on political movements – was a time-honoured

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tradition not only in Germany, but across Europe as well. In the words of Nipperdey: Since the French revolution, such perspectives became especially widespread among European liberals. The philosophers of the Counterrevolution had singled out Protestantism as the real origin and seedbed of revolution against tradition and authority. The liberals turned the argument around: Protestantism is indeed connected with progress and modernity, but Protestantism is not revolution; it is constant reform. The Catholic countries are the ones with these kinds of revolutions, provoked by despotism, corruption, and laziness. This kind of argument colored all historical-political reasoning in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Progress and backwardness were frequently explained in terms of religious categories (Nipperdey 1993, 77).23

Drawing a connection between political and economic behaviour and religion, or the study of religious phenomena in terms of ‘impulses’, ‘psychological incentives’ or, more generally, in terms of their effect on ‘personality’, were not approaches that belonged solely to Weber. On the contrary, together these formed a method with a long and rich tradition, especially in Germany, where the Lutheran Reformation – to borrow the words of Peter Ghosh – had given rise to a “‘liberation of subjectivity’” (Ghosh 2008, 177). Indeed, the Reformed countries comprised that “realm of independent subjectivity” (ibid) celebrated by Hegel and Schleier­ macher and, more widely, throughout the philosophical traditions and theological studies of the nineteenth century. More specifically, in terms of the approach and the terminology he employed to describe the ascetic Protestant personality, Weber owed a debt to the work of the theologian  Matthias Schneckenburger (1804–1848),24 author of a comparative 23 Nipperdey continues thus: “In the last decades of the nineteenth century, however, the rising wave of nationalism changed and weakened this kind of reasoning. French liberals, for example, would no longer praise the Reformation as the origin of Modernity, as Guizot and Michelet had done, but would find its origin in the Latin and perhaps the French Renaissance. Weber quoted a relic of the older tradition, Emile Laveleye, a Belgian Catholic anticlerical, whose 1875 book on Catholic and Protestant nations in Europe continued all the stereotypes about the inferiority of Catholic nations in education, culture, wealth, liberty, and even morality. (…) In Germany this type of reasoning survived among Protestants (…) In 1898, German newspapers frequently commented on the war between the United States and Spain in terms of Catholic decline and Protestant progress” (Nipperdey 1993, 77–78). 24 Schneckenburger’s work was divided into two parts, the first devoted to the subjective aspects of the religious ethic, and the second to the objective, doctrinaire and institutional ones. Weber referred only to the first part. Nevertheless, the division of religious studies into a part devoted to subjective aspects and another devoted to objective ones came from the structure given them by Schleiermacher in Der christliche Glaube, a point of



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analysis of Protestant piety to which Weber makes both direct (see Weber 2011), and indirect reference (see Ghosh 2008). According to Ghosh, it is precisely here that “were the roots of Weberian ‘psychology’, and thus of Verstehen” (Ghosh 2008, 177) and likewise, of that meaning of personality shaped by religion which Weber employed. Weber’s stance against the immigration of non-German workers in his 1895 Address was thus not inspired by purely nationalist, or even xenophobic, motivations. It would have been different had the seasonal workers settling on German land been Dutch farmhands of Calvinist profession, or British occasional labourers of firm Puritan faith. Indeed, in Weber’s mind, the greatest problem with the eastern Prussian Polonisierung was the Catholic issue. In asserting the economic and intellectual inferiority of the Polish workers and claiming that they had a greater ability to adapt to harsh living conditions due to their lower level of aspirations, Weber was redeploying some of the central themes of the recent Kulturkampf. That conflict had ended with a series of measures very clearly intended to discriminate against the Catholics, limiting their possibilities of obtaining positions of power and in state administration, not to mention their opportunities for political expression.25 Weber’s anti-Catholic words and his attempts to account for socio-economic inequality by resorting to religious factors should, therefore, be read while keeping in mind the background of the Kulturkampf climate and the attempts to endow these ideas with scholarly legitimacy being undertaken across Germany at the close of the century (see Rehmann 1998). In this climate, the young Weber was involved, not only as a German intellectual influenced by the currents of thought of his day, nor even as one who simply cared about the fate of his nation, but also as a then-active member of the evangelical-social movement. Weber’s blatant anti-Catholicism, however, did not go hand in hand with a rigorous defence of Lutheran superiority. On the contrary, the Protestantism that Weber promoted was not the doctrine of the father of reference for theological studies. It had been this work which had first introduced the questions of subjective aspects as related to both religious self-awareness [das fromme Selbstbewusstsein] and awareness of God [das Bewusstsein von Gott] (see Ghosh 2008). 25 In 1871, Bismarck did away with the Catholic department of the Ministry of Culture and brought the Kanzelparagraph into effect, a law that had already been enacted in Bavaria in order to ban the use of the pulpit as a political rostrum. Furthermore, between 1872 and 1875, a set of laws aimed at reducing Catholic influence in every sphere was enacted. With these actions, the Lutheran Bismarck explicitly endeavoured to lessen Papal influence and to weaken the Centre Party and the SPD, both of whose stances were antimonarchic and anti-liberal, albeit for opposed reasons.

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the Reformation – a doctrine that Weber rather regarded as one of the causes for the political immaturity of the German bourgeoisie (see Ghosh 2008, 173ff.). It was instead Calvinism – and, more generally speaking, the ascetic Protestantism of the denominations of Calvinist derivation – that represented the religious and political ideal that the German bourgeois class needed to adopt as their inspiration. Weber criticised Lutheranism – which he nonetheless acknowledged as having been the trailblazer in fostering the modern conception of Beruf – for its traditionalism and for its inability to encourage the creation of an inner habitus inculcated with absolute discipline and self-control. In his opinion, for Luther, the individual should basically stay in the calling and status in which God had first placed him. His striving in this life should remain within the boundaries of his existing life situation. Hence, whereas Luther’s economic traditionalism at the beginning was anchored in Pauline indifference to the world, his economic traditionalism later flowed out of an increasingly more intense belief in Divine Providence that identified an unconditional obedience to God with an unconditional submission to one’s given lot (…) Thus, Luther’s conception of the calling remained tied to economic traditionalism (Weber 2011, 103–104).

For Weber, Lutheranism had left “unaltered the spontaneous vitality of instinctive action and the untempered life based on feelings”. It did not have within it this motivational push toward an uninterrupted self-control and hence toward a planned regulation of one’s own life in any sense. Here Lutheranism stood in contrast to the motivational impulse contained in the mighty teachings of Calvinism. (…) As a result of its doctrinal teachings on the acquisition of salvation, Lutheranism lacks the psychological motivation capable of endowing the organisation of life with a systematic element. If present, this element would have compelled a methodical rationalization of the Lutheran’s life (Weber 2011, 136–137).

Consequently, “Luther’s writings”, Weber stated, “cannot be spoken of as having an inner affinity with the ‘capitalist spirit’” (Weber 2011, 101). In view of this argument, we can better understand how the study of the religious origins of the bourgeois spirit that was dominating the world, and a careful analysis of the origins and the role of the Protestant Beruf, ended up focusing on Puritanism and the denominations of ascetic derivation that had emerged especially throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. This study, etched into his political and scientific agenda ten years earlier in Freiburg and encouraged by his journey to the United States, was essential to understanding the Puritan Beruf – the element that seemed to Weber to



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lie at the foundation of the economic success and vocation to political leadership that existed in the nations in which it had taken root. 4. Rationalisation and Specialisation In Weber’s opinion, the reason that worldly asceticism was able to unleash the power of bourgeois subjectivity and give form to the ‘modern Western’ personality lay, above all, in the unprecedented relationship that it had established between the individual, God and the world. This relationship was based on a conception of the individual as an instrument in the service of divine will, within which detachment from the world and disdain for worldly goods was directly proportional to the desire to be an active participant in it. In the words of D’Andrea, it was “starting from this redefinition of the relationship between God, man and world” that there emerged “a type of subjectivity that exhibits the traits proper of the modern individual and that will contribute in a decisive manner to reshape institutions, orders of life and social forms towards an individualistmodern direction” (D’Andrea 2005, 82). The type of subjectivity forged by Puritanism consisted not only in the fact that the Puritan “rationally systematizes his own conduct, but also in his rejection of everything that is ethically irrational, esthetic, or dependent upon his own emotional reactions to the world and its institutions. The distinctive goal always remains the alert, methodical control of one’s own pattern of life and behavior” (Weber 1978, 544). Unlike Lutheranism, ascetic Protestantism had been able to foster self-discipline, and the elimination of impulsiveness and rigorous self-control. Its origins could be traced back to Christianity itself, whose asceticism at its beginning “had fled the world into the realm of solitude. In renouncing the world, however, this asceticism had assisted religion, through the cloister, to dominate the world” (Weber 2011, 157). Weber argued that Christian monks had been the first to establish an ascetic relationship with worldly goods, albeit without becoming directly involved in the world or exercising any wider power outside of the confines of their own circles or their monasteries. The monks’ Christian asceticism, therefore, “left the course of daily life in the world by and large in its natural and untamed state” (Weber 2011, 157). The “Puritan revolution” consisted in the fact that Christian asceticism had thereby “slammed the gates of the cloister, entered into the hustle and bustle of life, and undertook a new task: to saturate mundane,  everyday life with its methodicalness. In the process, it sought to

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reorganize practical life into a rational life in the world rather than, as earlier, in the monastery. Yet this rational life in the world was not of this world or for this world” (Weber 2011, 157). In Weber’s mind, “Protestant ‘asceticism’ ultimately (…) had the psychological effect of freeing the acquisition of goods from the constraints of the traditional economic ethic” (Weber 2011, 169). Furthermore, Weber maintained that “it created the norm on which its impact exclusively depended: the psychological motivation that arose out of the conception of work as a calling and as the means best suited – and in the end often as the sole means – for the devout to become certain of their state of salvation” (Weber 2011, 175). In describing the ascetic Protestant personality – the summa of the personality in the Weberian sense as formulated in the methodological writings (see Chapter One and Chapter Two) – Weber therefore portrayed a model of the individual that he argued had been forged by ascetic Protestantism of a Calvinist stamp or, in other words, the ideal type of that attitude which he held to be at the origin of the capitalist triumph in the Anglo-Saxon and Dutch lands. It was in this light that the concept of personality took on the features of a prescriptive (Schluchter 1979), or pedagogic (Barbalet 2008) concept, or of a model designed to illustrate the “practices for empowering the self”, as Goldman argues: To Weber, the outcome of subjection to the calling is the transformation of the natural self into a ‘personality’, a concept with roots in Kant and in the neo-Kantians of Weber’s time, and that Durkheim, Simmel, Troeltsch and others drew on as well. Puritanism, Weber argued, created the Occidental form of personality, which is always essentially ascetic (Goldman 1993a, 171).

In addition to rigorous self-discipline, a methodical approach to action and the removal of impulsiveness, Weber saw the Puritan Beruf as the key to understanding the economic and political vocation of the bourgeois class of the Anglophone world for a second reason as well, a reason closely linked to the first. While reconstructing Richard Baxter’s views on professional specialisation, Weber compared Baxter’s arguments to “Adam Smith’s familiar deification of the division of labour” (Weber 2011, 162). Citing Baxter, Weber argued that, Baxter places a discussion of the motivation involved at the center of his analysis: “Outside of a firm calling, the workplace achievements of a person are only irregular and temporary. This person spends more time being lazy than actually working (…) he [the worker with a vocational calling] will perform his work in an orderly fashion while others are stuck in situations of constant confusion; their businesses fal to operate according to time or place”. Intermittent work, into which the common day labourer is forced, is



puritan personality and political leadership of capital99 often unavoidable, but it is always an unwanted, transitional condition. The systematic-methodical character required by this worldly asceticism is simply lacking in the life “without a calling” [Beruflosen] (Weber 2011, 162–163).

The concentration of all efforts and hopes for redemption in worldly work, in the profession, according to Weber forced the believer to focus exclusively on his or her task: the pursuit of success in business as the only goal of an active life sublimated the desire to discover one’s state of grace – the state of grace being the Puritan’s only aspiration. The focus on duty, on applying absolutely rational criteria to the accomplishment of that duty – in other words, a focus determined exclusively by the choice of the most suitable means to achieve that end – encouraged not only the development of a formal rationalism that was applied to all areas of life, but also to the rise of a specialistic attitude and forma mentis. Just as the endowment of the stable vocational calling with ascetic significance sheds an ethical glorification around the modern specialized expert, the providential interpretation of one’s chances for profit glorifies the busi­ nessperson (Weber 2011, 164).

Professionalisation and specialisation ended up coinciding. Specialisation in particular, according to Weber, revealed the level of the sophistication and rationalisation that he held to be typical of the West alone.26 By identifying a mode of conduct and a culture oriented toward specialisation as two of the sine qua non elements for the development of the Puritan personality, Weber, albeit only implicitly, targeted for criticism two German nineteenth-century theoretical traditions that had opposed the idea of the Beruf as specialisation, although they had done so from two extremely different points of view – Humboldtian neo-humanism, on the one hand, and the Marxian perspective, on the other. 5. Weber Versus the Neo-Humanism of Wilhelm von Humboldt In his 1793 treatise on the education of man [Theorie der Bildung des Menschen], Wilhelm von Humboldt asserted that education, truth and virtue could be obtained only if the individual absorbed the greatest possible 26 In connection with this, the Preface [Vorbemerkung] that Weber added to the collection of his studies on world religions is of particular interest. Ultimately, the development of “specialized knowledge” on all levels appeared to him to be the element that differentiated Western civilisation from others (see Weber 2011).

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number of stimuli offered by the surrounding world and by an inner sensibility. The individual’s task then became to give form to that material, creating a harmonious interaction between his or her own personality and nature. Leghissa argues that, for Humboldt, “the Bildung that can be acquired through the study of the ancient world” in particular “allows above all the liberation of the individual from any form of specialism. From this derives the habit of considering study to be a value in itself, which does not find its justification in relation to the utility that can be drawn from study itself” (Leghissa 2007, 18). It was during the same years when Humboldt was developing his theory of education that Kant was calling for humanity to “cultivate your talents” (Kant 1996) and Schiller was drawing attention to the human cost of specialisation (Schiller 1793– 1795). The questions surrounding the topic of personality development by means of universalist education were so pivotal that the historian Schnädelbach considered the period between the years 1831 and 1933 to be “the century of Bildung in the specific German meaning of the word and of the Bildungsbürgertum” (Goldman 1992, 26–27). In this context, the concept of personality amounted to a deployment of the qualities of the individual within a “harmonious unity” (see Hinton 1977 and Goldman 1992). While Weber had been considerably influenced by this notion of personality and had taken up its basic thesis, he nonetheless criticised the humanistic model that was its premise. In the Humboldtian ideal, the development of a harmonious self required a multidisciplinary education. For Weber, however, precisely because it was multidisciplinary, such an education lacked a precise direction. Weber countered the humanistic ideal of the aristocratic bourgeois of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries with the anthropological figure of the modern industrial bourgeois: specialisation [Spezialisierung] in place of education [Bildung]. As Weber wrote, Behind all the present discussions about the basic questions of the educational system there lurks decisively the struggle of the ‘specialist’ type of man against the older type of the ‘cultivated man,’ a struggle conditioned by the irresistibly expanding bureaucratization of all public and private relations of authority and by the ever-increasing importance of experts and specialised knowledge. This struggle affects the most intimate aspects of personal culture (Weber 1978, 1002).

In the struggle between the “specialist” and the “older type of the cultivated man”, which Weber saw as the inevitable consequence of the bureaucratisation of capitalist society, he took sides with the former, even though



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he recognized its pernicious effects.27 The specialistic educational model had great importance “not only for general intellectual training but indirectly also for the self-discipline and the ethical attitude of the young person” (Weber 1949, 3). This position, as Goldman (1992) noted, was directly derived from Weber’s analysis of the process of rationalisation. This process had played an essential role in ousting the Humboldtian humanistic concept of Bildung. In Weber’s anti-humanistic reinterpretation, Beruf as profession and vocation, therefore, lay at the foundation of the methodical and specialist­ically-oriented personality formation. If Beruf was the acceptance of a calling as absolute and exclusive devotion to a single cause, this then led to the formation of a coherent and integral inner core characterising the personality. “The dignity of the personality [die Würde der Persön­ lichkeit]”, Weber wrote in his essay on objectivity, “lies in the fact that for it there exist values about which it organizes its life” (Weber 1949, 55). However, if Beruf as “specialisation” were both the origin and the consequence of a bureaucratized – or, in other words, depersonalized – society, that im-personal aspect then became the meeting point between it and personality (see Goldman 1992). Personality was thus the end result of a process of depersonalisation. It demanded complete self-abnegation to an object, and thus objectivisation of the self, which in turn had to repress those affections that could distract it from fulfilling the duty to which it had been “called”. In Weber’s words: 27 The famous phrase found at the end of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism gives a measure of the negative dialectic of which the rationalisation of capitalist development was, in Weber’s mind, a part: “The restriction of persons to specialized work, and the renounciation of the Faustian universality of the man it requires, is in our world today the precondition for doing anything of value at all (…) Goethe, at the peak of his wisdom in his Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Travel [1829] and in his depiction of Faust’s final stage of life [1808], tried to teach us just this: the middle class way of ordering life, if it wishes to be directed at all rather than to be devoid of continuity, contains a basic component of asceticism. This realization for Goethe implied a resigned farewell to an era of full and beautiful humanity – and a forsaking of it. For such an era will repeat itself in the course of our civilizational development with as little likelihood as a reappearance of the epoch in which Athens bloomed. The puritan wanted to be a person with a vocational calling; we must be. (…) The concern for material goods, according to Baxter, should lie on the shoulders of his saints like ‘a lightweight coat that one can throw off at any time’. Yet fate allowed this coat to become a iron cage [stahlhartes Gehãuse] (…) No one any longer knows who will live in this casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this monumental development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise” (Weber 2011, 176–178, translation modified). For an indepth examination of the concept of “faustian universality of man”, see Wilding 2008.

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chapter three The powerful personality does not manifest itself by trying to give everything a ‘personal touch’ at every possible opportunity. The generation which is now growing up should, above all, again become used to the thought that ‘being a personality’ is something that cannot be deliberately striven for and that there is only one way by which it can (perhaps!) be achieved: namely, the whole-hearted devotion to a ‘task’ whatever it (and its derivative ‘demands of the hour’) may be (Weber 1949, 5).28

Ascetic Protestantism, because of the force with which it imposed adherence to a profession as vocation, had allowed the development of the personality “as such” or, in other words, had permitted the development of the model of specialistic individuality that according to Weber was both origin and result of capitalist rationalisation. For this reason, the definition of the vocational personality had to constitute the presupposition for the role of leadership, a role that the bourgeois class was called upon to play. 6. Weber Versus the Realisation of Individuality in Marx Despite the mass of criticisms, commentaries and direct and indirect reconstructions regarding Weber’s relation to Marx’s work, very little space has been devoted to comparing and contrasting the two conceptions of vocation and self-realisation put forward by these authors.29 However, it is precisely on this ground that the distance between the two could not be greater. While Weber indicated the adoption of the concept of Beruf as professionalisation and specialisation as the way in which to achieve the subjectivisation of the bourgeois class and as the ideal of humanity which he thought to be more evolved than that which was the end-product of other civilizations – despite having recognized the negative dialectic this process would run up against – Marx, on the other hand, promoted its elimination. As Marx put it: The all-round realisation of the individual will only cease to be conceived as an ideal, a vocation [Beruf], etc., when the impact of the world which stimulates the real development of the abilities of the individual is under

28 Weber continued along the same lines when defining the personality “in the field of science” as the exclusive privilege of “only he who is devoted solely to the work at hand (…). And this holds not only for the field of science; we know of no great artist who has ever done anything but serve his work and only his work” (Weber 1946, 137). 29 An exception to this oversight is the still unsurpassed work by Löwith 1993. On this issue, see also Birnbaum 1953; Braudel 1992; Merleau-Ponty 1973; Weiss 1981.



puritan personality and political leadership of capital103 the control of the individuals themselves, as the communists desire (Marx 1976, vol. 5, 292).

Marx rejected the idea of vocation, seeing it as a harness, a restraint confining the individual in a determinate professional identity. When individuals were able to freely choose the activities to which they would devote themselves – as in the well-known image of the fisherman, hunter and critic that Marx develops in The German Ideology – they would cease to identify themselves with a specific activity, an identification that was a result of the division of labour. In Marx’s words: With a communist organisation of society, there disappears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordination of the individual to some definite art, making him exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc.; the very name amply expresses the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on division of labour. In a communist society there are no painters but only people who engage in painting among other activities (Marx 1976, vol. 5, 394).

In bourgeois society, the division of labour assumed a form that forced labour “to be externally determined by the aim to be attained and the obstacles to its attainment which have to be overcome by labour” (Marx 1976, vol. 28, 530). In other words, bourgeois society, in Marx’s account, obliges the individual to plan his/her activity with the aim of achieving a goal that is hetero-directed, or “externally determined”. Therefore, by externalising their inner nature in the results of their productive activity, human beings’ objectivisation in such activity results in “total alienation” (Marx 1976, vol. 28, 412). Individual and free selection of the goals to be achieved, and the elimination of the external obligation imposed by the division of labour characteristic of a society divided into classes were, according to Marx, prerequisites for self-realisation. Marx asked: What is wealth if not the universality of the individual’s needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive forces, etc., produced in universal exchange; what is it if not the full development of human control over the forces of nature— over the forces of so-called Nature, as well as those of his own nature? What is wealth if not the absolute unfolding of man’s creative abilities, without any precondition other than the preceding historical development, which makes the totality of this development—i.e. the development of all human powers as such, not measured by any previously given yardstick—an end in-itself, through which he does not reproduce himself in any specific character, but produces his totality, and does not seek to remain something he has already become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? (Marx 1976, vol. 28, 411–412).

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Marx saw the concretisation of “self-realisation” [Selbstverwirklichung], and therefore also of “real freedom”, occurring when “the external aims are stripped of their character as merely external natural necessity, and become posited as aims which only the individual himself posits” (Marx 1976, vol. 28, 530). Hence Marx’s perspective was poles apart from Weber’s interpretation since, for the latter, self-realisation was correlated with devotion to a single cause or object, and to the pursuit of those aims determined by the profession-vocation. According to Marx, the division of labour that occurs in bourgeois society leads to alienation, to the individual’s powerlessness to freely express his or her own desiderata. For Weber, on the other hand, the division of labour, insofar as it assigns individuals specific tasks and guarantees specialisation, is the necessary prerequisite for personality formation.30 Marx’s criticism of specialisation as a cage, imprisoning an individual’s creativity and abilities within a determinate, imposed profession, was a result of his broader criticism of the capitalist economic formation. In Marx’s opinion, the expropriation and privatisation of the means of production and the nature of exploitation in a capitalist labour regime must inevitably impede the development and full realisation of individuality.31 Weber’s position on the importance of specialisation was also shaped by his analysis of the capitalist mode of production, its inexorability, and even its superiority. According to Weber, insofar as a separation between producers and means of production is necessary and immanent in the “nature of today’s technology”, it necessitates the development of specialised disciplines and knowledge.32 As Löwith well recognised: 30 Such an evaluation is not incompatible with Löwith’s interpretation, which served as a basis for an attempted reconciliation between Weber and Marx concerning the individual. In Löwith’s opinion, “Both provide – Marx directly and Weber indirectly – a critical analysis of modern man within bourgeois society in terms of the bourgeois-capitalist economy, based on the recognition that the ‘economy’ has become human ‘destiny’” (Löwith 1993, 48). Thus, both men measured themselves against that which they considered to be the critical, rending power of modernity, the former suggesting a treatment, and the latter providing a diagnosis. Indeed, Weber interprets capitalism as an ‘inevitable’ and universal process of rationalisation, but Marx, while also interpreting it as universal, believes it can be ‘transformed’” (Löwith 1993, 49). While it is true that Weber, like Marx, had identified a negative dialectic intrinsic to capitalism, a harbinger not only of the disenchantment and autonomisation of the individual, but also of bureaucratisation and alienation, Weber’s research perspective leaned towards a characterisation of individual realisation under the terms set by capitalism itself and by the division of labour by which it is characterised. 31 For more on the conception of individuality in Marx, see Basso 2012. 32 Weber writes: “Everywhere we find the same thing: the means of operation within the factory, the state administration, the army and university departments are concentrated by means of a bureaucratically structured human apparatus in the hands of the



puritan personality and political leadership of capital105 The problem for Weber was not the same as for Marx. Marx wanted to find a way to abolish the specific human existence (i.e. existence as a specialist) characteristic of the rationalised world, and also to abolish the division of labour itself. Weber asked rather how man as such, within his inevitably ‘fragmented’ human existence, could nevertheless preserve the freedom for the self-responsibility of the individual. And even here, Weber fundamentally affirms what Marx describes as a self-alienated humanity because, for him, precisely this form of existence did not merely permit the maximum ‘freedom of movement’ but enforced it (Löwith 1993, 78).

By taking the concept of vocation, specialisation and absolute devotion to a cause as the basis for his definition of personality, Weber therefore underscored his distance from those positions that tended to define the personality in contrast to specialisation, from the Humboldtian humanistic ideal, but also from the Marxist one. Furthermore, it was in this same arena that his anti-materialist criticism found substantiation, rendering his theoretical and political perspectives fundamentally irreconcilable with those of Marx. 7. Puritan Personality and Political Leadership of Capital Against the position that has tended to present The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as the manifestation of a coupure in the corpus of Weber’s work, a watershed between his first and second phases marked by an absence of fundamental continuity, I have here proposed a different thesis. In that long essay of 1904–1905, Weber concretised a plan of study that he had already sketched out ten years earlier in the lecture he gave upon taking up his professorship at Freiburg and further developed following his journey to the United States, then undergoing rapid capitalist person who has command over [beherrscht] this human apparatus. This is due partly to purely technical considerations, to the nature of modern means of operation – machines, artillery and so on – but partly simply to the greater efficiency of this kind of human cooperation: to the development of ‘discipline’, the discipline of the army, office, workshop and business. In any event it is a serious mistake to think that this separation of the worker from the means of operation is something peculiar to industry and, moreover, to private industry. The basic state of affairs remains the same when a different person becomes lord and master of this apparatus, when, say, a state president or minister controls it instead of a private manufacturer. The ‘separation’ from the means of operation continues in any case. As long as there are mines, furnaces, railways, factories and machines, they will never be the property of an individual or of several individual workers in the sense in which the materials of a craft in the Middle Ages were the property of one guild-master or of a local trade cooperative or guild. That is out of the question because of the nature of present-day technology” (Weber 1994, 281).

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expansion. Indeed, in his Address, he had already laid out the key themes which he would later take up and explore in greater depth in his Protestant Ethic: the use of religious factors to explain the different economic behaviours of Protestants and Catholics, the criticism of historical materialism and the link between political and economic leadership and the concept of Beruf. Political and economic leadership demanded a vocation. This was already clear to Weber when, at the close of the nineteenth century, he praised its plenitude in Bismarck’s character, while lamenting the lack of it in his own class. But what constituted this Beruf? If the duty of those intellectuals who held the German nation dear was to educate the bourgeois class in the vocation of political leadership, which form of Beruf should be taken as a model, and of what, exactly, did it consist? Filled with enthusiasm for the dynamism of British and American capitalism, it was in the varieties of Protestantism that had developed and spread in those lands (in other words, as Weber understood it, in Puritanism) that Weber thought to find the key to understanding Western modernity. Beruf as vocation and profession, as absolute devotion to a purpose – this alone could allow a process of individuation built upon the basis of a sole ethical core. Thence derives the centrality of the concept of personality as a harmonious unity of self, a concept which Weber salvaged from the German humanist tradition and reformulated based upon Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. This personality was the key to understanding modern capitalism and its success internationally, and it was also the hinge upon which the political education of his class would have to pivot. By taking this theoretical perspective, Weber criticised Marx twice over. Marx’s historical materialism, which Weber criticised for the fault of onesidedness as a way of explaining social phenomena, as well as Marx’s ideal vision of humanity freed from the prison of vocation and given the abil­ ity  to determine its own realisation: these were the aspects of Marx’s thought which Weber attacked most fiercely, explicitly in the first case, and implicit-ly in the second. Nevertheless, one could note how Weber ends up juxtaposing the supposed economic determinism of a Marxist stamp against a sort of religious-political determinism.33 In Weber’s thought, religious doctrines, 33 In noting mainly a political type of deterninism in Weber’s work, Jameson argued that “Weber’s most influential legacy to the anti-Marxist arsenal lay not in some idealistic reaction against a materialism he himself clearly shared with Marx but rather in the strategic substitution, in his own research and theorization, of the political for the economic



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insofar as they determine the values and essential principles of life around which the personality takes shape and which act as the models for individuals’ actions, ‘determine’ individuals’ personality formation. The type of personality forged by Puritan asceticism lay, in turn, at the origin of the Fachmann, the specialist who stood in opposition to the “older type of the cultivated man”, and who was the most significant and lasting consequence of Protestant rationalisation, first, and capitalist rationalisation, second. But the Fachmann endowed with Beruf was also the political leader whom Weber, the intellectual, hoped to help educate. The type of political man who “is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history” (Weber 1946, 115), as he wrote in his Politik als Beruf in 1919, is a man who has, first and foremost, “passion in the sense of matter-of-factness [Sachlichkeit], of passionate devotion to a ‘cause’, to the god or demon who is its overlord” (Weber 1946, 115). For the authentic political leader, a sense of “responsibility to this cause” must be “the guiding star of action” (Weber 1946, 115). Thus, the true political man, insofar as his actions reflect a single core of values, a one and only cause, is a ‘personality’ in the fullest sense of the word. It was to just such a political personality, capable of harnessing and putting to use those ascetic qualities, which Weber had discovered growing most abundantly in the lands of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, and whom Weber hoped to see entrusted with the future of Germany at the dawn of the twentieth century.

realm as the principal object of study, and thus, implicitly, as the ultimately determining reality of history” (Jameson 1973, 53).

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ROOTS OF RATIONALISATION: ANCIENT JUDAISM The only consistent and worthy method which philosophical investigation can adopt, is to take up History – where rationality begins to manifest itself in the actual conduct of the World’s affairs (not where it is merely an undeveloped potentiality), – where a condition of things is present in which it realises itself in consciousness, will and action (Hegel 2008, 144).

The work entitled Ancient Judaism [Das antike Judentum], first published under the same title in Volumes XLIV (1917–1918) and XLVI (1918–1919) of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, constitutes the third and last part of the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Though Weber published his studies on Judaism at the time of the Balfour Declaration, they contained no overt reference to the political vicissitudes of the times.1 There are, however, various interpretations which seek to reconstruct the historical and theoretical background behind Weber’s examination of ancient Judaism, beginning with the historiographical context in which he was working, which was witnessing a renaissance in Old Testament studies and attempts to reform the methodology and historical reconstruction of the Old Testament research tradition (Guttman 1925; Causse 1937; Liebeschütz 1967; Holstein 1975; Parente 1978; Fahey 1982).2 1 As Shmueli wrote about Weber, “although admitting the possibility of some Jewish settlers colonizing Palestine, he never envisaged the Zionist program as charting a way for a solution for the external problems of Jewry. As many liberal thinkers before him, both Christians and Jews, he did not regard the Jewish people, after the destruction of its state, as a nation. His teacher, Mommsen, maintained that according to the Roman concepts, the Jews were regarded as a nation or people (ethos or gens) only up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem” (Shmueli 1968, 210). 2 According to Parente, the leading figures in this endeavour, despite their dissimilar backgrounds, were Welhausen, whose intention was to impose an idealist Hegelian perspective, and Eduard Meyer, who supported a more socio-historical perspective, albeit of a positivist character. In his reconstruction of ancient Judaism, Weber followed the latter’s interpretation, especially with regard to his criticism of Smith’s work (see Fahey 1982, 66). In Parente’s opinion, Weber believed that even Meyer’s positivist interpretation was inadequate to explain the internal development of the Jewish religion and its subsequent transformation, since “what was to be analysed was not only the relationship with the surrounding world, but also and above all, the reciprocal and continual interaction between the social and religious factor” (Parente 1978, 1370). Weber had established a new

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Other scholars point out the manner in which Weber, by conducting a study of the Old Testament not in traditional historiographical terms but from a historical-sociological research perspective, was responding to the hypothesis of an elective affinity between capitalism and the Jewish ethic, which had been put forward by Werner Sombart in his Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911). Indeed, Das Antike Judentum contains an analysis of the historical and doctrinal elements of Judaism that supposedly “inherently” prevented it from encouraging the professional ethic typical of modern capitalism. However, as Schluchter notes (1989), apart from being “mediated” by the need to arrive, by a positive route, at an explanation for the lack of an elective affinity between Judaism and capitalism, Weber’s study also aimed to reconstruct the origins of Judaism and its ties to Christianity and Western civilisation within a singular process of rationalisation.3 We thus come to what was ostensibly Weber’s main reason for conducting this study. As Weber stated, his decision to include Judaism among the “world religions” worthy of detailed study was determined by the fact that it contains historical preconditions decisive for understanding Christianity and Islamism, and because of its historic and autonomous significance for the development of the modern economic ethic of the Occident – a significance, partly real and partly alleged (Weber 1946, 267).

Indeed, for Weber Judaism did not satisfy the criteria that he had established to define the world religions – that is to say, the knowledge of “how to gather multitudes of confessors around them” (Weber 1946, 267). Rather, its relevance lay in the crucial influence it had exerted upon the world religions. In other words, if one did not consider ancient Judaism, one would not be able to understand Christianity and Islam. Weber’s interpretation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity and the importance of the former in the process of Western rationalisation began with the fact that the Jews had been the authors of the Old Testament, preserved by Paul as a holy book of Christianity. Weber placed particular emphasis on Paul’s choice to eliminate “all those aspects of the ethic enjoined by the Old Testament which ritually characterize the and fruitful investigative model for the study of the Old Testament that was being conducted within the field of German historiography in the early 1920s, a model wherein the religious factor was placed in relation not only to mental, but also to political, social and economic structures (see Parente 1978, 1371–1372). 3 Weber began his study of Judaism in 1909, for the third version of his Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum.



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special position of Jewry as a pariah people” (Weber 1952, 4). Weber was thus interested in gaining a more in-depth understanding of the elements of Judaism that had constituted the ethical foundation for the redemptive religion that followed upon it, but also that prevented the Jewish religion from developing those same traits present in the Puritan personality. On the basis of understanding that ethical foundation, he believed it would have been possible to apprehend the affinities and differences between the processes of individuation to which Judaism, on the one hand, and Christianity – and ascetic Protestantism in particular – on the other, had given rise. In this process, Weber’s principal aim was to identify the ultimate values and abiding motives that shaped the ethical core of individuals’ personalities and, based upon these, the more general ideological and social configurations that were their consequence. With the aim of dissecting those elements and revealing the characteristics of the rationalisation that Judaism had stamped on economic behaviour, as well as the ways in which it had influenced the construction of a truly singular interior habitus, Weber devoted the first part of the text to a reconstruction of the historical, economic and political features of ancient Palestine, before going on to focus on purely doctrinal elements and their effects on the Jewish “personality”. 1. Social Stratification in Ancient Palestine Of all Weber’s monographs devoted to the world religions, Ancient Judaism is probably the most difficult to read. This is due both to a certain lack of systematic order in the work, which constantly alternates between historical reconstruction and textual exegesis, and to its largely unfinished nature (see Weber 1988; Cavalli 1968). There is a further reason why the text is so challenging. Through a historical and exegetical study of ancient Judaism, Weber was further developing some of the central areas of his theoretical structure as a whole: the concept of charismatic power, the concept of exemplary prophecy and of missionary prophecy, as well as the concept of  rationalisation. Ultimately, Weber’s highly teleological interpretation of ancient Judaism results from his attempt to locate in it the origin of the world’s process of disenchantment, whose end result had been ascetic Protestantism. As in all of his monographs on world religions subsequent to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber devoted the intro­ ductory section of Ancient Judaism to an in-depth analysis of social

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stratification and political organisation. Thus, the first section of the text aims to provide a reconstruction of ancient Palestine’s political and economic framework, as well as of the important changes that took place within the Israelite Confederation [Eidgenossenschaft] at the end of the second millennium b.c.4 This reconstruction placed particular emphasis upon the period of political independence that followed the invasions of the small Palestinian territory by various bordering realms until the tenth and ninth centuries, and the lasting mark it left on Jewish history and religion. In his reconstruction of the vicissitudes of the ancient Israelite league and in describing its social stratification and class composition, Weber’s main point of reference was the “Song of Deborah”, the Old Testament text that relates the tale of the military victory achieved by the Israelite peasants, led by Deborah and Barak, against the league of the Canaanite cities. For Weber, this was one of the most significant texts for understanding the essentially peasant Israelite social organisation prior to urbanisation and the consolidation of the monarchy. On one hand, there was the free peasant: “once the kernel of the army of the Israelite confederacy in the battle against the Canaanite chariotfighting city patriciate, the free peasant with the increasing urbanization of the great Israelite sibs and the change-over to the chariot fighting technique was increasingly reduced to a plebeian within his own people” (Weber 1952, 27). With no active political rights and unable to participate in judicial functions, the “plebeianised” peasant thus became subordinate to the patrician class, which could employ usury to reduce debtors to slavery. On the other hand, there were the gerim and the seminomadic pastoralists. The gerim were metic merchants and craftsmen, foreign residents lacking the active rights provided by citizenship (although they were not totally separate from the rest of the community). Lastly, there were the seminomadic small-stock pastoralists, a social stratum that existed throughout the Mediterranean.5 Weber thus drew the conclusion that 4 For more on Weber’s concept of Eidgenossenschaft in relation to the Israelite league, see Fahey 1982. 5 Weber wrote that the seminomadic pastoralists were the natural allies of the peasants against the constant Bedouin incursions, since the slow pace of small-stock herding during periods often led the shepherds to become sedentary. The Bedouins were the Israelite peasants’ bitterest enemies. The Bedouin “has always scorned agriculture”, Weber writes; “[s/he] has lived on camel’s milk and dates, has known no wine, has need and tolerated no form of state organisation”. Indeed, the Bedouin was a nomadic trader and raider, and “economically the present-day Bedouin is often considered to be an unimaginative traditionalist, disinclined to follow peaceable economic pursuits” (Weber 1952, 18). They



the roots of rationalisation: ancient judaism113 In the historical tradition, the single Israelite tribe is to be found in all stages of transition from quasi-Bedounism to quasi nomadic small-stock-breeding and from both through the intermediary stage of occasional agriculture (Gen. 26:12 with Isaac) to urbanization as ruling sibs, as well as to settled agriculture as free and corvée-rendering peasants (Weber 1952, 42).

The social origins of every patriarch, from Abraham to Esau, to Jacob and finally to Joseph, could be traced back to the process mentioned above. The social extraction of the first kings also reveals the vital importance of the dualism of peasants and shepherds. Saul, for instance, was of peasant origin, while David was a shepherd. The tenth and ninth centuries b.c. marked an important period of economic, social and military development for the Confederation, beginning in particular with the reign of Saul, the first king of the Kingdom of Israel (1047–1007 b.c.) and the reign of his successor, David (1000–970 b.c.). Weber thus strove to shed light on those changes in the social and hierarchical stratification of Israelite society, which followed upon the establishment of the monarchy, their ethical and doctrinal consequences and, in particular, on the effects they had on the Jewish Lebensführung. Weber analysed, first and foremost, the disruption of the social hierarchy brought about by the establishment of the monarchy. He placed particular emphasis on the fact that, while the ancient confederation was founded upon a people’s army formed largely of peasants, the monarchical regime, beginning with Saul, saw the progressive establishment of a patrician urban warrior class that proceeded to become increasingly unpopular with the people. Weber highlighted in particular the ambivalent nature of the monarchical period. It had, on the one hand, been a period of unprecedented economic and political development. On the other hand, however, it had spawned never-before-seen tensions and changes of a religious nature. His analysis of the urbanisation process in ancient Palestine followed the same general lines he had taken in his earlier study of the city. According to Weber, the formation of an urban culture was normally followed by a progressive increase in the importance of noble family groups and a concomitant, typical sort of social stratification consisting of the patrician city resident as creditor and the peasant who dwelt outside of the city as debtor (see Weber 1952, 16). However, Weber’s aim in analysing the transition from League to monarchy and the political and social consequences to which this shift gave were, therefore, considered to be enemies of Israel, and this ‘enmity’ was suitably reflected in the divine world, in the atavistic struggle between God and Amalek.

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rise was, most importantly, to understand the social origins of the Jewish hierocracy and, more specifically, of that unusual phenomenon of the prophecy of doom. This historical, political and economic contextualisation was thus a prelude to better understanding the core of Jewish doctrine and its ethical orientation, particularly with regard to economic activities. During the course of this study, Weber placed his focus both on the official doctrine as set forth in Deuteronomy and propagated by the Levites, as well as on that initially marginalised and stigmatised element, the so-called “prophets of doom”, who fiercely criticised the political and religious institutions throughout the period of the monarchy. 2. Jewish Hierocracy: Between Bureaucracy and Charisma The Levites, and the prophets of doom in particular, played central roles not only within the analysis conducted in the pages of Ancient Judaism but also, more broadly speaking, within the sociology of religion and the sociology of power.6 These figures served as the inspiration for Weber’s thoughts on and systematisation of the two forces that he considered to be the principal vectors of preservation and change. On the one hand, there was bureaucracy, a vector of rationality but, at the same time, a markedly conservative force, insofar as it was geared toward the perpetual selfreproduction of its own apparatus. On the other hand, there was charisma, a potentially revolutionary element geared towards overcoming existing conditions through change occurring from within, by virtue of aspiration to a different kind of order. In Weber’s mind, the radically anti-authoritarian manner in which the prophets’ charisma had appeared, bestowing upon the prophets the role of torchbearers of a new and more advanced sort of rationalism, had allowed them to disseminate their preachings throughout society. An important parallel can be drawn between this situation and Weber’s characterisation of the dialectic between Church and Reformation. While in ancient Palestine bureaucracy was represented by the Levite priests, guardians of the orthodoxy of Yahweh, and charisma by the prophets of doom challenging and criticising the monarchy, in sixteenth-century Europe bureaucracy was embodied by the Catholic clergy and charisma by the Reformers. Neither the heterodoxy of the Reformation nor that of 6 The figure of the prophet lies at the root of the theory of the charismatic leader, which constitutes “the essential point of reference in a discussion of Weber and social change” (Cavalli 1968, 337).



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the prophecy of doom called into question the legitimacy of the sacred texts. Rather, they emphasised those aspects of doctrine capable of fostering a Lebensführung that conformed more closely to divine law. The effects of the denunciations of moral corruption made by both Reformers and prophets and their calls for a return to the fundamentals of the teachings that lay at the root of their religions went so far as to be subversive. Weber thus argued that, unlike in the Chinese and Indian civilisations, where heterodoxies were unable to pose a true threat to the dominant orthodoxies and hierocracies due to their a-political or anti-political stances (see Chapters Five and Six), Protestant Reform and the prophecy of doom both had a markedly political character. 2.1. The Circle of ‘Yahweh Intellectuals’: The Levites The Levite clergy played a central role in his reconstruction of Judaism’s doctrinal core and of its history. The clergy indeed, as Fahey argued, was the principal vector for the “intellectual and ethical maturation of Yahwism” (Fahey 1982, 69). With regard to their historical and social origins, Weber noted that “the name of Levi has no Hebraic etymology” (Weber 1952, 170). Thus, there were different interpretations attempting to reconstruct their genealogy and ancient features. Regardless of their historical origins as a priestly group, the importance of the Levites under the monarchy was due, first and foremost, to the fact they provided explanations for the causes of divine wrath and instructions about the necessary steps for gaining divine favour (Weber 1952, 173). “Under the monarchy”, Bendix wrote, (…) the religious and military ecstatics who had led the armies of the confederacy were replaced by schooled priests and by a king who stood at the head of an army of chariot fighting knights. The demilitarization of the herdsmen and peasants coincided, therefore, with the ‘demilitarization’ of the warrior ecstatic and the nabi. (…) In general, Baal worship tended to become more important in times of peace whereas pure Yahve worship and the idea of the covenant between God and Israel gained ascendance during periods of war and foreign invasion (Bendix 1960, 239–240).

Weber hypothesised that growing political adversities had led to a renaissance of orthodoxy, as all hope for the future lay in the people’s obedience to God’s commandments. It appeared to Weber that, under these conditions, the purely technical peculiarities of the receiving of the oracles had played a significant role in the rise and consolidation of the Levite clergy. However, the most crucial role that the Levites had played had been as the

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architects of the reformulation of the fundamental principles of Judaism that had been reworked to form a religious creed during the time of the League. As Fahey writes: The priesthood, with its specialized means of knowing the divine will, lends its aura of authority to the identification of offensive deeds and to the specification of expiatory acts which will succeed in regaining divine favor. The securing of a popular following for this service contains within it a strong religious dynamic: on the one hand, magic-the ritual coercion of the deityalong with individual charismatic authority, is combated as inimical to the exclusiveness of the priests’ access to God and as hostile to God’s transcendent superiority; on the other hand, the ever-increasing complexity of moral problems requires an increasing sophistication in the ethical casuistry applied to the deciphering of God’s will. Elaborate moral arguments, tailored to fit the problems and consciences of the priestly clientele, become the stock-in-trade of the priestly craft and lead to the accumulation of a dogma, a canon, and an ever-refined image of the divine nature (…). Priestly rationalism, confined as it was to the requirements of a popular service for which fees in some form were expected, had a strictly limited range (Fahey 1982, 70).

Weber therefore saw the Levite hierocracy as a crucial link in the chain of the development of Jewish ethical rationality. By defending and furthering the key concepts of the early tradition of Yahweh, the Levites refined and clarified those concepts, affirmed obedience to ethical rules and firmly abjured the use of magic in the relationship between mankind and God (see Fahey 1982, 70). According to Weber, this abjuration was the single greatest intellectual achievement of the great Biblical prophets and of the Yahwistic group of Levite priests. During the period of the united monarchy, the cult of Yahweh developed as a systematic doctrine in the interactions between a social stratum comprised of demilitarised, degraded peasants and the inspired priestly and intellectual stratum. The Levites’ status only became secure after the destruction of Jerusalem (587 b.c.) and the return out of slavery, when a series of laws were instituted distinguishing between priests who were authorised to officiate in Jerusalem (the home of the one Temple) and lesser functionaries of the cult or liturgical servants. The establishment of Jerusalem as the seat of the cult therefore strengthened the Levites’ position as a priestly organisation. 2.2. The “Titans of Holy Curse”: The Prophets of Doom Weber’s reconstruction and analysis of prophecy are not considered original per se. As Fahey puts it:



the roots of rationalisation: ancient judaism117 His main concern in this analysis was to re-examine prophecy as a sociological type, that is, to specify its religious character and at the same time locate it against its social background as a not entirely individually determined phenomenon. In typical fashion, Weber did this by a series of comparisons, contrasts, and juxtapositions that attempted to define the various facets of the prophetic character and its social role (Fahey 1982, 72).

In the pages of Ancient Judaism devoted to the prophecy of doom, Weber describes its development throughout the years of the monarchy and its decadence, through defeat and through exile. In this reading, prophecy’s primary function had been to unite the people of Israel; but in so doing, it also shaped a number of distinguishing characteristics essential for the subsequent development of Christianity. The prophets did not call into question the role of the Levites or of Deuteronomic law. Nonetheless, unlike Levites, they shifted the emphasis from ritual observance to ethical observance, laying the greatest stress upon the principle of collective responsibility. The great prophets came into being as a reaction to the development of the monarchy, which was considered a betrayal of and deviation from the orthodoxy of the berit, the covenant with God. The establishment of the monarchy also gave rise to fundamental tension with the ancient premonarchic order of the alliance, a tension whose nature was religious, social and economic. “With the advent of monarchy”, Parente writes, the idea of an alliance spread amongst the lower classes and the old counterposition between peasant and shepherd semi-nomadic tribes that bred the livestock grew after the increasing urbanisation of the former tribes, which was due particularly to security reasons. In the cities, during the monarchy, the greater articulation of economic life furthermore determined differences between the various families, thereby creating or increasing those social differences that we find denounced by the prophets. These denunciations, however, are not formulated in the name of abstract justice, because the poor, not being conscious of their interests, did not form a class. Rather, the denunciations are formulated as affirmation of the need to restore the ancient pre-monarchical order, which was based upon the berit (Parente 1978, 1381).

Weber reconstructed the manner in which the great prophets, beginning with Elijah, tended to appear most notably in times of political crisis under the Divided Monarchy. They denounced corruption, proclaimed the duties of the monarchs and spoke out against the social inequalities that had been unheard of in the time of the League. Indeed, their ideal was the law hallowed by the tradition of the ancient Israelite League, while an Israelite society transformed by its monarchs into an “Egyptian servant

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caste” represented the fundamental evil. These were not, however, antimonarchic appeals, as it was not the legitimacy of the dynasty of David that was being called into question but, rather, the authoritarian ways of Solomon, which had awoken the wrath of the prophets, as his reign was seen to have ushered in a method of governance which was held to be remote from the needs of the people. The prophecy of doom thus emblematically represented ethical prophecy, or missionary prophecy. The prophet spoke from divine inspiration and was an instrument of Yahweh, but did not for this reason see himself as different from or superior to other men. Unlike Oriental prophecy, for instance, ancient Jewish prophecy was characterised according to Weber by the fact that Jewish prophets prophesised that terrible misfortune would come as a consequence of the betrayal of the covenant with God that had followed the establishment of the monarchy and ensuing political and military disasters – hence the name of “prophets of doom”. As true “titans of the holy curse”, these prophets’ prestige, wrote Bendix, “rested on predictions of political disaster in the midst of prosperity, or of good fortune in the midst of disaster” (Bendix 1960, 251). Weber thus came to the following conclusion: The emperor, as the representative of his subjects vis-à-vis the heavens, provides the gods with titles and other distinctions whenever they have proven their capacity. Yet a few striking disappointments subsequently will suffice to empty a temple forever. Conversely, the historical accident that Isaiah’s steadfast prophecy actually came to fulfillment – God would not permit Jerusalem to fall into the hands of the Assyrian hordes, if only the Judean king remained firm – provided the subsequently unshakeable foundation for the position of this god and his prophets (Weber 1978, 427).

The prophets of doom were extremely alluring figures as well as singular religious guides. Their fundamentally religious preaching had highly political implications of both practical and theoretical natures. Unlike the orthodox hierocracies, the prophets did not preach for gain – not least because no one would have paid to hear their own ill fortune foretold. The fact that this highly charismatic vocation was performed without receiving economic gain had the fundamental consequence of exempting the prophets from any form of bureaucratisation, thus allowing them to preserve their charismatic character. For this reason, the prophets of doom were disliked by the kings as well as by the Levites, although the terror excited by the prophets’ oracles restrained both of these from giving in to the temptation to suppress them. Moreover, the prophets often had the support of important Israelite families. According to Weber’s



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reconstruction, “in status origin the prophets were diverse [uneinheitlich]. [However] It is out of the question that they were, for the most part, derived from proletarian or negatively privileged or uneducated strata” (Weber 1952, 277).7 The call for respect of the covenant with God and the non-sacredness of men’s laws had its origins also in the condition of ‘negatively privileged’ status that, in Weber’s view, is associated with the rise of religiosity of the “personal redeemer”.8 Furthermore, although the prophets recognised the teachings of the Levites as respected authorities on morality, they often clashed with them regarding questions of ritual. As Bendix wrote: “the prophets were lonely men who pitted the frightfulness of their impassioned vision against all the mundane interests of their day and thereby gave ethical meaning and religious significance to calamities in which ordinary men presumably saw undeserved cruelty and the mutability of fortune” (Bendix 1960, 253). The prophets’ political and religious foretelling was rendered especially evocative and emotionally powerful by the fact that their states of inspiration “were preceded by a wide variety of pathological states” (Bendix 1960, 253). The prophet’s mission basically consisted in exhorting the people to embrace morality and preaching thunderous prophecies of doom against whosoever had committed wrongdoing. Furthermore, the prophets placed emphasis upon retribution in this world, not salvation in the afterlife, because Israel was bound to obey its God’s compulsory laws hic et nunc. As Bendix notes, “the great contribution of the biblical prophets was to make the morally correct actions of everyday life into a special duty of a people chosen by the mightiest God” (Bendix 1960, 256). Weber was particularly struck by the unique theodicy of the prophecy of doom. Here, Yahweh was described as easily angered, powerful, omnipotent and capable of destroying his chosen people if they should stain themselves with sin. Yet, despite this, the greater the number of misfortunes that befell Israel, the greater grew its debt to Yahweh, in proportion to those ills. It was Yahweh himself who inflicted those torments, but it was thus that he demonstrated his infinite power and, consequently, his

7 With regard to this point, it should be noted that Weber did mention some notable exceptions to this rule such as, for instance, Isaiah and Ezekiel, who both came from families of noble origin (see Weber 1952, 278 et seq.). 8 In Weber’s opinion, the religiosity of redemption can also originate from positively privileged strata and requires at least a modicum of intellectual education. Nonetheless, a specific devout belief in a personal saviour is always associated with underprivileged strata.

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ability to guarantee his people their promised kingdom, when the time was right. Therefore, throughout the Exile and the Post-Exile period, [e]mphasis shifted from misfortune as a punishment of sins to a positive meaning of suffering for the salvation of all people. People who know righteousness are admonished not to fear the abuse and taunts of the world (…) Israel in exile now appears as the champion, the object of salvation, glorifying the endurance and suffering of the people before God by giving their fate the meaning of a world historical mission. With these concepts the prophets of the exilic and post-exilic periods prepared the ground for the emerging belief in Christ, the Savior (…) With this change in character the great age of prophecy drew to a close; in the Jewish congregations, now reconstituted as confessional communities, the priesthood gained the ascendance until all those who claimed to prophesy were ridiculed in the name of the Lord (Bendix 1960, 263–264).

This notwithstanding, the theodicy of the prophets of doom was highly rational. As Parente argued, “confronted with great national catastrophes”, they posed the problem of theodicy and called for the reaffirmation of the ancient order preceding the monarchy (Parente 1978, 1383). Since Israel had been struck by misfortune due to its abandonment of the alliance with God, “[p]rophetic theodicy is, therefore, a rational theodicy: the fate of the people depends upon the conduct of the people” (ibid). The prophecy of doom, thus, as we will see, seemed to Weber to have played an essential role in the development of the heart of Jewish doctrine. 3. The Historicity of the World and the Dislocation of Authority Weber stated that a religious ethic’s degree of rationality could be judged on the basis of its relationship with magic and the relation it estab­ lished between this world and a transcendent one. According to Weber’s parameters, the first element of rationalisation introduced by the Jewish religion – rationalisation being understood as the intellectual systematisation of the realm of knowledge and the establishment of control over religious practices – consisted in forming a creationist conception of the world. While initially exhibiting a naturalistic and local character, over the course of time Yahweh assumed a universal nature as the guarantor of the social order who had sealed a covenant with the people of Israel. Yahweh’s power derived, first and foremost, from the fact that he was the creator of the world and of mankind. The world was conceived as neither eternal nor unchangeable, but rather as having been created. Its present structures were a product of man’s



the roots of rationalisation: ancient judaism121 activities, above all those of the Jews, and of God’s reaction to them. Hence the world was an historical product designed to give way again to the truly God-ordained order (Weber 1952, 4, my italics).

The world was thus regarded as a product of history, and Yahweh was the god of that history, a history which could therefore be changed according to his will. In Weber’s view, the Jewish conception of the world, which simultaneously asserted the role of God in making the world and of mankind in prompting God’s reactions to their “activities” in that world, constituted the first spark capable of kindling the instrumental rationality typical of the Western world. This conception accordingly emphasised the role and effectiveness of human intervention, thus introducing a pragmatic element into the relationship between man, the world and the divine. The recognition of the dialectical relationship between God’s will and human praxis, together with Jewish messianic expectation, was for Weber the basis for conceiving of the possibility of historical and social change. As Wax notes on this point: In the Jewish conceptualization, time becomes the arena of action: the past is marked off as a preparation, and the present has meaning only in terms of the future. In contrast to the perspective of the magical world, in which the future is seen as the recapitulation of the present and might therefore be termed ‘closed,’ the Jewish perspective visualizes futures totally different from what has been and so might be termed ‘open’ (Wax 1960, 453).

It is for this reason that Löwy considers Weber’s sociology of religion to have been one of the first to formulate a hypothesis of the potentially revolutionary character of the religious tradition of ancient Judaism. “In the Bible”, Löwy writes, “[Weber] argued, the world was perceived not as eternal or unchanging, but as an historical product destined to be replaced by a divine order. The whole attitude to life was determined by this conception of a future God-guided political and social revolution” (Löwy 1992, 14).9 Alongside this, there was a second element of rationalisation, the emergence of which was triggered by the Jewish conception of the relationship between the world and the divine. In Judaism, the desire for knowledge of and control over nature, had not found expression through magical rites, but rather through an obedient form of reverence and respect for the laws of God and the covenant sealed with him. 9 Löwy continues: “Weber’s hypothesis, though extremely fertile, is still too general. For it does not allow us to identify, within the heterogenus group of modern revolu­ tionary doctrines, those that might have had a real affinity with the Jewish tradition” (Löwy 1992, 14).

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chapter four Free of magic and esoteric speculations, devoted to the study of the law, vigilant in the effort to do ‘what was right in the eyes of the Lord’ in the hope of a better future, the prophets established a religion of faith that subjected man’s daily life to the imperatives of a divinely ordained moral law. In this way ancient Judaism helped create the moral rationalism of Western civilisation (Bendix 1960, 264).

Salvation was thus linked to adopting an ethical and rational life conduct in accordance with divine law.10 As Parente pointed out, The structurally distinctive element of Judaism consists in its intrinsic eschatological tension towards a diverse, but future, reality according to which the present world, the present reality, is entirely human and therefore rational. The fundamental counterposition is the characterisation of the social behaviour of oriental religiosity, which tends towards annulment, and the characterisation of the social behaviour of Jewish religiosity, which, due to the clear separation between the human and divine spheres, annuls any residue of magic. The constant idea of reference in Weber’s study – namely the increasing rationalisation of the social order – finds its origin in the Jewish world as a consequence of the splitting in two of reality and of the counterposition between this world, entirely human, and the future world which is reserved to divinity. It is starting from these religious presupposition that it will be possible to reach the elimination of any mix between human and divine, irrational and rational and therefore, of any magic residue (Parente 1978, 1379).11

Thus, through the study of ancient Judaism, Weber believed he had established the historical and ideological basis for Western rationalism, tracing an unbroken path that led from Jewish monotheism to Christianity. For this perspective, a creationist, transcendent and changeable conception 10  With regard to this, Schluchter (1988) and Cavalli (1968) point out the manner in which his study of the process of sacralisation of divine law led Weber to focus his attention both on the process which gave rise to the distinction between the natural and the cultural, where magical rites pertained to the former and religion to the latter, and on the evolution in Western political thought of the distinction between legality and morality. When dealing with the Jewish ethic, Weber refers a number of times to the concept of Gesinnungsethik – roughly translated into English as an ethic of intention or of conviction. The term Gesinnungsethik expresses the idea of absolute obedience to ethical commandments, as contrasted with Verantwortungsethik, the ethic of responsibility that characterises the professional politician and demands that each individual be accountable for the foreseeable consequences of his or her actions. On this, see especially the so-called ‘Vocation Lectures’ – ‘Science as a Vocation’ and ‘Politics as a Vocation’ in Weber 1946. 11 Zaretti clearly highlighted this element when she broached the subject of the manner in which, “by waiting for a political and social revolution led by God and, therefore, by orienting the whole attitude towards life in light of this perspective, the people of Israel attempted to conform to a religious ethic which was profoundly rational, that is, free from magic and from all irrational expressions in the search for salvation” (Zaretti 2003, 117).



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of the world had been able to pave the way to permitting mankind to relate to the world as a product of history and therefore as mutable. At the same time, the idea that mankind was responsible, even if only in part, for the course of the world, introduced a subversive element, heralding innovations and changes to come. It freed human action from that state of receptive passivity typical of what Weber characterised as the oriental immanent religions as well as from the idea that the course of events is essentially immutable. Lastly – and for Weber this was a crucial element – the concept of a divine law more sacred than the law set down by men, along with the eschatological promise of eternal liberation, had together constituted the deepest and strongest foundations for the idea that historical change could be a possible and a desirable aim. 4. On the Utility and Liability of Marginality for Judaism: The Community of the Covenant and the Pariah-People The in-depth examination of ancient Judaism, and of the prophecy of doom in particular, had helped Weber to frame his answers to the initial questions that had driven him to begin his investigation. An historical conception of the world, as well as the possibility of conceiving of its temporal course itself as, in part, a consequence of human action, had encouraged the development of an instrumental and ascetic, or, in other words, active approach to the world. The overthrowing of magic and the establishment of an absolute, transcendental and omnipotent authority to whom unconditional obedience was owed, sowed the seeds for the separation of faith and reason and encouraged believers to form a sense of self-discipline, shaping their practical conduct to adhere to a system of laws of divine origin. Moreover, the sacred nature of the laws of God in comparison to the laws of kings and rulers of any sort set the scene for the Jewish Lebensführung to eventually challenge the status quo, thus heralding the possibility of social change. Weber assigned these factors a place of central importance. However, precisely for this reason, he found himself having to explain why such a configuration had failed to produce a Puritan-like type of personality. In other words, what had prevented Judaism from seeing the process of rationalisation through to its ultimate end – that Zweckrationalität which informed Western culture? Weber seemed to suggest that the answer might lay somewhere within the very nature of the berit, or among those ambivalent doctrinal, psychological and broader socio-cultural consequences which he saw as being the

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outcome of the religious exclusivism of the community founded upon the covenant (Ferraresi 2003). 4.1. Centrality of the Periphery Weber brought to light many ‘positive’ consequences of the berit along the road to typical Western rationalisation. First, the concept of berit was central to the understanding of the prophets and served as the linchpin for Weber’s reconstruction of Judaism as a whole. The importance of the covenant lay, first and foremost, in the prestige enjoyed by the people of Israel following the alliance forged by David with the elders of the Twelve Tribes of the Confederation. As Weber writes: The North land joined David only after Saul’s sib had been liquidated, and, indeed, by means of a special treaty [berit] between David and the elders of the tribes. A contract or covenant here established for the first time the national unity of all of the later twelve tribes of Israel under a national king. Only through such a treaty, that is the standpoint of the tradition, was a charismatic military leader made the legitimate monarch now entitled to summon the army (…) The Davidian kingdom, established in the midst of Judaic stock-breeders, at first, with the help of a personal following and the might of great Judaic sibs, became, from the beginning, with the capture of Jerusalem, a city kingdom (Weber 1952, 45–46).

Second, as an influence for order and control, the berit not only established the boundaries for believers’ behaviour, but also set out the limits of God’s own margin of arbitrariness. Yahweh was bound to respect the covenant he had made with his chosen people. The knowledge that he would fulfil his commitment to lead them towards eternal salvation made it possible to understand and forgive adversity. In Weber’s view, what made this theodicy of salvation extraordinary was the fact that faith in the power of Yahweh did not dwindle but, on the contrary, it grew with each misfortune and defeat his people were dealt. This was due to transformation of suffering from a simple punishment into an eschatological promise. Third, the social marginalisation of the Jewish people throughout the tortured history of the diaspora was, in the end, directly proportional to their historical-cultural influence on the destinies of the West. What, therefore, needed to be explained was the dual role which had seen them cast, on the one hand, as a people capable of setting in motion a process of rationalization that would find its culmination in ascetic Protestantism and, on the other, as promoters of a form of ethical exclusivism which would limit the their own power of rationalisation.



the roots of rationalisation: ancient judaism125 The world-historical importance of Jewish religious development rests above all in the creation of the Old Testament, for one of the most significant intellectual achievements of the Pauline mission was that it preserved and transferred this sacred book of the Jews to Christianity as one of its own sacred books. Yet in so doing it eliminated all those aspects of the ethic enjoined by the Old Testament which ritually characterize the special position of Jewry as a pariah people (…) Without emancipation from the ritual prescriptions of the Torah, founding the caste-like segregation of the Jews, the Christian congregation would have remained a small sect of the Jewish pariah people (…) Thus, in considering the conditions of Jewry’s evolution, we stand at a turning point of the whole cultural development of the West and the Middle East. Quite apart from the significance of the Jewish pariah people in the economy of the European Middle Ages and the modern period, Jewish religion has world-historical consequences (Weber 1952, 4–5).12

As we have already seen, Weber identified Paul’s “selective” preservation and interpretation of the Old Testament as one of the essential contributions to the “cultural development of the West and of the Middle East”. Furthermore, in Weber’s view, it had been Paul’s exploitation of the text that had made it possible to avoid absorbing those elements of Jewish teachings which Weber saw as being at the root of the Jewish people’s historical marginalisation, and reduction, in part self-inflicted, to the status of pariah.13 As he further noted: 12 As Liebeschütz points out, from Spinoza to Hegel “there was general agreement between the important representatives of the Enlightement in England, France and Germany on the idea that the Old Testament, and the history it tells of the elected people, was the root from which the sectarian concept of privileged truth was transmitted to Christianity”; such a legacy “was considered to be the principal barrier between the humanitarian ideas of the modern man and the European religious traditions” (Liebeschütz 1964, 41). Historical research later won out over statements based upon such limited ­criticism. The first break with this traditional view came when Ranke acknowledged the  overall, broader historical significance of Judaism in the draft proposal for his Universalgeschichte, stating that: “The process by which Israelite religion obtained the supremacy over all other forms of religious worship and became one of the fundamental bases both of Islam and of the Christian world, forms one of the most important elements in universal history” (cit. in Fahey 1982, 79). 13 Weber’s characterisation of the Jews as a pariah-people has given rise to a large body of criticism to which it would be impossible to do justice in just a few pages (Schiper 1959; Abraham 1992). The main objection, however, was levelled against the idea of the condition of pariah being a result of Judaism’s corpus of doctrine and of Jewish ritual and thus, ultimately, a desired condition. This assertion inevitably led Weber to underestimate the socio-historical causes that produced that result. In open controversy with Sombart in the final pages of the section of Economy and Society devoted to religion, for instance, Weber posed the rhetorical question regarding why the Jews had not developed industries or committed themselves to a rational organisation of labour – in Weber’s mind a salient characteristic of modern capitalism – at a time when guild restrictions had not yet extended to cover all spheres. With this statement, Weber assumed that guilds were closed

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chapter four Since the Exile, as a matter of actual fact, and formally since the destruction of the Temple the Jews became a pariah people. (…) a distinctive hereditary social group lacking autonomous political organization and character­ized by internal/prohibitions against commensality and intermarriage originally founded upon magical, tabooistic, and ritual injunctions. Two additional traits of a pariah people are political and social disprivilege and a farreaching distinctiveness in economic functioning. To be sure, the pariah people of India, the disprivileged and occupationally specialized Hindu castes, resemble the Jews in these respects, since their pariah status also involves segregation from the outer world as a result of taboos, hereditary religious obligations in the conduct of life, and the association of salvation hopes with their pariah status. These Hindu castes and Judaism show the same characteristic effects of a pariah religion: the more depressed the position in which the members of the pariah people found themselves, the more closely did the religion cause them to cling to one another and to their pariah position and the more powerful became the salvation hopes which were connected with the divinely ordained fulfilment of their religious obligations. (…) The difference between Judaism and Hindu caste religion is based on the type of salvation hopes entertained. From the fulfilment of the religious obligations incumbent upon him the Hindu expected an improvement in his personal chances of rebirth, i.e., the ascent or reincarnation of his soul into a higher caste. On the other hand, the Jew expected the participation of his descendants in a messianic kingdom which would redeem the entire pariah community from its inferior position and in fact raise it to a position of mastery in the world (Weber 1978, 492–494).

In order to understand the ambivalent nature of the berit, the moment of change from community of the covenant into pariah-people is essential. The condition of pariah (which Weber identifies as beginning since the days of the Babylonian Exile), as being self-inflicted by means of the doctrinal emphasis placed on the exclusive nature of the covenant with to Jews, an exclusion which, however, according to him, they themselves desired for reasons of ritual and due to the dual external and internal morality characteristic of their doctrinal positions. This statement was, however, severely criticised by historians, who pointed out that the guilds, which had been born as Christian confraternities, had religious roots and were therefore hostile and closed to Jews and non-Christians in general from the outset (Lipson 1915; Nelson 1949). Another essential factor that Weber regarded as having inhibited Jewish economic activity and contributed to the self-inflicted condition of pariah was the prohibition of mixed marriage. However, Weber neglected to mention one of the historical events that most strongly reinforced the prohibition of marriage between Jews and Christians, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. It was on this occasion that Pope Innocent III, with the aim of preventing sexual relations between Christians and Jews, issued the infamous decree (or Canon) 68. According to this decree, Jews were required to distinguish themselves from Christians “by a difference in dress”, specifically by sewing a yellow or red badge onto their clothing. This practice continued until the sixteenth century and was later revived by Hitler.



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the Jewish people, had nevertheless provided a markedly innovative potential. The relationship between innovation and the state of being marginalised – geographically, socially and intellectually – was an important Motiv of Weber’s thought. In his words: Prerequisite to new religious conceptions is that man must not yet have unlearned how to face the course of the world with questions of his own. Precisely the man distant from the great cultural centers has cause to do so when their influence begins to affect or threaten his central interests (…) The possibility of questioning the meaning of the world presupposes the capacity to be astonished about the course of events. Now, the experiences which the Israelites had before the Exile and which gave them cause to ask such questions were the great wars of liberation and the rise of kingship (Weber 1952, 206–207).

The historical and cultural importance of the Jews, which went hand in hand with their ghettoization, therefore, found its place within this larger theoretical confluence. Nonetheless, the change from community of the covenant to pariah-people also lay at the root of the most negative and ominous aspects of segregation and isolation that had marked the history of Jewish communities throughout the world. 4.2. Ethical Universalism and Religious Particularism of the Pariah-People Following Momigliano (1987), references to the Jews as a pariah-people can be found as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1823 the playwright Michael Beer wrote and produced a tragedy entitled Der Paria (1835), which was an obvious allegory of the condition of the Jews in Germany. This concept was taken up again at the end of the nineteenth century by Bernarde Lazare, at the time of the Dreyfus affair,14 and by Theodor Herzl. It was, however, Hanna Arendt’s posthumous work, The Jew as Pariah, which introduced the term into the Anglophone world.15 Particularly from this moment forward, notwithstanding the apparently negative connotation of the term pariah, the condition of marginalisation gained an added value – a position on the fringes of society was transformed into critical distance and capability; institutional isolation became 14 The term was initially used with a psychological meaning. Bernard Lazare, for whom the Dreyfus affair marked a turning point in his vision of anti-Semitism, declared, “I am a pariah” (as quoted in Shmueli 1968, 171). 15 Arendt, however, associated the concept of pariah with a specific type of Jewish attitude, embodied in particular by figures such as Kafka, Shalom and Heine. The Jewish pariah is at odds with another Jewish type, the parvenu. See Arendt 1978.

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social and historical centrality and rejection of the world fostered a revolutionary potential.16 If, on the one hand, Weber saw the berit as both the  element which bound together the Israelites in exile and the root from which had grown that rational character to which the Western world owed so much, he also, on the other hand, regarded the concept of berit as lying at the foundation of those forms of social self-exclusion and closed attitudes which had resulted in the Jews’ segregation. Indeed, in Weber’s view, the Jewish communities’ condition of segregation was self-created, the result of the ritual and religious exclusivism promulgated through prophecy. Prophecy together with traditional ritualism of Israel, brought forth the elements that gave Jewry its pariah place in the world. The Israelite ethic specially received its decisive imprint of exclusiveness through the development of the priestly Torah (Weber 1952, 336).

Weber used the term pariah-people in reference to the Jews for the first time in his 1915 essay, “The Economic Ethic of World Religions” [Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen], published in September of the same year in the Archiv fur Sozialforschung und Sozialpolitik and later employed as an introduction to his studies on world religions. As Shmueli notes, “[i]n the ten years between the study on Protestantism and those studies, Weber explored Indian religion and society where the caste is the fundamental institution of Hinduism” (Shmueli 1968, 172). Indeed, the characterisation of the Jewish people as pariah clearly called to mind the Indian caste system. As in this latter case, the Jewish people had, in his eyes, the character of a “guest people”, although he considered their segregation had been to be “imposed on them” by themselves (Weber 1952, 345). In his view, this desire for self-segregation translated into both an internal and external “double-standard morality”. This “double-standard morality” consisted of giving different weight to social and economic interactions and adopting different behaviours depending upon whether these interactions occurred between fellow Jews or, on the other hand, between Jews and persons belonging to other religions. Thus, that which was forbidden within the Jewish community, such as lending money at interest, was permitted in economic transactions with all others. According to 16 According to most commentators, Max Weber was a fervent nationalist but, while he supported German imperialist policy, he was not an anti-Semite (see Momigliano 1987; Raphaël 1982). In Raphaël’s view for instance, “Max Weber (…) was certainly a strong nationalist and a member of the Pangermanic League, but he did not belong to the apologists of the Arian race, like, for instance, H. St. Chamberlain and Ludwig Schemann” (Raphaël 1982, 333).



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Weber, it was this double nature of their business affairs, which led them to develop such a precocious, rational and refined relationship with business and with commercial and financial capital. In Weber’s opinion, it was these social and economic transformations, the doctrinal peculiarities and the reaction of the prophets, not to mention the conditions of the diaspora, which led Jewish communities around the world to segregate themselves. The reasons for this self-segregation were of a ritual character insofar as they were intended to preserve the purity and cohesion of said communities. However, it was due to this selfsegregation that the Jews came to characterise themselves as a pariahpeople, or, in other words, as a “guest people who were ritually separated, formally or de facto, from their social surrounding” (Weber 1952, 3). For Weber, the promotion of a religion of a universalistic, rational and potentially innovational character, paired with a particularist ethic and social conduct, were the elements that acted as an obstacle to the full realisation of that type of rationality typical of the West. In Weber’s mind, within this paradoxical relationship between the universalism of God (Yahweh was the God of all mankind) and the particularism of grace (only His people would enjoy His promise of salvation) lay a typical characteristic of virtuoso religiosity and a bequest to the doctrine of predestination. However, this same paradox also played a part in the ghettoization of Jewish communities. 5. Collective Emancipation Versus Individual Salvation: The Jewish “Personality” Ultimately, two strictly intertwined elements can be identified within Weber’s reconstruction of the historical and doctrinal elements that forged the ideal-type of the Jewish personality. First, according to Weber, the reason for the inability to promote the bourgeois mentality and the personality of modern industrial capitalism lay in Judaism being incapable of bringing to complete fruition the universalism and rationalism whose seeds it had planted. In Weber’s inter­ pretation, Judaism, having come to a standstill on the plane of religious particularism, had failed to complete its journey from a stage of “tribal brotherhood” to one of “universal otherhood”.17 The latter was the result of 17 As Nelson notes, for Weber “the singular triumph of methodical bourgeois capitalism in the West was exceptionally favoured by Occidental priority in completing another and even more impressive advance toward the adoption of a single moral standard for all society” (Nelson 1949, vii) – in other words, the journey from the tribalism of Jewish and Christian brotherhood to the universal ‘otherness’ of ascetic Protestantism.

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a transformation of biblical exegesis and practical conduct that would lead to the disregarding of blood ties and bonds of faith in economic transactions. The Jewish “double-standard morality”, which Weber defined as both internal and external, entailed the personalisation of economic relationships, as it only permitted making loans at interest to outsiders and not to fellow brothers in faith. The economic universalism that had been definitively established through capitalism, on the other hand, entailed the im-personalisation of the exchange of goods. Indeed, in commercial transactions, one was expected to have no qualms, and fellow brothers in faith ceased to enjoy the privileges of tribal brotherhood; they became strangers, universal “others”. According to Nelson, Weber, notwithstanding the fact that he had not pressed forward far enough to identify Calvin’s reinterpretation of Deuteronomy with reference to loans made at interest as the exact moment when this change had occurred,18 had nonetheless well understood “that Calvin’s view of usury was one of the first monuments of the Universal Otherhood, whose characteristics he had so well envisaged” (Nelson 1949, 74). The completion of the journey towards economic universalism, seen as the moment of alienation of the ‘other’, as the transformation of fellow brother into stranger, became, in Weber’s account of a modernity moulded by religion, the prelude to – or the fulfilment of – the bellum omnium contra omnes, of the end of the journey from particularism to universalism, from organic community to mechanical society. Competition takes the place of cooperation, but there is also the possibility of imagining equality and universalism, as opposed to that original condition of inequality among individuals for which religion had provided the justification. Second, the tribal brotherhood, or religious particularism, inherent to Judaism lay at the foundations of a sort of political communitarianism, in contrast to the political individualism inherent to ascetic Protestantism. The duty to respect the covenant with Yahweh was a collective one, just as the hope for eternal salvation was collective. Salvation was not, in other words, a private affair, but rather, a group endeavour. The aspiration to a transformation of the established order innate in Jewish millenarian afflatuses was shared by an entire community that preserved its elect quality first and foremost by severely restricting access to it. It was in the exclusive nature of the ritual practices of Jewish communities that Weber identified 18 In Nelson’s view, “Calvin is the first religious leader to exploit the ambivalence of the Deuteronomic passage in such a fashion as to prove that it was permissible to take usury from one’s brother” (Nelson 1949, 73).



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the roots of the Jews’ pariah status. It was in the emancipation of the individual from his family group and in the transference of the religious bonds from the family to the faith community, as well as in the transferring of ultimate authority from the law of man to the law of God, that Weber had identified the preconditions of that individualism so characteristic of the Christian – and especially of the Protestant – traditions. As he had seen in the analysis conducted in his essays on the “Protestant sects in North America”, however, the Protestant individualism in which Weber was interested was that form of political individualism which became established at the moment when an individual’s “freely made choice” to belong to a sect, to a group of good reputation, became the condition for his/her establishment in society as an individual. Amidst the intricacies of the contrast he drew between the sect and the pariah group (or caste), Weber introduced a classical topos for his conceptual apparatus. It is not the case that a pariah status is the same as a sectarian status considered sociologically (…). The pariah group is based on ethnic lines, hence the majority are born into the community (there are converts), and hence do not volunteer: so a pariah is a church-like association, with sect-like tendencies, but is neither a church nor a sect (Chalcraft 2007, 54).

The fact of belonging not to an assigned but to a freely chosen group together with, at the same time, that group’s “exclusive” nature as a club of the elect, laid the foundation for the formation of the authentic bourgeois personality: individualist, but nonetheless promoter of a universalist ideo­ logy. The emphasis on freedom and autonomy of choice, which distinguishes the sect from the caste, therefore conveyed Weber’s liberal side, thus rendering homage to the doctrine of bourgeois humanism. On the other hand, the precise definition of the exclusive nature of the sect, the conviction that its members were the elect, those predestined for eternal salvation – elements which Weber held to be of crucial importance – were the same elements which fostered his conservatism and the essentially elitist side of his political propositions. The two above aspects are what Weber identified as the obstacles to the construction of the Jewish self as a fully individualist and autonomous, or Puritan-like, personality. The potentially anti-authoritarian aspect that Weber saw as an essential feature of the Jewish self, and that was inscribed in the desacralisation of human law, had the potential to challenge the established order. This notwithstanding, Weber thought that this subversive character did not favour the development of inner-worldly asceticism or of the idea of Beruf (both essential if the spirit of capitalism were to

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take root), first and foremost because of the internal and external “doublestandard morality”. Furthermore, the second potentially innovational element that lay within the structure of the Jewish personality – that is autonomy from family ties – did not translate into a type of “individualisation”, or in other words, into the promotion of an atomistic ideology such as that of the bourgeois individualist.19 The element lacking in Judaism, but which Protestantism possessed, was the central importance given to the individual as such.20 Judaism placed its emphasis on the collective responsibility of the group to respect the berit, with the effect of discouraging both complete personal accountability and the birth of that radical individualism which, together with the liberation from the limitations imposed by obedience to the laws of man, produced a unique amalgam in ascetic Protestantism.21 The quest for salvation, for the Jew, was a collective hope, due to the fact that, in Weber’s words, “the Jew anticipated his own personal salvation through a revolution of the existing social stratification to the advantage of his pariah people; his people had been chosen and called by God, not to a pariah position but to·one of prestige” (Weber 1946, 494). Weber, therefore, contrasted Jewish eschatology with the theory of predestination in order to demonstrate that only the latter could have given rise to bourgeois individualism and, consequently, to capitalism. Calvinist doctrine was pitiless and inhuman, characterised by a sense of complete solitude. Weber writes, “[i]t seems at first to be puzzling how can that tendency toward a spiritual loosening of the individual from the tightest ties that encircle him and hold him in the world be connected to Calvinism’s undoubted superiority in respect to social organization” (Weber 2011, 122). Whereas for the Calvinist the hope of salvation was entirely individual, the destiny of the Jew was inextricably bound to the fate of his people. 19 Michael Löwy (1992) has similarly emphasised that one of the principal motives of the ‘anti-authoritarian’ character present in the Judaic-Christian tradition was the voiding of the bond of parental authority because of a symbolic agreement with a superior authority. 20 On this question, Seidman and Gruber hold that the first instance of individuation and autonomisation of the individual was brought about by Christianity as a result of its universalism, its brotherhood of faith and its removal of the barriers to ‘commensalism’, which allowed for the creation of relationships between individuals as opposed to between clans (Seidman and Gruber 1977, 495). 21 This aspect was brought to light in particular by Gerth and Martindale, editors of the English translation of Weber’s work on ancient Judaism. In their opinion, “the first sociological theme in Ancient Judaism consists in tracing the powerful integral relation between Yahwism and the social collectivity, their inseparable mutual interaction and development” (Gerth and Martindale 1952, xviii).



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Thus, in Weber’s reconstruction, the observance of the laws of Yahweh seemed to be established as an outward affair, external, brought about by the collective need to respect the terms of the covenant. The depth and uniqueness of Protestant individuation, on the other hand, was constructed beginning with an inward scrutiny of one’s consciousness of professional and moral duty and, most importantly, with an awareness of predestination and thus of the futility of actions directed towards the pursuit of salvation. In the end, Weber saw the Jewish religion at the origin of gregarious, non-autonomous selves. In this latter type of individuation, he maintained, the anti-authoritarian and innovational potential of ancient Judaism were joined with forms of pariah-collectivism, which ended up negating the initial universalist impulse within the religion of Yahweh and thus, inhibiting the rise of a Protestant type of personality.

CHAPTER FIVE

PARADOXES OF RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM: ON WEBER’S SOCIOLOGY OF INDIA The distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric, once made by phi­ losophers, was found among the Indians as well as among Greeks, Persians, and Muslims. Basically, it was found everywhere that people believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights (Nietzsche 2002, 31).

1. The Sociology of India. Hinduism and Buddhism The essays that comprise Weber’s study on India, later collected in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie under the title of Hinduism and Buddhism [Hinduismus und Buddhismus], first appeared in the third instalment of Volume XLI (1915–1916) and in the second instalment of Volume XLII (1916–1917) of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. They were translated into English in 1958 as The Religion of India. In these studies, Weber proposed a reconstruction of the complex Indian caste system, the reasons why it had become established and the ideology upon which it rested. The central aspect of the caste system seemed to Weber to be the extraordinary ability of its “prisons of class” to resist every assault of modernity, with attendant consequences affecting the wider Indian social and economic system. Weber’s analysis of Indian history and religion aimed, like his other comparative works on world religions, to corroborate the hypothesis advanced in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Indeed, demon­ strating that the type of personality shaped by the precepts of Hinduism had acted as an obstacle to the rise of the formal rationality which had arisen in the lands were ascetic Protestantism held sway would have strongly supported his initial hypothesis (Schluchter 1984). 2. Hinduisation, Church and Sect In introducing his study of Indian society, Weber referred in particular to the statistics contained in the Census of India and to numerous studies

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then available, most of which were in French or English.1 Based upon these accounts, Weber described India as a “country of villages”, an unchanging society characterised from time immemorial by a social archi­ tecture based upon classes determined by birth. This notwithstanding, he discovered a series of elements in Indian society which, unlike those he found in China (see Chapter Six), seemed to suggest the development of a sort of specialistic rationality and culture closer to the one which had developed in the West. Weber noted that a rational type of science had developed in India. Moreover, the dynamic that had formed the urban cul­ ture appeared to him to be in many ways similar to that which had shaped the urban culture of medieval Europe. Furthermore, Weber was struck by the “nearly absolute tolerance” of different religious and political views for long periods of time in India, and which was more widespread than in the West. Additionally, in Weber’s opinion, the political unification of the country which had begun under the Mogul dynasty (1526) had contrib­ uted to the development of a certain amount of rationalisation within the administration, although, due to the effect of subsequent splintering of the territory, its full potential was never realised. Considering the list of elements that seemed to suggest the presence of a certain amount of economic, social and political development and even brought to mind some of the elements of Western rationalism, Weber wondered what it had been that “may have prevented capitalistic develop­ ment (in the occidental sense)” (Weber 1958, 4). The answer to this ques­ tion lay for Weber in Indian religiosity and, in particular, in the country’s process of Hinduisation. In the course of about eight hundred years the present Hindu system has spread from a small region in Northern India to an area comprising over 200 million people. This missionary propagation was accomplished in oppo­ sition to “animistic” folk belief and in conflict with highly developed salva­ tion religions. (…) Ordinarily the propagation occurs in approximately the following way. The ruling stratum of an “animistic” tribal territory begins to imitate specific Hindu customs in something like the following order: abstention from meat, particularly beef; the absolute refusal to butcher cows; total abstinence from intoxicating drinks. To these certain other specific purification practices of good Hindu castes may be added (Weber 1958, 9). 1 In addition to the data contained in the Census of India, Weber had also employed other select sources of information, in particular the works of the Englishmen H.H. Risley, E.A.H. Blunt and E.A. Gait, and of the Frenchmen C. Bouglé.



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Having gradually become established as the dominant priesthood, the Hindu religious hierocracy became the caste at the summit of the social pyramid. It was this priesthood that seemed to have most strongly encour­ aged the consolidation and spread of Hinduism as a doctrine, contribut­ ing in an exceptional measure to the preservation of segregation in social relationships. According to Weber, Hinduism presented a number of the characteristics inherent to a church – in the sense established by Weber (see below) – due especially to the hereditary nature of inclusion in the religious community. Nevertheless, as a consequence of its exclusive char­ acter and of the formal obstacles barring the path to conversion, Hinduism was closer in nature to the sect. Its church-like character had strongly con­ tributed to the widespread growth of Hinduism but, in Weber’s opinion, it had also limited the possibility that the sort of religious virtuosity that he saw as laying at the root of the momentous transformations that had been set in motion in Europe could become firmly established in India. As Weber wrote: A “sect” in the sociological sense of the word is an exclusive association of religious virtuosos or of especially qualified religious persons, recruited through individual admission after establishment of qualification. By con­ trast, a “church”, as a universalistic establishment for the salvation of the masses raises the claim, like the “state”, that everyone, at least each child of a member, must belong by birth (Weber 1958, 6).

Just as occurs in a church, one is “born Hindu”. This notwithstanding, Hinduism is “exclusive – like a sect. For certain religious offences a person is forever excluded from the community” (Weber 1958, 8). Hinduism did not rely upon proselytising, and yet it had grown from being a northern Indian minority religion to dominate the entire Subcontinent. Therefore, in Weber’s opinion, the process of Hinduisation had been made possible largely by the ability of its priest caste, the Brahmans, to acquire a monop­ oly over the principal ritual and magical services. In so doing, the Brahmans inherited and strengthened the hierarchical organisation of a stratified and unequal system whose different segments allowed themselves to be “Hinduised”. On one hand, “the internalisation of the Hindu order by underprivileged strata, guest and pariah tribes, represents the adjustment of socially weak strata to the given caste order” (Weber 1958, 18). On the other hand, “the struggle for or against acceptance of Hinduism for entire territories generally was led by the rulers or ruling strata. In any case, the strongest motive for the assimilation of Hinduism was undoubtedly the desire for legitimation” (Weber 1958, 18).

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Once the caste system had been made compatible with the Hindu reli­ gion and become integrated within it, immanent criticism became nigh on impossible. Indeed, attempts by autochthonous groups to withdraw from or rebel against the caste system appeared to be fruitless, since the rebel groups were simply treated as pariah groups. 3. The Caste System In order to understand the power of the ritual-religious architecture of Hinduism, Weber therefore analysed the caste system and its interconnec­ tions with the Brahmanic hierocracy with particular care. The structure and the power of the caste system historically developed in connection with one of the most important dictates of Hinduism, which was to respect dharma, the ritual duty associated with one’s caste. In Weber’s interpreta­ tion, the observance of dharma came before doctrine, which possessed a certain flexibility regarding the aims of salvation and the means of achiev­ ing it, and knowledge of pure doctrine in its entirety was a privilege belonging almost exclusively to the Brahmanic caste. However, what intrigued Weber most of all was the nature and architecture of the castes, that condition of being “prisoners of class” – a condition from which escape appeared to him to be not only extremely complicated but also a thing not much sought after. “The castes of India”, Bendix writes, “estab­ lishe a direct link between religious belief and the social differentiation of society – a link that in most other societies was indirect” (Bendix 1960, 158–159). In their nature as “exclusive communities of persons whose social status is indicated by their birth and who share the same status by virtue of their ritual practices” (Bendix 1960, 159), castes were, to some extent, a singular example of class.2 It was, however, a class of a hereditary nature, whose restrictive practices were unparalleled both in their ability to erect unassailable barriers between the members of different castes as well as in the minuteness of the detail with which they governed individu­ als’ lives. In order to shed greater light on the social character of the unique type of unit of the caste, Weber compared it to a tribe. Unlike a tribe, however, according to Weber, a caste was not a local territorial entity. It could include persons of different occupations, albeit limited to the types of pro­ fessions admissible within each caste. A tribe included individuals of 2 For an overview of Weber’s definition of ‘class’, see Weber 1978, 302.



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different social ranks, while a caste was, above all, a social rank, even though it could comprise sub-castes of different ranks. A caste was, there­ fore, characterised for Weber by the fact that it was a social and profes­ sional group existing within a larger social community, and not a political group such as a party or a class, nor a territorial group such as a tribe. Weber noted that geographical division by caste often lay at the root of political conflict in the country, but the most important castes always retained an inter-state character. Furthermore, castes were built upon extremely specific and fundamental rules governing marriage, diet and living location which structured and were restrictive to a point that Weber argued were unparalleled. The central issue, however, lay in the fact that a caste’s social standing was ultimately determined by whether it main­ tained positive or negative relations with the caste of the Brahmans. It was for this reason, in his opinion, that caste could be more accurately described in terms of a “rank order” of a religious-ritualistic type, a system which was able to gain dominance over the Indian system of stratification and organisation, imposing itself above every other form of social aggre­ gate such as, for instance, the guilds. Weber thus moved on to an analysis of the architecture of the four castes of classical doctrine, each of which had left profound marks on the Indian social order. These were the Brahman caste, the Kshatriya caste, the Vaishya caste and the Sudra caste. The members of the Hindu hierocracy, who stood on the highest tier of the Indian social pyramid, belonged to the Brahman caste. The Brahmans were priests and scholars of high standing whose power had initially become established as a consequence of their skill as scribes and local administrators; in this sense, the Brahmans were no historical exception. However, they were able to establish themselves as the sole legitimate priest class, initially in the role of private priests to nobles and later – thanks to the systems they had put in place to preserve the position they had obtained – in the role of sole priest caste in possession of Vedic knowl­ edge and an understanding of the ways of salvation. Weber argued that the processes through which they were able to establish themselves over, for instance, magicians or folk priests, but also over the heterodox hiero­ cracies, were based upon a few rules that they knew how to impose from the outset. Some such rules were, for instance, the demand that the domestic chaplain of the royal household always be chosen from among their ranks, that astrology and other spheres of Brahmanic knowledge remain their province alone, and that the minimum donation they should receive for ritual services performed be equal for all, so as to prevent differ­ ent currents or divisions from forming within their ranks. Moreover, the

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prince was expected to keep a Brahman in a fixed post at court and, since Brahmanic knowledge was protected by ritual secret, the Brahmans were able to monopolise and control access to the doctrine in favour of their descendants. The Brahmans’ social power thus rested principally upon their role as priestly administrators and advisors to the prince. Furthermore, they possessed the exclusive economic privilege of being permitted to receive land donations. The Kshatriya caste was directly below that of the priests and advisors to the prince and, once again, as is usual in patriarchal systems, it was com­ posed of warriors and soldiers of high standing. Weber argued that this caste “lacked the special character of our medieval knighthood”, since the social position occupied by the Kshatriya “rested on sib and clan charisma and not on a feudal hierarchy. This was true even before the crystallization of caste forms” (Weber 1958, 63). The Kshatriya were, and remained, vice­ roys and, in their lower stratum, local aristocratic notables with certain economic privileges. According to classical sources, “the function of ‘pro­ tecting’ the population politically and militarily” was allocated to the Kshatriya (Weber 1958, 64). Moreover, Weber recalled the legend accord­ ing to which the ancient Kshatriya had been banished in revenge for their aversion towards the Brahmans (indeed, it was thought that the Kshatriya had been followers of the religions of redemption, such as Buddhism) (see Weber 1958, 65). Weber, however, explained this downgrading of their sta­ tus by the fact that they represented a threat to the cultural and intellec­ tual monopoly of the Brahmans, as they were also extremely cultured and educated in the art of administration. In about the eighth century b.c. the Rajput thus began to perform the functions that had formerly belonged to the Kshatriya, assuming their social and economic position and substitut­ ing them as the new warrior class. Ancient illiterate mercenaries, the Rajput did not represent a threat to the Brahmanic monopoly and were more inclined to accept the Brahmans’ superiority, thus contributing to the so-called Hindu restoration (see Weber 1958, 65). With regard to the Vaishya caste, the third tier of the Indian social pyra­ mid, Weber compared them to the freemen of Medieval Europe. According to classical sources, the Vaishya was, first and foremost, a peasant. However, among the types of livelihood which were permitted them, we find that they were allowed to own land – this being the principal distinction between the Vaishya and the Sudra – as well as to make loans at interest and engage in trade (see Weber 1958, 77). The fortunes and misfortunes of the Vaishya caste were entirely dependent upon the growth of the agricultural­economy and trade development. With the development of



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the guilds and of the urban economy, the Vaishya caste devoted itself entirely to commerce, an activity that was more or less well-accepted depending upon the historical period and the type of relationships the merchants maintained with the rulers in a given era. The lowest caste on the Indian social pyramid were the Sudra. This caste comprised craftsmen and labourers forbidden to hold full posses­ sion of land. They lived off of the produce of cultivated plots, fringe ben­ efits or salaries, and from the time of the first settlement they had played an indispensable part in the home economies of the peasant. The Sudras’ standing depended upon the historical period and upon the contingent importance of the duties with which they were entrusted, as well as upon the caste for which they performed those duties. The pure Sudra caste, for instance, engaged in crafts and urban commerce, while the lower stratum of the caste, considered to be absolutely impure and believed to be tainted (from a ritual point of view), occupied those professions that, as they involved physically dirty work, were looked down upon nearly every­ where – they were occupied in jobs such as street cleaner and other similar occupations, as well as in those professions which were considered impure from a Hindu perspective, such as those of tanner or leatherworker (see Weber 1958, 100). According to Weber, the principal characteristic of the rigidity of the Indian caste and social system lay in the unprecedented power of its forms of ritual segregation. To break bread with, or even come into close physical proximity with, individuals belonging to different castes, and particularly to inferior ones, was behaviour worthy of stigmatisation and was pre­ vented by means that Weber held to be unique to India. Not only do the ancient occupation castes sustain a rigid traditionalism, but also, in general, they uphold the strictest ritualistic caste exclusiveness. Nowhere are endogamy and the exclusion of commensalism more rigidly observed than by the occupation castes, and this is by no means true only of the interrelation of high with low castes. Impure castes shun infectious contact with non-members as rigidly as high castes. This may be taken as con­clusive proof of the fact that mutual exclusiveness was predominantly caused, not by social, but by ritualistic factors based on the quality of many of these castes as ancient guest or pariah people. Especially ‘correct’ Hindu communities are to be found precisely among the old industrial castes and in part among the impure castes (Weber 1958, 106).

In the above passage, Weber reasserted the wholly ritual nature of the division between castes and of the acceptance of this division on the part of their members. He thus sought to eliminate from the outset any ­element

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that could lead to a materialistic explanation. In Weber’s interpretation, religious customs and the practices associated with them were therefore the principal – and even ultimate – reason behind the Indian social struc­ ture. This notwithstanding, Weber did not hesitate to cite racial factors as an explanation for the stability of the caste system.3 At best we can say that race or, better, the juxtaposition of racial differences and – this is sociologically decisive – of externally striking different racial types has been quite important for the development of the caste order in India (Weber 1958, 124).4

These elements therefore served as the basis for Weber’s explanation of the development of the Indian social structure as the consequence of processes of territorial subjugation. India’s conquerors distributed the land in such a manner that the noble families settled in indigenous villages where they subjugated the native population, transforming some into an agricultural tenant workforce, others into craftsmen working in the service of the vil­ lage, and yet others into servants forced to live outside of the village and carry out the jobs that were looked down upon. Bendix stressed the fact that the conquering families and the subject population confronted each other as collectivities, the one realizing its ‘right to the land’ by claiming a portion of the village production, the other occupying a position of obligatory ser­ vice, not to individuals but to the ruling castes as a whole. On this basis pro­ duction and commerce led to a division of labor and exchange among, rather than within, the villages and therefore among, rather than within, different ethnic groups. This occupational specialization might have been curbed by a vigorous development of centrally located urban markets, but this did not occur. Instead, villages and royal residences remained for centuries the prin­ cipal outlets for the sale of village products (Bendix 1960, 163–164).

Furthermore, the caste system was built upon an administrative infra­ structure of a patrimonial nature, as was the case also in other great Asian countries, but created through a prebendary system. It was the develop­ ment of this type of patrimonial power, as opposed to a feudal system, which led to conflict with the mercantile bourgeoisie. In Weber’s view, 3 Weber’s decision to turn to “racial” factors to explain the system of inequalities was most likely influenced by his having read H.H. Risley’s work. In The People of India, Risley explained the origin of the castes starting from differences in their somatic and racial fea­ tures, dismissing the relevance of more strictly social, historical and material factors. For a critique of Weber’s use of Risley’s ideas, see Allen 2004. 4 Bendix’s opinion on this topic was that the racial differences to which Weber referred had nothing to do with so-called “race instincts or qualities (…) the point is, rather, that the conquerors rejected intermarriage with the despised natives” (Bendix 1960, 162).



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this struggle against the power of the patrimonial princes was fatal to the bourgeoisie when coupled with their decided inferiority of numbers and certain other specific circumstances in Indian history. Among these other circumstances cited by Weber, in addition to the caste system itself, was the pacifism of the religions of redemption which had become widespread at the same time that the cities were developing and which had especially attracted merchants and members of the bourgeois classes: Both these factors blocked the development of the military power of the citi­ zenry; pacifism blocked it in principle and the castes in practice, by hinder­ ing the establishment of a polis or commune in the European sense (Weber 1958, 89).

Thus, Weber believed that it had been the caste structure in particular which had acted as an impediment to the autonomisation of professional organisations and to the development of commercial law, and this because the only law corresponded to dharma, which was each caste’s own ritual duty. The prescriptiveness of caste dharma, in turn, seemed to have a prin­ cipally doctrinaire character. In Weber’s opinion, the specific promise of salvation offered by the Hindu religion oriented individual life conduct not only towards nearly absolute conformity with existing conditions but, most importantly, towards the spiritual obligation not to alter those condi­ tions. It was only by respecting ritual duties that the inferior castes could be ensured social mobility – albeit a mobility that would only be achieved in the next life. 3.1. The Brahmanic Hierocracy Weber’s account of the establishment of the caste system can be described as a form of “organizational materialism” (see Hall 2006). Weber used the organisational apparatuses, the bureaucratic structures and the processes by which the social groups who were in charge had consolidated their power, to explain the nature and methods of the dominion of spiritual power as well as the broader social and economic structures. Weber thus traced the ability displayed by the Brahmans in setting up a religious hege­ mony back to both the social and political organisational structure of ancient India – divided as it was into patrimonial states – and to the political and religious organisations’ need to promote a strictly segregated ­system. In distant times, the ancient magicians – who later became Brah­ mans – had already been advisors and court magicians who, due to the fact that they alone were in possession of magical knowledge, were able to establish­their authority (see Weber 1958, 58). The transformation of their

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initial charismatic power into a noble charismatic power, and then into a hereditary one, allowed them to consolidate their position and identify processes by which they might multiply that power which ensured them an absolute monopoly over services of a religious nature. According to Weber, it was the Brahmans who, allied with the princes, were able to prevent the nascent bourgeoisie from establishing its power. Indeed, the management of commerce was in the hands of the Brahmans’ adversaries, the Jains, a magical-religious order which was economically active but was seen as being unable to translate its activities in any political terms. Moreover, the princes’ power offered the Brahmans the means to repress both the heterodox religions of redemption, which had become widespread among the urban populations, as well as the tribal priests and those of non-Brahmanic profession. The latter were unable to offer them­ selves as real alternatives either to the oppressed castes – since they belonged, as we will see, to extremely elitist religions – or to the rulers, since they proposed anti-political religions that preached withdrawal from the world and a refusal to compromise with it. The various foreign conquerors, on the other hand, had no interest in mitigating the Brahmans’ power, since “priestly power under foreign domination always serves as a refuge for the conquered and as a tool for domestication for the foreign overlords” (Weber 1958, 130). Having destroyed the powerful social posi­ tion of the guilds, the princes thus eradicated the beginnings of any sort of Western type of urban development. Furthermore, the power of the Brahmans and the princes also drew on the rural organisations, which provided men for their armies and a large portion of their levies. In rural areas, the division of labour among host populations and the fringe bene­ fits payment system, to which ancient village craftsmen had been accus­ tomed and which still remained in effect, remained the dominant elements. Unlike in the West, the development of an urban economy did not lead to an ever-stronger relation between city and countryside – a rela­ tionship that could have led to the development of a bourgeoisie along occidental lines. Thus, in Weber’s view, the obstacles blocking the way to the formation of a bourgeois class, which were of a wholly religious nature, stood in the way of a more dynamic economic and social development. The rigidity of the caste system and the tangle of ritual duties had played a decisive role in the formation of the economy. In analysing the role they had played Weber did not refrain from implicitly criticising his­ torical materialism for its supposed economic reductionism. If the Indian system functioned in a traditionalistic and anti-rational manner, accord­ ing to Weber,



paradoxes of religious individualism145 the basis for this, however, must not be sought in the wrong place. Karl Marx has characterized the peculiar position of the artisan in the Indian village his dependence upon fixed payment in kind instead of upon production for the market – as the reason for the specific ‘stability’ of the Asiatic peoples. In this, Marx was correct (Weber 1958, 111).

Nevertheless, in Weber’s opinion, Marx’s explanation was correct but not complete. As he further argued, “insofar as social stratification is con­ cerned, not only the position of the village artisan, but also the caste order as a whole must be viewed as the bearer of stability” (Weber 1958, 111). Although India had always been predominantly a country of villages, the cities were initially centres for trade, just as they were in the West. It was for this reason that, in Weber’s view, it was necessary to understand how the seeds that had prevented the development of a formal-rational eco­ nomic and political system had taken root within the ‘soul’ of the system as a whole.5 5 At this point it is worth noting that the relationships between village economy and the caste structure, and the effects of the religiously-inspired caste system on the composi­ tion of the workforce and on the broader economic relationships which have developed in India, continue to be the most debated and studied topics, especially in the fields of anthropology and of the sociology of development (Chaturvedi 1986; Das Gupta 1979; Mandelbaum 1970; Bayly 1978; Gellner 1995 and 2001). Moreover, the fact that the caste system has endured in Indian society even following the Subcontinent’s incorporation into the global system of capitalism has contributed to keeping interest in Weber’s study alive, as has an interest in its potential applicability to an analysis of the present situation. This notwithstanding, the nearly unanimous conclusion reached in the majority of works that have attempted to conduct historical assessments and “on-site” verification of the theory are not in agreement with Weber. Although the castes have remained an extremely influential force within the system of economic relationships in the villages as well as in urban settings, Weber is said to have over-estimated their importance and to have made an error when he denied that this system had the ability to give rise to economic transfor­ mations or even undergo internal changes. David West Rudner’s anthropological study, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Nattukottai Chettiars (1994), is often called upon to provide an example of the erroneousness of Weber’s hypothesis. In addition to internal fallacy, a number of studies have pointed out the error made by Weber in underestimating, where not distorting, the richness and complexity of the fabric of the Indian economy before the time of British colonialism (see Bayly 1978). This error is one of the aspects of Weber’s study which has given rise to the largest number of criticisms and condemnations, especially in light of his near total omission of the effects of British colonisation on Indian economic development (see Allen 2004; Madan 1979). Indeed, when Weber made any ref­ erence to the role of colonialism, he seemed implicitly to deny that it had hindered the development of the Indian economic system, insofar as he assumed that any sort of capi­ talistic transition in India was “highly unlikely”: “In modern times it has not always been easy, but eventually it has been possible to employ Indian caste labor in modern factories. And even earlier it was possible to exploit the labor of Indian artisans capitalistically in the forms usual elsewhere in colonial areas, after the finished mechanism of modern capital­ ism once could be imported from Europe. Even if all this has come about, it must still be considered extremely unlikely that the modern organization of industrial capitalism

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Weber argued that the Indian variety of ascesis was one of the most tech­ nically developed in the world from a rational standpoint. He claimed that there was no ascetic methodology that had not been put into practice in a virtuoso manner, and such methodologies were often rationalised and arranged within a theoretical corpus. In his attempt to analyse the way in which the type of rationalisation employed by Hinduism governed the practical aspects of life conduct, or, in other words, over which psychologi­ cal aspects it held sway, Weber claimed that Brahmanism had arranged the magical states of salvation in such a way that the orientation was towards a quest for a personal state of redemption. The latter took the form of sacred knowledge (gnosis) built upon the apathetic ecstasy that led to mystical communion with the divine. The world was thus rationally interpreted according to its natural, social and ritual orders, namely, through the lens of an ontological and cosmological speculation, leading to a rational foundation for the ends of salvation and the ways to obtain it. In other words, this interpretation led to the formation of a theodicy. It was dharma, the ritual duty whose precepts varied according to caste, which Weber identified as the true law – the body of rules governing actions that gave order to individuals’ social and political lives. The first rule of the dharma of caste was that respect for the caste profession and rules was absolutely sacred. It was therefore a ritual law under which not only any change in profession, but even any change in the work techniques employed, could result in a ritual degradation. In Weber’s opinion, such a body of prescriptions could not produce economic and technical transfor­ mations, nor even allow the seeds of such transformations to take root. Even travel was ritually stigmatised, and any form of change was looked upon with suspicion precisely because respect for dharma was a prerequi­ site of salvation. As Weber writes: Migrant members were suspect of having offended against ritual caste duties (…). Only in cases of absolute necessity was travel considered correct. Internal migration in India, therefore, even at present, is far below what would ever have originated on the basis of the caste system” (Weber 1958, 112). Numerous studies, however, have highlighted precisely the prominent role of the colonial presence on the Subcontinent. In his writings on India, Marx, in light of his analysis of the laws of the accumulation of capital, had already reported the effects of the British occupation with a wealth of details: the destruction of the output of local craftsmanship, especially with regard to the production of the textiles which had been exported until that time, and the lowering of India to the role of a mere raw materials supplier (see Pradella 2010).



paradoxes of religious individualism147 might be expected in view of the great transformation of economic condi­ tions. More than nine tenths of the people live in their native districts. As a rule only ancient village exogamy leads to settlement in another village. Permanent settlement of caste members in other places regularly results in the split up into new subcastes, for the residentially stable members refuse to consider the descendants of migrants as their peers (Weber 1958, 102).

Why was any change in social position so forcefully discouraged? Weber sought the reasons in the two principal cornerstones of Hindu doctrine: the principle of the transmigration of souls [samsara] and the principle of compensation [karma]. The principle of samsara had its roots in the dogma of the immortality of the soul, according to which the soul was destined to be reborn in a series of lives whose specific forms were decided, from one life to the next, based upon the individual’s conduct in the previ­ ous life. More specifically, rebirth was regulated by the doctrine of com­ pensation [karma], according to which “all (ritual or ethical) merits and faults of the individual formed a sort of ledger of accounts; the balance irrefutably determined the fate of the soul at rebirth and this in exact pro­ portion to the surplus of one or other side of the ledger (…) One can stay in heaven or hell only for a finite period” (Weber 1958, 119–120). The type of life into which a soul was reincarnated thus depended upon the faults or merits accumulated in the previous life, so that it is theoreti­ cally possible to die a Sudra and be reborn a Brahman, or vice versa. The Communist Manifesto concludes with the phrase “they (the proletariat) have nothing to lose but their chains, they have a world to win”. The same holds for the pious Hindu of low castes. He too can “win the world”, even the heavenly world; he can become a Kashtriya, a Brahman, he can gain Heaven and become a god – only not in this life, but in the life of the future after rebirth into the same world pattern (Weber 1958, 121–122).

However, Weber claimed merits and faults were essentially determined by an individual’s respect for the dharma of cast or his/her lack thereof. The idea that an individual’s state of well-being and overall social and caste con­ dition were the consequences of actions performed in previous lives had been taken to the point where an individual’s fate upon rebirth was believed to be entirely his or her own responsibility. Weber identified this mecha­ nism as the critical connection between Hinduism and the caste system. The very caste situation of the individual is not accidental. In India the idea of the ‘accident of birth’ so critical of society is almost completely absent. The idea of ‘accident of birth’ is common to traditionalistic Confucians and occidental social reformists. The Indian views the individual as born into the caste merited by conduct in a prior life (Weber 1958, 121).

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In essence, members of an impure caste could cherish hopes of being reborn into a better condition only by fulfilling their ritual obligations or, in other words, by accepting their social position and acting according to the prescriptions it imposed upon them. They were not granted the pos­ sibility of improving their condition during the course of their lifetime. Weber believed that it was for this reason that the inferior castes were those most firmly entrenched in tradition, as they were the ones who had the most to gain by observing ritual correctness of caste. The combination of caste legitimacy with karma doctrine, thus with the ­specific Brahmanical theodicy – in its way a stroke of genius – plainly is the  construction of rational ethical thought and not the product of any ­economic ‘conditions’. Only the wedding of this thought product with the empirical social order through the promise of rebirth gave this order the irresistible power over thought and hope of members and furnished the fixed scheme for the religious and social integration of the various profes­ sional groups and pariah peoples. Where the connection between the theo­ dicy and social order is lacking, indeed – as in the case of Indian Islam – the caste order can be assimilated externally, but it remains a caput mortum (Weber 1958, 131).

There was therefore no concept of any sort of radical evil, since there were no absolute sins, but only ritual infractions of dharma contingent upon caste. In this world of eternal rank orders there was no place for a blissful original state of man and no blissful final kingdom. Thus there was no ‘natural’ order of men and things in contrast to positive social order. There was no sort of ‘natural law’. But there was, in theory at least, only holy, status-compart­ mentalised positive law in areas which remained unregulated as indifferent. There were positive statutes of princes, castes, guilds, sibs, and agreements of individuals. All the problems which the concept of ‘natural law’ called into being in the Occident were completely lacking. There simply was no ‘natural’ equality of man before any authority, least of all before a superworldly god (Weber 1958, 144).

In Weber’s view, this was the aspect that completely precluded rationalistic speculations and social criticism from evolving in the direction of natural rights, thus preventing germination of the rights of man. There was no concept of state or subject, but only the dharma of class. Moreover, in his opinion, in India no issue of political ethic ever arose because the dharma of the prince was “to make war for the love of war and power in them­ selves”. There were no limitations on the means that could be employed to achieve this aim. Similarly, unlike Confucianism, with its hostility towards specialism, Hinduism encouraged the growth of specific sciences and disciplines­in different fields (rhetoric, logic, eroticism). Based upon this,



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Bendix (1960) defined the Brahmanic ethic as ethical pluralism (as opposed to the ethical universalism proposed by Confucianism and Christianity). The attribution of existing inequalities to merits or faults accumulated in previous incarnations could not lead to a conception of natural equality among men. It was for this reason as well that, in Bendix’s view, Hinduism, unlike Confucianism, tended to encourage specialistic knowledge. The Indian religions – Buddhism and Hinduism – were, like Christianity, ‘ethi­ cal salvation religions’.6 However, as Bendix writes: The Indian thinkers saw the world as a transient abode and an impediment to man’s spiritual quest, whereas the Occidental doctrine of salvation placed a heavy emphasis on the short span of human life during which man’s actions determined his ‘eternal’ salvation or perdition (Bendix 1960, 209).

Moreover, Weber attributed the apparent political disinterestedness of the Indian religions (both Buddhist and Hindu) to the reluctance to par­ ticipate in the affairs of the world by an individual who had been led to look upon his existence with absolute indifference, seeing it as nothing more than one in a series of lives of the same soul, continuously moving in a circular cycle of reincarnation. To quote Ferraresi: The whole of Indian religiosity looks like knowledge concerning the “mean­ ing” of the world, to be understood as eternal and immutable. Given these premises, it remains a religiosity for noble ranks and intellectuals, in princi­ ple extraneous (except for some developments of Buddhism) to the religious needs of the masses (left to the lures of magic), which instead Christianity knew how to recognize and to interpret (…) The idea of an ethical God that struggles against the power of the evil in the world was never elaborated in the Indian “enchanted garden”. Thus, the distance from the world (the dual­ ism) that was necessary to produce the unitary systematisation of the con­ duct of life around the concept of ‘ethical personality’, which was so important for the occidental development, did not arise. The contrast between ethics and world did not emerge, because the notion of an autono­ mous (disenchanted) world, beyond the idea of a supramundane and tran­ scendent God, was not affirmed. In the West, on the other hand, precisely this constituted the most powerful practical effect of ethical prophecy (Ferraresi 2003, 302).

It was for these reasons as well that Weber claimed that there was a lack of historiography in Indian cultural tradition. Every means of achieving sal­ vation deriving from the intellectual strata, be they heterodox or ortho­ dox, had, in India, the meaning and the aim of removing oneself from 6 On this point, see Kalberg 1990.

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daily life. The Hindu brand of otherworldly asceticism thus encouraged extreme individualism, since the fate of each soul was in that soul’s own hands, and the fact that all things were of a transitory nature made the world appear much less valuable. It was thus that Hinduism developed no ethic to govern any sort of practical behaviour within the world that fell outside of the ritual duty of caste, that duty being those prescriptions of a technical nature whose aim was to maintain the status quo. The caste system and karma doctrine place the individual within a clear circle of duties and offer him a well-rounded, metaphysically-satisfying con­ ception of the world. However certain and unambiguous this ethically ratio­ nal world order might present itself, the individual, once he raised the question of the ‘meaning’ of his life in this compensatory mechanism, could experience it as dreadful. The world and its cosmic social order was eternal and individual life but one of a series of the lives of the same soul. Such lives recur ad infinitum: therefore, any one in the last analysis is a matter of com­ plete indifference. The Indian representation of life and the world prefers the image of an eternally rolling “wheel” of rebirths (…) It is no accident that India has produced no historiography to speak of. The interest in historically unique forms of political and social relations was far too weak for a man contemplating life and its passage (…) However, to any thoughtful and reflective person, life destined to eternal repetition could readily appear completely senseless and unbearable. It is important to realize that it was not primarily the dread of ever-new life on this earth, which is after all so beautiful. Rather it was dread of the ever-new and ineluctable death (Weber 1958, 132–133).

As we shall see in the next sections, this analysis of the “dread of the evernew and ineluctable death” as the most important aspect shared by most Indian religions, orthodox and heterodox alike, had crucial consequences for Weber’s understanding of the process of individuation and the forma­ tion of the Indian personality. 5. The Heterodox Religions: Jainism and Buddhism The Brahmans’ ability to impose themselves as the dominant caste on both the religious and the socio-political planes could be explained, to begin with, by their ability to enter into alliances with the princes against the bourgeoisie and the soteriologically heterodox sects. According to Weber, it was therefore essentially the Brahmans’ power that acted as an impediment to capitalist development. In other words, he saw Brah­ manism preserving the Indian social system in ways which hindered the devel­opment of a mentality and a modus vivendi potentially favourable



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to capitalism.­The Brahman’s political and material power, Weber noted, could ultimately be explained on the basis of the ability of their core doc­ trines to produce the psychological incentives that drove individuals to act in such a way as to maintain the conditions suitable for the perpetua­ tion of the Brahmans’ privileged situation. This was also due to the fact that Jainism and Buddhism in particular – that is, according to Weber’s definition, the “two great heterodoxies” – were unable to become the conveyors of a religious credo capable of building forms of community that could transmit an alternative political message. In Jainism, for instance, Weber highlighted a number of features that he claimed it had in common with ascetic Protestantism. Its secondmost important precept imposed limitations on possessions, because excessive, unnecessary wealth was considered to be dangerous for an indi­ vidual’s possibilities of salvation. Exactly as in Reformed Christianity, this was not a ban on acquiring wealth as such, but only a warning against excessive aspiration or attachment to it. Moreover, in Weber’s mind, pro­ scriptions against dishonesty, especially in the context of economic exchange, suggested further analogies. Furthermore, that which Weber defines as the “ascetic imperative to economise” [asketische Sparzwang], could be seen in action amongst Jains just as it could amongst Protestants; accumulated property was used as acquisitive capital rather than as usable capital to generate annuities. The orderly nature of the life they led, which consisted in avoiding any sort of passionate feeling or excessive emotion and encouraged rigid self-control, was also conducive to the accumula­ tion of assets. The birth of the Jain sect came about at the same time as the rise of the first Indian cities, but Weber ruled out the idea that the Jain cult could have been a product of a bourgeoisie. In his view, there were two extremely important elements that had determined why a religion that seemed to promote a form of ascetic rationalism had not been able to foster a form of practical conduct that could be regarded as amenable to capitalism. The first of these elements was the fact that the sort of ascetic action promoted by Jainism was of the otherworldly variety, guiding its adherents towards a kind of practical action that anticipated forms of compromise with the things of this world but ultimately advocated withdrawal from it. The sec­ ond element was that many of its ritual religious prescriptions, especially those intended for the laity, were of an exclusive nature. In other words, they formed a workable routine of the everyday life only for a stratum of mer­ chants. But it imposed also on such a stratum, as we saw, quite burdensome

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chapter five restrictions, which it could neither have developed nor tolerated because of economic interests. (…). The great flowering of Jain religion does not occur in the time of the rising bourgeoisie but coincides precisely with the decline of city politics and guild power, somewhere between the third and thir­ teenth centuries b.c (Weber 1958, 202–203).

The principal differences between Jainism and Hinduism lay in the for­ mer’s rejection of the Veda. The Jains considered the Veda to be irrelevant to individual salvation since, in their view, redemption consisted of libera­ tion from the ancient wheel of death and rebirth, and could only be obtained through detachment from the world of the transitory. However, according to Weber, following the Hindu restoration, Jainism became Hinduised, a sort of sect within the latter religion. The rise of Buddhism, like that of Jainism, occurred at the time when the cities, the monarchy and the “bourgeois patricians” were all develop­ ing (see Weber 1958, 234). Though considering it a salvation religion, Weber defined ancient Buddhism as “a religious ‘technology’ of wandering and of intellectually-schooled mendicant monks” (Weber 1958, 206). Furthermore, he placed it at the antipodes of Confucianism and Islam, particularly for its “unpolitical” and “anti-political” nature. In his recon­ struction of Buddhist soteriology, Weber placed particular emphasis on the “destruction” of the will and the annihilation of any attachment to worldly pleasures as steps that Buddhism established as necessary in order to obtain salvation [nirvana]. As Weber put it: All men’s toil and trouble, whatever illusory cover they may use to clothe themselves before themselves and others has, in the end, this last single meaning: the will to life. This will in its metaphysical meaninglessness is what ultimately holds life together. It is this which produces karma. The task is to destroy the will if one wishes to escape karma. The will to life, or, as the Buddhists say, the ‘thirst’ for life and actions, for pleasure and joy, above all, for power, but also for knowledge or for whatever it be – this will alone is the principium individuationis (Weber 1958, 211).

The absolute detachment from worldly matters and the denial of one’s ‘thirst’ for life were crucial in order to understand the principium individuationis, or the process of individuation, enacted by Buddhism. The “‘soul’ as a lasting unit” is the very illusion on the path to salvation (Weber 1958, 207). The idea of “personality” as harmonious unity of the self, thus, became entirely inconceivable. Buddhism therefore, with its nature as an escape from the world, offered no trace of any inner-worldly motivation for action. Moreover, Weber argued that its initial lack of organisation resulted in the early



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founding of various sects, a state which gave rise to its becoming estab­ lished as an elitist religion totally inaccessible to the oppressed or unedu­ cated classes. In Weber’s view, these were the elements that had made it impossible for Buddhism to assert itself as an alternative to Hindu Brahmanism. In addition to its spiritual tension, there was also the fact that Buddhism “had no sort of tie with any sort of ‘social’ movement”, nor did it establish “‘social-political’ goal” (Weber 1958, 226). Buddhist salva­ tion promise and the path to achieve it could not have any appeal to the “socially oppressed strata” (Weber 1958, 228). Only individuals belonging to the Brahman or Kshatriya castes were suited for achieving gnosis. As a whole early Buddhism was the product not of the under-privileged but of very positively privileged strata. There can be no doubt, however, that its anti-hierocratic feature, namely, the devaluation of Brahmanical knowledge of ritual and of Brahmanical philosophy, made the princes and patricians sympathetic to its teaching (Weber 1958, 227).

Despite its elitist character and its inability to give rise to a “personality” in the Western sense as unity of the self, Buddhism was nonetheless for Weber the most coherent of the soteriologies adopted by the intellectual Hindu nobility. Furthermore, it was the only dominant “religion of redemption” in Asia, even if only for a brief period. Its inner coherence, which was also, however, its weakness, was the fact that the redemption it offered was limited to those who truly followed the path to salvation, which is to say, those who became monks, while it tended, to a great extent, to ignore laymen (see Weber 1958, 233). Buddhism was therefore forced, in the struggle with other soteriologies, to open itself to them and thus change its very nature. Weber pointed out the case of King Asoka who, in his attempt to impose Buddhism as the religion of his realm, was forced to temper its markedly élite side in order to render it accessible to larger portions of the population. The petty bourgeois and peasant could make nothing of the products of the soteriology of educated gentility. Least of all could they find satisfaction from early Buddhistic soteriology. The petty bourgeois or peasant could as little think of yearning for nirvana as he could of uniting with the Brahmans. Above all, he did not have the means at hand to attain these holy objects; it required leisure for the meditation necessary to achieve the gnosis. He had no such leisure and, as a rule, saw no reason for gaining such leasure by liv­ ing as a penitent in the woods. To some degree both orthodox and hetero­ dox soteriology had prepared for this contingency: the orthodoxy through holy promises of caste ritualism; heterodoxy though a secondary lay moral­ ity, for which premiums in this and the future life were promised. However all of this (…) in no way satisfied the specifically religious need for emotional

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chapter five experience of the superwordly and for the emergency aid in external and internal distress. Such unsatisfied emotional needs were and are always decisive for the psychological character of all soteriologies of intellectuals. For emotional mass religiosity there have been and are but two possible types of soteriology: magic or a savior. Or both may occur together, the living savior as magician and helper in physical and psychic need, the dead, deified savior as helper in need, as intercessor and super-earthly object of ardent devotion and emotional ecstatic reawakening in the experience of having the holy or being possessed by it (Weber 1958, 236–237).

As this passage attests, Weber argued that Buddhism lacked the strength in numbers necessary to set itself up as a serious alternative to Brahmanic Hinduism. The mystical and extremely complex nature of its ritual pre­ cepts rendered it an intrinsically aristocratic religion and therefore illsuited to pose a threat to the nearly absolute hegemony of Brahmanism. Buddhism’s hostility to magic, iconography and forms of political partici­ pation hindered it from becoming a mass political instrument and it was thus that, from the fifth century onward, it fell into decline. It was not only the Islamic invasion and the hostility of the Brahmans that contributed to  neutralising Buddhism’s potential. The greatest inner weakness of Buddhism remained its failure to provide a clearly defined ethic for the laity such as the one offered by the Brahmanic ritual of caste or by the organisation of the Jain community. Thus, in Weber’s opinion, it was rela­ tively simple to restore Brahman orthodoxy following the Buddhist inter­ lude, which, while encouraged from high up in the social order, had failed to truly eradicate Hindu Brahmanism. Based on his interpretations of India’s history and of India’s orthodox and heterodox religions in particular, Weber identified the intellectual classes who held the spiritual power as being the guardians of the tradi­ tional conditions of existence. Furthermore, the establishment of conser­ vative tendencies was due to the anti-political and fundamentally aristocratic nature of the various heterodox movements, which were unable to provide viable alternatives to the official orthodoxies. Weber here compared the Brahmans to the intellectual Confucians: In both we find a status group or genteel literati whose magical charisma rests on ‘knowledge’. Such knowledge was magical and ritualistic in charac­ ter, deposited in a holy literature, written in a holy language remote from that of everyday speech. In both appears the same pride in education and unshakable trust in this special knowledge as the cardinal virtue solely determining all good. Ignorance of this knowledge was the cardinal vice and source of all evil. They developed a similar ‘rationalism’ – concerned with the rejection of all irrational forms of holy seeking. Both Brahman and



paradoxes of religious individualism155 Mandarin rejected all types of orgiasticism. Just as the Confucian literati rejected the Taoistic magicians, so the Brahmans rejected all magicians, cult priests, and holy seekers. Their intelligence had not been cultivated by Vedic education and the Brahmans viewed them as unclassical, despicable and worthy only of extermination. Of course, in neither case (Chinese or Indian) could the implied program be consummated. Though the Brahmans suc­ ceeded in preventing the development of a unified organization of unclassi­ cal priests, it was at the price, as we shall see, of permitting many hierarchies of mystagogues partly within their own stratum, and therewith a disintegra­ tion of unified holy learning into sect soteriologies (Weber 1958, 139).

However, the principal difference between Mandarins and Brahmans lay in the fact that, while the former identified themselves with the emperor, who was the supreme priest of the realm and able to unite political and religious power, in India these two sides of power remained divided. Every Indian king had to turn to his court priests regarding ritual and religious questions. Thus the separation between political and religious power was maintained and there was, moreover, a sort of subordination of secular power to the religious authority of the Brahmans, so that the latter organ­ ised as an independent priestly caste. 6. Egotism and Conformism: Religious Individualism in India In analysing the Indian social and economic system and the influence exerted by its dominant and heterodox religious doctrines, Weber believed he had grasped the conformation of the interior habitus, or, in other words, of the specific type of individuation produced on the Subcontinent.7 First of all, Weber noted the role which Hindu doctrine, promoted by the priestly bureaucracy which had contributed to the creation of a soci­ ety divided into castes, had played in orienting the conduct of individuals towards conservatism while also rendering it, paradoxically, extremely individualistic. What Weber saw, however, was an anti-political individu­ alism paired with absolute acceptance of authority and of the worldly order. In other words, Weber described the structure of the self shaped by Hinduism in particularistic terms. However, it was a self that, in the nearly exclusive care it took in its actions and in pursuing its own personal inter­ ests, contributed to safeguarding the interests of the dominant castes and the status quo in general. The result was thus a simultaneously egotistic 7 For an examination of the Indian “mentality” in an anthropological sense, with results compatible with those found in Weber’s analysis, see Dumont 1980.

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and conformist form of individualism at the opposite end of the spectrum from the type of individualism that had characterised the establishment of ascetic Protestantism. In order to analyse the manner in which the type of rationalisation deployed by Hinduism influenced practical life conduct, Weber essen­ tially turned, as we have seen, to three elements: the role of the dharma of caste and the tenets of the doctrines of samsara and of karma. However, when subjected to careful analysis, Weber’s interpretation of the intercon­ nection that came into being between the principle of ritual duty [dharma] and the doctrines of karma and samsara, the role of these in hindering any kind of social change and therefore in reinforcing the caste system, led to paradoxical results. On one hand, the Hindu doctrine promoted by the Brahmanic priestly bureaucracy fostered an extremely corporative orientation for individual conduct. According to the precepts of Hinduism, individuals were obliged to respect the ritual duties of the caste to which they belonged. This obli­ gation did not, however, act as a form of external coercion. Rather, as in the case of the professional activities encouraged by ascetic Protestantism, respect for dharma of caste became an interior constraint, a psychological incentive and hope for salvation. Only by respecting the ritual duties assigned at birth could one increase his/her hopes for a better rebirth in a higher-ranking caste. Furthermore, the point of departure of karma doc­ trine, according to Weber, was not “personality” as the unity of the self, but instead “the meaning and value of the single act” (Weber 1958, 206–207), an element which resulted in paradoxical forms of religious individualism and an egotistic type of self. On the other hand, while the nature of practical action maintained the character of corporative action, the search for salvation was a wholly pri­ vate affair. It was a search that consisted in contemplative action, prac­ ticed alone and detached from earthly cares. Both this slavish compliance with ritual duty, as well as the emphasis Hinduism placed on the fact that the responsibility for the outcome of reincarnation lay entirely with the individual, encouraged a sort of extreme form of egotism and, indeed, of individualism. There was within Hinduism a type of religious individualism [which is] characteristic of all mystical holy seeking in the attainment of which the individual can and will, in the last analysis, help only himself. (…) Apart from the belief in predestination, the religious solitude of the single soul has never been placed on such a sounding-board as in this conclusion from Brahmanical doctrine. In polar opposition to the belief in election by divine grace, this doctrine left it entirely to the individ­ ual soul to work out its own fate (Weber 1958, 169).



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In Hinduism, just as in ascetic Protestantism, the solitary quest for salva­ tion had thus encouraged the development of a practical conduct and an interior habitus imbued with individualism. This, however, was where the similarities ended. Unlike ascetic Protestantism and, in particular, differ­ ently from the doctrine of predestination, Hinduism placed the responsi­ bility for salvation directly upon the shoulders of the believer. According to ascetic Protestantism, on the other hand, an individual’s fate was decided by God alone, who was the sole source of authority. Furthermore, the type of self-awareness and egotism encouraged by ascetic Protestant­ ism had fostered an unmediated individual relationship with the divine, a personal interpretation of the sacred texts and practical conduct which aimed to seek for confirmation of a believer’s state of grace through his profession. Hinduism, on the other hand, according to Weber, promoted a individualistic quest for salvation, the success of which depended entirely on individual responsibility. However, the instruments employed in achiev­ ing salvation were not personally chosen. Rather, they were imposed upon the individual by a centuries-old tradition of doctrine in which the Hindu believer had no direct access to the sacred texts, which were rendered to him/her through the mediation of priests. Ultimately, the Hindu type of ‘religious individualism’ encouraged con­ formism and adaptation, thus maintaining the stability and immutability of the social order. It was a social order which, in Weber’s view, was unique in the world, and which prevented the factors that could have led to a capitalistic type of socio-economic development from evolving.

CHAPTER SIX

THE LAND OF THE ‘WELL-ADJUSTED MAN’: WEBER’S SOCIOLOGY OF CHINA [The Chinese People] have become stationary—have remained so for ­thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners (Mill 2005, 106). I can only rejoice in the thought of an invasion of the Celestial Empire by a European army. So at last the mobility of Europe has come to grips with Chinese immobility! (Tocqueville 1985, 141 [At the beginning of the Opium War]).

The first part of the series of studies entitled “The Economic Ethic of World Religions” [Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen] was published in the first and second instalments of Volume XLI (1915–1916) of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik under the title Confucianism [Der Konfuzianismus]. It was subsequently revised in view of its publication in the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, appearing with the modified title Konfuzianismus und Taoismus [Confucianism and Taoism] in the first volume of the collection and translated into English by Hans H. Gerth as The Religion of China. Confucianism and Taoism in 1951. According to Schluchter (1983 and 1989), the reason that the monograph on Confucianism “served as an introduction” to the studies on the nonWestern religions consisted in the fact that, during the initial phase of the work, Weber considered Confucianism to be the religious ethic that was closest to ascetic Protestantism. However, by the end of Weber’s study, he had come to the conclusion that it was actually the most distant. This disparity between his initial assumptions and the conclusions reached as a result of his research also serves to explain the reason why the study of China occupied more of Weber’s time than did his other monographs. Furthermore, not only did he modify numerous passages that had first appeared in the texts published in the Archiv, but he also made a number of parts considerably longer, particularly the section dedicated to China’s historical and socio-economic profile. Additionally, he included a new

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final chapter entirely devoted to a comparison of Confucianism and Puritanism.1 The first part of the study focuses on an analysis of the sociological, economic and political foundations that defined the context within which Weber framed his interpretations of the orthodox and heterodox religious ethics. The question that particularly determined the direction for his research was centred on the analysis of Chinese feudalism and the reasons why it had failed to lead to capitalist forms of economy, as had occurred in Europe beginning in the fifteenth century. In order to interpret the history and socio-economic structure of Imperial China on the basis of the secondary sources available at the time, Weber employed the theoretical framework provided by one of his previous ­studies regarding the history of agrarian relationships in antiquity: his 1909 work, Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum. His analysis of Chinese society was, thus, carried out from the standpoint of historical categories, namely the concept of patria potestas, used to understand the economic history of the Roman Empire. This historical and conceptual framework permitted Weber, on the one hand, to make a constructive comparison between two very dissimilar contexts and, on the other, to formulate concepts, such as those of patrimonial bureaucracy and political capitalism, which have been held to be of great utility from a heuristic standpoint by historians and social scientists alike. However, by employing a theoretical lens that had been crafted to study the ancient history of the West, Weber lent his work of comparative history a fundamentally Eurocentric cast. 1. From Feudalism to Patrimonialism The theoretical challenge that established the direction taken in Confucianism and Taoism is, once again, the need to shed light on the 1 In Schluchter’s view (1989), of all the works comprising his sociology of religions, Konfuzianismus und Taoismus was the text on which Weber worked the longest following its initial publication. At the end of 1915, Weber had already planned to collect his writings on the sociology of religion in a series of volumes. However, this plan anticipated their expansion “by means of revisions and considerable additions”. The study of China was the one that underwent the most revisions and re-workings. As Schluchter writes: “In contradistinction to PE [Protestant Ethic] as well as the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Intermediate Reflections,’ where only small changes, interpolations, and rearrangements of the text were made, China was almost doubled in length. This is reflected in its table of contents. Not only the title of the study was changed. The essay published in 1915 had four chapters. But the revised essay included in the first volume of the Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (GARS) [Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie], the only



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mutual causal influence between the ideal and material spheres and on the logical and historical importance, or even priority, that should be assigned to the former within processes of socio-historical change. However, due to the peculiarities inherent to Chinese economic, political and cultural history, this study represented not only an attempt at investigating a causal reciprocity of this sort, but also an opportunity to expand on the peculiarities of intra-worldly ascetic rationalism in Europe. Weber’s reconstruction of Chinese history focused in particular on the process that had led to China developing beyond a feudal form of social organisation characterised, as in the West, by a geographical division of the territory into a myriad of aristocratic states in conflict with each other, whose nobles’ qualification for their offices derived from hereditary charisma.2 As Weber noted, the passage from the feudal to the “prebendary” state began with the political unification of the Chinese lands into the Middle Kingdom, starting in 221 bc. As in other great empires of antiquity, this unification process had been encouraged by issues relating to regulation of the water supply network, which had created the need for a coordinated and centralised administrative apparatus.3 Unification brought an end to the internal wars that had set the various regions against each other. It was their division that had prevented a rationalisation of the administration and of water distribution – indispensable for the economic livelihood of a country of such size. To meet this need, the rulers sought the aid of scholars and developed forms of organisation designed to ­prevent subinfeudation. They thus intended to prevent not only the old aristocracy from reclaiming its powers at local levels, but also to prevent functionaries who became governors of individual provinces from doing so. volume Weber himself was able to complete for publication, was divided into eight” (Schluchter 1989, 87). 2 The principle of hereditary charisma, as referred to the family group and not to the individual, implied that simply belonging to a noble family group was all that was required to qualify one to hold a feudal office of a given rank. Weber argued that, in China as in India, this was due to the fact that the feudal political system had not arisen from a landed nobility comprised of chivalric warriors as it had in the West, but rather from the aristocracy. In Chinese antiquity, the importance of hereditary charisma had also migrated to the religious plane, where it translated into worship of the spirits of ancestors and devotion to an impersonal otherworldly divinity who maintained the harmonic order of the world. Indeed, in China, celestial power was represented by an immutable, impersonal, supradivine being who did not speak to men but revealed himself to them through worldly governance, therefore through the stable order of nature and of tradition. This divinity had the responsibility of safeguarding the established order and the well-being of its subjects. 3 Notoriously influenced by Max Weber’s analysis of China, the historian and sinologist Karl A. Wittfoegel (1957) defined Oriental societies as “hydraulic civilisations”. On Weber’s “hydraulic” reading of China social structure see also Schmidt-Glintzer 1991.

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Weber defined the moment when these functionaries were selected as a process of “democratisation”: A financial factor operated alongside the universally effective and natural alliance of the autocratic ruler and the plebeian strata in opposition to the status dignitaries and in favour of ‘democratization’ of officialdom. As mentioned above, it was not accidental that the Annals ascribed the earliest sale of office to the first Emperor, Shih Huang Ti. This practice necessarily brought well-to-do plebeians into state prebends. The struggle against feudalism, however, was one of principle. Any transfer of political authority was prohibited, even within the sib of the Emperor, but the status structure remained unaffected. Ascent opportunities for officials of lowly birth increased when a fixed hierarchy of offices was established, preliminary steps to which had been taken in the Warring States (Weber 1951, 43).

The alliance of the emperor and the intellectual class against the aristocracy and the feudal principle of hereditary charisma had the aim of divesting the nobility of its power over the provinces and preventing its reconstitution. As Weber noted, however, they also faced the problem of preventing the new functionaries from becoming autonomous and creating their own personal fiefdoms within the provinces they governed. A system for recruiting the bureaucracy was therefore established, organised in such a manner as to hinder any sort of feudal crystallisation of its members’ interests. To this end, the financial needs of the state initially gave rise to the sale of offices, providing even scholars of non-noble or common birth with the possibility of obtaining posts. Furthermore, a meritocratic selection system for functionaries was put into place through the institution of an empire-wide examination. In addition, each functionary was assigned to a given province (which was, wisely, not his province of origin) for no longer than three years and, to preclude the risk of political alliances, steps were taken to ensure that the bordering provinces were governed by bureaucrats belonging to different or enemy factions. It was this transition from a type of bureaucratic structure that Weber defined as “patrimonial” to a system of rational recruitment of aspiring functionaries that he argued constituted the most important element in the process of moving beyond the feudal system. However, Weber also maintained that this same structure also constituted a formidable obstacle to the inception of a potentially capitalistic socio-economic dynamic. In Economy and Society, Weber analysed patrimonialism as a specific case of traditional power of a patriarchal sort. Any change could be seen as a threat to the personal and economic interests on which this type of structure rested, and was therefore to be feared. Thus, in Weber’s view, the



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patrimonial state was characterised by a juridically weak structure subject to judgements based upon a body of customary norms that had not been formally sanctioned. As Weber writes: Patrimonialism, being ethically oriented, always sought substantive justice rather than formal law. Hence, in spite of the traditionalism, there was no official collection of precedents (…) For the most part, the administrative edicts of the Emperor were couched in the pedagogical form peculiar to papal bulls of the Middle Ages but without a similarly precise legal content. The best known statutes codified ethical rather than legal norms and excelled in literary erudition (…) Insofar as it was oriented to orthodoxy the whole imperial administration was controlled by an essentially theocratic board of literati (Weber 1951, 102).

In Weber’s reconstruction, the Chinese patrimonial structure was organised as a decentralised domestic power to which the principle of hsiao was crucial. Weber held that one characteristic aspect of Chinese patrimonialism, as in all the patrimonial empires of antiquity, was the lack of a widespread, formal code of law in place of more or less arbitrary measures of arbitration. It had been the traditional Roman concept of patria potestas, which hinged on the authority of the pater familias and on the patrilineal nature of the different forms of law, which had inspired Weber’s conception of patrimonialism. As mentioned earlier, the concept of patrimonialism has been regarded as being of extreme heuristic importance in Weber’s interpretation of the Chinese political and administrative structure (see, in particular, Anderson 1974). Nevertheless, a number of authors have called into question the possibility of a conceptual overlap between the concept of hsiao and that of patria potestas. In the words of Hamilton, With regard to a son’s obedience to his father, the difference between patria potestas and hsiao can be summarized in a phrase. With patria potestas, a person obeys his father; with hsiao a person acts like a son. Patria potestas defines jurisdictions within which a person can exercise personal discretion, and accordingly defines relations of authority between people. Hsiao defines roles, and actions and values that go with roles, and accordingly defines a person’s duty to a role. These two concepts imply different ideas about the nature of patriarchal domination both within and especially beyond the family (Hamilton 1984, 411).

The same was true for Buss (1985), according to whom Weber based his analysis of China on his knowledge of the ancient Roman civilisation, where patria potestas meant that a father had the power to do as he wished. In China, however, the concepts of loyalty and obedience were applied first and foremost to one’s role and duties, but did not refer to

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commands imposed by another. The emperor, for instance, was called the ‘Son of Heaven’, whereby his relational, or filial, status was emphasised. The political implications of this were, in the words of Redding, that The Confucian state was seen by its members as an enormous, but nevertheless united group, while the Western version is doctrinally at least an abstraction, a universal or absolute idea. Thus the Chinese state is in essence the super-family of Chinese people (…). The society is constructed of morally binding relationships connecting all. In this the self is not an enclosed world of private thoughts. The individual is instead a connection and the ‘totalness’ of society is passed down from one binding relationship to the next (…) For the Chinese, fulfilment comes from the very structure and dynamics of the relationships and emphasis on belonging (Redding 1990, 44).

The concept of hsiao could not therefore be seen as mirroring the concept of patria potestas insofar as hsiao did not place two individuals in an hierarchically asymmetrical relationship of dominance, laying down the rules for legally or officially lawful or desirable behaviour, as did the patria potestas. Rather, hsiao referred to a role; in other words, it functioned on the basis of the internalisation of a behavioural code that derived from the individual’s position in society. Another element linked to patrimonial bureaucracy was the weakness of its organisation from the point of view of formalisation and universalisation. According to Weber, this was a typical trait of patrimonial states, which also characterised, in authoritarian terms, the Chinese Empire, as well as the Oriental states in general (see Eisenstadt 1991). Weber compared Chinese law to the justice of a Qadi or, in other words, a form of what he regarded as “substantively irrational” law. This was due to the fact that patrimonial offices, according to him, were occupied not by technically qualified legal experts, but rather by generalist functionaries with a humanist education. Both Marsh (2000) and Sprenkel (1964) have criticised Weber’s analysis. In their view, the feature that limited the offices’ power to arbitrate was not sacred tradition but the very obligations they had to the written codes of law. Moreover, although they believed that Weber had been right to maintain that the system whereby functionaries were recruited did not include an exam on topics specifically related to law, they also held that he had been mistaken to maintain that any knowledge of law was completely omitted from it. 2. State Bureaucracy and Political Capitalism Weber regarded what he saw as the absence of adherence to prescribed forms in the application of the law to be balanced by the rationality



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applied in controlling its offices, which rendered the Chinese structure both a traditional type of system of rule as well as a legal-bureaucratic one.4 From a formal standpoint, precisely because it constituted an historic deviation from selection models based upon personal favour, the system of recruiting functionaries through means of an examination represented the most extreme sort of realisation of bureaucratic objectivity. The Chinese functionary class did not, however, transform itself into a modern bureaucracy. The rationalisation of the administration proceeded to the point at which it guaranteed a balance between the interests of the emperor and his intellectual bureaucracy and the particularistic interests of local powers in the provinces – a situation which, according to Weber, led to a deadlock preventing a capitalistic system, in the true sense of the term, from emerging. Weber observed the manner in which trade, for instance, despite promising development, remained limited within individual towns and cities. In addition, due to a failure to properly exploit the gold mines, there was not an efficient development of the monetary economy. Lastly, although China had always been a nation of great cities, it did not even develop an urban model similar to that found in Italy in the Middle Ages, where the cities were the cradle of the urban bourgeoisie and encouraged the development of autonomous political structures.5 In Weber’s view, Chinese cities remained closed to internal trade and their bureaucracy was the rational product of an administration incapable of weakening the power either of rural family groups or of professional associations in the cities. The development of guilds, for example, did not lead to the organisation of corporative law. In addition, the fact that, 4 According to Perry Anderson, “[i]n general, Weber’s analytic contrasts between ‘feudalism’ and ‘patrimonialism’ are of great force and acuity. His overall use of them, however, is vitiated by the notorious weaknesses of the notion of ‘ideal-types’ characteristic of his later work. Thus both feudalism and patrimonialism are in practice treated as detachable and atomic ‘traits’ rather than as unified structures; consequently they can be distributed and mixed at random by Weber, who lacked any historical theory proper after his pioneering early work on Antiquity. One result is Weber’s inability to provide any stable or accurate definition of Absolutism in Europe: sometimes it is ‘patrimonialism’ which is ‘dominant in Continental Europe up to the French Revolution’, while at other times Absolute monarchies are deemed ‘already bureaucratic-rational’. These confusions were inherent in the increasing formalism of his later work” (Anderson 1974, 410, footnote 22). 5 Indeed, in Weber’s view, the Medieval Western city was the cradle of financial rationalisation, because it was there that a currency had been created which could serve as a unit of measure and which served as an indicator of the direction of a state’s monetary policy. Moreover, the cities of the West leaned predominantly towards foreign maritime trade, while the formation of their bureaucracies was the product of an autonomous urban economy.

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unlike in the West, the guilds had no political or military power was a further impediment to the development of the Chinese economy in a capitalistic sense. Weber also noted how the progressive pacification of the empire had led to an enormous increase in the population, especially in rural areas. Agriculture, he noted, nevertheless remained structured around smallscale farms. This was due both to a fiscal policy system which required lands to be divided in order to increase the number of tax payers, thus making it impossible for a process of land accumulation to begin, as well as to the desire of the central government to prevent landed property from being transformed into feudal fiefdoms. Weber discussed all the above elements in order to illustrate the obstacles that he believed had blocked an indigenous Western-like capitalistic development in China. One should note, however, that by positing the ‘pacification of the empire’ as one central element preventing the rise of endogenous capitalism in China, Weber partially amended the positions he had adopted in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In that work, he had firmly denied that forms of predatory capitalism, such as, for instance, the acts of violence which had accompanied colonial expeditions or wars of conquest, had played any role in the rise of modern capitalism, arguing that the latter was distinct from other forms of capitalism precisely because it had rationalised unadulterated auri sacra fames and unscrupulous action. In his writings on China, however, this assessment appears to have been tempered, if not contradicted. As Weber writes: Just as capitalism lacked a judiciary independent of substantive individualization and arbitrariness, so it lacked political prerequisites. To be sure, the feud was not lacking. On the contrary, the whole of Chinese history is replete with great and small feuds, including the numerous struggles of individual villages, associations, and sibs. Since the pacification of the world empire, however, there has been no rational warfare, and what is more important, no armed peace during which several competing autonomous states constantly prepare for war. Capitalist phenomena thus conditioned through war loans and commissions for war purposes did not appear. (…) The Chinese Empire also lacked overseas and colonial relations and this handicapped the development of those types of capitalism common to occidental Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. These were the varieties of booty capitalism, represented by colonial capitalism and by Mediterranean overseas capitalism connected with piracy. While the barriers to overseas expansion partly depended on the geographical conditions of a great inland empire, in part, as we have seen, they resulted from the general political and economic character of Chinese history (Weber 1951, 103–104).



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Consequently, in the place of “formally rational” industrial capitalism, what developed and remained in place in China was something that Weber had defined as “political capitalism” in his study of Antiquity and patrimonialism – that is, a type of capitalism related to “tax farming, leasing or sale of offices” (Weber 1978, 238), “the profitable provisions of the state’s political needs” (Weber 1978, 480) and irrational elements “from the point of view of orientation to market advantages and thus to the consumption needs of budgetary units” (Weber 1978, 166). 3. On the Sacred Nature of Tradition: The Precarious Equilibrium between Centre and Periphery The group of individuals who held bureaucratic and spiritual power, the Confucian scholar class, played a central role in Weber’s reconstruction of Chinese economic history. As in the West, those who held the monopoly over written culture were largely those who had access to the sacred texts and who had initially been the counsellors to the princes in their struggles against the lesser vassals who posed a possible threat to their power. We have already touched upon a few of the factors which permitted the alliance of the emperor and the scholars to oust the feudal nobility in favour of a bureaucratic sort of process of rationalisation of the administration, even though this did not lead to the same entirely legal and rational consequences as it did in the West.6 Weber highlighted the way in which the strategic importance of the intellectual class, as the keepers of the sacred art of writing, was the result of a long process of unification and centralisation. The efforts of those cultured strata, who were the only ones able to work towards bringing about the administrative homogenisation of the Empire – given that they did not make any hereditary claims to the lands they governed or seek to gain ownership thereof – were crucial to this process. The selling of offices, brought about in part by the financial needs of the times, allowed scholars of common birth to gain access to posts as functionaries, thus giving rise to that democratisation of the bureaucracy, not to mention ensuring that the men vested with those offices had no interest in laying claims to hereditary titles or birth rights. 6 As Weber writes: “Princely cartels against subinfeudation were formed and the literati established principles according to which inheritance of office was ritually offensive and neglect of official duty incurred magical harm (early death). This characterizes the way in which bureaucratic administration displaced the administration of vassals, and hence the charismatically qualified great families” (Weber 1951, 42).

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Moreover, as has already been noted, the need to avoid situations of subinfeudation led to the elimination of any factor that could allow functionaries to increase their own personal power. In light of these factors, which he saw as being extremely rational and dynamic in intent, Weber defined the Chinese type of power in terms of a bureaucracy, or legitimate, rational-legal rule based upon a formally ordained set of rules and regulations. However, the very mobility of the functionaries that was meant to forestall the crystallisation of personal interests and which could have been a dynamic element within government lay, in Weber’s mind, at the root of an even greater immobility and of lapses into administrative traditionalism. Weber therefore described the Chinese order in terms of an unfinished bureaucracy, a hybrid of legal and traditional power: a “patrimonial bureaucracy”. The traditional characteristics inherent in this form of administration essentially consisted in the fact that it was the very remedy meant to prevent the formation of autonomous hubs of power in the provinces, first and foremost by the appointment of bureaucrats native to other areas, which also meant that those same bureaucrats were thus totally unprepared to govern vast lands whose language and customs were often utterly foreign to them. For this reason, they were forced to fall back on the aid of local family groups in order to be able to handle a series of administrative duties, which they would otherwise have found impossible. According to Sprenkel (1954; 1964), the fact that the administrators had to rely upon local family groups was the element that, more than any other, had captured Weber’s attention. In his eyes, the fixity of Chinese society was the result of an extremely delicate yet stable balance between two forces whose interests were diametrically opposed: the central government, on one side, and the family groups, on the other. If, on the one hand, both sides were each attempting to limit the actions and the powers of the other, on the other hand, neither of the two displayed any desire to risk an all-out struggle for fear of exposing their own inner weakness (Sprenkel 1964, 353). The family groups, in particular, were the guardians of that cult of ancestor worship that lay at the foundation of the concept of hsiao, the unconditional devotion and obedience to the “superior man”. Hsiao also guaranteed devotion to the emperor and the functionaries and therefore constituted a cardinal principle of Confucianism. Weber thus saw the Chinese system as being impervious to change in the modern rational sense. In his view, the Mandarins had no interest in promoting forms of renewal or encouraging modernisation of the administrative apparatus, since their livelihood derived principally on ‘prebends’



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accumulated through tax collection.7 Furthermore, the principle of unconditional devotion towards the superior, of which the family groups were the bearers and the guardians, allowed the functionaries to maintain the positions they had obtained. As their basic interests were not affected by Mandarin rule, Weber argued, the family groups dared not call imperial power into question, firstly as a consequence of the devotion due to them as superiors and, secondly, as a consequence of their belief in spirits and of their fear of any innovation to be a harbinger of woe.8 As Weber writes, Any innovation could call forth magic evils. Above all, fiscal innovations were suspect and met with sharp resistance (…) Besides, the influence of the sib elders was mostly decisive for the acceptance or rejection or religious innovations, which is of special concern to us. Naturally, and almost without exception, their weight tipped the balance in favour of tradition, especially when they sniffed a threat to ancestral piety (Weber 1951, 96).

Therefore, for Weber, the most effective counterweight to the power of the scholar class consisted in those “uneducated” elderly people who held sway over their family groups and represented the true bulwark of Chinese traditionalism. Indeed, the rationalism of the patrimonial bureaucracy was opposed by a traditionalist force rendered superior by that very relationship of dependence that the functionaries were obliged to cultivate with local authorities in the course of their duties.9 7 As Bendix points out, “[i]n China the early unification of the state and the consequent establishment of a centrally organized officialdom meant that the struggle for political power turned on the distribution of offices rather than on the distribution of land. The members of prominent hereditary landowning families vied for appointment to office and for the income of fees and taxes derived therefrom. The imperial government depended upon the administrative services of these benefice-holders, not upon the military services of self-equipped knights. As individuals the Chinese officals were freely removable, unlike the analogous benefice-holders of western Europe who were able to appropriate their positions and pass them on to their heris. Once this structure had been established, it tended to be perpetuated by the collective interest of the officialdom in the existing opportunities for income and prestige. Any change in the direction of a more rational administrative organization would have destroyed these opportunities” (Bendix 1960, 103). 8 It should be noted that this is one of the most highly-debated aspects of Weber’s interpretation of Chinese history. As a matter of fact, there were no less than three peasant rebellions in China (the most famous was the Taiping Rebellion), all three of which led to the emperor being deposed (see Andreski 1984; Allen 2004). 9 At this point we might note the extent to which Weber’s reconstruction of imperial China’s political and economic structure in the terms of a patrimonial bureaucracy – a system poised in equilibrium between modernizing and traditionalist forces – is reminiscent of the structural-functionalist theories which would dominate sociological research in the years to follow. Despite the widespread interpretation that views Weber’s contribution to Parsons’s theoretical framework only in terms of his theory of the individual or of rational social action, Weber’s analysis of social systems interpreted the relationship

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In the first part of his study on China, Weber had considered the “structural” impediments to the rise of indigenous capitalism. In the second part, he attempted to demonstrate the manner in which “the lack of a particular mentality” had played a decisive role. Indeed, this latter aspect represented the central theme” of his work (Weber 1951, 104). In order to analyse the impediments that arose from “a particular mentality”, Weber examined Chinese religious life based on the assumption that in China, as in any other place, religious life had forged the personality of believers in truly unique ways. In the case of China, it was therefore necessary to shed light on the role played by Confucianism, as the official religion of a vast empire. Weber began from the assertion that Confucianism was not, strictly speaking, a religion, but rather an enormous code of political maxims and rules of good social behaviour “for cultivated men”. He therefore defined it as a type of “secular inner-worldly ethics”. The nearly paradoxical singularity of Confucianism lay in the fact that, despite the fact that it was an extremely rational and potentially utilitarian ethic – in other words, it could possibly herald a formal, rational economic development – it actively cooperated in upholding tradition and forming an adaptive rationalism that acted as an impediment to any sort of innovation. As Weber writes: The Chinese ‘soul’ has never been revolutionized by a prophet. There were no ‘prayers’ of private individuals. The ritualist and literary officeholders and, above all, the Emperor took care of everything and they alone were able to do so (…) Chinese language has no special word for ‘religion’. There was first: ‘doctrine’ – of a school of literati; second: ‘rites’ – without distinguishing whether they were religious or conventional in nature. The official Chinese name for Confucianism was ‘doctrine of the Literati’ [ju chiao] (Weber 1951, 142–144).

Weber analysed Confucianism in terms of a religiosity that served to maintain the established orders insofar as it sustained the cult of ancestor worship – the prerogative of the family group and its inner order. As a rule, the orthodox Chinese Confucian performed his rites in the interests of his own earthly destiny or, in other words, to obtain a long life, children and between the different parts of the system in terms of a functional equilibrium. This notwithstanding, as we shall shortly see, Weber’s attention remained focused on individual forces, or rather, on the type of “personality” whose structure was rooted in religious beliefs.



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wealth, and not in the interests of a hypothetical afterlife. Indeed, according to the “enlightened” Confucian scholars, the soul dissolved after death, dispersing into the air. Moreover, Confucianism preached no religiously justified inequality between men and, despite the way things might stand in reality, the official theory stood by the principle that it was not birth which played a decisive role, but education – to which, in theory, all had access. Furthermore, there was no clear concept of freedom, and although private property was protected, it did not have that aura of the sacred which it had acquired in the West.10 According to Weber, it was this absence of conflict with a dimension that transcended the world, and therefore the belief that the world had an intrinsic harmony, which had precluded those consequences typical of the religions of salvation. As a result of their belief that the world was “impure” and “imperfect”, the religions of salvation had tended to transform the world and, in this way, they were more inclined to innovations and to going beyond tradition, encouraging an attitude which, in Weber’s view, had equipped them for the progressive establishment of a form of instrumental rationality. Confucianism, on the other hand, was hostile to any form of creativity, because the orthodox Confucian was bound to know the classics but not to produce new interpretations or literary or cultural experimentations based upon them. Moreover, the cardinal principle of the hsiao, the principle of devotion towards the superior man, hindered the growth of market relations in a capitalist sense, because these required a form of trust (necessary for extending credit, for example) that was unthinkable for the Chinese outside of the members of the extended family. Weber therefore defined Confucianism as an “ethic of social adjustment (…) piety, the mother of discipline, and a literary education was the one universal means of perfection” (Weber 1951, 163). Unlike Protestantism, which provided no solution to the issue of theodicy, thus increasing the conflict between the real and idealised worlds, and the Asian religions of salvation which never ceased to give meaning to the world, thereby reducing the tension between the empirical and ideal worlds, Confucianism had essentially neutralised that conflict by conceiving of this world as the best of all possible worlds. In Weber’s view, the evidence he had gathered regarding the Confucian mentality proved that 10 Property and profit remained issues from the point of view, on the one hand, of practical expediency and, on the other, of socio-ethical welfare with a view to feeding the masses. These were not the issues of an individualistic social ethic of a natural law stamp, of the kind that arose in the West in the modern age from the conflict between formal law and material justice.

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socially and economically advanced conditions alone did not imply develop­ ment of a capitalistic sort. Indeed, the case of China seemed to him to undermine the idea that moral teachings could not have a decisive influence on human behaviour unless they promised an irresistible benefit or a powerful psychological reward. The only psychological reward offered by Confucianism was a promise of honour and stability “in this life” (see Buss 1984). Weber observed that Confucianism had not always been the only state religion-philosophy. Indeed, during the Warring States Period (475 bc), there had been competition between different philosophical schools, a competition that remained particularly fierce whenever there was a decline in imperial power. Confucianism attained its true victory only around the eight century ad. The fact that it did not pose a threat to political power and to the Emperor’s religious authority allowed Confucianism to establish itself as the state religion. Indeed, the Confucian scholars did not represent a hierocracy antagonistic to temporal power. Rather, they subjected themselves to that power, recognising its superiority. Consi­ dering that Confucianism was an inner-worldly, secular ethic with no conception of an otherworldly God, of an immaterial and superior entity to which one had to submit, the type of conflict between spiritual and political power found not only in the West but also, for instance, in India, did not arise. Moreover, Confucianism had an essentially pacifist character, whose focus was provided by a fear of the spirits, which acted as an “official magna carta of the masses”. Nevertheless, in Weber’s view, “the central force of a salvation religion conducive to a methodical way of life was non-existent” (Weber 1951, 170). Therefore, according to Weber, the school of Confucius succeeded where, for instance, none of the Greek philosophies had. It had imposed itself as a state ethic by serving the interests of patrimonialism and of the intellectual class of functionaries who governed China.11 The only schools that threatened the hegemony of Confucianism were two doctrines of a non-rationalist orientation, Taoism and Buddhism. Neither of these, 11 “Thus the tension between philosophical theory and social ethics, as opposed to the popular cult of the pre-Christian Occident, continued to exist in the following sense. The cult of the heroic and folk deities of “Homeric” times was correspondingly developed as the official institution; but the teachings of the philosophers were the optional concern of private citizens. It was exactly opposite to what was found in China. There a canonical doctrine and religiously sanctioned state rites coexisted with deities whose cult was in part only officially practiced, in some degree merely tolerated, and in part suspiciously viewed as a private affair” (Weber 1951, 176–177).



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however, due to their essentially “adaptive” and “anti-political” characters, was able to pose a strong, sweeping alternative to the power of Confucian orthodoxy. 5. The Taoist and Buddhist Heterodoxies Taoism: According to Weber’s interpretation, Taoism shared some of the Confucian philosophy’s intrinsic principles. Both religious ethics upheld the centrality of the “macrobiotic” objective and of the classical literary culture. In particular, they had in common the fundamental category of the Tao, an originally Confucian concept that represented the order and eternal flow of the cosmos. Both of these ethics took supreme salvation to be an inner state of the soul and not a state of grace to be confirmed through action and, moreover, both shared the entire official pantheon of the spirits. Aside from the fact that these two doctrines overlapped at multiple points, Weber believed that, from a perspective of political strategy, that which prevented Taoism from undermining Confucian authority was the fact that Lao-Tzu (the founder of Taoism) had come from the same social stratum as Confucius. Lao-Tzu therefore shared a number of Confucius’s cardinal precepts such as the positive worth of government and the conviction that a good administration was the surest way to keep demons at bay. On the other hand, the point where Taoism and Confucianism differed most was, above all, the means they recommended to achieve the goals of harmony and balance. For instance, the Holy Man who Lao-Tzu set above the ideal of the Confucian gentleman needed no worldly virtue, which was considered a danger on the path to salvation. Moreover, Taoism did not go so far as to argue for a definite retreat from the world, nor so far as rejecting on principle the ideal of the Confucian educated gentleman. Rather, it limited itself to considering these to be secondary elements in comparison to achieving the highest virtue. In Lao-Tzu’s system, the concept of sanctity was fundamental, but it served no purpose in the Confucian one. As Weber argued, such a concept “it is by no means unknown, but Confucius considered this state as never having been attained, not even by himself. Hence, this concept remains unconnected with the Confucian ideal of chun tzu, the ‘cultured’ man” (Weber 1951, 184). Furthermore, Taoism promoted a federalist political policy based upon the smallest possible bureaucracy – and it was bureaucracy upon which the power of the Confucian intellectuals ultimately rested.

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The factors that, according to Weber, had prevented Taoism from representing a viable alternative to Confucianism were therefore all to be found lying within one major underlying contradiction. Although Taoism preached a principle of apoliticism, it never altogether rejected a number of aspects of inner-worldly action intrinsic to Confucianism. Furthermore, although it encouraged a form of mystical action, albeit an inner-worldly one, Taoism was looked upon with wariness by a state governed by intellectual functionaries who rejected the egotism typical of mystical behaviour. Seen in these terms, Confucianism, in Weber’s mind, had no difficulty in reducing the Taoist message to a credo for the élite, for whom salvation was a thing reserved for the few, meaning those who could afford a mystical retreat from the world. As Weber argued: For the mystic Taoist, however, the difference between the illuminated mystic and the man of the world had to be a difference in charismatic endowment. The immanent aristocracy and the particularism of grace in all mysticism express the experience that men are differently qualified in a religious way (Weber 1951, 187).

Weber observed, moreover, that the Confucian mandarin “also claimed the Taoist for certain services” (Weber 1951, 194). Confucianism therefore, in Weber’s reconstruction, did not consider Taoism to be a political threat. Indeed, as Weber further argues, “the very ineradicability of Taoism rested upon the fact that the victorious Confucians themselves never seriously aimed at uprooting magic in general and Taoist magic in particular. They only sought to monopolize office prebends” (Weber 1951, 194). Taoism thus became widespread prevalently among traders, largely as a consequence of its “a-literate” anti-literary nature (see Weber 1951, 196). On this basis, Weber became ever more convinced that economic factors and religious beliefs represented two independent dynamics, since he saw in Taoism clear support for the claim that economic situations alone did not determine the type of religiosity of a stratum. Still, the inconsistencies of Taoism, its fundamental apoliticism and lingering traditionalist nature, not to mention the “irrational” elements which were much stronger than in Confucianism, prevented it from becoming the ideology of a class which could have ushered capitalism into China, as had elsewhere occurred. In Weber’s words: Ultimately, the substantive differences between orthodox and heterodox doctrines and practices, as well as any decisive peculiarities of Confucianism, had two sources. On the one hand, Confucianism was a status ethic of the bureaucracy educated in literature; on the other hand, piety and especially



the land of the ‘well-adjusted man’175 ancestor-worship were retained as politically indispensable foundations for patrimonialism. Only when these interests appeared to be threatened did the instinct of self-preservation in the ruling stratum react by attaching the stigma of heterodoxy (Weber 1951, 213).

Buddhism: In Konfuzianismus und Taoismus, Weber addressed Buddhism with regard to the relationship it had maintained with Confucianism. Undertaken from this perspective, his analysis focused in particular on those aspects of Buddhism that government authority could not tolerate and which prevented it from gaining hegemony within Chinese lands. There were essentially three such factors: 1) “the currency and mercantilist interests of Confucianism” (Weber 1951, 195); 2) “the widespread competition for prebends” (ibid.); and 3) “the antagonism of Confucians toward Sultanism which was supported by the Buddhists” (ibid.). Furthermore, the formation of “non-licensed associations”, and the severing of family ties encouraged both by Taoism and Buddhism through the invitation to separate oneself from one’s parents in order to lead a monastic or unconventional life, were aspects highly reproached by Confucianism. The latter aspect in particular was the most unacceptable in the eyes of Confucianism, as it was seen as a rejection of the cult of ancestor worship. To reject the ancestor cult meant to threaten the cardinal virtue of politics, i.e., piety and on this depended discipline in the hierarchy of offices and obedience of subjects. A religiosity which emancipated [the subjects] from believing in the all-decisive power of imperial charisma and the eternal order of pious relations was unbearable in principle (Weber 1951, 216).

For these reasons, in the ninth century ad the Buddhist church became the target of a massive campaign of repression. Though they were not closed, Buddhist and Taoist monasteries were “placed on the state budget, with the strict rule that every monk be publicly certified” (Weber 1951, 217). That is, as Weber revealingly wrote, they had to obtain a “cultural examination (…) in the manner of the Prussian Kulturkampf ” (Weber 1951, 217), while the monks were made to fulfil their duties only insofar as was required to maintain order among the masses and court the spirits’ favour. As much as Buddhism and Taoism had exerted an important influence on the daily life of the masses, Weber argued that the most sociologically decisive factor which had made it impossible for them to become “politically competitive” religions of redemption lay in the fact that their basically élite natures prevented them from forming religious communities. It was essentially for these reasons that the Buddhist and Taoist

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heterodoxies, although they were deeply rooted among the strata of the common people, especially during certain historical periods, were unable to pose any real threat to Confucianism. Indeed, both of these hetero­ doxies supported the authoritarian elements intrinsic to Confucianism, such as the importance given to good government and the charisma of superior men. Moreover, even within their most extreme anti-Confucian ­elements  – and this was especially true in the case of Taoism – there remained a fundamental anti-politicism that preached moderation in involvement in the affairs of this world, but not to such an extent as to cause a real shift towards the anti-worldly. On the contrary, in preaching its opposition to political involvement, Taoism accentuated its elitist character, thus rendering itself incomprehensible and impracticable to the masses, further decreasing its chance of posing a real danger to the official Confucian ideology. It was for these reasons above all, Weber claimed, that the emperor and the keepers of the official religion did not attempt to wipe out so much as neutralise to the greatest possible extent Taoism and Buddhism’s possible anti-conventional influence. As Bendix pointed out: According to Confucianism, the worship of the great deities is an affair of state, ancestor worship is required of all, and the multitude of popular cults is merely tolerated. The nature of this compromise is illustrated by the fact that on occasion of the emperor would salute the Taoist and Buddhist shrines with a polite bow, reserving the formally required act of reverence – the kowtow – for the official great spirits of the state cult (Bendix 1960, 125).

Confucianism in the end, as Bendix further argued, “tolerated magic and mysticism as long as they were useful means for controlling the masses” (Bendix 1960, 134); yet, “it denounced them as heresy and resorted to merciless suppression whenever institutions developed that threatened the established order” (ibid.). But the extent to which Confucianism had contributed to forging mentalities that were hostile to the promotion of economic forms that could have ushered in capitalism still remained to be understood. In what manner had Confucianism dictated the shaping of the self and of the personality? Which were the “anti-modern” traits that had taken root in the soil of Confucian religiosity? Ultimately, these were the questions to which Weber sought answers. 6. The Theoretical Challenge of Confucian Rationalism During the course of his studies, Weber had become convinced that the Lebensführung inherent in the Asian religions could be characterised in prevalently mystical terms. The mystical orientation, which lay at the



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foundation of exemplary prophecy (examined in Chapter Two), had, in his opinion, hindered the formation of the desire to participate in the world that was intrinsic to the asceticism that had developed within the Middle Eastern religions and which had fostered ethical prophecy. This notwithstanding, Weber had drawn a series of theoretical and methodological conclusions, especially from his studies of Confucianism insofar as it represented an anomalous alternative within the typology he had identified. Indeed, Confucianism was not a religion, but a philosophy, a “secular inner-worldly ethic”, which Weber considered to be highly rational (see Weber 1951, 226–249). Unlike other ethical orders, Confucianism did not vilify the world. On the contrary, it considered it to be the best possible world, and its rewards of salvation were entirely inner-worldly: health, wealth and long life. Furthermore, practical conduct was imbued with rationality and sobriety and characterised by a rejection of the passions. Additionally, Confucianism, like Protestantism, encouraged “rational” economic action based on the merit of thrift. Yet, despite the fact that Chinese economic policy posed no objections, at least in principle, to the development of a system of the capitalistic, rational sort, according to Weber such a system never came into being. It was therefore Confucianism which, more than any other religion, tested Weber’s basic hypothesis regarding the link between ascetic behaviour and capitalism. In light of this fact, it was a comparison between the Puritan and Confucian ethics that offered Weber the chance to demonstrate his thesis regarding the importance and the historical-causal efficacy of the formation of a certain type of personality in the rise to capitalism. The Confucian ethic presented the following problem: Confucianism appeared to be the religious ethic that was closest to Protestant rationalism but, nonetheless, upon careful analysis, was the one which was furthest from it. In other words, the causal efficacy of inner-worldly asceticism for the development of capitalism would be most clearly demonstrated through a comparison of two such apparently similar rational ethics, which shared inner-worldly attitudes. If Weber could do this, then he would be able to identify the psychological element that only one of them possessed and the decisive role it played. 6.1. Rational Accomodation to the World Versus Rational Dominion Over the World With the aim of conclusively corroborating the initial thesis contained in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber devoted the final chapter of Konfuzianismus und Taoismus to a systematic comparison

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between Puritanism and Confucianism. He thus focused on the differential element of Puritan rational ascetic action and the reasons for which it, and not Confucianism, had fostered modern Western capitalism. At first glance, both of these religious ethics, in Weber’s view, displayed similarities, both in the type of utilitarian inner-worldly rationalism they encouraged as well as in the historical conjunction whereby both China and Northern Europe had reached one of each of their highest peaks of economic and cultural prosperity between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Weber therefore inquired into the reason such a cultural and economic concomitance had then led in two such different historical directions. In this context, it is worthwhile to clear the field of a possible misapprehension to which, in my opinion, many important commentators of Weber’s work have fallen prey: namely, that of assigning characteristics of irrationality to his description of Confucianism.12 In Weber’s treatment of Confucianism and Puritanism, both are a form of rational ethic, albeit of different types. Indeed, Weber argued that a religion’s degree of rationalism can be determined based upon two factors. The first is the extent to which the religion in question was able to dispossess magic; the second, the ethical relationship it maintained with the world or, in other words, the type of relationship it had established between the world and the divine. Having applied these criteria to Confucianism and Puritanism, Weber became convinced of the different solutions that these ethics had reached and sought to show the directions towards which they each oriented individuals’ practical behaviour and, in particular, their economic behaviour. With reference to the first criterion, i.e., the dispossession of magic, Weber believed that Confucianism could not be considered a religion. Due to its extremely élite nature – in its capacity as the official ideology of a patrimonial-bureaucratic state whose followers comprised only the educated and wealthiest strata of the population – the Confucian ethic tolerated a great number of magical and folk beliefs only insofar as they ensured order and subservience among the masses. The cult of spirit worship, and of ancestor worship in particular, was the backbone of Chinese society, because it ensured devotion and obedience to the family group and to those who occupied a higher tier in the social hierarchy. It was for this reason that Confucianism did not forbid magic, but on the contrary, it “left 12 I here refer in particular to Andreski (1984), who reproached Weber for having denied the rational nature of Confucianism.



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untouched the significance of magic for redemption” (Weber 1951, 226–227). Confucianism therefore permitted magical practices, the legacy of a traditional religiosity that had permeated Chinese society, only insofar as they were useful for maintaining the social order. Protestantism, on the other hand, had dispossessed magic – of which the figure of the Catholic priest was still considered a manifestation – by eliminating the illusion that it was possible to intervene in the course of events by establishing an unmediated relationship between God and the believer.13 Ultimately both Confucianism and Protestantism had their irrational moorings in magic and in the unfathomable and incomprehensible decrees dictated by otherworldly powers. However, while the remnants of magic that interacted with Confucianism had the objective of keeping tradition intact, Puritanism had established a relationship between God and the world that can be seen in terms of a complete separation. This separation had prevented tradition – insofar as it was a worldly ­tradition – from becoming sacred and, in Weber’s mind, had provided the possibility of change. From magic there followed the inviolability of tradition as the proven magical means and ultimately all bequeathed forms of life-conduct were unchangeable if the wrath of the spirits were to be avoided. From the relation between the supra-mundane God and the creaturally wicked, ethically irrational world there resulted, however, the absolute unholiness of tradition and the truly endless task of ethically and rationally subduing and mastering the given world, i.e., rational, objective ‘progress’. Here, the task of 13 Weber described the type of rationalism that had begun to develop with Confucianism (and in synergy with the other sources from which Chinese values had derived) in terms of ritualism and conventionalism, but he defined the type of rationality applied within the patrimonial-bureaucratic administration as material, in contrast with the formal rationality of administrative systems typical to European and Western states. While the typical type of bourgeois behaviour gave rise to a practical rationalism in life conduct, as a result of the fact that all of bourgeois existence was based upon “calucation and technical or economic domination of nature and of men”, the type of rationalisation to which a patrimonial bureaucracy could give rise was different, due to the fact that “the struggle for the expropriation of status prerogatives has varied greatly in history. In Asia and in the Occident during the early Middle Ages they were typically clerics; during the Oriental Middle Ages they were typically slaves and clients; for the Roman Principate, freed slaves to a limited extent were typical; humanist literati were typical for China; and finally, jurists have been typical for the modern Occident, in ecclesiastical as well as in political associations. The triumph of princely power and the expropriation of particular prerogatives has everywhere signified at least the possibility, and often the actual introduction, of a rational administration. As we shall see, however, this rationalization has varied greatly in extent and meaning. One must, above all, distinguish between the substantive rationalization of administration and of judiciary by a patrimonial prince, and the formal rationalization carried out by trained jurists” (Weber 1946, 298).

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chapter six the rational transformation of the world stood opposed to the Confucian adjustment to the world (Weber 1951, 240).

Nonetheless, there were a number of important analogies between Confucianism and Puritanism that still needed to be understood. To begin with, Confucianism proposed a utilitarian, rational and practical orientation which tolerated the contemplation and meditation that were typical of the Asian religions of salvation, seeing them as parasitic forms of life since, according to Confucianism, the principal worldly rewards to be pursued were wealth and education. In Weber’s words, “asceticism and contemplation, mortification and escape from the world were not only unknown in Confucianism but were despised as parasitism” (Weber 1951, 229). The result of this scorn, as Weber further argued, was that “all forms of congregational and redemptory religiosity were either directly persecuted and eradicated, or were considered a private affair and little esteemed” (ibid.). Confucianism therefore presented itself as a behavioural ethic of a rational and intra-worldly nature. Utilitarianism, concern for the rewards of this world and the apparent psychological uniformity that expressed itself in the thrift, professionalism and reliability of merchants, were the principal values of the Confucian ethic. While reading the accounts of Christian missionaries in China – almost the only sources available at the time when Weber was writing – Weber noticed a number of behavioural “peculiarities” that seemed to him to represent the key to understanding the differential element between Confucianism and Puritanism. In these anthropological-like accounts, the Chinese businessman was seen to attribute both success and failure to spiritual forces, as consequences of merits or infractions from magical or ceremonial standpoints. For a Confucian, wealth was the most important means by which to live in a dignified manner and devote oneself to self-perfection. A Confucian was therefore as economical as a Puritan and placed great value on thrift. The thrift of a Confucian, however, “for the Chinese petty bourgeois classes, meant hoarding”, Weber wrote. “This was fundamentally comparable to the peasant’s way of hoarding wealth in his stockings” (Weber 1951, 245). It did not therefore take on the rational and systematic nature that, in the West, gave rise to extremely sophisticated forms of financial capitalism. Finally, Confucians abhorred specialistic knowledge, considering it inferior to generalist knowledge. Man himself was the end, not the means to some other objective end of any other kind. It was here that Weber identified a “core of Confucian ethics”. Indeed, in Weber’s assessment, this core led to a rejection of “professional specialization, modern expert



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bureaucracy, and special training” and “above all, it rejected training in economics for the pursuit of profit” (Weber 1951, 246). As an advocate of specialism as opposed to generalist-humanistic education (see Chapter Three) Weber saw Confucian anti-specialism as one of the keys to understanding the forms of personality that Confucianism fostered. Based on the disparity between their approaches to economic assets, Weber had become convinced that the fundamental difference between Confucian and Puritan rationalism lay in their conceptions of the world and man’s place in it: in the case of the former, worldly position was an end unto itself, while, in the case of the latter, man’s existence on this earth was nothing more than a means. Confucian rationalism meant rational adjustment to the world; Puritan rationalism meant rational mastery of the world. Both the Puritan and the Confucian were “sober men”. But the rational sobriety of the Puritan was founded in a mighty enthusiasm, which the Confucian lacked completely; it was the same enthusiasm which inspired the monk of the Occident. The rejection of the world by occidental asceticism was insolubly linked to its opposite, namely, its eagerness to dominate the world. In the name of a supra-mundane God the imperatives of asceticism were issued to the monk and, in variant and softened form, to the world. Nothing conflicted more with the Confucian ideal of gentility than the idea of a “vocation”. The “princely” man was an aesthetic value; he was not a tool of a god. But the true Christian, the other-wordly and inner-worldly ascetiscist, wished to be nothing more than a tool of his God; in this he sought his dignity. Since this is what he wished to be he was a useful instrument for rationally transforming and mastering the world (Weber 1951, 248).

The instrumental attitude towards worldly assets and the introduction of a plan for transcendence to which one could aspire and upon which one could base his actions in a world stripped of sacredness were for Weber the pivotal elements of Puritan rationalism seen as “rational dominion” of the world, quite unlike the “adaptive” rationalism inherent to the Confucian. Weber thus believed he was able to prove that “the basic characteristics of the ‘mentality’, in this case the practical attitudes toward the world, were deeply co-determined by political and economic destinies. Yet, in view of their autonomous laws, one can hardly fail to ascribe to these attitudes effects strongly counteractive to capitalist development” (Weber 1951, 249). In Weber’s reconstruction, “the world [for the Confucian] was the best of all possible worlds; human nature was disposed to the ethically good. Men, in this as in all things, differed in degree but being of the same nature and capable of unlimited perfections, they were in principle adequate for

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fulfilling the moral law” (Weber 1951, 227–228). For a Confucian, promises of redemption consisted of long life, health, wealth and keeping one’s good name after death. These were thus strictly worldly rewards, and for this reason there was no conflict between the commandments of an otherworldly God and the world of living beings, just as there was a total lack of any orientation towards an end located in the afterlife. As Weber writes: Tension toward the “world” had never arisen because, as far as known, there had never been an ethical prophecy of a supramundane God who raised ethical demands. Nor was there a substitute for this in the “spirits” who raised demands and insisted upon faithful fulfilment of contract. For it was always a matter of specific duty placed under the spirits’ guardianship, oath, or whatever it happened to be; never did it involve inner formation of the personality per se nor the person’s conduct of life (Weber 1951, 229–230).

Based on the insights provided by his exploration of the conformist and dispassionate rationality of the Confucian economic ethic, Weber arrived at his main argument: the idea that Confucianism had not given rise to an “inner formation of the personality per se” (ibid). In other words, while Puritanism, thanks to the emphasis it placed on the concept of Beruf, had forged individuals as “psychological units” or, in other words, “personalities” in the fullest sense of the word, Confucianism had promoted a ritualism without pathos that had failed to give rise to “personality per se”. 7. On the Absence of Personality In Weber’s view, Confucian adaptive rationalism was the result of a lack of a stimulus for action and transformation both in and of the world (which he saw as being the principal elements encouraged by the Western ascetic, rational ethic). It was a lack due, in turn, to the absence in Confucian culture of tension between God and the world. Only such tension could, according to Weber, lead to a decrease in the value of worldly affairs and, consequently, to the possibility to imagine changing that world. However, that which interested him most was the manner in which all of these elements had the practical consequence of inhibiting the inner development of the “personality as such”. Weber reached this conclusion after having read and compared the writings of the different missionary sources. These were in agreement in portraying typical Chinese behaviour not only as being a-systematically utilitarian but also self-contradictory. Based on the descriptions provided by European travellers in China, Weber noted how fear of the unknown



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did not seem to fit well with the ingenuous credulity of the Chinese regarding any sort of magical quackery, just as the prestige of “liars”, when viewed in comparison with the reliability and honesty of merchants, appeared incomprehensible. The lack of sympathetic involvement with one’s neighbour was little in keeping with the extraordinary stability and closely knit nature of the primary social groups.14 Weber saw these demonstrations as an indication of an irreparable rift between the cohesion and impassibility of the psycho-physical disposition which Confucianism encouraged and of the instability of the characteristics of the life conduct that it promoted. This rift ultimately derived from the absence of a prophecy of redemption, of any sort of form of transcendence and, therefore, the lack of an impulse to construct a cohesive personality and a rational life conduct oriented to a powerful psychological reward, such as the rewards promised by the doctrines of salvation. Weber ultimately attributed these examples of discordance to the fact that the Confucian Lebensführung was not “governed from the inside”, but from the outside; in other words, it was ritualistically governed through strictly set norms and conventions. Thus, in his opinion, a Confucian’s action was not a rational type of action whose roots were sunk in an interior habitus; rather, it was a ritualistic-conventional type of action that respected tradition due to the sacred nature of devotion and honour, but was not, however, affected by any interior urge to transgress in this regard. As Weber writes, in a long passage that is worth quoting in its entirety: True prophecy creates and systematically orients conduct toward one internal measure of value. In the face of this, the “world” is viewed as material to be fashioned ethically according to the norm. Confucianism in contrast meant adjustment to the outside, the conditions of the “world”. A welladjusted man, rationalizing his conduct only to the degree requisite for adjustment, does not constitute a systematic unity, but rather a complex of useful and particular traits. In Chinese popular religion the animistic ideas which perpetuate the belief in plural souls of the individual could almost stand as a symbol of this fact. Not reaching beyond this world, the individual necessarily lacked an autonomous counterweight in confronting this world. Confucianism facilitated the taming of the masses as well as dignified bearing of the gentleman, but the style of life thus achieved must necessarily be characterized by essentially negative traits. Such a way of life could not allow 14 Weber put forward a number of explanations for this: “magical also is the belief that disease and misfortune are symptoms of divine wrath which the individual has brought upon himself. In turn this belief facilitated a certain inhibition of those sympathetic emotions which, in the face of suffering, usually originate from the we-feeling of salvation religion” (Weber 1951, 233).

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chapter six man an inward aspiration toward a “unified personality”, a striving which we associate with the idea of personality. Life remained a series of occurrences. It did not become a whole placed methodically under a transcendental goal. The contrast between this socio-ethical position and the whole religious ethic of the Occident was unbridgeable. Outwardly some patriarchal aspects of the Thomist and the Lutherans ethic might appear to resemble Confucia­ nism, but this is merely an external impression. The Confucian system of radical world-optimism succeeded in removing the basic pessimistic tension between the world and the supra-mundane destination of the individual. But no Christian ethic, however entangled in mundane compromise, could attain this. Completely absent in the Confucian ethic was any tension between nature and deity, between ethical demand and human shortcoming, consciousness of sin and need for salvation, conduct on earth and compensation in the beyond, religious duty and socio-political reality. Hence, there was no leverage for influencing conduct through inner forces freed of tradition and convention. Family piety, resting on the belief in spirits, was by far the strongest influence on man’s conduct (Weber 1951, 235–236).

The lack of a systematic life conduct “toward one internal measure of value”, the “exterior” and ritual as opposed to the interior attitude adopted in conforming to the governing principles of the religious ethic, the absence of an aspiration to transcend the world and thus of any counterweight to it, were all elements that prompted Weber to locate Confucianism at the other end of the spectrum from ascetic Protestantism. In the view of the latter, every individual was equally unworthy and inadequate from an ethical standpoint; the world was a place of sin and imperfection. To adapt oneself to such a state would have been a sign of moral baseness. The ideal of a perfectible humanity would have been naught but the expression of an ethically deplorable attempt to raise man to the level of the divine. However, although all men were equally sinners, not all were equally entitled, as only a small number of the massa perditionis were called to attain salvation. Life in this world was therefore a vale of tears and a transitional passage. Moreover, as in every active ascesis, the fact of being in the grace of God could only be borne out by acting according to his will. The greatest interior reward imaginable was thus put down to a rational mode of living that evolved from the basis of a cohesive and coherent inner ethical core. “Only life conduct abided by firm principles and controlled at a unitary center”, Weber wrote, “could be considered a God-pleasing way of life (…) To ‘work the works of him that sent me, while it is day’ here became a duty and the works posited were not ritual but rational-ethical in nature” (Weber 1951, 240). The fact that an omniscient and omnipotent God could dispense grace according to inscrutable criteria and fathom individuals’ hearts gave rise to the need to harmonise one’s practical conduct from



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within, because “one could not lie to God as on could lie to men”. One of the principal arguments used by Weber to explain the difference between Confucian and Puritan rationalism thus consisted of assigning only to the latter “an inward aspiration toward a ‘unified personality’, a striving which we associate with the idea of personality” (Weber 1951, 235). In Weber’s mind, the principal effect of the absence of either ethical or exemplary prophecy – or, rather, of the lack of a tension born of the desire to transcend the world into which we are born, the absence of any concept of a personal or impersonal divinity, in addition to the lack of a concept of sin as a far-reaching evil as opposed to the concept of “neglect of ritual duty” – had been the formation of a disharmonic psychological structure. In other words, Weber argued that the lack of a cohesive self was to be attributed to the lack of an inner stimulus to create one, since Confucianism did not acknowledge any transcendent end upon which that self could be modelled. The lack of a promise of redemption that could orient behaviour towards its attainment, the absence of a God who could keep such a promise but who was, at the same time, able to look deep within and verify one’s devotion to that promise and, finally, the lack of a concept of an impersonal God whose promise of salvation lay in his spiritual acceptance and therefore, once more, in the effort required to forge one’s own soul and conduct “from within”, were the factors that Weber saw as lying at the root of the atomised subjectivity of Confucianism. There was no psychological reward for the Confucian beyond obtaining worldly rewards such as wealth, health and long life by maintaining conduct that was sober and dignified and therefore “exterior”.15 It was for all of these reasons that the behaviour of the Chinese appeared to Weber to be inconsistent and their practical conduct traditional, especially where economics were involved. Indeed, the economy was not oriented towards a practical rationalism which would have constantly endeavoured to identify ever newer and better ways to obtain higher profits or more advantageous results, as had occurred in the West during the 15 Although Weber assigned a vital importance to the “psychological” consequences of Confucian philosophy, he at times appeared to consider the lack of an ethic of redemption itself to be the fruit of the Chinese political bureaucracy. This bureaucracy comprised an interest group that was suspicious of any sort of individual quest for salvation or of the unimpeded formation of any community beyond the community of the family, as these could possibly serve to usher in an emancipation from subservience to the state institution. “Religious duties have ultimately been simply official or social obligations of the citizenry and of status groups. Ritual has corresponded to rules and regulations, and, therefore, wherever a bureaucracy has determined its nature, religion has assumed a ritualist character” (Weber 1946, 283).

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course of individuals’ attempts to seek verification of their state of grace. Chinese behaviour was, on the contrary, aimed to maintain such a level of uniformity that even the attainment of earthly rewards was pursued in a ritualistic manner, with none of the “pathos typical of the Puritan”. 7.1. ‘State of Minority’ and Ascribed Roles Weber identified the lack of autonomy of the individual formed by the Confucian culture, including the absence of emancipation from family ties, as another reason for the lack of a process of individuation and failure to develop an individualist ideology. Devotion to the family group, obedience and respect towards parents and elders and the cult of ancestor worship all comprised aspects of the Chinese Confucian ethic which served as measures of the absolute centrality of the family and hierarchy (Weber 1951, 229). Although Weber did not state it clearly, his line of reasoning seemed to lead him to the conclusion that the central importance of the family group within Chinese culture and Confucian religiosity had prevented a cohesive, emancipated self – or, to paraphrase Kant, a state of “maturity” [Mündigkeit] – from coming into being. This factor had influenced Confucian economic conduct, since the absence of a process by which individuals gained autonomy from the family was reflected within the social structure as a guarantee of respect for tradition and an absence of conflict. Indeed, respect for general order and for superiors was an imperative for the Confucian.16 This explanation, combined with the Confucian ritualistic attitude, gave rise to what Weber defined as a “limit in the objec­ tivation of man” that was reflected, first and foremost, in the Confucian economic mentality. The absence of a cohesive self, which manifested in part as an inability to liberate oneself from the psychological and material 16 In a comparative study of the father-son relationship in Confucianism and in Protestantism, Robert Bellah (1970) wrote, “Confucian phrasing of the father-son relationship blocks any outcome of Oedipal ambivalence except submission – submission not in the last analysis to a person but to a pattern of personal relationships which is held to have ultimate validity. An outcome which could lead to creative social innovation as in the Protestant case was precluded by the absence of a point of transcendent loyalty which could provide legitimation for it” (Bellah 1970, 164). In Bellah’s view, Confucianism did not envisage any situation that could justify disobedience towards one’s parents, even though parents could be criticised when they did not lead a life that complied with ancestral models. In such a case, it was a son’s clear duty to express disapproval, and yet it was still forbidden to transgress against parental rules. Even political rebellion was seen as a form of “disobedience towards one’s parents”. For an analysis of Weber on the Confucian self see also Kubin 1991.



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ties to one’s family group, was a further measure of the distance between Confucianism and Puritanism. For Weber, this last element, relating to devotion to the family as the force with the greatest power to orient Confucian Chinese conduct in a practical sense, had been one of the principal obstacles to the development of a rational economic system of a capitalistic sort. Indeed, the duties of a Confucian Chinese individual were all duties towards mortal men, be they living or dead, who were close to a given individual by virtue of the system in which he lived. There were therefore no duties towards ideas, sacred causes or impersonal objects. For Weber, this element represented the “limit of the process of objectivising rationalisation”, the reason for which life conduct and bonds of loyalty were constantly oriented towards respect and regard towards individuals belonging to the family circle as opposed to towards objective tasks (business)”.17 The consequences 17 As Weber writes: “The Confucian ethic intentionally left people in their personal relations as naturally grown or given by relations of social super- and subordination. Confucianism hallowed alone those human obligations of piety created by inter-human relations, such as prince and servant higher and lower official, father and son, brother and brother, teacher and pupil, friend and friend. Puritan ethic, however, rather suspected these purely personal relationships as pertaining to the creatural; but Puritanism, of course, did allow for their existence and ethically controlled them so far as they were not against God. The relation to God had precedence in all circumstances. Overly intensive idolatrous relations of men per se were by all means to be avoided. Trust in men, and precisely in those closest to one by nature, would endanger the soul. Thus, the Calvinist Duchess Renate d’Este might curse her next of kin if she knew them rejected by God through arbitrary predestinations. From this, very important practical differences of the two ethical conceptions resulted, even though we shall designate both of them as rationalist in their practical turn of mind and although both of them reached ‘utilitarian’ conclusions. These differences did not alone result from the autonomy of the laws of political structures. In part the cohesion of the sibs was an essential result of forms of political and economic organization which were themselves tied to personal relations. To a striking degree they lacked rational matter-of-factness, impersonal rationalism, and the nature of an abstract, impersonal, purposive association. True ‘communities’ were absent, especially in the cities, because there were no economic and managerial forms of association or enterprise which were purely Chinese roots. All communal action there remained engulfed and conditioned by purely personal, above all, by kinship relations. This applied also to occupations associations. Whereas Puritanism objectified everything and transformed it into rational enterprise, dissolved everything into the pure business relation, and substituted rational law and agreement for tradition, in China, the pervasive factors were tradition, local custom, and the concrete personal favour of the official. Another factor seems still more important. In conjunction with the tremendous density of population in China, a calculating mentality and self-sufficient frugality of unexampled intensity developed under the influence of worldly-minded utilitarianism and belief in the value of wealth as a universal means of moral perfection. The Chinese shopkeeper haggled for and reckoned with every penny, and he daily counted over his cash receipts. Reliable travellers reported that the conversation of the native Chinese was about money and money affairs, apparently to an extent seldom found elsewhere. But it is very striking that out of this

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of this element on a financial level were many. Indeed, all trust – the basis for every business relationship – seemed always to remain founded upon family ties or purely personal relationships of a family sort. On the other hand, “the great achievement of ethical religions, above all of the ethical and asceticist sects of Protestantism, was to shatter the fetters of the sib” (Weber 1951, 237). Weber continued: These religions established the superior community of faith and a common ethical way of life in opposition to the community of blood, even to a large extent in opposition to the family. From the economic viewpoint it meant basing business confidence upon the ethical qualities of the individual proven in his impersonal, vocational work. The economic ramifications of universal and mutual distrust must probably be rated high, though we have no yardstick for this. Thus, universal distrust resulted from the official and exclusive sway of conventional dishonesty and from the Confucian emphasis on keeping face (Weber 1951, 237).

*** Weber had set out with the idea that Confucianism was a religious ethic similar to Puritanism, but arrived at the conviction that it was, on the contrary, the furthest from it of all the religious ethics that he surveyed. This distance could not, however, be measured based upon Confucianism being ascribable to an ideal type on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from that of Puritanism, such as, for instance, a form of intra- or extra-worldly mysticism would have been. On the contrary, this distance could be inferred from the very impossibility of ascribing it to any of the ideal types that Weber had developed. Confucianism was an intra-worldly ethic; however, it did not encourage an ascetic, let alone mystical attitude. In essence, it was not a religion. It lacked a transcendental plane, a separate world set in contrast to the earthly one, to which an individual could aspire and upon which s/he could base the orientation of his/her own life conduct and forge his/her own personality. As we have seen, Weber defined personality as “a concept which entails a constant and intrinsic relation to certain ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life” (Weber 1975, 192–193), that is, an unwavering compass by which to orient one’s action. It was the result of intense inner effort directed towards unceasing and intensive economic ado and the much bewailed crass ‘materialism’ of the Chinese, there failed to originate on the economic plane those great and methodical business conceptions which are rational in nature and are presupposed by modern capitalism” (Weber 1951, 240–242).



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fostering a cohesive habitus (which was ultimately generated by religious beliefs and, in particular, the pursuit of the rewards of otherworldly salvation). The absence of religious tension, the encouragement of the pursuit of entirely earthly rewards and the designation of earthly values and rewards as the ultimate ones, as well as the respect for one’s superiors for assigned roles, were the factors that therefore had prevented the formation of cohesive and autonomous individualities. It was for this reason that, although his study on Confucianism had served to launch his series of works entitled “The Economic Ethic of World Religions” [Die Wirtschaftsethick der Weltreligionen], it was nonetheless with this study that Weber brought the work begun with The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism full circle. Through this work he believed to have convincingly and definitively demonstrated the nature of the role played by interior or psychological-motivational factors in economic behaviour. In a context such as that of China, where utilitarianism and the promotion of earthly wellbeing represented the supreme ideals, the lack of an opportunity for capitalism to develop appeared to Weber to have provided the most solid proof in support of his “culturalist”, or “idealist”, thesis. Once again he targeted those positions labelled as “economistic”, belonging to that which he defined as “vulgar Marxism”, but it could also be argued that he targeted positions that advocated that economic planning should be exclusively in the hands of the state. “Confucianism and Confucian mentality, deifying ‘wealth’, could facilitate political-economic measures of a sort comparable to the worldliness of the Renaissance in the Occident” (Weber 1951, 237). This notwithstanding, it was precisely within this situation that, in his opinion, one could observe the limited significance of economic policy as compared to economic mentality. In no other civilized country has material welfare ever been so exalted as the supreme good. (…) Still economic policy did not create the economic mentality of capitalism (…) Still no intermediate link led from Confucianism and its ethic – as firmly rooted as Christianity – to a civic and methodical way of life (Weber 1951, 237–238).

Criticisms of the planned economy and historical materialism thus once again became of central importance. The economic mentality, or the bourgeois way of life that, according to him, was the adequate cause for the rise of capitalism, could not be fostered by an “economic policy”, since “Puritanism did create it, and unintentionally at that” (Weber 1951, 238). Only the Puritan rational ethic with its supramundane orientation brought economic rationalism to its consistent conclusion. This happened merely

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chapter six because nothing was further from the conscious Puritan intention. It happened because inner-worldly work was simply expressive of the striving for a transcendental goal (Weber 1951, 247–248).

The bourgeois mentality, springboard for the ‘magnificent and progressive fate’ of capitalism as an economic system was, in turn, the unforeseen result of unintentional actions. From the invisible hand of Adam Smith, who considered collective wellbeing to be the result of the individual pursuit of profit, via the criticism of organicism and collective concepts by Carl Menger and the Austrian School, it was a question of establishing the social order as being the result of individual actions and repudiating the “scientific” value of those positions that argued for the involvement of collective entities or of the state in defining public well-being. As we saw in the first chapter, Weber did not number among the staunch supporters of laissez-faire. This notwithstanding, criticism of the planned economy in the context of his studies on non-Western religions was crucial to Weber’s broader criticism of historical materialism. However, far from confirming his thesis as Weber wished, the comparison between Confucianism and Puritanism, upon closer examination, disproved it. Immanent criticism of the arguments put forward in the pages of Konfuzianismus und Taoismus reveals an underlying weakness of the entire explanatory framework. In comparing Confucianism and Puritanism, Weber was juxtaposing socio-historical phenomena that were on two completely different levels. On the one hand, there was the Protestant ethic as a manifestation of the body of doctrine that Weber synthesized under the name of “Puritanism”, which he used to refer to English, Dutch and American ascetic Protestantism. On the other hand, there was the ideal type of Confucianism which, in Weber’s recon­ struction, proved not to be so much a clearly circumscribable body of ­doctrine  – which could be said to be the sole element at the root of a ­psychological attitude that could be clearly traced back to it – but, rather, a complex blend of Confucian precepts and residual elements of Taoist and folk magic, as well as ethical and ritual principles deriving from constant confrontation/interaction between the centre (the emperor) and the periphery (family groups). In other words, Weber had sought to compare the ideal type of a well-defined religious system with the ideal type of an aggregate social order. In order to prove that an entirely ideal-cultural factor had played an autonomous role and had been historically adequate to give rise to a more extensive social order, Weber would have had to keep strictly to the body of Confucian precepts or to prove that in China, as in Northern Europe, an identifiable religious doctrine had had a



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profound and lasting influence on practical economic conduct. However, the fact that Confucianism was not a clearly delineated religious system, but rather the ideological apparatus of a patrimonial state, a cultural constellation that included elements which were, strictly speaking, foreign to Confucianism as a doctrinal system, robbed his whole argument of validity at exactly the point where he had hoped to find its conclusive confirmation.18 Ultimately, despite its many suggestive insights, Weber’s monograph on China ended up reinforcing the myth of an immutable China, a myth whose roots were sunk in a specific German historical and philosophical tradition that could only think of the Asian civilisations by considering them to be static and insignificant in relation to the diachronic movement of the world and, therefore, unworthy of attention from a historical point of view. According to this narrative, thus, The dynamism of history remained an exclusive attribute and privilege of the West.

18 As Weber writes: “the leading intellectual stratum, officials and candidates for office, had consistently supported the retention of ancestor worship as absolutely necessary for the undisturbed preservation of bureaucratic authority. They suppressed all upheavals arising from religions of redemption. Besides Taoist divination and sacramental grace, the only religion of salvation permitted was that of the Buddhist monks for, being pacifist, it was not dangerous. In China, its practical effect was to enrich the scope of psychic experience by certain nuances of moody inwardness as we shall see. For the rest, it was a further source of magical-sacramental grace and tradition-strengthening ceremony” (Weber 1951, 230). And, further on: “Animistic magic, as the only remaining form of popular religion, determined the traditionalist fear of any innovation which might bring evil charms or stir up the spirits. To be sure, this magic was despised by the educated Chinese; but it was the form of religion supported because of the character of the official cults. The preservation of this animistic magic explains the great credulity of the Chinese” (Weber 1951, 233). Weber then goes on to speak of the “immeasurable ceremonial fetters surround the life of the Chinese, from the stage of the embyo to the cult of the dead (…) Part of this ceremonial is evidently magical, especially apotropaic in origin. Part is to be attributed to Taoism and popular Buddhism. (…) Both Taoism and popular Buddhism have left profound traces in the workday life of the masses” (Weber 1951, 234).

CHAPTER SEVEN

POLITICS AND ORIENTALISM OF THE OCCIDENTAL PERSONALITY Asiatic self-control found its point of gravity precisely at a point negatively evaluated in the Occident. (…) The Taoistic Wu wei, the Hinduistic ‘emptying’ of consciousness of worldly relations and worldly cares, and the Confucian ‘distance’ of the spirit from preoccupation with fruitless pro­ blems, all represent manifestations of the same type. The occidental ideal of active behaviour – be it in a religious sense concerning the beyond, be it inner-worldly – centrally fixes upon ‘personality’. To all, by highly developed Asiatic intellectual soteriology this could only appear either as hopelessly onesided philistinism or as barbaric greed for life. Where it is not in the beauty of the traditional, refined, salon-sublimated gesture as in Confucianism it is in a trans-worldly realm of the salvation from transience that all highest interests of Asia are located and therewith ‘personality’ also finds its worth (Weber 1958, 338–339). It has not been remarked, I think, that Weber’s studies of Protestantism, Judaism and Buddhism blew him (perhaps unwittingly) into the very territory originally charted and claimed by the Orientalists. There he found encouragement amongst all those nineteenth-century thinkers who believed that there was a sort of ontological difference between Eastern and Western economic (as well as religious) ‘mentalities’ (Said 2003, 259).

This study began by arguing that Weber’s writings on the sociology of religion constitute the ideal terrain for deciphering his theory of personality and processes of individuation. I have proposed, furthermore, that this elaboration cannot be dissociated from a political goal: that of identifying, within the Western Protestant tradition, the most suitable personality type for the political leader that Weber wished to see guiding his nation through the economic and political shift to a modern capitalist liberal democracy. Weber’s theory developed in a phase of transition between eras, at a time when new hegemonic blocs were supplanting the old ones and the complete integration of German society within the capitalist mode of production demanded that there be a change in forms of state management and in the political dialectic between classes that were struggling for political and social power. It was at this juncture that Weber took a classic theme of modern political and social theory – the theme of

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the constitution of the modern subject – and translated it into the terms of the problem of the type of political leader, or political personality, who should be called upon to lead the nation through an unprecedented set of transformations.1 In this concluding chapter, I aim to show that the  political agenda that underpins Weber’s formulation of the Puritan personality cannot be dissociated from the equally political stakes and ­orientalist rationale that underwrite his portrayal of the Oriental non-­ personality. This argument therefore requires the precise definition of these concepts. The Occidental personality and the Oriental, or Asiatic, nonpersonality – as I have called them – are the two personality formations that emerge from Weber’s writings on religion, constituting his overall theory of personality. On the one hand, the concept of the Occidental personality coincides with the harmonious ‘total personality pattern’ discussed in Chapter One and Chapter Two; however, as we have seen, the ‘total personality pattern’ seems to be modelled on the Puritan personality that is discussed in Chapter Three. On the other hand, the Oriental, or Asiatic, non-personality results from the merging of the main traits of the personality formations that Weber thought he had identified in his studies on India and China, which have been discussed in Chapter Five and Chapter Six. However, it is only in the essay “The General Character of Asiatic Religion” – which is placed at the end of The Religion of India (1958) – that Weber outlines the contours of what I call the Oriental, or Asiatic, nonpersonality. I will therefore discuss this text in more depth in this chapter. In particular, I will seek to show how the defining characteristics of each of the two personality formations should be read in close relation to each other. This task will be pursued by means of integrating my reading of the Occidental personality and the Oriental non-­personality with Weber’s political writings, particularly “Politics as a Vocation”. This integration will both highlight the political foundations of Weber’s concepts of the Occidental personality and of the Oriental non-personality, and also reveal the orientalist rationale that informs them.

1 As Jan Rehmann has perceptively noted, Weber’s main goal particularly in The Protestant Ethic was that of “liberating the forces of self-moralisation” (Rehman 1998, 208) and self-discipline of the German bourgeoisie, the class with which Weber proudly identified himself. Weber thus had to “emphasise with strength and at risk of speculation, the ‘inner specificity’ of the subject” (Rehmann 1998, 208–209), a specific subject moulded by Puritan virtues and to whom the German Bürgertum had to conform in order to become a verantwortlich and gesinnungsethisch ruling class.



politics and orientalism of the occidental personality195 1. The Protestant Sects and the Puritan Personality

Weber sketched the outlines of the Puritan personality in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and in the essays on the Protestant sects in North America. It may be argued that he here attempted to find answers for a question he had already confronted ten years earlier in the Freiburg Address, that is, the problem of the absence of political Beruf in the German bourgeois class. His examination of the Protestant, and particularly Puritan, Beruf, and a reconstruction of the mode of individuation to which he believed the latter leads, reflected Weber’s desire to fulfil his role as an ‘organic’ intellectual of the German bourgeoisie. Hence he sought to find a way to educate his class in the vocation/profession of leadership of the nation.2 For Weber, in other words, it was an issue of finding the way to wed what he saw as the inevitability of the domination of capital, which he called “the fate of our times” (Weber 1946, 155), to his class’s ability to provide political leadership. In the Anglophone countries, Great Britain and, above all, the United States, Weber thought that this problem had been resolved, insofar as the firmly established economic triumph of capitalism corresponded to the political and cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie. The US was where the profession/vocation of political leadership had become established in the form of an individualist ideology that pervaded every aspect of social relations. Moreover, Weber’s analysis of the Puritan personality led him to pinpoint, within the very structure of this type of personality, a unique and characteristic combination of elements within the West’s political pattern, in which individualism is promoted within the paradigm of communitarianism. An examination of American society revealed to Weber the properties of the modern political personality within, as Ferraresi put it, that very “oxymoric community of absolute singularities” constituted by the Protestant sects (Ferraresi 2003, 289–290). The omni-pervasiveness of a sectarian spirit that promoted individualism through typically communitarian methods of cooperation indicated the sects’ “constitutively ambiguous status”, hovering “between a communitarian and a societal type of action” (Ferraresi 2003, 284). Compared to the German situation, which he saw at an impasse between modernity and tradition, or trap­ped between the emergence of a capitalist Gesellschaft to which a feudal Gemeinschaft opposed resistance, to phrase it in Tönnies’s famous 2 On this point, see Rehmann 1998 and Barbalet 2008.

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terms,3 Puritan asceticism in American society, in Weber’s view, had achieved, “on the terrain of the sect”, the “transfiguration” of every “‘organic (and German) concept of community” (Ferraresi 2003, 284). In other words, the religious sect represented a form of community operating fully within bourgeois-capitalist sociality. Further­more, “on the level of the complete individuation of its subjects”, as Ferraresi further argues, the sect symbolised “the threshold point of the maximal – and final – convergence between the personal motivations of individuals and the objective coercion of the economic cosmos” (Ferraresi 2003, 285). Weber saw religious sects as the ‘place’ where the formation of bourgeois subjectivity was possible, insofar as the self-discipline that the individual learned within them was based on values directly interwoven with capitalistic spirit. As he writes: According to all experience there is no stronger means of breeding traits than through the necessity of holding one’s own in the circle of one’s associates. The continuous and unobtrusive ethical discipline of the sects was, therefore, related to authoritarian church discipline as rational breeding and selection are related to ordering and forbidding. In this as in almost every other respect, the Puritan sects are the most specific bearers of the innerworldly form of asceticism. Moreover, they are the most consistent and, in a certain sense, the only consistent antithesis to the universalist Catholic Church – a compulsory organization for the administration of grace. The Puritan sects put the most powerful individual interest of social self-esteem in the service of this breeding of traits. Hence individual motives and personal self-interests were also placed in the service of maintaining and propagating the ‘citizenry’ Puritan ethic, with all its ramifications. This is absolutely decisive for its penetrating and for its powerful effect (Weber 1946, 320–321).

The American Sektengesellschaft, in Weber’s account, resulted from a truly singular chemistry: it was not only the stage upon which capitalist moder­ nisation was played out, but also the place where ‘citizenry’, or communitarian ties, were perpetuated. These ‘paradoxes’ within American society appeared to Weber to be the key to understanding the formation of the type of personality whose existence was so strongly intertwined with the birth of the capitalist spirit. Accordingly, the Puritan individual that emerges from the pages of his writings on North America was not an ‘individualist’ individual à la Robinson Crusoe, or the isolated monad fabricated by methodological individualism. Rather, it was an individual more 3 For a discussion of the Tönniesian echoes in Weber’s discussion of the American sects, see Kim 2000.



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akin to the Aristotelian zoon politikon – that is, a political being who can only define him/herself in relation to a group, and specifically to an acquired group (for instance the religious community or the city-state), rather than an ascribed one (the family). Bourgeois individualism forged by ascetic Protestantism and its corresponding personality structure thus seemed to Weber to demonstrate a markedly political nature whereby the individual developed him/herself as a true individuality only within the boundaries of a community, or a polis. What the traits of this ‘political’ personality were, however, still remains to be clarified. If the land of the Protestant diaspora, with its peculiar arti­ culation of community and individualism, had been the seedbed of the modern zoon politikon, what were, more specifically, the inner personality traits of such political beings? What are the psychological and anthropological features that characterise the Puritan personality and that can be understood in both religious and political terms? And in what ways does Weber’s reflections on religion intersect at a theoretical level with his reflections on politics? As I will show in the following section, the category of the Occidental political personality itself can be fully grasped only in light of another notion which is central to Weber’s sociology of religion and politics: that is, charisma. For it is the theory of charisma that constitutes the knot that binds together the complex web of concepts that Weber used to articulate his idea of personality, both in his collected essays on the sociology of religion and in his writings on politics and power. 2. In the Beginning was Charisma Famously, Weber defined charismatic power as one of the three types of legitimate domination, alongside the traditional and the legal/bureaucratic forms. Unlike bureaucracy, however, charisma is characterised by the lack of any structured procedural code; it “knows no formal and regulated appointment or dismissal, no career, advancement or salary, no supervisory or appeals body, no local or purely technical jurisdiction, and no permanent institutions” (Weber 1978, 1112). Furthermore, whereas bureaucracy can survive only on the basis of continuous economic support, charisma “abhors the owning and making of money”, which “accounts also for its radical difference from the patriarchal” (ibid.) and traditional form of power. Although it is the fate of charisma to be ‘routinised’ and eventually to be transformed into either a legal or traditional type of

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power, in its statu nascendi charismatic power has a peculiarity that radically distinguishes it from the other two types of legitimate domination. As Weber put it: Charisma, in its most potent forms, disrupts rational rule as well as tradition altogether and overturns all notions of sanctity. Instead of reverence for customs that are ancient and hence sacred, it enforces the inner subjection to the unprecedented and absolutely unique and therefore Divine. In this purely empirical and value-free sense charisma is indeed the specifically creative revolutionary force of history (Weber 1978, 1117).

Weber credited the church historian and theologian Rudolph Sohm for having provided the first sociological treatment of the notion of charisma. Yet, unlike Sohm, who employed this notion in his work on early Christianity, Weber considered the prophet rather than the priest to be the most interesting case of charisma. For Weber the prophet is indeed the “purely individual bearer of charisma” (Weber 1978, 439), for he proclaims a religious doctrine or divine commandment only “by virtue of his mission” (ibid). The prophets of doom of ancient Judaism were the paramount example, particularly because of the radical nature of their extra-­ economic activity (see Chapter Four). Nonetheless, two important elements should be noted: not only were religious figures the most important historical examples of charismatic authority, but the notion of charisma itself lies at the very foundation of both Weber’s theory of power and politics as well as his theory of the Puritan personality. The recognition of the centrality of charisma has important implications for understanding his whole theory of personality as developed throughout the collected essays on the sociology of religion. In Economy and Society, Weber famously distinguished between power and domination in order to demarcate personal from impersonal power. As he put it, ‘Power’ [Macht] is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests. ‘Domination’ [Herrschaft] is the probability that a command with a given specific content will be obeyed by a given group of persons (Weber 1978, 53).

With these definitions, whereby ultimately both power and domination amount to the probability that someone’s determination, regard­less of its origin in one actor or in one commanding figure, becomes the ­imposing force in a chain of individual wills, Weber shifts the issue of power from



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the arena of its constitution to that of its recognition.4 In so doing, he blazes an important trail in modern thought, marking the transition to the systematic reflection on consensus that would become the principal theme of twentieth-century political theory. At the same time, he unveils the ultimate implications of the individualist foundation upon which his political thought was developed. In contrast to what might be thought, the emphasis that Weber placed on the question of the acknowledgement of power, namely the question of the consensus granted to it, is not conducive to a shift towards a more democratic theory. To illustrate this point, it may be useful to recall an illuminating reflection on this topic made by Wolfgang Mommsen. According to the latter, Weber’s sociological theory of legitimacy started from the factual observation of how much consent to legitimacy is given by the ‘ruled’, that is in the empirically discernible willingness to subject themselves to a particular system of domination and to accept its norms as personally binding. Seen from this perspective, for Max Weber ‘illegitimate’ domination could not exist as a type, but there could only ever be a greater or lesser degree of empirically extant consent to legitimacy (…) Thus it is not normative criteria of moral or ethical nature that decide the legitimacy of a system of domination but the subjective disposition of its subjects in practice to accept the authority in question. This comprehensive typology claims to take into consideration all forms of legitimate domination at one fell swoop and to be applicable in theory to every system of domination known to us in history. Furthermore, this model also displays an antinomical structure. Inasmuch as legitimacy ought to be more than just the acceptance of the immutability of a system of rule on the basis of the existence in practice of domination, it always ultimately originates in one single form, namely the charismatic foundation of political authority (Mommsen 1989, 21).

In other words, insofar as power, in Weber’s thought, is defined neither on the basis of a constituent moment, nor on the basis of a moral or ethical principle that determines it,5 but rather on the basis of the consensus it 4 As Antonio Negri argued: “Can constitutional history be a natural history? Two major twentieth-century scholars answer this question: Max Weber and Carl Schmitt. With an acute perception Weber understood that the naturalist criterion is insufficient to make constituent power immanent to constituted power. Instead, Weber insistently pushes constituent power to confront historical-social reality. Throughout the core of his political sociology where he defines the theory of the types of legitimacy, it is clear that for Weber constituent power is situated between charismatic and rational power. Constituent power derives from the first the violence of innovation, and from the second its constitutive instrumentality. It suddenly forms positive law according to an innovative project that grounds a paradigm of rationality” (Negri 1999, 6). 5 On this topic it can be once again particularly useful in terms of analytical lucidity to consider the reflection of Mommsen, according to whom “the essential incompatibility of

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finds, most forms of power are ultimately legitimate. Furthermore, every form of power ultimately originates in charisma.6 The legitimacy of power does not derive from the agreement of subjects who decide to subject themselves to it. Power is ‘there’ and, as such, it actively seeks a following. It is for this reason that, if we follow Mommsen’s analysis, the legitimacy of power in Weber always begins with charisma; firstly, because charisma is the moment of renewal in the routine of legal and traditional power and, therefore, a herald of possible new configurations of power; secondly, and most importantly, because insofar as power is given and exists before the subject, it derives its own legitimacy from itself. Weber illustrates this characteristic of charismatic power in crystal-clear terms in the following passage: Charisma is self-determined and sets its own limits. Its bearer seizes the task for which he is destined and demands that others obey and follow him by virtue of his mission. (…) However, he does not derive his claims from the will of his followers, in the manner of an election; rather, it is their duty to recognize his charisma (Weber 1978, 1112–1113).

In its statu nascendi, charismatic power thus differs from other types of power insofar as it is founded on the extraordinary gift of the political (or religious) leader who is capable of obtaining obedience precisely because of that gift. Therefore, it is not the recognition accorded by the subject to charismatic authority which legitimises charisma, but it is charisma – the gift itself – which is legitimate and, consequently, recognised as such.7 politics and ethics as we find it in Weber’s sociology of domination is reflected in the theory of the three pure types of legitimate domination. The antinomical structure of the political as an autonomous sphere of values is again much in evidence here. There way in which Weber tried to determine the legitimacy of political systems excluded from the start any recourse to normative criteria of a moral or ethical kind. In this respect, he broke with a long tradition in Western political theory which traced the legitimacy or illegitimacy of domination (as the case may be) back to a system of moral norms, whether it be Hobbes’s argument for the moral desirability of ending the anarchic condition of ‘war of all against all’ by the establishment of unrestricted domination, if necessary with the help of unrestrained violence; or Machiavelli’s idea of the circulation of virtù, that is, the creative vitality of individuals or peoples capable of rulership; or the natural-law dogma of the likes of John Locke, which tried to impose fundamental limits on the exercise of state power” (Mommsen 1989, 20). 6 For an exposition on the idea of non-legitimate power in Weber, see in particular Scaglia 2007. 7 In the words of Tuccari, “the authoritarian character of the authentic charismatic person consists essentially in the fact that the recognition of the chief who has power comes after – in conceptual terms – the legitimacy of his/her office. That is, the chief is not legitimate because he/she is recognised as such by the followers; rather, precisely because he/ she is legitimate – namely charismatic – he/she is recognised as such by the totality of the



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In Weber’s writings, charisma is therefore an element inherent to power tout court, as its demand for legitimacy is founded upon that charisma. Power itself, like the charismatic form, is the thing that sets the process of legitimation in motion, and not the other way around. And it is in these terms that charisma is, in Weber’s writings, the truth of power. At this point one should note that, if charisma is the foundation of Weber’s theory of politics and of power itself, the conceptual apparatus offered by charisma is also at the core of his theory of the Puritan personality. As Weber wrote in “Politics as a Vocation”, the type of power that especially interested him was the “domination by virtue of the devotion of those who obey the purely personal ‘charisma’ of the ‘leader’. For this is the root of the idea of a calling [Beruf] in its highest expression” (Weber 1946, 79).8 Charismatic power, therefore, was the type of power that fascinated Weber the most, because he considered the ‘devotion’ for the personal gift that was showed by both the individual who possessed such a gift and by the followers as lying at the very origin of the idea of vocation. Due to the centrality assigned to an analysis of the inner, human traits of the charismatic leader, “Politics as a Vocation” is central to the exploration of the intersections between Weber’s political theory and the concept of the Occidental personality that he saw configured in the Puritan type. 3. Homo Politicus and Homo Puritanus “Politics as a Vocation” is Weber’s most well-known political text. It was delivered at the University of Munich in January 1919 as part of a lecture series organised by the Freistudentische Bund of Bavaria, a left-liberal student group that Weber presumably knew from a meeting in 1917.9 As Wolfgang Schluchter has argued, the vocation lectures (including “Science dominated. It is not recognition that produces legitimacy but, rather, legitimacy that produces recognition. In other words, recognition, as Weber writes in many texts, is a duty for those who are subjected to charismatic power; it is the very act of obedience” (Tuccari 1991, 91–92). 8 Weber continues, writing that: “Devotion to the charisma of the prophet, or the leader in war, or to the great demagogue in the ecclesia or in parliament, means that the leader is personally recognized as the innerly ‘called’ leader of men. Men do not obey him by virtue of tradition or statute, but because they believe in him. If he is more than a narrow and vain upstart of the moment, the leader lives for his cause and ‘strives for his work’. The devotion of his disciples, his followers, his personal party friends, is oriented to his person and to its qualities” (Weber 1946, 79). 9 On the controversy of the exact dates of the two ‘vocation lectures’ see Roth and Schluchter 1984.

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as a Vocation”) are to be read as a “philosophical text” whose goal is to “persuade the individual to responsible work in the service of a supra-­ personal cause [Sache]”.10 Here Weber begins by defining politics as “the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership, of a political association, hence today, of a state” (Weber 1946, 77). As he further noted, “‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power” (Weber 1946, 78). Indeed, “he who is active in politics strives for power [Wer Politik treibt, erstrebt Macht], either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as ‘power for power’s sake’, that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives” (Weber 1946, 78). Thus, as a consequence, politics is the power [Macht] to which the politician aspires. By equating politics and the individual thirst for power of the political activist, Weber arguably translated the issue of politics and power distribution into the terms of the human characteristics of the politician, particularly of the leader.11 Here one can notice that, in Weber’s mind, the political leader is, firstly, a peculiarly Western figure, the offspring of the city-state and the constitutional state, two historical phenomena that he saw as being peculiar to the West. Political leadership in the form of the free ‘demagogue’ who grew from the soil of the city-state is of greater concern to us; like the city-state, the demagogue is peculiar to the Occident and especially to Mediterranean culture. Furthermore, political leadership in the form of the parliamentary ‘party leader’ has grown on the soil of the constitutional state, which is also indigenous only to the Occident (Weber 1946, 80).

Particularly, in the case of the “parliamentary ‘party leader’”, or ‘professional politician’, Weber depicts his traits as the opposite of, and in contrast to, both those of the intellectual scholarly personality and of the figure of the functionary. The “politician’s element, and above all the element of the political leader” is “to take a stand, to be passionate – ira et studium” (Weber 1946, 95). The political leader is he who takes upon himself all “personal responsibility for what he does” (Weber 1946, 95), and it is from this that he gains his “honour”. Insofar as only a strong personality can bear the burden of sole responsibility, the inner reward for the politician consists of the joy that he derives from the power which leadership 10 Quoted in Owen and Strong 2004, xiv. 11 Of course, in Economy and Society Weber also dedicated numerous pages to the questions of political structure, the state, parties and political groups and so forth. See Weber 1978.



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brings, in other words, “the feeling of holding in one’s hands a nerve fibre of historically important events” (Weber 1946, 115). Indeed, in Weber’s mind the critical question is: “What kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?” (Weber 1946, 115). As Weber’s rhetorical question suggests, the problem of political leadership translates into the question of the qualities, or personality, of the leader, since politics requires a certain “kind of a man”. The three key qualities such a man must possess are “passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion” (Weber 1946, 115). Passion in the sense of matter-of-factness [Sachlichkeit] of passionate devotion to a ‘cause,’ to the god or demon who is its overlord. (…) Mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a ‘cause’ also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. ‘Lack of distance’ per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. It is one of those qualities the breeding of which will condemn the progeny of our intellectuals to political incapacity. For the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone (Weber 1946, 115).

But who possesses these qualities? What kind of man carries inside himself all those characteristics that are the stuff of a political leader? I argue that, to a great extent, Weber’s description of the qualities of what could be called the homo politicus coincides with his portrayal of what I will call the homo puritanus, as depicted in his writings on Protestantism. If the type of man who is to “be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history” must possess the qualities of Sachlichkeit, of far-sightedness as a sense of responsibility and distance “to things and men”, of passion as a feeling of true fervour for the cause that guides his actions, this “kind of a man” then is embodied most completely in Weber’s portrayal of the Puritan berufliche Persönlichkeit. The devotion to a cause, the Sachlickeit of the political leader, appears in the Puritan as a channelling of all his/her efforts into following the ­calling that obliges the believer to focus exclusively on his/her duty. Farsightedness as both the responsibility and the distance from things and human beings that a leader must necessarily have is well-embodied in the Protestant rationalist who, “in his rejection of everything that is ethically

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irrational”, has nothing but the aim of an “alert, methodical control of one’s own pattern of life and behaviour” (Weber 1978, 544). Finally, the passion necessary to fuel the actions of the professional politician was also a crucial trait of Puritan rationality. “Both the Puritan and the Confucian”, as Weber put it in The Religion of China, “were ‘sober men’. But the rational sobriety of the Puritan was founded in a mighty enthusiasm which the Confucian lacked completely” (Weber 1951, 248). Therefore strict self-­ discipline, the elimination of instinctual drives, and absolute devotion to one’s business and one’s profession instilled in the Puritan the type of instrumental rationality that underpins the ethic of responsibility. On the other hand, religious fervour, the pathos that belongs to the inner-worldly ascetic and moves him to intervene in the world in majorem gloria Dei, constituted the elements of an ethic of ultimate ends. Ultimately, the Puritan personality epitomised the essential aspects of the political personality: profession and vocation, dedication, distance and passion, Verantwortungsethik and Gesinnungsethik combined. Hence, it can be argued that not only was Puritanism central to Weber’s ideal model of political individuation due to its historical organisational ability to breed the qualities of political individualism, communitarian ties and capitalist Beruf, but also the Puritan personality itself possessed the very psychological features that he regarded as the epitome of the Occidental personality and the sine qua non for the establishment of true political leadership. 4. The Asiatic Non-Personality While the Puritan personality thus appears as quintessentially the Occidental personality and the role model for the type of political charismatic leadership that Weber sought to awaken in the German ­bourgeoisie, a rather different psychological and anthropological type seems to arise in the Orient. In the last chapter of The Religion of India, entitled “The General Character of Asiatic Religion”, Weber portrayed the non-Puritan and non-Occidental personality “at a point negatively evaluated in the Occident” (Weber 1958, 338). In this text, Weber sought to sketch out what he regarded as the main ethical and psychological components of the two great non-Western “civilisations” – Indian and Chinese – in a compounded manner. Here in particular, his “civilizational-analytics”, as Nelson (1976) called Weber’s comparative historical sociology, can be seen operating according to a fundamentally binary perspective. Consequently, Weber set the uniqueness of the Occident against the peculiarity of the Orient, both



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treated as homogenously geo-historical and cultural-political wholes. On the one side stands the Occident, with its rational, methodical and auto­ nomous individuals. On the other side is the Orient, exhibiting fundamentally traditionalist, dependant and irrational human types. Despite the attempts at a cautious treatment of the concept of rationality and rationalism throughout the systematic account of religion that he elaborated in Economy and Society (see Chapter Two), whereby he had sought to describe the beliefs that developed in the Asian continent as rational ­constellations of their own, “The General Character of Asiatic Religion” shows a less nuanced portrayal of the Indian and Chinese heterodox and orthodox religions. Here they are represented as fundamentally irrational ­ethical systems leaning towards passivity, inactive contemplation or conformism. In Weber’s own words: A rational practical ethic and life methodology did not emerge from this magical garden which transformed all life within the world. Certainly the opposition of the sacred and the secular appeared – that opposition which in the West historically conditioned the systematic unification of life conduct, describable in the usual manner as ‘ethical personality’. But the opposition in Asia was by no means between an ethical God and the power of ‘sin’, the radical evil which may be overcome through active life conduct. Rather, the aim was to achieve a state of ecstatic Godly possession through orgiastic means, in contrast to every day life, in which God was not felt as a living power. Also, it involved an accentuation of the power of irrationality, which the rationalization of inner-worldly life conduct precisely restricted. Or the aim was the achievement of apathetic-ecstatic Godly possession of gnosis in opposition to everyday life as the abode of transient and meaningless drives. This, too, represents an orientation that is both extra-worldly and passive and thereby from the standpoint of inner-worldly ethics it is irrational and mystical, leading away from rational conduct in the world. Where the inner-worldly ethic was systematically ‘specialized’, with great consequences and with sufficient, workable, soteriological premises, in practice, for the corresponding relations in the Hindu inner-worldly caste ethic, it was simultaneously traditionally and ritually absolutely stereotyped. Where this was not the case, indeed traces of ‘organismic societal theories’ appeared, however, without psychologically workable premises for the corresponding practical behaviour. Consequently, a psychologically workable systematization was lacking (Weber 1958, 336–337).

As he clearly stated in the above passage, Weber thus saw irrationality, lack of systematisation of one’s life conduct and apathy as the overall main traits of the Asiatic Weltanschauungen. Whether in the extra-worldly variation that leads away from rational conduct in the world and that is performed “in the style of the trans-worldly field of formless Indian

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mysticism” (Weber 1958, 342), or in the inner-worldly variation that rejects “such world-fleeing efforts and, instead, consciously and intentionally pursues the charm and worth of the elegant gesture as the highest possible goal of inner-worldly consummation” (ibid.), as in the case of Confucian­ ism, the Asiatic religions, in Weber’s opinion, ultimately lacked the very premises for the emergence of personality. Weber put this in crystal clear terms in the following passage: Out of both these components [extra and inner-worldly] crossing and jostling one another (…) an essential part of all Asiatic intellectual culture was determined. The conception that through simple behaviour addressed to the ‘demands of the day’, one may achieve salvation which lies at the basis of all the specifically occidental significance of ‘personality’ is alien to Asia. This is as excluded from Asiatic thought as the pure factual rationalism of the West, which practically tries to discover the impersonal laws of the world. They were, indeed, protected by the rigid ceremonial and hieratic stylisation of their individual conduct from the modern occidental search, for the individual self in contrast to all others, the attempt to take the self by the forelock and pull it out of the mud, forming it into a ‘personality’. To Asia this was an effort as fruitless as the planned discovery of a particular artistic form of ‘style’. Asia’s partly purely mystical, partly purely inner-worldly aesthetic goal of self-discipline could take no other form than an emptying of experience of the real forces of experience. As a consequence of the fact that lay remote from the interests and practical behaviour of the ‘masses’. They were left in undisturbed magical bondage (Weber 1958, 342).

As has been discussed in the chapters devoted to Weber’s treatment of the Oriental religions (see Chapters Five and Six), he regarded what he saw as the lack of complete ‘disenchantment’ [Entzauberung] of the world, coupled with a fundamentally disengaged attitude towards mundane matters, as the main obstacles to the development of that inner-worldly asceticism that he deemed to be necessary for the rise of capitalism. Moreover, and more fundamentally in the context of this study, “Asiatic thought” could not conceive of the “specifically occidental significance of ‘personality’” (ibid.) as such. Weber argued that the striving for inner clarity and consistency that he evocatively depicts as the attempt “to take the self by the forelock and pull it out of the mud” (ibid.) was unthinkable in Asia. The individualities nurtured by Asiatic thought were, therefore, by (Weber’s) definition, incoherent constellations of inarticulate traits that could not develop into proper personalities. At this point it is tempting to ask whether the writings on the Asiatic religions themselves could be seen as having an underpinning performative role, as compared to the one we have seen operating in his writings on



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Protestantism. In other words, if we take Weber’s passionate portrayal of Protestantism as the expression of his attempt to indicate in the Puritan type the role model for the “political education” of his class (see Chapter Three), what could be made of his unsympathetic depiction of the Asiatic non-personalities, particularly in the aforementioned text, “The General Character of Asiatic Religion”? Was it merely the un-dissimulated Euro­ centrism of a German professor in the face of what he regarded as ‘premodern’ civilisations that prompted his unflattering comments about the conformism of the Asiatic individual? Or was it also a disguised fear that Oriental-like disengaged and conformist personalities were stifling the actualisation of the ideal union between a Puritan personality and the German bourgeois political class, a union for which he so longed? Was not perhaps the apathetic Oriental individuality the Doppelgänger of the Occidental self? 5. Homo Asiaticus and Homo Bureaucraticus As briefly mentioned in the previous section, Weber set two main figures in opposition to the charismatic professional politician. On one side stands the intellectual, scholarly personality whose distinctive trait he identified as vanity. Weber called vanity the “occupational disease” of academic and scholarly circles (Weber 1946, 116). Nevertheless, he regarded such a disease as “relatively harmless” in the case of the scholar, “in the sense that as a rule it does not disturb scientific enterprise” (ibid). Quite the opposite was true for the politician. For he who works “with the striving for power as an unavoidable means” (ibid.), vanity is that which diverts his attention from “exclusively entering the service of ‘the cause’” (ibid.). Vanity was the Circes of the politician, she who lured him into the temptation of committing the two mortal sins of politics: “a lack of objectivity” and “a lack of responsibility”. As Weber put it, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matterof-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one’s self (Weber 1946, 116).

At the other end of the spectrum of the political leader stands also, and more importantly, the official, namely the impersonal individual who carries out his tasks sine ira et studio. His duty is unbiased administration, requiring him to apply regulations even when he does not agree with them. For the official, therefore, “this means a ‘loss of soul’ [Entseelung]”,

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the subjecting of himself to a process of “intellectual proletarianisation” (Weber 1946, 113). Weber describes the “proper vocation” of the genuine official as that which does not engage in politics but rather in “impartial administration” (Weber 1946, 95). The honour of the official “is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own conviction” (ibid.). For these reasons, Weber believed that excellent officials could only be “poor politicians, and above all, in the political sense of the word (…) irresponsible politicians” (ibid.). They followed rules set down by a higher authority rather than responding to their own conviction and taking personal responsibility for their course of action. The main problem that Germany had to solve, in Weber’s mind, was precisely the fact that officials and civil servants, rather than gifted professional politicians, had been “again and again in leading positions” (Weber 1946, 95). It was in order to find an answer to the problem of the domination of bureaucrats that Weber regarded a system of parliamentary democracy corrected with a plebiscitary dispositive as the potential generator of a constructive political antagonism. In such an antagonistic arena, Weber believed that a charismatic political personality imbued with a Puritan-like attitude towards the cause of power could possibly emerge. In the context of this analysis, however, it is worth noting how the depiction of both the apolitical character of the scholar as well as of the bureaucratic conventionalism of the civil servant were not without their religious alter-egos. In other words, if the analysis of the features of the political leader – or what I have called homo politicus – reveals a strong resemblance, and even correspondence, with those of the Puritan personality, or homo puritanus, likewise an analysis of the features of the academic intellectual’s and official’s personalities can also shed light on the shades of religious images behind their elaboration. I argue that these are the images of the “Asiatic” personality. The academic intellectual personality, with its vanity and lack of distance from oneself – all aspects that Weber saw as distracting the political leader from the devotion to the ultimate goal of power – was, in Weber’s mind, fundamentally apolitical or anti-political. When one looks at his description of the Asiatic types of selves, as Weber describes their various traits in his writings on India and China, the resemblances clearly emerge. Buddhism, for instance, in Weber’s account, with its obsession with the self manifesting as a form of lonely meditation in the pursuit of gnosis that made it unappealing for the masses, was the paradigmatic example of the anti-political religion. As he put it, “the petty bourgeois and peasant could make nothing of the



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products of the soteriology of educated gentility”, as “it required leisure for the meditation necessary to achieve the gnosis” (Weber 1958, 236–237). Buddhism, in fact, “had no sort of tie with any sort of ‘social’ movement”, nor did it establish any “‘social-political’ goal” (Weber 1958, 226). Further­ more, Weber argued that the interests of Asiatic intellectuality, so far as it was concerned with everyday life, lay primarily in directions other than the political. When political intellectuals such as the Confucians appeared, they were aesthetically cultivated literary scholars and conversationalists (also in this sense salon-men) rather than politicians. Politics and administration represented only their prebendary subsistences; in practice these were usually conducted through subaltern helpers (Weber 1958, 338).

Portrayed as “salon-men”, with their aesthetic sophistication and instrumental-utilitarian relationship with politics, it is the Confucians in particular that appear to embody the Weberian model of both the scholarly apolitical posture and of the bureaucratic attitude of the civil servant sine ira et studio. Confucians, in Weber’s account, lacked the necessary ontological presuppositions for the development of the true political leader: namely, charisma. As Weber put it: “the Chinese soul has never been revolutionized by a prophet” (Weber 1951, 142).12 He saw Confucians as representing an “intellectualistic rationalism” which had nothing but contempt for religions and used them only to the extent that they were “indispen­ sable” for the taming of the masses (Weber 1951, 143). Weber emphasised how Confucians were “sober men”, without the pathos typical of the Protestant. “What is felt to be indolence”, Weber writes, “is perhaps partly connected with [a] complete lack of Dionysian element in Chinese religion, a lack which resulted from the deliberate sobering of the cult by the bureaucracy. In the bureaucracy nothing existed and nothing was allowed that might bring the psyche out of its equilibrium” (Weber 1951, 233). Thus Confucians, like the civil servants Weber described in “Politics as a Vocation”, did not possess a crucial quality of the true politician, that is, the “passionate devotion to a ‘cause,’ to the god or demon who is its overlord” (1946, 115). As Weber argued, “nothing conflicted more with the Confucian ideal of gentility than the idea of a ‘vocation’” (Weber 1951, 248). Inevitably, he saw Confucians as fundamentally lacking the very idea of Beruf, that is, the very foundation of both the Puritan personality and charismatic politics. The figure of the civil servant, or what could be 12 Although Weber considered the Emperor’s right to govern as a form of hereditary charisma – see Chapter Six.

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termed the homo bureaucraticus, thus appears to be personified by the Asiatic and particularly by the Confucian individual, or homo asiaticus. The two can be seen as conflating at the point where the absence of vocation that Weber saw as typical of Confucianism translated into an idea of politics as conventional and “impartial administration”. Whereas Weber placed Puritanism at the centre of his analysis of the capitalist mind and of the theory of personality, which met at the crossroads created by the notion of charismatic political leadership, he regarded Confucianism in particular as the religion of the bureaucrat, which inhibited the formation of personality tout court. 6. Concluding Remarks: Politics and Orientalism of the Occidental Personality According to Edward Said, “Weber’s studies of Protestantism, Judaism and Buddhism blew him (perhaps unwittingly) into the very territory originally charted and claimed by the Orientalists” (Said 2003, 259).13 As several scholars have discussed, particularly following Said’s seminal work, Weber’s perspective on religions and politics was closely intertwined with an Orientalist, or Westocentric, Weltanschauung (Turner 1994; Salvatore 1996; Love 2000; Lehmann and Ouedraogo 2003; Zimmerman 2006). After all, the emphasis upon the purely Occidental roots of modern capitalism has been the overriding Leitmotiv of most Orientalist discourses of the twentieth century, something to which Weber’s prominent role in the social sciences contributed in no small measure. Yet, whereas most readings of Weber’s orientalist sociology have focused on his biased portrayal of the East vis-à-vis the West and on his idea of the Occident as the cradle of progress, capitalism and rationality, Said indicated two additional key dimensions of the orientalist discourse: the methodology of the ideal type, and the notion of the oriental self as “lack”. Said briefly discussed the methodological dimension in relation to Weber’s sociology, without expanding further upon the notion of the oriental self’s deficiency; this chapter has thus far sought to provide an analysis that demonstrates the ways in which Weber’s concept of the Asiatic non-personality was developed. In this concluding section, I would like to focus on the ways in which the orientalism of Weber’s methodology of the ideal type and of his 13 For a full account of the relationship between Said and Weber, see Farris 2010.



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portrayal of the Occidental personality and Asiatic non-personality are closely intertwined. Weber’s methodology of the ideal type, to which Said refers as both “an analytical device and as a way of seeing familiar things in a new way” (1978, 259), had an important role in the formation of orientalism as a cultural force. In particular, it informed an understanding of Oriental religions and societies in terms of what Said called a “summational attitude”. As a result of such an attitude, a statement about one single aspect of ‘the East’ becomes “a statement about the Orient as a whole, thereby summing it up” (Said 1978, 255). Weber defined the ideal type as a conceptual construction that is “formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasised viewpoints into a unified analytical construct [Gedankenbild]” (Weber 1949, 90). The ideal type thus functions both as a tool for the conceptualisation of different social phenomena by means of focusing upon a specific point of view, and as a ‘telescope’ or a ‘yardstick’ (Mommsen 1974) that classifies and compares social dominions, in order to detect similarities, differ­ ences between, or absence of, the properties that form the ideal-typical concept. In the comparative studies on world religions Weber employed the methodology of the ideal type in both ways. Firstly, he applied it in his historical comparative studies in order to classify religious prescriptions regarding economic activity into ‘types of economic ethics’. This resulted in a typology of different societies as those geo-culturally and geo-­ politically unified constellations that Said criticised as essentialist and ­stereotyped. Each of Weber’s studies on Weltreligionen thus led to the ­for­mulation of types of ‘civilizations’ that ultimately were assumed to be ­uniform and static. As a result, as many subsequent critics have emphasized, the variables ‘time’ and ‘history’ are cancelled from these unify­ ing  and essentialising ideal types (Fischoff 1944; Robertson 1933).14 Secondly, Weber applied the methodology of the ideal-type in his writ­ ings  on religion in order to conceptualise, classify and compare the ­category of personality in different religious-civilisational settings. In the 14 Even Parsons had to admit that Weber “tended to treat typical motives (…) as rigidly unchangeable entities [and] used ideal types to atomize his material into rigid units which could only be combined and recombined in a mechanistic way or absorbed into higherorder patterns” (Parsons 1963, lxiv).

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­ ethodological writings (see Chapter One) and in the texts on Protes­ m tantism (see Chapter Three) he formulated a definition of personality in its purest, or ideal-typical form. In Economy and Society, he also refers to this as a ‘total personality pattern’ (Weber 1978, 533). Accordingly, personality is the type of self that is rigorously coherent and unified under a set of strong values and convictions. Individual autonomy and a sense of antiauthoritarianism and anti-traditionalism are corollaries to this definition; taken together, they substantiate the ideal-type of personality that Weber saw expressed fully in the Puritan believer. It is to this ideal type of the Puritan personality that he compared the formations of the self that he argued had occurred in the non-Western religions. At the end of this comparative inquiry, Weber concluded that his ideal type of a “unified personality”, one according to which life becomes “a whole placed methodically under a transcendental goal” (Weber 1951, 236), did not spring from any of the ‘Oriental’ religions. It did not originate in ancient Judaism, which Weber saw as having failed to enhance autonomy from ascribed groups within the individual self. Nor did it stem from religions adopting the doctrine of karma (Buddhism and Hinduism), which promoted autonomy and egotism at the expenses of anti-traditionalism. Nor, least of all, did it arise from Confucianism, which fostered gregariousness and conformism rather than autonomy and anti-conformism. Viewed from this perspective, the ideal-typical concept of personality can thus be regarded as a continuum, or as an analytical tool that ‘measures’ a gradual transition from a state in which all defining elements of personality are present at the same time (e.g., Puritanism), to a state in which they are absent (e.g., Confucianism). The non-occidental personalities were therefore characterised in terms of the absence of the specific traits that Weber saw embodied in the Puritan personality, and as crucial for encouraging the rise of capitalism, i.e., individualism, personal autonomy and specialisation. Furthermore, these non-personalities were also found to be lacking in what Weber argued were the most important qualities of the charismatic political leader, i.e., passion, personal responsibility and vocation. We can thus argue that it is ultimately ‘lack’ itself that describes Weber’s Asiatic nonpersonality. This constitutes the second, previously noted ideological dimension of the Orientalist discourse in Weber’s thought. As Said argued, Orientalism not only depicted Oriental individuals with weak, undesirable personality traits. It also portrayed them as individuals caught in a constitutive ‘state of minority’, fundamentally lacking psychological autonomy from ascribed social groupings, or devoid of personality



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altogether (see Said 2003, 154). In other words, on the one hand, Weber delineated the traits of the Oriental subject as fundamentally at the anti­ podes of the Occidental personality, seemingly inheriting the German idealist tradition’s idea that the subject needs the Other to recognise itself. Within this Orientalist perspective, Asia, and China in particular, is seen as the cradle of a human type without a developed personality, thus discouraging the emergence of capitalism. On the other hand, the concept of the Oriental non-personality was developed not only as a negation of the traits of the fully rounded Puritan self, but arguably also as the embodiment of the bureaucrat, a figure which Weber despised as an obstacle for the emergence of true political leadership in his own time. Weber’s orientalist ideal type of personality, thus, is construed and operates as a powerful political dispositive. The “negative” traits that he saw as the breeding ground of supposed oriental immobility and lack of personality were also the traits he hoped to exorcise from political life in the West. Far from operating as a neutral device, a descriptive concept, or merely as a ‘yardstick’ by which to compare different formations of the self in different religions and civilisations, the ideal type of personality was strongly marked by a specific political agenda, imbued in the conscious and unconscious assumptions of this Orientalist ideology. Weber’s theory of personality thus turns out to be a crucial axis of his general political theory, and a key site for the displacement of the Orientalist rationale that informs his sociology of world religions. By disclosing their mutual interconnections and functioning, it is possible to achieve a more in-depth understanding of the complex “Westocentric” roots that so greatly shaped one of the most important paradigms of sociol­ ogical thought. By continuing to interrogate and to expose the biases in the texts and concepts that have largely functioned as seemingly objective analytical tools within sociology and the social sciences more generally, we can contribute to the criticism of Orientalist discourses and theories that remain powerfully operative in the present.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Works of Max Weber Weber, Max, 1946, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions”, in Gerth, Hans and Wright Mills, Charles (eds). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York (Oxford University Press). Translation of: “Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Band I, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1920–1921. Weber, Max 1946, “Politics as a Vocation”, in Gerth, Hans and Wright Mills, Charles (eds). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York (Oxford University Press). Translation of: “Politik als Beruf”, in Gesammelte politische Schriften, Munich, 1921. Also in 2nd edition edited by Johannes Winckelmann, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1958. Weber, Max 1946, “Science as a Vocation”, in Gerth, Hans and Wright Mills, Charles (eds). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York (Oxford University Press). Translation of: “Wissenschaft als Beruf”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922. Weber, Max 1946, “Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions”, in Gerth, Hans and Wright Mills, Charles (eds). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York (Oxford University Press). Translation of: “Zwischenbetrachtung: Theorie der Stufen und Richtungen religiöser Weltablehnung”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Band I, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922–1921. Weber, Max, 1949, Methodology of Social Sciences, New York (Free Press). Translation of: Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 1st edition edited by Johannes Winckelmann Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922. Weber, Max, 1951, The Religion of China, New York (The Free Press). Translation of: “Konfuzianismus und Taoismus”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Band II, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922–1921. Weber, Max, 1952, Ancient Judaism, New York (The Free Press). Translation of: “Das Antike Judentum”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Band III, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922–1921. Weber, Max, 1958, The Religion of India. The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, New York (The Free Press). Translation of: “Hinduismus und Buddhisums”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. Band II, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922–1921. Weber, Max, 1975, Roscher and Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics, translated with an introduction by Guy Oakes, New York (Free Press). Translation of: “Roscher and Knies: und die logischen Probleme der historischen Nationalökonomie”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 1st edition edited by Johannes Winckelmann, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1922.

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SUBJECT INDEX Accumulation 116, 166 Of capital 146 Primitive 86 Action(s) 5, 10, 12, 16, 22, 38–44, 47–48, 52–55, 57, 60–73, 77, 79–80, 86–87, 95–96, 98, 107, 109, 119, 121–123, 133, 146–147, 149, 151–152, 155–156, 163, 166, 168, 173–174, 177–178, 181–183, 187–188, 190, 195, 203–204, 208 Theory of 3, 52 Social 14, 52, 69, 85, 169 Rational 10, 35, 45–46, 48, 65, 68, 73 Acquisitive drive (Erwerbstrieb) 78 Anti-Semitism 127–128 Asceticism 5, 60, 63–66, 79–80, 83, 85, 97, 99, 150, 177, 180–181, 196 Puritan 80, 107, 196 Inner-worldly 5, 64, 69, 131, 177, 181, 193, 206 Extra-worldly 64 Axiology 23–24, 29, 33, 72 Universal/ist 33–34, 45 Subjective/ist v, 30, 33, 36, 38 Balfour Declaration 109 Berit 117, 123–124, 126, 128, 132 Bildung v, 2–3, 10, 47–50, 99–101 Brotherhood 29 Tribal 129–130, 132 Buddhism 4, 8–9, 58–59, 64, 135, 140, 149–154, 172, 175–176, 191, 193, 208–210, 212 Bureaucracy 12, 114, 155, 162, 164–165, 167–168, 173–174, 185, 197, 209 Modern 165, 181 Patrimonial 160, 164, 168–169, 179 Priestly 12, 155–156 Bureaucratisation 100, 104, 118 Bureaucrat(s) 6–7, 13, 57, 162, 168, 208, 210, 213 Calling 78, 96, 98–99, 101, 201, 203 See also vocation (Beruf) Calvinism 64, 79, 84, 96, 132 Capitalism 5, 8–9, 11–12, 14, 44, 50–52, 54, 69–70, 73, 75–76, 81, 83–84, 86–88, 101, 104, 106, 110–111, 125, 129–132, 135, 145, 151 Colonial 166–167 Commercial 129

Financial 180 Industrial 129, 167 Modern 72–73, 78, 88, 106, 166, 188, 210, 212–213 Political vii, 160, 164, 166–167, 170, 174, 176–177, 189, 190, 195, 206, 210 Predatory 166 Western 178 Capitalist development 72, 85, 92, 150, 181 Caste 12, 59, 89, 118, 125–126, 128, 135–148, 150–156, 205 Caste system vii, 128, 131, 135, 138, 142–144, 150, 156 Catholicism 53, 66, 95 Causality 39–40, 45, 51, 76 Charisma 5, 111, 114, 116, 118, 124, 140, 144, 154, 161–162, 167, 174–176, 197–201, 207–209 Charismatic leader 6–7, 13, 71–72, 201, 210, 212 Church-sect distinction 82, 131, 135, 137 Clergy 114–115 Confucianism 4, 8–9, 12, 56, 59, 148–149, 152, 159–160, 168, 170–191, 193, 210, 212 Consumption 167 Contract 124, 182 Conviction(s) 48, 52, 78, 122, 131, 173, 188, 208, 212 Ethics of conviction (Gesinnungsethik) 122, 194, 204 Credit 81, 171 Culture 10, 15, 20, 23–24, 28–29, 39, 45, 48, 49, 53, 55, 78–79, 83, 94, 99–100, 113, 123, 136, 167, 173, 182, 186, 202, 206 David 113, 118, 124 Democracy 193, 208 Dharma 12, 59, 138, 143, 146–148, 156 Disenchantment (Entzauberung) v, 5, 47, 53, 55, 66–67, 104, 111, 206, 220–221 Double-standard morality 11, 128, 130, 132 Duty 12, 17–18, 79, 99, 101, 106, 119, 130, 133, 138, 143, 146, 150, 156, 163, 167, 182, 184–186, 200–201, 203, 207 Economic development 31, 145 Economic ethics (Wirtschaftsethik) 51–52, 72, 211

226

subject index

Elective affinities (Wahlverwandtschaft) 11, 76–77, 219 Emanatism 26–27, 36 Emotion(s), emotional 22–23, 63, 70–71, 80, 89, 97, 119, 151, 153–154, 183 Erklären 39 Eurocentrism, eurocentric 7, 14, 160 Expectation(s) 40, 58, 69, 121 Experience 22–23, 28, 33, 40–41, 56–58, 64, 127, 150, 154, 174, 196, 206 Explanation 11, 20, 34–36, 40–41, 44, 45, 52, 58, 59, 85, 142, 145, 183, 186 Teleological 41, 43, 45 Causal explanation 27, 39, 41–42, 45

Individuality 18–19, 21–28, 35, 45, 47–48, 51, 54, 72, 83, 102, 104, 197, 207 Individualisation of history 15–16 Individualism 81–83, 131–132, 150, 156–157 Methodological 47 Political 130–131, 204 Religious vi–vii, 9, 12, 135, 155–157 Individuation 1, 3–4, 10, 14, 47, 49–50, 53, 67, 72–73, 80, 83, 106, 111, 132–133, 150, 152, 155, 186, 193, 195–196, 204 Interpretive sociology (verstehende Soziologie) 41, 42, 44 Irrationality 27, 39–40, 42–43, 178, 205 Israelite confederation 56, 112–113, 124

Fact-value distinction 37 Family 4, 82–83, 113, 131, 161, 163–165, 168–171, 178, 184–188, 190, 197 Family ties 132, 175, 186, 188 “Faustian universality of man” 101 Fortune 118–120, 140 Misfortune 118, 124, 140, 183 Freiburg address

Jainism 150–152 Judaism 4, 8–9, 11, 53, 56, 59, 66, 80, 109–111, 113–117, 119, 121–127, 129–133, 193, 198, 210, 212 Jews 109–110, 121, 125–127, 131 As a pariah people 127–129 Junkers 91–92

German historical school of economics 27, 34, 39 Of law 29 German historicism 18, 37 German social democracy 21, 51 Guilds 125–126, 139, 141, 144, 148, 165–166 Hierocracy 114, 116, 137–139, 143, 172 Hinduism vi, 4, 8–9, 12, 56, 59–61, 64, 128, 135, 137–138, 146–150, 152, 154–157, 212 Historical individual (historische Individuum) 10, 15, 18, 20–21, 24–25, 27–33, 39 Historical materialism 11, 29, 51–52, 106, 189–190, 219 Homo asiaticus 207, 210 Homo bureaucraticus vii, 207, 210 Homo oeconomicus 35, 83 Homo politicus 201, 201, 208 Homo puritanus 201, 203, 208 Hsiao 163–164, 168, 171 Humanity (Menschentum) 5, 28, 30, 37, 49–50, 68, 100–102, 105–106, 184 Humanism 47, 131 Neo-humanism 99 Ideology 12, 52, 132, 135, 174, 176, 178, 186, 195, 213 Ideal type 1, 3–4, 7, 9, 13, 32, 56, 98, 188, 190, 210, 211–213

Karma 4, 12, 59, 146–148, 150, 152, 156, 212 Kulturkampf vi, 93, 95, 175 Labour 15, 35, 53, 75, 79, 90–91, 98, 103–105, 125, 144 Law 21, 115, 143, 182 Natural 148, 171 Formal 163, 171 Levites 114–119 Life conduct (Lebensführung) 62–63, 65–67, 86, 89, 122, 143, 146, 156, 179, 183–184, 187–188, 205 Literati 154–155, 163, 167, 170, 179 Lutheranism 79, 96–97 Magic 53, 66, 68, 80, 91, 116, 120, 122–123, 149, 154, 169, 174, 176, 178–179, 190–191 as opposed to religion 53–56 Man of a vocation (Berufsmensch) 81 Man of association (Vereinsmensch) 82 Man of specialisation (Fachmann) 107 Mandarin(s) 12, 24, 155, 168–169, 174 Market 69, 89, 90, 142, 145, 167, 171 Marxism 28–30, 50–51, 71, 189 Merchants 112, 141, 143, 180, 183 Methodenstreit 10, 31, 34 Methodism 79 Money 77, 86, 128, 187, 197 Motivation 44, 58, 85–86, 95–96, 98, 152, 189, 196 Psychological 85, 96, 98, 189



subject index227

Mysticism vi, 65, 174, 176, 206 Inner-worldly 63–64 Extra-worldly 64, 188 Nationalism 94 nationalist, nationalistic 26, 28, 30, 48, 51, 91, 95, 128 Naturalism 28–29 Anti-naturalism 27, 29 Neo-criticism 21, 27, 34, 40, 99 Neo-Kantianism 15, 21, 38, 40 Objectivity 19, 32–33, 101, 165, 207 Old Testament 80, 109–110, 112, 125 Orientalism 3, 6–7, 14, 193, 210–213 Otherhood, universal 129–130 Palestine, ancient 111–114 Pariah 12, 111, 123, 125–129, 131–133, 137–138, 141, 148 Passion(s) 5, 22, 61–62, 107, 177, 203–204, 207, 212 Patria potestas 160, 163–164 Patrimonialism 160, 162–163, 165, 167, 172, 175 Peasants, German and Polish compared 90 Person 25, 40, 43, 48, 63, 98, 101, 105, 137, 150, 163, 186 Personality 1–7, 9–14, 15, 22, 25, 39, 42–50, 53, 60–62, 70, 72–73, 75, 79–80, 82–83, 85–87, 94–95, 97–98, 100–102, 104–107, 111, 123, 129, 131–133, 135, 149–150, 152–153, 156, 170, 176–177, 181–185, 188, 193–198, 201–213 Ethical total 48 Hindu/Indian 135, 150, 152 Protestant 94, 98 Puritan 1, 4–6, 9, 11–13, 75, 105, 111, 194–195, 197–198, 204, 207, 209, 212 Jewish 11, 129, 132 Occidental vii, 4, 6, 193–194, 201, 204, 210–211, 213 Philosophy 17, 19, 20–24, 28–30, 40, 45, 48, 70, 153, 172–173, 177, 185 Pietism 79 Polytheism of values 33, 37 Political Individualism 81, 130–131, 195, 197, 204 Political Education 88, 92, 106, 207 Political Leadership vi, 6, 11, 75, 87, 93, 97, 106–107, 195, 202–204, 210, 213 Politics 3, 5, 7, 13, 46, 56, 70, 86, 92, 152, 175, 193, 197–198, 200–203, 207–210

as a vocation (Politik als Beruf) 5–6, 13, 107, 122, 194, 201, 209 Predestination 59, 79–80, 129, 133, 156–157, 187 Priests 57–58, 114–116, 139–140, 144, 155, 157 Professionalisation 99 Profit 69–70, 81, 99, 171, 181, 190 Prophecy 60–63, 80, 116–120, 128, 149, 183 Exemplary 60–62, 111, 177, 185 Missionary, or ethical 61, 65, 76, 111, 118, 177, 182 Of doom 114–120, 123 Protestantism 1, 3, 5–6, 8–9, 11, 13, 50–53, 59–61, 64, 66, 70, 72, 75, 80–85, 87–88, 94–98, 102, 106, 111, 124, 128–130, 132, 135, 151, 157, 159, 171, 177, 179, 184, 186, 188, 190, 193, 197, 203, 207, 210 Protestant sects 8, 11, 13, 75, 81, 131, 195 Puritanism 1, 11–13, 73, 80, 96–98, 106–107, 160, 178–180, 182, 187–190, 204, 210, 212 Puritan sects 196 Race 23, 90–91, 128, 142 Racism 90 Rationality 19, 35, 38–39, 41, 51, 54, 66–67, 69–73, 78, 109, 114, 116, 120–121, 129, 135–136, 164, 171, 177, 179, 182, 199, 204–205, 210 Formal rationality vi, 66, 69–70, 73, 78, 135 Material rationality 69 Rationalisation 11–12, 53–54, 59, 65–71, 78–80, 97, 99, 101–102, 104, 107, 109–111, 120–124, 136, 146, 156, 165, 167, 179, 187 Rationalisation of means/irrationalisation of ends 66, 68–70 Reformation Religious ethics 70, 160, 173, 178, 188 Resentment 37, 58 Responsibility, Ethics of (Verantwortungsethik) 122, 194, 204 Revolution 6, 16–17, 29, 47, 93–94, 97, 114, 121–122, 132, 165, 170, 198 Salvation 12, 23, 47, 50, 58–59, 61–64, 66, 71, 79–80, 82, 96, 98, 119–120, 122, 124, 126, 129–133, 137–139, 143, 146, 149, 151–153, 156–157, 171–174, 177, 180, 183–185, 189, 191, 193, 206 Samsara 12, 146–147, 156 Science(s) 19–20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 31, 34, 45–46, 72, 77, 86, 92, 102, 136 as a vocation (Wissenschaft als Beruf) 67, 122

228

subject index

Sciences, natural 15, 18, 20–22, 26, 29, 31, 44, 70 Sciences, historical and social 2, 31–32, 39, 44–45, 48, 87, 210, 213 Self 1–2, 4–5, 7, 9, 11–13, 15, 42, 48–50, 53, 61, 66–67, 78–80, 82, 87, 93, 95–98, 100–106, 114, 123, 125–126, 128–129, 131, 151–153, 155–157, 164, 169, 175–176, 180, 182, 185–187, 193–194, 196, 200, 202–204, 206–208, 210, 212–213 Sektengesellschaft 81–82, 196 Social structure 64, 89, 142, 161, 186 Spheres 52, 68, 70–71, 122, 125, 139, 161 Value 29, 71 Artistic 70 Economic 41, 52, 69, 71 Erotic 70–71 Political 70 Religious 70–71 Specialisation 97–102, 104–105, 212 Specialist 85, 100, 105, 107 State 4, 12, 16, 25, 34, 35–36, 38, 41, 48, 61, 89, 91–93, 95, 104–105, 109, 112, 123, 127,

137, 139, 161–167, 169, 172, 174–176, 178, 185, 189–191, 193, 197, 200, 202, 205, 212 Subjectivity 10, 35–36, 94, 97, 183, 196 Taoism 8–9, 159–160, 172–176, 191 Technology 104–105, 152 Theodicy 57–60, 119–120, 124, 146, 148 Total personality pattern 48, 194, 212 Trade 76, 84, 89, 105, 112, 116, 140, 145, 165, 174 Trust 77, 154, 171, 187–188 Urbanisation 112–113, 117 Value relation (Wertbeziehung) 33, 36, 38 Verstehen 22, 39, 41, 47, 95 Vocation (Beruf) 2, 5–6, 11, 79, 81, 84, 92–93, 96–99, 101–107, 118, 131, 181–182, 195, 201, 204, 208–209, 212 Westocentrism, westocentric 7, 210, 213

NAMES INDEX Althusser, Louis 30 Anderson, Perry 163, 165 Arendt, Hanna 127 Barbalet, Jacques 5, 11, 87–88, 98, 195 Baxter, Richard 98, 101 Bendix, Reinhard 9, 115, 118–120, 122, 138, 142, 149, 169, 176 Buddha 58, 61 Calvin, John 80, 130 Confucius 172–173 Croce, Benedetto 39 Dilthey, Wilhelm 19, 22 Durkheim, Émile 53, 98 Engels, Friedrich 40 Fischer, Karl 83–84 Fischoff, Ephraim 52, 211 Gerth, Hans Heinrich 1–2, 76, 132, 159 Ghosh, Peter 15, 80, 94–96 Goldman, Harvey 2, 10, 49–50, 53, 98, 100–101 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 19–20, 26, 40, 55, 94, 109, 125 Hennis, Wilhelm 2 Humboldt, Wilhelm von vi, ix, 19, 50, 99–101, 105 James, William 88 Jung, Carl Gustav 50 Kalberg, Stephen 4, 66, 149 Kant, Immanuel 15, 20–22, 26, 28, 39–40, 46, 76–77, 98, 100, 186 Kautsky, Karl 58 Koselleck, Reinhart 10, 15–18 Knies, Carl 15, 39 Lao Tzu 61, 173 Lask, Emil 26–27 Löwith, Karl 2, 52, 102, 104–105

Löwy, Michael ix, 52, 77, 84, 121, 132 Luther, Martin 79, 96 Marx, Karl vi, 30, 40, 47, 51, 75–77, 102–106, 145–146 Menger, Carl v, 31–36, 38, 41, 190 Mill, John Stuart 29, 159 Momigliano, Arnaldo 127–128 Mommsen, Wolfgang 2, 15, 109, 199–200, 211 Negri, Antonio 47, 51, 71–72, 199 Nelson, Benjamin 126, 129–130, 204 Nietzsche, Friedrich 126, 129–130, 204 Parsons, Talcott 52, 65–66, 68, 75, 77, 85, 169, 211 Rachfal, Felix 83–84 Rehmann, Jan 1, 5, 21, 28–29, 40, 95, 194 Rickert, Heinrich v, 10, 20–21, 24–25, 277–28, 30–33, 36, 40, 45 Roscher, Wilhelm 15, 27, 30 Roth, Guenther ix, 8, 52, 88, 201 Said, Edward 6–7, 193, 210–213 Salvadori, Massimo 51 Schiller, Friedrich 47 Schluchter, Wolfgang 2–3, 9, 12, 52, 66, 86, 98, 110, 122, 135, 159–161, 201 Schmitt, Carl 37–38, 199 Schmoller, Gustav von 39 Simmel, Georg 39, 49, 98 Sombart, Werner 11, 88, 110, 125 Tenbruch, Friedrich 9, 28–29, 52, 66 Tocqueville, Alexis de 159 Troeltsch, Ernst 21, 28–29, 49, 83, 88, 98 Turner, Bryan 2–3, 36–37, 52, 210 Turner, Charles 36 Weber, Marianne 7, 15, 26, 31, 75, 88 Windelband, Wilhelm v, 10, 20–24, 28, 31, 45 Wright Mills, Charles 1–2, 76