Book Review: The Search for Thematic Orientations in a Fragmented Oeuvre: The Discussion of Max Weber in Recent German Sociological Literature
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Auteurs : Stephen KalbergSource :
- Sociology [ 0038-0385 ] ; 1979-01.
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DOI: 10.1177/003803857901300111
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encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article article-type="review-article" dtd-version="2.3" xml:lang="EN"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="hwp">spsoc</journal-id><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">SOC</journal-id><journal-title>Sociology</journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">0038-0385</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Sage Publications</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1177/003803857901300111</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">10.1177_003803857901300111</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Articles</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>Book Review: The Search for Thematic Orientations in a Fragmented Oeuvre: The Discussion of Max Weber in Recent German Sociological Literature</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kalberg</surname><given-names>Stephen</given-names></name><aff>Sociology department at the Universitaet Trier</aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>01</month><year>1979</year></pub-date><volume>13</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage>127</fpage><lpage>139</lpage><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Reviews</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> THE SEARCH FOR THEMATIC ORIENTATIONS IN A FRAGMENTED OEUVRE: THE DISCUSSION OF MAX WEBER IN RECENT GERMAN SOCIOLOGICAL LITERATURE STEPHEN KALBERG IT has become such a commonplace to consider Max Weber's oeuvre as a fragmented one without a trace of internal unity that any claim to the contrary is likely to be met with skepticism. Weber is generally pictured as a theorist endowed with an enormous capacity to classify, conceptualize and synthesize, and a desire to do so for itself. Such an explanation of his corpus provides the underlying legitimation for the common procedure of dissecting its separate chapters in reference to subsequent research and of conducting rigidly controlled studies to 'test' a Weberian hypothesis. While allowing Sociologists to frequently invoke Weber as a prestigious authority to justify their own research, this mode of utilizing Weber's sociology leaves aside the issue of his overriding aims, interests and thematic orientations. Those few Weber scholars, such as Benjamin Nelson and Reinhard Bendix,' who have argued in recent years that several themes lend an inner coherence to Weber's writings have remained voices in the dark. Admittedly, Weber himself is largely to blame: the sociologist who seeks to unmask the 'true' Weber confronts a maze set within a refined obstacle course. With luck, fortitude, patience and time, he may be able to intuit that a relationship of sorts exists between the methodological and comparative-historical sociological writings, yet its specification would require a re-reading of all the texts as well as repeated study of a comprehensive set of notes. Moreover, Weber's writings themselves often encourage us to avoid going beyond particular parts of his sociology. The chapters in Economy and Society (E&S) on bureaucracy and stratification, for example, are well-suited to specialized research in these fields. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism also stands on its own as a classical analysis of a specific problem. Despite the enormity of the task, a concentrated effort has been underway in the last few years in West Germany to cast aside the common stereotype of Weber as a sociologist of unrivalled historical and comparative breadth as well as analytical rigor, yet one who unfortunately divided his energies to such an extent that he bequeathed nothing more than a series of unrelated fragments to modern Sociology. These 'fragments' are now being scrutinized under a different light, and more and more viewed as pieces within a mosaic. Though the mosaic as a whole remains not fully reconstructed, its boundaries have become visible. Two articles have stood out as the pathbreakers: 'Max Weber's Works' by F. H. Tenbruck and 'The Paradox of Rationalization' by Wolfgang Schulchter.2 These articles have been used as basic texts in a number of recent university courses and have also served as impulses for an international conference that took place in September, 1977 on the theme of 'rationalization' in Weber's works. The papers presented at this conference will be published within a few months.3 In asserting the priority of a rationalization process in the sphere of religion that proceeds under its 'own logic', Tenbruck explicitly claims to have discovered the unifying thread to Weber's corpus. Schulchter's aim - to extract a theme that permeates many of Weber's 1REVIEW ARTICILES writings - is less ambitious, though no less intriguing in its execution. He argues that Weber wished to assess which ways of life can be said to be, given sociological constraints, 'ethically adequate' for different epochs and civilizations, primarily our own. Since these two articles are the most comprehensive in breadth and original in scope, it has appeared preferable to examine the issues they have raised in detail instead of attempting to consider the entire spectrum of positions represented in this discussion. In addressing himself to the core of Weber's writings - rationalization and the relationship between ideas and interests - Tenbruck has not only given us an interpretation of a theme that penetrates throughout Weber's oeuvre, but also proposed a Weberian 'theory' of this relationship that deserves to serve as the cornerstone for discussions of ideas and interests for several decades, regardless of whether they take Weber or Marx as their point of departure. Weber's often neglected seminal essays, 'The Social Psychology of the World Religions ('SP') and the 'Religious Rejections of the World' ('RR') are the texts that Tenbruck relies upon) Although he does not explicitly say so, one of the well-known, though baffling, passage in the SP' may well have set off his ruminations: Not ideas, but material and ideal interests directly govern men's action. Yet the 'world views' (Weltbilder) that have been created by 'ideas' have, like switchmen, very often determined the tracks within which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interests. 'Trom what' and 'for what' one wished to be redeemed and, let us not forget, could be 'redeemed', depended upon a given world view.5 The reader is first offered an interpretation of this passage in relation to a rationalization process in the religious realm, and then an 'application' of this interpretation to Weber's scattered writings on the unique religious rationalization process that took place in the development of Western civilization. The denouement of Tenbruck's article comes with his conclusion that religious ideas6 have not only formed the 'tracks' within which the daily altercation of interests has taken place, but also themselves followed an autonomously developing course of rationalization or, in Tenbruck's words, an 'inner logic' (Eigenlogik) of rational development.7 Moreover, the position is argued that, according to Weber, the rse of the West is itself to be mainly understood as a product of a rationalization process at the level of religious ideas (p. 669). Tenbruck's lines of argumentation deserve to be thoroughly examined here. His interpretation fundamentally begins with a recapitulation of Weber's passages on the search of early man for solutions to the problem of theodicy.Y Since misery and distress remained indigenous to daily life for 'primitive' man, charismatic figures were repeatedly called forth. Yet their explanations were proven fallible, victims of the ubiquity of suffering. This perpetual confrontation with random misfortune unfolded into a dynamic of development: since every explanation was invariably recognized as unsatisfactory, it called forth a further 'solution', yet one as well fated to be replaced by still another 'answer' (pp. 686-87). The central descriptive characteristic of this line of religious development identified it as a rationalization process: to acquire credibility, each 'solution' to the problem of suffering necessarily transcended its predecessor in the degree to which it unified isolated occurrences and explained the disjointed events of daily life. With the advent of world views and the ethical salvation religions that carried them, the rationalization process in the sphere of religion arrived at its most decisive stage. When considered in reference to a view of the cosmos as a whole that claimed to be the final explanation for man's misery, the conundrum of suffering appeared all the more intolerable. The tension induced as a result of the discrepancy between the world view and the continued disproportionate distribution of happiness could be alleviated now only by 'adjusting' the view of the world. Furthermore, world views became doubly pressured to I 2 8 REVIEW ARTICLES unfold along a rational line of development: each had to adequately defend its postulated 'theodicy structure' against calls for fundamental alterations, and each was simultaneously compelled to offer increasingly more comprehensive explanations for enduring suffering (p. 684). For Tenbruck, it is precisely the demand for a rational answer to the problem of theodicy - that is, an answer in reference to the given world view - that dictates the internally logical unfolding of religions along a series of increasingly comprehensive stages rationally consistent with one another. Irrespective of different salvation values and paths of redemption, such rationalization processes progressed forth until an explicit and internally consistent theodicy of the world as a whole became manifest (p. 684): For Weber, religion advances forward in terms of a specific problematic all its own. At its very foundation appears a phenomenon that he termed the problem of theodicy; that is, a phenomenon that has nothing to do with the cognitive investigation of reality. The rational thrusts that religion follows arise out of the need to maintain a rational answer to the problem of theodicy, and the stages of religious development are constituted from the increasingly more explicit conception of this problem and its solutions. The rational development of religion is carried out neither in reference to the external reality of the world nor for it. Just the opposite takes place: according to Weber, the rational unfolding of the problem of theodicy occurs in opposition to the world. He ascertained not only that a largely rational development of religious world views succeeded in establishing itself in history, but also that religion followed a rational internal logic- detached from the cognitive constitution of reality (p. 683; cf. further, p. 675). The power of ideas and their status as history's 'switchmen' derived not simply from their stubborn persistence as ideas, as most schools of nineteenth century thought contended, but moreso from the dynamic of their 'own logic': 'Certain ideas develop under the thrust of their own logic to their point of rational consistency and, in this manner, effect universal- historical processes' (p. 685). Unlike rationalization processes based upon interests, which 'blindly' unfold to a point of saturation and then dissolve when overpowered by a more vigorous constellation of interests (p. 689), the rationalization process in the sphere of religion based upon ideas as world views was a long-term development endowed with a continuity that united entire epochs by setting the direction for the flow of interests (p. 684). Thus, for Tenbruck, 'Weber's works as a whole testify to his conviction that no comprehensive and continuous rationalization of reality can proceed out of interests alone' (p. 689). At every stage along the course of religious rationalization, Man rationalized his practical action and his interests to fall into line with the altered religious doctrine (p. 683). Man 'won' his rationality, in the sense of a way of life patterned methodically to conform to a world view, not from interests or empirical reality, nor from changes in a cognitive world view, but rather primarily from the 'logic' of the religious rationalization process (pp. 683, 688-9o). Moreover, with his discovery of this process, Weber demonstrated the unity to Man's history by showing that, Tenbruck contends, his Reason had been at work, after all, throughout history: the world of the 'primitive' as well as that which gave birth to ethical salvation religions were ones in which Man had, in accord with his image of the cosmos, attempted to rationally explain its 'meaning' and its suffering and to act rationally in relation to this explanation (p. 689).9 Having forcefiuly argued his case at the purely theoretical level for an 'inner logic' of religious rationalization, Tenbruck then turns to the issue of 'testing' his interpretation by applying it to the religious development from ancient Judaism to Calvinism. He claims that this development may be best understood as a religious rationalization process characterized by de-magicification (Entzauberung)'0 and an 'inner logic'. As evidence, he points to the fact that both AncientJudaism and Calvinism shared the same monotheistic world view and valued action in the world free from magic, or rational action. In addition, whereas Ancient 129 Judaism was a religion that 'to a high degree' (p. 670) remained uninfluenced by magic, Calvinism had unequivocably abolished all magic. In keeping with his theoretical position, Tenbruck concludes that this long-term rationalization process provided the 'track' which set the outer boundaries for the flux of interests across the ages. It reached its own inner boundaries with the rationally consistent solution to the problem of theodicy that arose with Calvinitm. This religion, in turn, gave the impetus for capitalism and the rise of modern, de- magicized rationalization processes (pp. 671, 690) 11 Howevele much Puritanism may be acknowledged as an heir of Ancient Judaism, Tenbruck's stress upon the de-magification process does not itself demonstrate the existence of an 'inner logic' of religious rationalization. On the contrary, since both AncientJudaism and Calvinism had largely if not totally abolished magic, de-magification is scarcely apparent. Tenbruck, however, is convinced otherwise and asserts that, once Weber had discovered this rationalization process, he no longer needed to undertake the studies on early Christianitv and medieval Catholicism that have been generally regarded as the 'missing links' in his comparative sociology of religion (p. 69o). Tenbruck's misunderstanding of Weber results here from his equating of action uninfluenced by magic with rational action in the world (p. 69o). Since this procedure, which is correct though insufficiently differentiated, leaves him with no means of distinguishing the various types of rational action that Weber repeatedly stresses,'2 he overlooks the qualitative difference between the types of rational action that prevailed in Ancient Judaism and in Calvinism. This oversight follows directly from a more serious misinterpretation: in this 'test case', Tenbruck reduces Weber's notion of rationalization within the sphere of religion to de-magification, thereby omitting Weber's second line of religious rationalization: To judge the level of rationalization a religion represents we may use two primary yardsticks which are in many ways interrelated. One is the degree to which the religion has divested itself of magic; the other is the degree to which it has systematically unified the relation between God and the world and therewith its own ethical relationship to the world."3 On those few occasions where Tenbruck does note the unification line of rationalization (cf. p. 69), he fails to draw the conclusion most important for Weber's notion of the autonomy of religious development: namely, this rationalization process reacts back upon and rationalizes the action of the believer. Unlike the de-magification process, it thus provides an analytical base for differentiating types of rational action in the world. Without a consideration of the rationalization process based upon a unification of the relations between God and the world, no understanding of the autonomous shifts of religion-oriented action can be acquired. Such an understanding is of axial centrality for Weber, especially when he compares Ancient Judaism to Calvinism. According to Weber, Jewish 'rationalism' and the Jewish 'methodcal patterning of life' (Lebensmethodik) stemmed from 'the effect of the Law and the intellalist schooling in the Law'." Unlike the purely ritualistic laws of Hinduism and the Persians" which demanded solely an 'external obedience' ,16 theJudaic Law contained an ethical quality. Yet no overriding and unifying dogma ordered the diverse Laws under a single poit of view in the manner that the certitudo salutis acted as the doctrinal core for the Calvinist belief system." It was the consistent internal unity of Calvinism that provided it with its rationalism. On the one hand, Calvinism unified the value constellation it had inherited from Ancient Judaism, old Christianity, medieval Catholicism and Lutheranism into a rationally consistent solution, based upon the belief in predestination, to the original Judaic problem of theodicy.'8 On the other hand, as a consequence of this consistent solution, a unified relationship of the believer to the world resulted: to the degree that believers REVIEW ARTICLES I 3 0 REVIEW ARTICLES internalized Calvinism's unified ethical standard, their practical action in all spheres of life stood under the imperative of rational consistency with it and became, in Weber's terms, practical-ethical action. In comparison to Ancient Judaism's methodical patterning of life to conform to delimited Laws, the Calvinist's action emanated from an internalized and fully unified constellation of ethical values."9 Bound to his reduction of Weber's two-fold religious rationalization process to de-magification, Tenbruck of necessity lumps these distinctly different types of rational action together under the rubric of action uninfluenced by magic. This orientation to de-magification rather than to rationalization as a unification process also allows him to downplay all differences at the level of doctrine as insignificant, as well as to neglect Weber's contention that Jewish Law - and not a de-magification process - played perhaps the major role in the development of the Puritan's capitalist ethic.2" Of these two rationalization processes, the unification process is far more important than de-magification simply because it carried the autonomous rational thrust in the religious development from ancientJudaism to Calvinism. Yet this autonomy has, for Weber, a quite specific usage, and he repeatedly expresses his concern to rid it of all 'reification' overtones. He specifically takes pains to locate the unification process in a status group: religious intellectuals, whether priests, monks or theologians. These intellectuals oriented to a religious world view have theoretically rationalized its theodicy structure into an internally consistent unity of values. This process, rather than de-magification, constitutes the autonomy of religious rationalization for Weber and lends the sociological dimension to the passage that Tenbruck construes as referring to de-magification as such (p. 690): ... the rational in the sense of a logical or teleological 'consistence' of an intellectual- theoretical or practical-ethical point of view has (and always has had) power over man, however limited and unstable this power is and always has been in opposition to the other powers of historical life. Precisely the religious interpretations of the world and ethics of religions created by intellectuals have been strongly exposed to the imperative of consistency.22 However much these criticisms call into question Tenbruck's application of his interpretation to the course of religious development from Ancient Judaism to Calvinism, they do not necessarily directly cast doubt upon the interpretation itself. That Weber, in his key essays, 'The Social Psychology of the World Religions' and 'Religious Rejections of the World', discussed an autonomous religious rationalization process is not to be denied. Tenbruck's achievement has been to not only draw attention to the essential paramountcy of these essays for an understanding of the themes that unify the seemingly amorphous Weberian oeuvre, but also to extract the religious rationalization process and to argue its primacy for a Weberian theory on the long-term relationship between ideas and interests. He has also laid the groundwork for a more broad-ranging Weberian analysis of the origins of modern societies than is to be found in The Protestant Ethic. Yet perhaps Tenbruck overstates his case. For Weber, ideas acquire a significance and an autonomy in history not only because they unfold from an 'inner logic', but also because individuals with common ideal and material interests orient their actions to them and, when in cohesive groups, carry them. Although Tenbruck, in passing (p. 688), does note that intellectuals theoretically rationalize world views, his article leaves the general impression that the 'inner logic' proceeds under it own internal steam, divorced from all social reality. Yet once religious intellectuals are acknowledged as the carriers of the theoretical rationalization process, the question arises of the degree to which their alterations of world views influenced only their own action orientations or also those of other strata. Far from assuming, as Tenbruck appears to, that the dispersion of religion-oriented action takes place as a result of more rational solutions to the problem of theodicy, Weber asserts that the diffusion of ideas must be scrutinized I 3I REVIEW ARTICLES sociologically: ideas and values spread throughout a culture only when groups and strata arose to carry them. Whether these carriers have crystallized and then succeeded in the ensuing struggle against indigenous forces of tradition is a question of the strength of interests, authority and power. Man acts, for Weber, not only in relation to world views; he also stresses the power of sheer tradition to immerse individuals within their daily tasks as well as the orientations of most persons to their immediate interests. Because he has focussed his argument exclusively on the level of rationally consistent ideas, Tenbruck seems to have neglected these more mundane motivations for action that have, as Weber repeatedly documents, time and again challenged the 'inner logic' of world views to unfold rationally. Yet a critique along these lines, which has been frequently expressed against Tenbruck's efforts, proves to be too facile. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that Tenbruck's omission of Weber's more conventional sociology results from his overriding aim to argue the significance of the long-term religious rationalization process. By doing so, he has hoped to insure the status of this aspect of Weber's thought in the secondary literature and to demonstrate its capacity to unify the Weberian oeuvre: Weber's discovery of the religious rationalization process constitutes the yield from his Collected Essays in the Sociology-of Relkgion (CESR), and the separate chapters in E&S that trace rationalization processes in the various life-spheres (e.g. domination, the economy, politics, and law) based upon interests are given their orientation by the religious rationalization 'tracks'. Tenbruck would surely have no objection to questions such as these: what sociological and historical combination of factors brought about the alteration of classical Hinduism's world view, in spite of its rational solution to the problem of theodicy? What constellation of interests arose in behalf of monotheism to anchor and successfully carry it as the basis of a belief system? What configuration of sociological and historical fictors provided the possibility for the crystallization of a stratum of religious intellectuals, and for the diffiusion of religious action consistent with altered religious ideas beyond this strata? Tenbruck's claim to have unveiled the unity in Weber's corpus rests upon the extraction of an overall theme: the importance of the 'inner logic' of ideas as world views that guide the flow of interests. Without a consideration of this factor, the E&S investigations appear simply as fragments devoid of an internal relationship. For this reason, according to Tenbruck, they cannot be fully understood. In effect, Tenbruck chose to demonstrate the unifying character of an ideational architectonic in Weber's oeuvre - and more could not be expected in a journal article - and to then merely draw attention to those tasks that remain: namely, in Benjamin Nelson's terms, the formation of the 'analytic' to Weber's sociological treatment of interests, power, tradition and authority. This analytic must be extracted from E&S and the CESR by a thorough examination and comparison of these texts. It is only in this manner, as Tenbruck would be the first to acknowledge, that a genuinely Weberian theory on the relationship of ideas and interests can be reconstructed. Only in this manner can the full unity be established between Weber's empirical sociological studies and his stress upon the role of ideas as world views. Such a reconstruction can now, as a result of Tenbruck's interpretation, utilize the autonomy of epoch-transcending ideas as its thread of orientation. This theory would offer a distinctly Weberian analysis of the manner in which ideas arise, become established within institutions and become accepted as valid. Because the religious rationalization process unites entire epochs and also provides the overarching dimensions within which the seemingly unrelated chapters in E&S must be understood, Tenbruck further argues that the CESR should be viewed as Weber's major work rather than E&S.2" Yet this conclusion can be only partly accepted, in spite of the fact that it logically follows from Tenbruck's exposition of the thematic unity to Weber's writings. The basic structures for Wober's comparative-historical sociology are laid down, however unsystematically, in E&S and only 'applied' in the Economic Ethics of the World Religions (EEWR).24 The reader of the EEWR who does not have these structures firmly in I 3 2 REVIEW ARTICLES mind will become lost within the maze of ideal types endlessly balanced off one another in these comparative studies. Rather than to be viewed as 'major work' and 'minor work', these two efforts of awesome proportion must be understood as intimately intertwined: the E&S lays out, in abstract form, the sociological concepts and sociological regularities for a Weberian historical-comparative sociology. These heuristic 'tools' are then used, by Weber himself, to guide his research of a problem: the rationalization of action in various civilizations and its implications for the type of person (Menschentyp) different civilizations, viewed sociologically, could give birth to. As basic modes of sociological orientation, they allow the researcher to confront the raw irrationality of history and simultaneously 'protect' him from losing his way amidst its chaos of isolated occurrences and profusion of fragmented events. The originality of Tenbruck's article is scarcely diminished by the reservations mentioned here. He has brought the long-neglected 'SP' and 'RR' to our attention and skillfully argued their cogency for Weber's analysis of the rationalization of religious world views and for his theory of the relationship between ideas and interests. This theory not only permeates Weber's works and lends a unity to them, but also provides us with a qualitatively more informed point of departure for a reconstruction of Weber's view of history as opposed to Marx's. More importantly, it reacquaints us with our heritage, knowledge of which, as Weber knew well, provides the indispensable prerequisite for the comprehension of the overriding problems that confront us in the twentieth century. Unlike Tenbruck, Wolfgang Schluchter does not claim to have found the unity to Weber's corpus. He does, however, extract a theme that surfaces continually throughout Weber's writings. According to him, a major aim of Weber's sociology is to determine the particular ethical way of life that is 'adequate' to modern society (p. 261). The reconstruction of this contemporary 'Occidental ethic' from the sociology of religion chapters in E&S, the CESR, the political writings and, in particular, the 'RR' is the task that Schluchter undertakes. At the outset, he states that his analysis rests exclusively upon a consideration of world views and their rationalization. In doing so, Schluchter directly orients his interpretation to Weber's memorable statement on the relationship between ideas and interests that served as Tenbruck's point of departure. In this passage, Weber declares plainly that action orientations are not simply the consequence of a pursuit of self-interests or of an adaptation to given societal norms and social structures. Schluchter first discusses the world views predominant in several civilizations and their respective ethically adequate ways of life. Using this analysis as a comparative framework, he then turns to the subject of major interest to him and also to Weber: an assessment of the contemporary world view and its corresponding ethically adequate way of life. In those historical civilizations dominated by the world views of Ancient Judaism, Hinduism, Medieval Catholicism and the Puritan sects, ways of life ethically adequate to them remained unproblematic. Schluchter's discussion of Hinduism and Ancient Judaism is not nearly as balanced and well-reasoned25 as his examination of the alterations in the religious world views that took place from medieval Catholicism to Lutheranism and Calvinism. In an incisive manner, this overview specifies how changes in the respective doctrines influenced action. It arouses great interest simply because it demonstrates that Weber, in his sociology of religion, went far beyond an analysis of organizational forms and social structures to the crucial issue of how such forms and structures had been given distinctly different value contents according to a religion's highest salvation goals. Schluchter reveals his originality when he begins to reconstruct the way of life ethically 13 3 adequate to the modern West where the scientific world view has obtained hegemony. This dominance has not automatically led to a suituation in which the interests of everyday life have been radically re-ordered. On the contrary, the transitional period from religion to science has been characterized by a vacuum that has allowed the separate arenas of life most importantly, the political, the economic and the legal - to follow their own autonomous (eigengesetzliche) laws, often in a manner in opposition to the scientific world view. The question of the tasks science can legitimately perform is, as Schluchter rightfully contends, of utmost importance for Weber here. If he had not, in all of his methodological essays as well as in 'Science as a Vocation',26 consistently limited the role of science, no difficulty would have arisen regarding an appropriate ethical way of life: science itself could appear as a religion in a secularized form and freely offer modern man a new and absolute world view as well as a value system. Weber's entire sociology, however, can be viewed as a testament against the belief common in his day as well as in our own that no principled division separates the domain of science from that of values. Nothing was more abhorrent to him than the vision of a caste of specialists empowered to dictate, in the name of science. 'correct' ways of life. Having noted that Weber rejects both religious world views and conclusions scientifically arrived at as possible bases for ethical action in the modern era, Schluchter poses his main question of whether Weber offers us guidelines for ethical conduct that are in deed 'honest to our times. If the contemporary world view, unlike those of the past, is incapable of dictating proper modes of conduct, on what basis can a way of life be deduced that is ethically adequate to our era? The answer for Weber is one that threads throughout his entire oeuvre ethical claims must now emanate from the individual himself. Yet this well-known Weberian conclusion, rather than a 'solution', itself posed a dilemma that Weber wrestled with throughout his mature years: Where, in the individual case, can the ethical value of an action be determined? In terms of success or in terms of some intrinsic value of action itself, regardless of how it is to be determined as ethical? The question is whether and to what extent the responsibility of the actor for the results sanctifies the means, or whether the value of the actor's conviction justifies him in rejecting the responsibility for the outcome . ..27 As Schluchter astutely points out, very different ways of life result from one's answer to this question: if success is chosen as the ultimate axiom for action, an ethic of responsibility guides conduct; if an intrinsic value is chosen, one's way of life will be determined by an ethic of conviction (p. 280)o. Neither of these ethics are, however, for Weber, fully adequate. The ethic of responsibility merely adapts to the various orders of the objectified world devoid of brotherhood. The ethic of conviction, even though it opposes given realities, does not take responsibility for the consequences of action, many of which, viewed from the perspective of the goals originally desired, may be irrational (p. 280). Rejecting Weber's synthesis of these two ethics28 as 'systematically unsatisfactory' when viewed in relation to a comprehensive reading of the Weberian oeuvre, Schluchter argues that Weber in fact, in his search for an ethic adequate to our times, elevated the ethic of responsibility above the ethic of conviction. He then further asserts that the ethic of responsibility is not simply an ethic of adaptation and success; it also implies an element of moral obligation (Gesinnung)29 and allows for a conscious domination of the world. The correct character of the ethic of responsibility can be ascertained, he argues, only when this ethic is compared not only to the ethic of conviction, but also to the Realpolitik Weber frequently examined in his political writings (p. 28o, esp. n. 74). Because it involves action that values efficiency above all, Realpolitik stands in a relation of severe inner tension to the moral claims advanced by the ethic of conviction (p. 28I). I 34 REVIEW ARTICLES REVIEW ARTICLES Neither of these modes of conduct offer adequate ethical guides: the 'ethic' of efficiency, since it deplores all moral claims, leads simply to adaptation to given conditions, while the ethic of conviction, by elevating moral claims to an absolute position, leads to escape from the world. The tension between these two ethics can be absolved only by a hierarchical ordering of one under the other. Only the ethic of responsibility pursues the optimal solution. This ethic 'negotiates its way between moral standards and efficiency and attempts, even while taking given conditions into account, to establish a tension-filled balance' (p. 28I).30 This accomplishment of the ethic of responsibility must be viewed in relation to modernity's world view. In the 'dualistic anthropocentric' cosmos of the present in which persons must seek, without the aid of religion, to resolve the opposition between the random flow of good and evil and a postulate of comprehensive ethical principles (pp. 279, 28i), reality must be manipulated to conform to the highest values of persons. Rather than capable of banishing the problem of theodicy by a rationally consistent explanation that claims to be transcendentally anchored and thus in principle beyond the scrutiny of the believer, however, the contemporary 'dualistic anthropocentric' world view offers only an explanation for the continued existence of tension between 'the ought and the is, conviction and success, rejection of the world and acknowledgment of the "autonomous rights" of the de-magicized world' (p. 279). Thus, contemporary man must prepare himself to live within the tension that arises from pluralistic value positions (pp. 281-82). Only the ethic of responsibility can, Schluchter believes, assist in this regard. The ethic of responsibility posture is capable of reconciling neither between the separate value positions and reality, nor between the different value positions. It creates only the assumption for doing so: that opposites remain acknowledged and that the struggle between them takes place rationally (p. 281).31 This limitation of the ethic of responsibility to a seemingly modest task is in keeping with Weber's desire to provide the conditions for an unencumbered development of the individual as a unified personality capable of consciously forming a personal value system and taking an ethical stand in accord with it. Only ethical action can erect effective barriers against the imminent danger that the destruction of dualisticc theocentric' world views will lead to a new 'monism' in which no principled opposition between the world's random occurrences and ethical postulates exists (pp. 281-82). In this case, the precarious basis for the formation of 'the Individual', a type of person that has evolved as a result of uniquely Western cultural configurations and that is endowed with the capacity to mould his reality into conformity with his values, will have been shattered. A new type of person little more than a pale reflection of his surroundings and unable to conceive of an opposition between 'the world' and an ethical postulate will embark upon the stage of Western history. No sense of inner obligation could long survive in such societies. Regularities of action would result simply from the instrumental-rational action of individuals in similar positions acting in accord with their self-interests rather than from internalized value systems and ethical positions.32 Schluchter's formulation of the Weberian ethic of responsibility appears correct to me. It is obviously, however, when viewed sociologically in terms of its potential to serve as ethically adequate to our times, a 'virtuoso ethic'. Only the extraordinary person can, while avoiding the extremes of retreat from the world and merely adaptation to it, permanently live in a dualistic 'tension filled "equilibrium" ' (spannungsreiches Gleichgewicht). Moreover, since universal ethical standards for action are not postulated, they remain dependent in our era upon the capability of persons to create their own ultimate values. Only persons able to do so can then act responsibly against value positions different from their own as well as against reality's random flow of circumscribed events. Without such I 3 5 values, which have been historically formed by virtuosos and carried by institutions that have lost their sociological rooting in our era, neither a 'content' for an ethic of responsibility exists nor a possibility for, in reference to these values, a conscious domination of the world, let alone a rational struggle of one set of values against another. Without such values, the ethic of responsibility will lose its component of moral obligation and deteriorate into simply a Realpolitik mode of conduct. If one considers a synthesis of the ethic of responsibility with the ethic of conviction to be Weber's statement of an ethic adequate to our times, the same conclusion, however, is reached: this synthesis is also a virtuoso ethic. At first glance, the realization that Weber could have postulated a virtuoso ethic as adequate to our age is met with dismay. He, more than any other sociologist, had repeatedly traced the fate of virtuoso ethics in the histories of diverse civilizations: compromise and routinization had been their universal destiny. Yet Weber's position acquires consistency if examined from the point of view of his own methodology. In upholding a virtuoso ethic, he remained true to his axiom that the tasks of science do not include the dictating of personal values to individuals. Even while consciously acknowledging the irrefutable conclusions of his sociological investigations that demonstrated the futility of upholding a virtuoso ethic, Weber refused to allow science to determine his values for him. Rather than an ideal solution that offers a truly adequate ethical way of life to Modern man, Weber would surely have considered such a synthesis as the only possible ethical way of life, given the twentieth century's sociological constraints. Unable to identify strata entrenched within contemporary institutions that could carry the virtuoso ethic he propounded, he asserted its correctness with a deep sense of pessimism. Only a virtuoso ethic possessed the strength to confront all weathervanes pointing toward totalitarianism, yet virtuoso ethics have been rejected throughout history. Cognizance of this dilemma confronted by Weber throws an entirely different light upon the interpretation by Schluchter. Weber is not convinced, as might be concluded from the Schluchter article, that the future will take care of itself if only individuals discover and follow their 'own demons'. On the contrary, the decline of religious follies and the ascendance of Reason and 'progress' that was heralded by the devotees of evolution in his day was viewed by Weber with immense foreboding, if only because he saw the powers of Reason as less capable of uniting the personality and directing it in behalf of values - and particularly in behalf of a unified value constellation - than the powers of Belief. Of what relevance can recognition of the integrating themes in Weber's oeuvre have for our research today? That Weber's writings are frequently dealt with as a fragmented lexicon of useful concepts tells us a great deal about the present plight of Sociology. Today's mode of research values the delimited empirical study as an end in itself and the refinement of methodologies above the posing of general questions, answers to which necessarily transcend the immediate present or any single slice of the historical past. Within this knowledge paradigm, the talent to classify itself becomes sufficient reason for doing so. The era within which Weber wrote, however, was much more directly concerned with cultural problems and considered the empirical study as merely a means toward the establishment of conclusions to broadranging questions. These questions generally related to the fate of Western traditions with the rise of industrialism, the type of person that will - or could - survive within the rationalized cosmos, and the manner in which individuals in different cultures attribute 'meaning' to their action. Precisely such questions obsessed Weber and provided him with the tremendous motivation required for the writing of E&S, his methodological essays, and his studies of the 'world religions'. Just such questions must be kept continually in mind by the reader who aspires to filter out even a fraction of the vast sociological treasure in these volumes and to comprehend the guiding principles hidden within the Weberian corpus. 1 6 REVIEW ARTICLES REVIEW ARTICLES That the secondary literature has fragmented Weber's oeuvre rather than examined it from the standpoint of the questions that literally possessed this classical theorist has resulted from the unwillingness of most contemporary researchers to transcend the knowledge paradigm of the present and to scrutinize Weber's 'fragmented' writings from the perspective of his interests. As long as we remain content to use Weber as merely a prestigious point of reference for contemporary research rather than as a theorist capable of providing profound guidance for the development of a comparative and historical sociology, we will remain incapable of utilizing the genuinely sociological mode of research buried within his writings as a means of identifying and analyzing our epoch's culturally significant problems. Notes All references to Weber's texts are given first in the English translation, and then in the original German. All translations of the Tenbruck and Schluchter articles are my own. i. Benjamin Nelson, 'Max Weber's "Author's Introduction" (qw2): A Master Clue to his Main Aims', Sociological Inquiry, 44, 1974, 269-77. Reinhard Bendix, 'Max Weber's Sociology Today', International Social ScienceJournal, 17, i965, 9-22. 2. F. H. Tenbruck, 'Das Werk Max Webers', Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 27, 1975, 663-702. Wolfgang Schluchter, 'Die Paradoxie der Rationalisierung', Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie, 5, 1976, 257-84. The most recent contribution to this discussion is a critique of Tenbruck's position by Schluchter. It has just appeared in the Koelner Zeitschrift. Schluchter's article, together with a longer essay that in many ways serves to introduce it (Wertfreiheit und Verantwortungsethik, Tuebingen: Mohr, 197I), ill be published this year in English in Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter, Max Weber s Vision of History: Ethics and Method, Berkeley: The University of California Press. Other articles important in this discussion have been those by Ulrike Vogel, 'Einige Ueberlegungen zum Begriff der Rationalitaet bei Max Weber', Koelner Zeitschrift, 25, I973, 533-50; and by Guenter Dux, 'Religion, Geschichte und sozialer Wandel in Max Webers Religionssoziologie', in Religion undgesellschaftliche Entwicklung: Studien zur Protestantismus-Kap italismus-These Max Webers, edited by Constans Seyfarth and Walter M. Sprondel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973, pp. 3I3-37. The superb book by Johannes Weiss has also made an important contribution. Max Webers Grundlegung der Soziologie, Frankfurt: UTB, 1975. 3. Walter M. Sprondel and Constans Seyfarth, eds. Max Weber und das Problem der gesellschaftlichen Rationalisierung, Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1979. 4. These essays are found in Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford, i958, pp. 267-301, 323-59. The 'SP' is the introduction to Weber's three-volume comparative studies of the religions of China, India and ancient Palestine. The 'RR' appears in volume one of the German edition immediately after the study on China and before the study on India. 5. 'SP', p. 280/Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religionssoziologie (GARS) I, Tuebingen: Mohr, 1972, p. 252. 6. Weber generally uses the terrm 'ideas' (Ideen) in the nineteenth century usage to refer to coherent views of the cosmos and man's place within it. Thus, 'ideas' and 'world views' will be used synonymously here. Cf. Tenbruck, op. cit., p. 685. 7. Weber repeatedly uses the term 'Eigengesetzlichkeit' in reference to rationalization processes in the religious and other realms (e.g. the economic, domination and legal spheres). This term usually appears in the translations as 'own automony' or 'own lawfulness'. Tenbruck generally prefers his term, 'Eigenlogik'. I 3 7 REVIEW ARTICLES 8. Cf. the beginning pages of the 'SP', 271-76/GARS 1, 241-47 and of Weber's 'Sociology of Religion' in E&S, edited by Guenther Roth and Klaus Wittich, New York: Bedninster Press, i968, pp. 399-439/Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (WG), edited byjohannes Winckelmann, Tuebingen: Mohr, I976, pp. 245-68. 9. Cf. further, E&S, p. 40o/WG, 245; 'Einige kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie', Cesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (WL), Tuebingen: Mohr, '973, pp. 432-38. IO. I am here translating 'Entzauberung' literally rather than, as occurs in all translations of Weber, as 'disenchantment'. 'De-magification' is, for Weber, a very specific type of rationalization process. The term 'disenchantment' conjures up many general notions regarding the decline of the Gemeinschaft. Moreover, it is weighed down with romanticist overtones and a sense of longing for the earlier, 'simpler' world. None of these notions have anything whatsoever to do with Weber's usage of 'Entzauberung'. Parsons' frequent translation as 'rationalization' is wholly misleading. II. SAice Tenbruck's concern is to deal with the long-term rationalization process based on ideas in the sphere of religion, he does not turn to these rationalization processes. They exs in the economic, legal, domination, knowledge and political spheres. 12. For example, practical rational, substantive rational and formal rational action orientations as well as the better known types of rational action: instrumental-rational and value-rational action. Cf. my unpublished dissertation, Max Weber's Concept of Rationlization, Stony Brook: State University of New York, 1978, and my forthcoming article in German in Sprondel and Seyfarth. op. cit. 13. The Religion of China, translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth, New York: The Free Press, 195I, p. 226/GARS I, 512. Cf. further, E&S. p. 424/WC 259. 14. E&S, p. 6I8/WC 372 (my translation). I 5 Ibid., p. 617/371. i6. Ibid., p. 621/373. 17. Ibid., p. 620/373. i8. Cf. 'RR', p. 359/GARS 1, 572-73. 19. Cf. E&S, P. 62I/WG, 373. 20. Weber contrasts 'Jewish rationalism' with 'Puritan asceticism' on a number of occasions in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons, New York: Scribner's, i958, e.g. pp i63-66/GARS 1, I78-82, 123/122. Cf. also E&S, pp. 6i5- 23/WG, 370-74. 21. 'The Jewish law played perhaps the most important role in the development of the specifically modern "capitalist' ethic: its legalistic ethic was taken over by the Puritan ethic and placed together with the modern "bourgeois" economic morality'. (E&S, p. 12o4/WG, 721; my translation). 22. 'RR', P. 3241GARS 1, S37 (translation altered). Cf. further, E&S, p. 522/WG, 317. The specific manner in which the unification oftheJudaic world view by monks and priests altered religious doctrines cannot be discussed here. A central weakness of Tenbruck's article results from the fact that he never turns to the religious doctrines themselves in order to demonstrate his de-magification thesis. 23. To demonstrate this point, Tenbruck also argues that the themes of the CESR occupied Weber for his entire lifetime, whereas the E&S was written in a relatively short period of time. Furthermore, whereas Weber felt obligated to write the E&S as a result of the contract he had signed and the fact that his co-authors never wrote their contributions, the CESR volumes represented a more genuine interest of his. In another article, Tenbruck has called into question the accuracy of the editing of Weber's oeuvre by Johannes Winckelmann ('Wie gut kennen wir Max Weber?', Zeitschrififuer die Gesamte Staaeswissenschaft, 1 3 I1 1975, 7 I9-42). More recently, after examining the correspondence between Weber and his publisher, Tenbruck has again awarded 'major work' status to I 3 8 REVIEW ARTICLES the CESR ('Abschied von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft', Zeitschrifft fuer die Gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 133, 1977, 703-36). 24. The CESR includes The Protestant Ethic in addition to the studies on China, India and ancient Palestine. Weber refers to the latter three studies, which are much more sociological in method than The Protestant Ethic, as The Economic Ethics of the fWorld Religions. Tenbruck argues that they were written later than E&S and thus are more representative of Weber's mature interests. My research of this chronological question leads to the conclusion that the two treatises were written roughly simultaneously. 25. Schluchter's mode of ordering these two religions under Weber's categories of world rejection and world domination leads to all sorts of confusion. For example, his omission of Buddhism from the former category and his inclusion of AncientJudaism in the latter leads to a severe misconception of Weber's overall typology of religious action, as does his labelling of Hinduism as an ethic of conviction and his failure to distinguish between this religion's classical and routinized forms. Asceticism and not AncientJudaism is the concrete reference for Weber's notion of world domination, as is Buddhist mysticism, and not Hinduism, for his concept of world rejection. 26. Cf. e.g. 'Science as a Vocation', in Gerth and Mills, op. ct., pp. i5o-5i/WL, 607. 27. 'RR', p. 339/GARS 1, 552-53 (translation slightly altered). 28. 'Politics as a Vocation', in Gerth and Mills, op. cit., p. 127/Gesammelte Politische Schriften, edited byJohannes Winckelmann, Tuebingen: Moir, i171, p. S59. 29. This element of moral obligation comes into play when, for example, the politician who has acted in accord with an ethic of responsibility feels morally obligated to resign his position after admission of an error ofjudgment. 30. In Wertfreiheit und Verantwortungsethik (op. cit.), to which the article reviewed here is in many ways a sequel, Schluchter has discussed the ethic of responsibility in greater detail. 31. In ibid., Schluchter argued that only the ethic of responsibility, as opposed to the ethic of conviction, can avail itself of the results of 'value-free' science. Cf. also p. 281 of the article reviewed here. 32. Cf. e.g. E&S, p. 30/15. Such a society is the one Weber refers to as an 'iron shell' in the unforgettable concluding pages to The Protestant Ethic. Biographical Note: STEPHEN KALBERG was born in I945 and educated at the University of Washington, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the Universitaet Tuebingen. He has taught at Tuebingen and is currently in the Sociology department at the Universitaet Trier. Acknowledgment I would like to thank Guenther Roth for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. I 39</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><back><notes><p>All references to Weber's texts are given first in the English translation, and then in the original German. All translations of the Tenbruck and Schluchter articles are my own.</p><p><list list-type="order"><list-item><p>1. Benjamin Nelson, `Max Weber's "Author's Introduction" (1920): A Master Clue to his Main Aims', <italic>Sociological Inquiry,</italic> 44, 1974, 269-77. Reinhard Bendix, `Max Weber's Sociology Today', <italic>International Social Science Journal</italic>, 17, 1965, 9-22.</p></list-item><list-item><p>2. F. H. Tenbruck, `Das Werk Max Webers', <italic>Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie,</italic> 27, 1975, 663-702. Wolfgang Schluchter, `Die Paradoxie der Rationalisierung', <italic>Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie, 5,</italic> 1976, 257-84. The most recent contribution to this discussion is a critique of Tenbruck's position by Schluchter. It has just appeared in the <italic>Koelner Zeitschrift.</italic> Schluchter's article, together with a longer essay that in many ways serves to introduce it (<italic>Wertfreiheit und Verantwortungsethik,</italic> Tuebingen: Mohr, 1971), ill be published this year in English in Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter, <italic>Max Weber s Vision of History: Ethics and Method,</italic> Berkeley: The University of California Press. Other articles important in this discussion have been those by Ulrike Vogel, `Einige Ueberlegungen zum Begriff der Rationalitaet bei Max Weber', <italic>Koelner Zeitschrift,</italic> 25, 1973, 533-50; and by Guenter Dux, `Religion, Geschichte und sozialer Wandel in Max Webers Religionssoziologie', in <italic>Religion undgesellschaftliche Entwicklung: Studien zur Protestantismus-Kap italismus-These Max Webers,</italic> edited by Constans Seyfarth and Walter M. Sprondel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973, pp. 313-37. The superb book by Johannes Weiss has also made an important contribution. Max <italic>Webers Grundlegung der Soziologie,</italic> Frankfurt: UTB, 1975.</p></list-item><list-item><p>3. Walter M. Sprondel and Constans Seyfarth, eds. <italic>Max Weber und das Problem der gesellschaftlichen Rationalisierung,</italic> Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1979.</p></list-item><list-item><p>4. These essays are found in Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., <italic>From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology,</italic> New York: Oxford, 1958, pp. 267-301, 323-59. The `SP' is the introduction to Weber's three-volume comparative studies of the religions of China, India and ancient Palestine. The `RR' appears in volume one of the German edition immediately after the study on China and before the study on India.</p></list-item><list-item><p>5. `SP', p. 280/<italic>Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religionssoziologie (GARS)</italic> I, Tuebingen: Mohr, 1972, p. 252.</p></list-item><list-item><p>6. Weber generally uses the terrm `ideas' (Ideen) in the nineteenth century usage to refer to coherent views of the cosmos and man's place within it. Thus, `ideas' and `world views' will be used synonymously here. Cf. Tenbruck, <italic>op. cit.,</italic> p. 685.</p></list-item><list-item><p>7. Weber repeatedly uses the term `Eigengesetzlichkeit' in reference to rationalization processes in the religious and other realms (e.g. the economic, domination and legal spheres). This term usually appears in the translations as `own automony' or `own lawfulness'. Tenbruck generally prefers his term, `Eigenlogik'.</p></list-item><list-item><p>8. Cf. the beginning pages of the `SP', 271-76/GARS 1, 241-47 and of Weber's `Sociology of Religion' in <italic>E&S,</italic> edited by Guenther Roth and Klaus Wittich, New York: Bedninster Press, 1968, pp. 399-439/<italic>Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (WG),</italic> edited by johannes Winckelmann, Tuebingen: Mohr, 1976, pp. 245-68.</p></list-item><list-item><p>9. Cf. further, E&S, <italic>p.</italic> 400/WG, 245; `Einige kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie', <italic>Cesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (WL),</italic> Tuebingen: Mohr, `973, pp. 432-38.</p></list-item><list-item><p>10. I am here translating `Entzauberung' literally rather than, as occurs in all translations of Weber, as `disenchantment'. `De-magification' is, for Weber, a very specific type of rationalization process. The term `disenchantment' conjures up many general notions regarding the decline of the <italic>Gemeinschaft.</italic> Moreover, it is weighed down with romanticist overtones and a sense of longing for the earlier, `simpler' world. None of these notions have anything whatsoever to do with Weber's usage of `Entzauberung'. Parsons' frequent translation as `rationalization' is wholly misleading.</p></list-item><list-item><p>11. Since Tenbruck's concern is to deal with the long-term rationalization process based on ideas in the sphere of religion, he does not turn to these rationalization processes. They exst in the economic, legal, domination, knowledge and political spheres.</p></list-item><list-item><p>12. For example, practical rational, substantive rational and formal rational action orientations as well as the better known types of rational action: instrumental-rational and value-rational action. Cf. my unpublished dissertation, <italic>Max Weber's Concept of Rationlization,</italic> Stony Brook: State University of New York, 1978, and my forthcoming article in German in Sprondel and Seyfarth. <italic>op. cit</italic>.</p></list-item><list-item><p>13. <italic>The Religion of China,</italic> translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth, New York: The Free Press, 1951, p. 226/GARS <italic>I,</italic> 512. Cf. further, <italic>E&S.</italic> p. 424/WC 259.</p></list-item><list-item><p>14. <italic>E&S,</italic> p. 618/WC 372 (my translation).</p></list-item><list-item><p>15. <italic>Ibid.,</italic> p. 617/371.</p></list-item><list-item><p>16. <italic>Ibid.,</italic> p. 621/373.</p></list-item><list-item><p>17. <italic>Ibid.,</italic> p. 620/373.</p></list-item><list-item><p>18. Cf. `RR', p. 359/<italic>GARS</italic> I, 572-73.</p></list-item><list-item><p>19. Cf. <italic>E&S,</italic> p. 621/<italic>WG,</italic> 373.</p></list-item><list-item><p>20. Weber contrasts `Jewish rationalism' with `Puritan asceticism' on a number of occasions in <italic>The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,</italic> translated by Talcott Parsons, New York: Scribner's, 1958, e.g. pp 163-66/GARS 1, 178-82, 123/122. Cf. also <italic>E&S,</italic> pp. 615-23/WG, 370-74.</p></list-item><list-item><p>21. `The Jewish law played perhaps the most important role in the development of the specifically modern "capitalist' ethic: its legalistic ethic was taken over by the Puritan ethic and placed together with the modern "bourgeois" economic morality'. (E&S, p. 1204/WG, 721; my translation).</p></list-item><list-item><p>22. <italic>`RR',</italic> p. 324/<italic>GARS</italic> I, 537 (translation altered). Cf. further, <italic>E&S,</italic> p. 522/<italic>WG,</italic> 317. The specific manner in which the unification of the Judaic world view by monks and priests altered religious doctrines cannot be discussed here. A central weakness of Tenbruck's article results from the fact that he never turns to the religious doctrines themselves in order to demonstrate his de-magification thesis.</p></list-item><list-item><p>23. To demonstrate this point, Tenbruck also argues that the themes of the <italic>CESR</italic> occupied Weber for his entire lifetime, whereas the <italic>E&S</italic> was written in a relatively short period of time. Furthermore, whereas Weber felt obligated to write the <italic>E&S</italic> as a result of the contract he had signed and the fact that his co-authors never wrote their contributions, the <italic>CESR</italic> volumes represented a more genuine interest of his. In another article, Tenbruck has called into question the accuracy of the editing of Weber's oeuvre by Johannes Winckelmann ('Wie gut kennen wir Max Weber?', <italic>Zeitschrififuer die Gesamte Staaeswissenschaft,</italic> 131, 1975, 719-42). More recently, after examining the correspondence between Weber and his publisher, Tenbruck has again awarded `major work' status to the <italic>CESR</italic> ('Abschied von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft', <italic>Zeitschrifft fuer die Gesamte Staatswissenschaft,</italic> 133, 1977, 703-36).</p></list-item><list-item><p>24. The <italic>CESR</italic> includes <italic>The Protestant Ethic</italic> in addition to the studies on China, India and ancient Palestine. Weber refers to the latter three studies, which are much more sociological in method than <italic>The Protestant Ethic, as The Economic Ethics of the World Religions.</italic> Tenbruck argues that they were written later than <italic>E&S</italic> and thus are more representative of Weber's mature interests. My research of this chronological question leads to the conclusion that the two treatises were written roughly simultaneously.</p></list-item><list-item><p>25. Schluchter's mode of ordering these two religions under Weber's categories of world rejection and world domination leads to all sorts of confusion. For example, his omission of Buddhism from the former category and his inclusion of Ancient Judaism in the latter leads to a severe misconception of Weber's overall typology of religious action, as does his labelling of Hinduism as an ethic of conviction and his failure to distinguish between this religion's classical and routinized forms. Asceticism and not Ancient Judaism is the concrete reference for Weber's notion of world domination, as is Buddhist mysticism, and not Hinduism, for his concept of world rejection.</p></list-item><list-item><p>26. Cf. e.g. `Science as a Vocation', in Gerth and Mills, <italic>op. ct.,</italic> pp. 150-51/<italic>WL,</italic> 607.</p></list-item><list-item><p>27. `RR', p. 339/<italic>GARS 1,</italic> 552-53 (translation slightly altered).</p></list-item><list-item><p>28. `Politics as a Vocation', in Gerth and Mills, <italic>op. cit., p. 127/Gesammelte Politische Schriften,</italic> edited by Johannes Winckelmann, Tuebingen: Moir, 1171, p. 559.</p></list-item><list-item><p>29. This element of moral obligation comes into play when, for example, the politician who has acted in accord with an ethic of responsibility feels morally obligated to resign his position after admission of an error of judgment.</p></list-item><list-item><p>30. <italic>In Wertfreiheit und Verantwortungsethik (op. cit.),</italic> to which the article reviewed here is in many ways a sequel, Schluchter has discussed the ethic of responsibility in greater detail.</p></list-item><list-item><p>31. <italic>In ibid.,</italic> Schluchter argued that only the ethic of responsibility, as opposed to the ethic of conviction, can avail itself of the results of `value-free' science. Cf. also p. 281 of the article reviewed here.</p></list-item><list-item><p>32. Cf. e.g. <italic>E&S,</italic> p. 30/15. Such a society is the one Weber refers to as an `iron shell' in the unforgettable concluding pages to <italic>The Protestant Ethic</italic>.</p></list-item></list></p></notes></back></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Book Review: The Search for Thematic Orientations in a Fragmented Oeuvre: The Discussion of Max Weber in Recent German Sociological Literature</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Book Review: The Search for Thematic Orientations in a Fragmented Oeuvre: The Discussion of Max Weber in Recent German Sociological Literature</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Stephen</namePart><namePart type="family">Kalberg</namePart><affiliation>Sociology department at the Universitaet Trier</affiliation></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="review-article" displayLabel="review-article"></genre><originInfo><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1979-01</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1979</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><physicalDescription><internetMediaType>text/html</internetMediaType></physicalDescription><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Sociology</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0038-0385</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1469-8684</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">SOC</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spsoc</identifier><part><date>1979</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>13</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>1</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>127</start><end>139</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">7274DBF5E71D5CED676B766A3B74D8BE217AD58E</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1177/003803857901300111</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1177_003803857901300111</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource>SAGE</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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