Abstract
Amidst the recent resurgence of interest in religion as one of the main ‘sources of the self’, Max Weber’s argument in the
Introduction
Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of both public and academic interest in religion. This renewed interest is due in particular to the role that religion has increasingly played in mobilising political participation, particularly in the last decade. A key element of interest and concern for what has been termed a post-secular turn (Habermas, 2008) has been the fact that religion is regarded as still being an important factor in identity formation, or one of the main ‘sources of the self’, to paraphrase Taylor’s appropriate formula (Taylor, 1992). The role of religion in the shaping of an inner self also had, however, a foundational role for sociology itself. The study of the religious roots of subjectivation occupied large and crucial parts of the work of its founding fathers, from Karl Marx to Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel and Max Weber. By means of their investigation into the role played by religious belief as a privileged medium of primary socialisation and individuation, they provided crucial elements for the understanding of their mechanisms and of the dialectic between individual and society.
In this article, I aim particularly to address Max Weber’s writings on religion in terms of their treatment of the role played by religions in shaping the individual’s self. Weber’s hypothesis regarding the religious dimensions of individuation is still crucial to contemporary sociological readings of the renaissance of religion, as it helps us to understand the intimate dynamics between social conditions, economic and political structures, religious beliefs and personal identity.
In Weber’s
We could thus start by noticing that, for Weber, while individualism could certainly be ascribed specifically to Western social formation, processes of individuation, albeit in different forms and especially with different results, took place also in the other cultural contexts that he analysed, particularly world religions. Weber detected the roots of both the rise and the absence of capitalism and modernity in different patterns of individuals’ formation.
In order to highlight this aspect of Weber’s work, I will first recall the main problematic of the
Religious ‘determinants’ of Weber’s lexicon of individuation
It is well known that Weber started the study and comparison of different religions and civilisations in order to corroborate his initial thesis: namely, that only Protestantism (and especially Calvinism) could give rise to modern capitalism, via the concept of
By studying the main features of ancient Judaism, Protestantism, Hinduism and Confucianism, along with other ‘hetherodox’ Asian religions, Weber argued that they could not generate a
Weber did not provide an explicit and univocal definition of religion. The section on ‘The Sociology of Religion’ in
For the purposes of the present essay, it is important to highlight how Weber’s pattern of explanation was threefold insofar as it conceived religion as the middle term between social and individual conditions. Social and political dimensions, in his view, were the elements responsible for shaping the very content and the essential characteristics of religious rationalisations (or theodicies). At the same time, religious rationalisations were translated into a coherent set of prescriptions and motives that forged individuals’ behaviour and personality.
Thus the concept of personality, which plays a crucial role in Weber’s reconstruction of religion’s historical role, is not conceivable without reference to the very social and political circumstances in which religions themselves arose. What precisely, however, does personality mean? Does it have a specific and privilegd status in Weber’s account of the subjective factors of historical development? By briefly answering these questions, I aim to clarify the specifity of Weber’s vocabulary and to provide an analytical map for understanding the main developments and results of his studies on religion that will be presented in the following paragraphs.
Weber uses the terms ‘individual’, ‘individuality’ and ‘personality’ at different moments. For instance, he employs the concept of individual (
Weber was much influenced by these notions of individuality and personality. He explicitely referred to the term
‘Personality’ is a concept that finds its ‘essence’ in the consistency of its intimate relationship to certain ultimate ‘values’ and ‘meanings’ of life. These values and meanings have their effect by being forged into purposes and thereby translated into rational-teleological action. (Weber, 1968: 132)
In the light of this, religions had the role of shaping individuals as autonomous personalities inherently forged by a set of coherent motives. The concept of individuation (
Ethic particularism and religious universalism in the construction of the Jewish personality
For Weber, the roots of the process of formal rationalisation that characterises the West were to be found in the Jewish religion and in the particular relation that it instituted between God and the world.
Like most of the Semitic divinities, the God of the Hebrews initially had a naturalist and local character. Only with the passing of time did he assume a universal quality as the guarantor of the social order who made an agreement with the people of Israel. He was not the only God but simply the most important one. His strength derived especially from being the creator of the world and human beings.
The world was conceived as neither eternal nor unchangeable, but rather as being created. Its present structure was a product of man’s actions, above all those of the Jews, and God’s reaction to them. Hence the world was a
The first element of rationalisation, therefore, could be traced back to the following fact: Judaism considered the world to be a historical product, the effect of an inscrutable will that could not be influenced through magical means or rituals, but must simply be followed by assuming an ethical and rational conduct of life according to the laws of God. In the Weberian reconstruction of the psychological connections that shaped the typical Hebrew character we can identify at least two elements that set the stage for the construction of personalities potentially oriented towards social change, although not towards a capitalist organisation of society.
The first element, which is also the more important one, is the
With the passing of time, poor monarchical policy led to continuous tensions and discontent within Israelite society. According to Parente,
with the rise of the monarchy, the idea of alliance was extended to the lower classes and the ancient contraposition between semi-nomadic peasant and shepherd tribes … increased following the progressive urbanisation of the former, due especially to security reasons. Moreover, in the city, during the monarchy, the major articulation of economical life determined disparity between the various families by creating or increasing those social differences that we find denounced by the Prophets. Yet these denunciations are not formulated in the name of an abstract justice … Rather, these denunciations function as a re-affirmation of the need to restore the ancient pre-monarchical order which was based upon the
In Parente’s observation we can find some key aspects for understanding the ambivalent character of anti-authoritarianism within prophecy; ambivalent in the sense that there was a tension between revolutionary and restorative impulses. In Weber’s reconstruction, ‘in status origin the prohets were diverse [
The second important element in the constitution of Jewish personality was the fact that the community of faith was more important than the community of blood. Thus, there was a form of emancipation of the individual from the authority of family insofar as the first power with which prophecy came into conflict was the natural community of the family group. According to Weber, in ancient Judaism ‘the relationships of the sib and of matrimony have been, at least relatively, devalued. The magical ties and exclusiveness of the sibs have shattered, and within the new community the prophetic religion has developed a religious ethic of brotherliness’ (Weber, 1967: 329–333).
For Weber, the idea of a privileged relation with God by means of this agreement also contributed to the identification of Jews as a ‘pariah people’ (
However, in Weber’s reading, this anti-authoritarian characteristic and the condition of marginality as privileged positions from which new, radical ideas can be born were necessary but not sufficient conditions for the promotion of change and, in particular, the type of change in which Weber was interested: that is, the unique historical conjuncture with a universal character from which capitalism arose.
The doctrinal elements of ancient Judaism were not favourable to the development of inner worldly asceticism, nor to the idea of
The element that Weber thus found to be missing from the combination of potentially revolutionary ingredients was that of the individual and its centrality (Seidman and Gruber, 1977; Nelson, 1969). Judaism stressed ‘collective’ responsibility in the face of the
Ultimately, Weber contrasted Jewish eschatology and the theory of predestination in order to show that only the latter could have given rise to bourgeois individualism and, consequently, to capitalism. The search for salvation, for the Jew, was a collective hope, because he ‘anticipated his own personal salvation through a revolution of the existing social stratification to the advantage of his pariah people’ (Weber, 1978: 494). On the other hand, Calvinist doctrine was merciless, inhuman and characterised by a feeling of total solitude. As Weber argued, ‘it seems at first a mystery how the undoubted superiority of Calvinism in social organisation can be connected with this tendency to tear the individual away from the close ties with which he is bound to this world’ (Weber, 1930: 108). Hope for salvation for the Calvinist was therefore entirely individual and even though it could not be favoured by actions according to the laws of God, it could be nourished by worldly action
Individualism, anti-authoritarianism and particularism of grace: the Protestant Persönlichkeit
In
A socio-economical contextualisation of the Reformation is completely absent from the first monograph of
This is certainly one of the reasons that led Protestantism to be deeply marked by the anti-authoritarian feature already present in ancient Judaism. The Protestant anti-authoritarian trait was, essentially, the manifestation of a political fight for economical power. Starting with Luther’s challenge of the authority of the Roman Church, this element accompanied the creation and organisation of all Protestant Churches.
For instance, while Weber refers to the historical struggle between the Stuarts and the first Puritan sects in England during the 17th century (when the laws were enacted that allowed some Sunday entertainment after the hours of religious devotion), he wrote that ‘the King’s threats of severe punishment for every attack on the legality of those sports were motivated by his purpose of breaking the anti-authoritarian ascetic tendency of Puritanism, which was so dangerous to the State’ (Weber, 1930: 167). 7
Beside this aspect, what constituted the particular and decisive sign of the Protestant character was the promotion of individualism as the ideology of the self-made man and as a universalist, non-discriminatory economical morality. The affirmation of ‘utilitarian’ radical individualism was possible, first, by means of a doctrine according to which salvation was an entirely private affair. The institution of a personal, direct relationship with God, by means of a personal reading of the holy texts, without priestly intermediary, was another step towards the delegitimisation of the authority of the Church’s ministers. However, it also promoted a more individualistic attitude as it forced the individual into a deeper personal reflection on him/herself and to the complete acceptance of responsibility for his/her actions. 8
This combination of radical individualism and anti-authoritarianism led to a paradoxical situation in which the human world was, on the one hand, discredited vis-a-vis the divine world and, on the other hand and at the same time, taken into greater consideration as the space in which signs of grace could be made visible. It is by means of this paradoxical fusion that Calvinism in particular developed the ‘inner-worldly asceticism’ that was at the origin of the doctrine of
The religious virtuoso can be placed in the world as the instrument of a God and cut off from all magical means of salvation. At the same time, it is imperative for the virtuoso that he ‘proves’ himself before God, as being called
The refusal of the world and, at the same time, its re-affirmation as the place of confirmation of grace, were therefore central aspects to the rationalisation of economic activity and social change as permanent conditions of a society founded upon the de-sacralisation of its secular institutions and upon personal responsibility. Nevertheless, it was necessary that the same religious ethic that could give rise to such a Copernican revolution within the ethic-religious and worldly field also accomplished other important tasks. That is, it had to dismiss the magical, to abandon every foolish ambition of knowing the sense of the world and, therefore, every hope of changing the course of destiny with its own action. In other words, it was necessary to eliminate the concept of atonement and forgiveness.
Only an ethic that could promote rational conduct at such a level of mercilessness, for Weber, could have led to the impersonality of bureaucracy that characterises Western formal rationality. What permitted such a combination was not only an intrinsic anti-authoritarian element, potentially able to challenge tradition and already present in the Jewish-Christian personality, but especially the promotion of bourgeois individualism through the epocal shift that led – to use Benjamin Nelson’s (1969) effective formula – ‘from tribal brotherhood to universal otherhood’.
Weber highlighted this aspect especially in the pages of ‘“Churches” and “Sects” in North America’ and ‘Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism’.
9
Here, he completed his depiction of the
In Weber’s eyes, despite the intuitive image of an atomised society, the USA was an intricate web of groups and sects, membership of which was a precondition for being admitted to the world of business. Thus Weber defined American society as a
Therefore, the sectarian constitution of American society, seemingly a hybrid type between
Sects were the place in which religious zeal was re-incited, in which a spirit of exclusivity and proud resistance to worldly institutions was cultivated, and in which individual affirmation was a precondition for social cohesion. Weber argued that
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
The individual shaped by ascetic Protestantism, of which membership of a sect was an expression, also constituted the basis on which Weber defined the modern self as a manifestation of
Far from being a ‘doctrine’ of isolation and atomisation, modern individualism, in Weber’s depiction, was deeply characterised by a social-collective dimension. What was crucial to such an individualism, indeed, was precisely that the group to which the individual bounded him/herself was not an ascribed one. In this respect Weber recognised that other religions (such as Hinduism, as we will see) also promoted an individualised, personal search for salvation that could develop forms of individualism, or self-centeredness. Yet this factor alone was not sufficient, as the emancipation of the individual ‘from the close ties with which he is bound to this world’ turned out to be an element of decisive importance.
The solipsistic and conformist personality of Hinduism
In his study of India, Weber detected deviation from the tracks of a potential rational economical development in a capitalist sense primarily in the so-called ‘Hindu or Brahminic restoration’. This enabled the Hindu hierocracy (the Brahmins) to affirm themselves as the caste at the apex of the social pyramid. Moreover, in Weber’s view, it also promoted a doctrine which contributed greatly to the segregation of social relations, thus inhibiting the possibility of the onset of capitalism and of any kind of change.
In this case, the work Weber essayed was essentially the reconstruction of the complex Indian system of castes, the reasons for its affirmation and the ideology on which it was based. The extraordinary capacity of these
For Weber, the process of individuation in India is not understandable without a detailed analysis of the caste system and of the complex and refined intertwining of interests (especially those of the Brahmins) upon which it was based.
The Brahmins were priests and scholars of high status. They were initially employed in the administrative service, and they were able to affirm themselves as the only legitimate priestly rank. Initially, they promoted themselves as the personal priests of princes and nobles and then, thanks to systems of conservation of acquired position that they developed, they defined themselves as the priestly caste that was the only depositary of Vedic knowledge and paths to salvation. The social power of the Brahmins, therefore, was based especially upon their acquired position as the spiritual advisors of princes, and through the doctrinal principles they propagated they demonstrated themselves to be extraordinarily effective in preserving the
In order to analyse the way in which the type of rationalisation promoted by Hinduism addressed the practical conduct of life and shaped recognisable cores of personality, Weber referred essentially to three elements: the role of caste
The principle of
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 proportion to the surplus of one or other side of the ledger. (Weber, 1958: 119)
These merits and faults consisted essentially in the individual’s respect or contravention of the
The interconnections between ritual duty (
religious individualism [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 Brahminical doctrine. In polar opposition to the belief in election by divine grace, this doctrine left it entirely to the individual soul to work out its own fate. (1958: 169)
In this passage, Weber points to an important difference between Hinduism and Protestantism. The type of individualism and personal responsibility promoted by Protestantism encourages an individual (rather than mediated) relation with the divine, a personal interpretation of the Holy books and a behaviour in the world oriented towards the search for confirmation of grace. In the last instance, however, the individual can do nothing in order to change his/her destinty, which is entirely decided by God, the sole and unique source of authority.
Hinduism, on the other hand, promotes an individual search for salvation that is undertaken in total solitude; its achievement is entirely a personal responsibility. At the same time, the tools of this search are not personally chosen, as the Hindu believer does not have direct access to the Holy books but needs an intermediary. Furthermore, this type of ‘religious individualism’, as Weber termed it, lacks any sort of anti-authoritarian idea, insofar as every action is dictated by the rules of the caste to which the individual belongs and which, in turn, is the caste that the individual has gained through his/her previous behaviour. It is indeed scarcely possible to think of a more ‘ascribed’ community or group than the one to which one belongs by birth and by necessity.
As a consequence, to Weber, the type of ‘individualism’ promoted by Hinduism was a form of extreme self-closure without any worldly appeal. In other words, the structure of the personality shaped by Hinduism was strongly marked by a major form of egotism and pursuit of particularist objectives. At the same time, it was oriented in a way that conformed completely to authority. Thus, it was a form of individualism better termed as
The individualities that were constituted in South Asia thus appeared to Weber more like monads, singularly responsible for their faults and conditions. They were individualities adequate for the achievement of beatitude by means of the immanent purification of the human being, conceived as an absolute individual; but this form of extreme (or, as I have called it, solipsistic) individualism, for him, could not carry within itself the seeds of social change.
The ritualistic and gregarious individual of Confucian China
The study of China constitutes perhaps the most complete and persuasive of Weber’s four monographs on the sociology of religion. It is the text on which Weber worked for the longest time and to which he made the most numerous changes (see Schluchter, 1988). The final chapter of
Weber begins by analysing the strategical importance of intellectual rank in relation to those who had mastered the holy art of writing. He depicts the formation of this group as the result of a long process of territorial unification and administrative centralisation. The work of the cultured strata was essential for the administrative homogenisation of the empire. However, in order to avoid feudalisation, it was equally important that they did not demand the acquisition of the governed territories. Apart from the prohibition on the inheritance of administrative posts, the establishemnt of roots in the provinces was also discouraged by means of a system of time-limited assignments and destinations different from the places of origin of the mandarins.
It was in the light of these restrictions, both rational and dynamic, that Weber defined Chinese bureaucratic power in terms of rational-legal domination legitimated by formally constituted institutions. However, the element that could have constituted a dynamic aspect of the administration – namely, the mobility of the officials as an atidote to the crystallisation of interests – was the cause of major immobilism and of regression into administrative traditionalism. These aspects led Weber to characterise the Chinese order as an ‘incomplete bureaucracy’, as a hybrid between legal and traditional power, which he defined as ‘patrimonial bureaucracy’. Mandarins did not have any interest in promoting the renewal or modernisation of the administrative apparatus, because their principal source of sustenance, apart from a state income, was the prebends accumulated through tax collection. What enabled them to keep their acquired position was the principle of unconditional reverence (
Although Weber emphasised the consequences of the complex balance between central and peripheral forces for the Confucian type of, the supposed stability of this form of rationality was explained, in the last instance, by aspects linked to personality. Weber thus procedeed to a detailed and pointed analysis of Confucianism as the key to the traits of Chinese individuality.
As I have argued, the combination of anti-authoritarianism and individualism constituted, in Weber’s view, the key mixture for explaining both the origin of modern capitalism and change as a possibility that was open to individuals and as an immanent condition of the social system. While ancient Judaism, in contrast to Hinduism (and heterodox oriental religions), had the first but not the second element, Confucianism
The first crucial feature of Weber’s explanation was the claim that Confucianism, in itself, was not a religion but a philosophy, a
Weber thus stressed how the stability of Chinese society and the lack of an impulse to intervene in and to change the world (as promoted instead by the Puritan ethic) were due to two features: on the one hand, the absence of a tension between God and the world that could have led to the downgrading of the latter and consequently to the
Weber arrived at the conclusion that an ‘incomplete’ individuality was developed in China (incomplete, that is, in comparison with Western individuality). Weber followed missionary accounts (almost the only sources available to a westerner without knowledge of Chinese in the years in which Weber wrote) in depicting typical Chinese behaviour as
meant adjustment to the outside, to the conditions of the ‘world’. A well-adjusted man, rationalising his conduct only to the degree requisite for adjustment, does not constitute a
The absence of a unitary and coherent conduct that was driven from inside and oriented to demonstrate devotion to a superior entity, or to overcome the fallen state and sufferings of the world, prevented the emergence of a more rational economical conduct (in a capitalistic sense). This occurred not only in the sense that Confucianism developed a form of merely conventionalist rationalism. It also prevented the emergence of the form of individualism that, according to Weber, was essential to the rise of civil society and, ultimately, capitalism. Furthermore, both the centrality of the concept of
Ultimately, the study of Confucianism enabled Weber to focus and to explicate his thesis regarding the elements that alone could give rise to change. They included a doctrine that was an expression of marginalised, but not subjugated, social groups, which by reason of their social position and capacity of responding politically and actively to this condition, could promote enduring characteristics for the construction of personality: namely, anti-authoritarianism and individualism as the capacity to emerge from the constraints of the ascribed group.
Concluding remarks
In each of his monographs on world religions, Weber delineated the profile of different individualities as different
Some of the aspects of this process upon which Weber focused were the orientations of accommodation (or adjustment) rather than of anti-authoritarianism. It was the combination of these orientations with those of autonomy or gregariousness that could lead to a process of change or, rather, to immobilism and traditionalism. Their intertwining gives rise to particular constellations of personalities, which in turn are typical of their respective religious and socio-economical contexts.
As Weber delineated the process of individuation in each context of study and identified their historical promoters, he attempted to describe the types of individuality or personality that inaugurated Western modernity, or those that inhibited it, as well as their socio-economic profiles. In the final analysis, he argued that these orientations and possible combinations were the expression of specific social classes and interest groups that, due to their position, were more or less in favour of breaking with tradition and established powers.
Undoubtedly, there remain many problematic aspects of Weber’s analysis, not least of which are his well known historically inaccurate depictions and cultural and religious misunderstandings. Furthermore, given that he posited the roots of social change in the ‘Western personality’ alone, and suggested that there is an ‘ontological difference between Eastern and Western economic (as well as religious) “mentalities”’ (Said, 1978: 259), Weber has justly been identified as one of the most important 20th-century representatives of Eurocentrism and Orientialism. Nevertheless, his attempt to understand by means of historical and transcultural comparative inquiry the ways in which the intertwining of religious beliefs and social, economical and political structures may constitute ‘sources of the self’ still constitutes an important resource with which debates in social theory about the role of religion in the contemporary world may profitably engage.
Footnotes
1.
It must be clarified at the outset that here I employ the term ‘individuation’ as the process of formation of patterns of individuality or individual types. However, the term itself is not employed by Weber.