Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity

Sam Whimster, Dr Scott Lash

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317833352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book brings together leading figures in history, sociology, political science, feminism and critical theory to interpret, evaluate, criticize and update Weber's legacy. In a collection of specially commissioned pieces and translated articles the Weberian scholarship recognizes Max Weber as the figure central to contemporary debates on the need for societal rationality, the limits of reason and the place of culture and conduct in the supposedly post-religious age.

In Part 1, Wolfgang Mommsen, Wilhelm Hennis, Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter provide a full and varied account of the theme of rationalization in the world civilizations. In Part 2 Pierre Bourdieu and Barry Hindess critically examine Weber's social action model, and Johannes Weiss and Martin Albrow address the putative 'crisis' of Western rationality. In Part 3 Jeffrey Alexander, Ralph Schroeder, Bryan Turner, Roslyn Bologh and Sam Whimster scrutinize Weber's understanding of modernity with its characteristic plurality of 'gods and demons'; they focus on its implications for individuality and personality, the body and sexuality, feminism and aesthetic modernism. Part 4 turns to politics, law and the state in the contemporary world: Colin Gordon on liberalism, Luciano Cavalli on charismatic politics, Stephen Turner and Regis Factor on decisionism and power and Scott Lash on modernism, substantice rationality and law.

This book was first published in 1987.

PART ONE

The Processes of Rationalization

1

Personal Conduct and Societal Change

Towards a Reconstruction of Max Weber’s Concept of History

WOLFGANG MOMMSEN

Translated by Rainhild Wells

For some years now Max Weber’s sociological work has been attracting a new kind of attention, not just of the social sciences and historiography but from the wider public as well. His programme of constructing ideal type concepts oriented towards history, which had been neglected as a relic of historical thinking, has now become topical again. Ever since the ‘end of ideology’ thesis has been revealed as both rash and erroneous, and ever since technological, economic and social progress has appeared to be increasingly problematic, the need has arisen once again to reassure ourselves of our place in relation to history. In this situation going back to Max Weber’s work presents itself as an obvious choice for it provides an unrivalled combination of the macro-sociological, on the one hand, and on the other a precise definition of the field together with concrete historical research.

Max Weber was probably the last of the line of great liberal thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and he endeavoured to formulate his political views on the basis of the whole of Western history as it was known. Faced with an industrial mass society that transformed the conditions within which Western man was to live his life, he sought, at a time of enormous constraint, new answers to the old question of the scope of personal freedom. At a time when the materialist philosophies of history and their associated ideologies had called into question the notion of individual freedom, Max Weber’s ‘interpretive sociology’ offered the possibility for the individual to orientate him or herself to the world in a rational way. ‘We cannot read off the meaning of the world from our investigation of it however perfect, rather we have to create this meaning ourselves’ (MSS, p. 56); for Weber this was a state of affairs beyond which one could not go. This did not mean a return to irrationalism, but instead formed the starting-point for developing a system of ‘interpretive sociology’ that would enable the individual to calculate as rationally as possible the basis for his action in relation to his own situation. The decision as to which ultimate ideal one chose from other competing and, in formal terms, equally valid ideals should be made in complete knowledge of other possible ways of leading one’s life. In the last analysis interpretive sociology of a universal historical compass could serve to indicate the optimal form of conducting one’s life according to one’s own ultimate ideals. This required that our entire knowledge of the past be put into systematic order at any given time according to specific perspectives. His works on the history of ancient society, the development of the Occidental city and the sociology of the world religions are far more than narrative history; they represent ideal-typical and systematic treatment of defined segments of historical reality in their significance for modern man. Likewise the theory behind ideal types, which in Economy and Society is a systematization of all known history, was in the first instance meant as an aid for conceptually orienting the individual in the face of the infinite diversity of the past, even though it also serves as a specific aid for the historian to make ‘the causal explanation of some historically and culturally important phenomenon’ (ES, p. 20).

Max Weber always warned against the misconstruing of the ideal-typical reconstruction of segments of the past that appear to ‘hold a meaning’ as elements of a materialist philosophy of history; instead he emphasized time and time again the merely hypothetical and perspectival character of the ideal type as it is applied to the historical process in his work. So, for instance, Puritanism as the ground from which sprang the spirit of capitalism was one such hypothesis. Admittedly his investigations into the sociology of religion can be interpreted in some measure as a grandiose attempt at a substantive reconstruction of Occidental history in terms of the origins of the ‘specific and peculiar “rationalism” of Western culture’ (PESC, p. 26). In the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to the ‘Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion’ Weber himself emphasized with the utmost clarity the ‘singularity’ of Western civilization; it alone has produced rational science and rational harmonic music; it alone has brought to perfection the bureaucratic principle of rule through the organization of trained officials; it alone had fully developed capitalism as the rational, capitalistic organization of (formally) free labour (PESC, p. 21) in its specific form as a production-intensive, continuous and market-oriented system of industrial production for the maximization of profit, which would determine the life of every individual in the foreseeable future. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from this that the reconstruction of this irreversible secular process was the specific object of his historical sociology. Of course Weber himself invited this misunderstanding to some degree by allowing his analyses of the other great world religions and their influence on societies to appear merely as a contrast to the specific character of Western civilization and as an indirect corroboration of the hypothesis of modern capitalism and the spirit of Protestantism. And equally there is no lack of remarks suggesting that Western civilization had reached its ‘end-point’ of development. In at times almost apocalyptic formulations he evoked again and again the impending petrification of Occidental civilization based on the principles of individuality and competition, albeit in a hypothetical manner as for instance in his treatise, ‘Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany’ of 1918: ‘Together with the inanimate machine it [bureaucracy] is busy fabricating the shell of future servility which men will perhaps be forced to inhabit some day, as powerless as the fellahs of ancient Egypt.’ This would occur if the German people were determined to put a technically good civil service higher than everything else (ES, p. 1402).

Influenced by these and other similar remarks previous research has been prepared to adopt the rationalization thesis as the axis of his work without too much deliberation. Accordingly history is reconstructed as a process of the rationalization of social relations and of increasing disenchantment, in which all world-views become progressively devalued. Two different strategies of interpretation offered themselves and were, indeed, adopted: first, the teleological reconstruction of the history of the Occident as an essentially linear process of disenchantment and as the rationalization of the predominating world-views and orders of society; second, an evolutionist interpretation of world history as an evolutionary process of selection, in the course of which the present rational order of the world had developed as one among many other historically possible patterns of society and was reached through a historical progression of previously attained levels of rationalization.

Günter Abramowski’s study, Das Geschichtsbild Max Webers, which closely follows the texts themselves, shows with remarkable clarity the extent to which the teleological interpretation with rationalization as its central thesis is possible and makes sense (Abramowski, 1966). But readings like this, when measured against the originality and richness of his ideal-typical interpretation of the past, lead inevitably to a narrowing of Weber’s questions and to a dilution of his theories. And in the process the tensions in Weber’s work quite frequently are unacceptably harmonized and the chronological order of his oeuvre is disregarded. But most of all the antinomy within the structure of his thought is excised to be replaced by a largely uniform model of interpretation. The newer evolutionary theories, in particular that of Wolfgang Schluchter, are an improvement in this respect (1981). Schluchter has suggested transferring the rationalization thesis, as it is to be found pre-eminently in the writings on the sociology of religion, into a model of a ‘societal history of the West’, which avoids the pitfalls of a straightforward evolutionary theory. In a similar manner Stefan Breuer has recently attempted to distil from Weber’s writings on the history of the classical world an evolutionary model of historical development (1982). The advantage of this approach is that it does not lead to a conception of world history as directed towards a single goal and hence to a mono-linear, teleological and material reconstruction. Instead it is able to do justice to the variety of sociological formations and to the breaks in the continuity of societal development as they have occurred in the course of over a millennium of Western history. All the same this approach seeks to show that according to Max Weber world history is a directional and irreversible process in which the principle of rationalization has triumphed out of an inner necessity. Despite the countless relapses and the repeated interruptions in the continuity, the history of the West is a process of man’s increasing domination over the world due to the progressive rationalization of world-views and a corresponding development in the steering capacities of social systems. Decisive importance is given to the formally rational methods of science, the rational institutions of the capitalist industrial system and the bureaucratic and institutional state that developed solely in the West. From this perspective Weber’s sociology appears as the apotheosis of the principle of rationality and modern rational science with progressive disenchantment and the end of ideology as its logical correlates. It is unarguably the case that Max Weber’s writings, at least up to 1913, allow one such interpretation of his whole work. Nevertheless the question arises whether this really gets to the heart of Weber’s intentions, or only – as we believe – touches on one, admittedly important, aspect.

The recent interpretations of Wolfgang Schluchter and Arnold Zingerle are in some ways attempts to refute the view that the evolutionary dynamic of religious world-views was at the core of Weber’s sociology. Friedrich Tenbruck doubts whether evolutionist interpretations that opt one-sidely in favour of a rationalistic world-view and a world ‘freed from enchantment’ do in fact correspond to Weber’s own view (1975; 1980). While Schluchter and Tenbruck agree that the question ‘What is rationality?’ lies at the centre of Weber’s work, they arrive at different conclusions. Tenbruck rightly points out that Weber emphasized repeatedly that the rationalization of world-views, which were originally determined by religion, could develop in a great variety of directions and not solely in the direction of a reduced religious orientation to the world and a corresponding increase in instrumentally rational forms of conduct guided by modern ‘value-free’ science. Therefore rationalization should not, he claims, merely be understood as a self-propelling process of progressive disenchantment of religious world-views, but rather as a step leading precisely to the intensification of the effects of religious values on society. This is something that may be observed in all world religions. The ability of religious and ideological world-views – which were supposed to have disappeared as it were into the obscurity of the past – to set the course of societal development is a feature, says Tenbruck, that has to be rehabilitated in the present time as well.

Wilhelm Hennis has taken a much stronger position against neoevolutionist interpretations of Weber’s work and the supposition that the rationalization process is its apotheosis (1983). Hennis disputes that the development of Western ‘rationalism’ in the hitherto described sense-as a process of increasing disenchantment or, rather, as an increasingly purely rational and functional order of all social relationships – was really Max Weber’s theme. Instead, argues Hennis, the primary concern was the ‘development of mankind’ (Entwicklung des Menschentums) as such. In Weber’s work the analysis of social structures is always carried out with respect to one main consideration: what type of person is granted the optimal chances? As support for his thesis Hennis refers to an illuminating remark of Weber’s concerning the intentions that guided him when writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: ‘it was not the furtherance of capitalism in its expansion which formed the centre of my interest, but the development of the type of mankind that was brought about by the conjunction of religiously and economically conditioned factors’ (Hennis, 1983, p. 148). Hennis therefore regards the entire recent research to be erroneous in concluding that Weber wanted to write ‘the universal history of the establishment of occidental rationalism’ (Hennis, 1983, p. 150). In contrast to this Hennis takes up an older tradition, that of Löwith, Jaspers and Landshut, who had mainly emphasized the anthropological basis of human existence in Weber’s thinking. The dangers to individuality and the increasing ‘alienation of man’ as a result of the advance of bureaucratic forms of social organization had already been singled out by Löwith as the central idea in Weber’s work (Löwith, 1982). In the investigations into the sociology of religion and sociology in general, Weber was primarily interested in the following question: under what conditions and in what forms has a rationalization of the conduct of life (Lebensführung) come about for the individual in pursuit of his or her ideals, whether those ideals are religious in origin or not? It is no accident that Weber demands that sociology has ultimately to relate all social processes to the active or passive individual and that any sociology that does not place the individual person as the essential point of reference in its analysis and interpretation is not fulfilling its task. Whether we have to follow Hennis and conclude that Weber’s ‘interpretive sociology’ was primarily directed towards an anthropological understanding may be left open at this juncture (Hennis, 1983, p. 158).

We need to put the flesh on Hennis’s proposals. The questions – how the directionality of a certain world-view, influenced by material and institutional factors, gives rise to the rationalization of the conduct of life of particular social groups – occupies a central position in his work because it is closely related to his conception of historical change. The rationalization of the conduct of life in a specific direction precipitates change in society each time it affects a significant social group. What is meant by the ‘rationalization of the conduct of life’ (Lebensführung)? It means the orientation of the individual’s way of life in the light of certain ultimate values that are regarded as absolutely binding irrespective of whether these do or do not come into conflict with everyday life. Because of this the individual, or the group to which he belongs, accumulates a capacity for action whose force under certain conditions can have revolutionary consequences for the existing social system of which he is a part. Two examples may serve to illustrate this. Precisely because the Puritan seeks confirmation of the fact that he has been ‘chosen’ in the success of his career, he puts everything into the maximization of his professional success; this requires a conduct of life of extreme frugality and the observation of a strict work ethic. Secondly, precisely because the charismatic leader is deeply convinced of the correctness of the ultimate ideals that move him, so there emanates from his charisma impulses of a far-reaching character. If he succeeds in convincing his followers of the absolute stringency of the ideals or aims professed by him, so these deploy, as it were, a concrete social effect. As a result the followers feel obliged to shape their own personal conduct of life in the same direction, so that an optimal realization of those ideals and goals is brought about in society.

Here we encounter a general model of societal change that is in principle equally valid for all epochs of historical change. Consequently those interpretations that regard the process of progressive rationalization of all spheres of life as the central matter of Weber’s work reveal themselves to be one-sided generalizations of a particular aspect of his work. It cannot simply be said that for Weber rationalization is a process resulting from the interaction of ideal and material factors and proceeds in a mechanical and autonomous fashion, without allowing for the possibility of opposing forces that could give yet another direction to the course of events. In his own day Weber diagnosed the dangers of ossification, but held that a break-out from this situation was conceivable; indeed he pleaded for economic and political conditions that would make this a possibility. In principle he adhered to a pluralistic model of societal change. Formal rationalization – that is to say, the instrumentally rational perfection of the existing system – could be, but did not have to be, the ultimate objective of the historical process. The dichotomy within the concept of rationalization itself, with its opposition of formal and substantive rationality, shows this to be the case. There can occur ‘substantive’ rationalizations proceeding in the most different directions and that run counter to ‘formal’ rationalization.

Admittedly this is often obscured by Weber’s own way of expressing himself, in particular in his earlier writings. Even in the later writings there are residues of an ‘objectivistic’ use of language in regard to rationalization that give rise to misinterpretations. In Max Weber’s conception of universal history, disenchantment and rationalization play a decisive role, and their potential termination is the often referred to ‘shell of future servility’. But wherever he gives such a gloomy perspective, he emphasizes the hypothetical nature of such trends. This also applies to the altogether more pointed remarks that are to be found at the end of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism:

No one knows as yet who will live within these confines [created by modern industrial capitalism] in future, and whether, at the end of this vast development, totally new prophets will emerge or there will be a powerful revival of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither of these, whether there will be a state of mechanised petrification, embellished by a kind of frenzied self-importance. In that case it might indeed become true to say of the ‘last men’ of this cultural development: ‘specialists without soul, hedonists without heart: this cipher flatters itself that it has reached a stage of humanity never before attained’.

(WS, p. 171)

The re...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editions and Abbreviations of Weber Texts
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One The Processes of Rationalization
• Part Two Rationalization and the Limits of Rational Action
• Part Three Problems of Modernity
• Part Four Reason and the Political Order
• References
• Index