Max Weber

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Max Weber

• Sociology of Religion

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Emile Durkheim 1858-1917French Sociologist and
Anthropologist
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Religion and Social Cohesion

• Durkheim set out to do two things
• establish the fact that religion was not
  divinely or supernaturally inspired and was in
  fact a product of society, and
• he sought to identify the common things that
  religion placed an emphasis upon, as well as what
  effects those religious beliefs (the product of
  social life) had on the lives of all within a
  society. Far from dismissing religion as mere
  fantasy, despite its natural origin, Durkheim saw
  it as a critical part of the social system.
  Religion provides social control, cohesion, and
  purpose for people, as well as another means of
  communication and gathering for individuals to
  interact and reaffirm social norms.
• The general conclusion of the book which the
  reader has before him is that religion is
  something eminently social. Religious
  representations are collective representations
  which express collective realities the rites are
  a manner of acting which take rise in the midst
  of assembled groups and which are destined to
  excite, maintain, or recreate certain mental
  states in these groups. So if the categories are
  of religious origin, they ought to participate in
  this nature common to all religious facts they
  should be social affairs and the product of
  collective thought. At least -- for in the actual
  condition of our knowledge of these matters, one
  should be careful to avoid all radical and
  exclusive statements -- it is allowable to
  suppose that they are rich in social elements.
• Emile Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of the
  Religious Life.

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Karl Marx1818-1883German Philosopher and
Political Economist
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Marx on Religion

• Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
  Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and
  self-awareness so long as he has not found
  himself or has already lost himself again. But,
  man is no abstract being squatting outside the
  world. Man is the world of man -- state, society.
  This state and this society produce religion,
  which is an inverted consciousness of the world,
  because they are an inverted world. Religion is
  the general theory of this world, its
  encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular
  form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it
  enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn
  complement, and its universal basis of
  consolation and justification. It is the
  fantastic realization of the human essence since
  the human essence has not acquired any true
  reality. The struggle against religion is,
  therefore, indirectly the struggle against that
  world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
• Religious suffering is, at one and the same
  time, the expression of real suffering and a
  protest against real suffering. Religion is the
  sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
  heartless world, and the soul of soulless
  conditions. It is the opium of the people.
• The abolition of religion as the illusory
  happiness of the people is the demand for their
  real happiness. To call on them to give up their
  illusions about their condition is to call on
  them to give up a condition that requires
  illusions. The criticism of religion is,
  therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale
  of tears of which religion is the halo.
• Karl Marx. Contribution to the Critique of
  Hegel's Philosophy of Right. (1844)

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Weber
Max Weber April 21, 1864 June 14, 1920
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Early Life Education

• Born in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, the eldest
  of seven children of Max Weber Sr. and Helene
  Fallenstein. His father was a prominent
  politician and civil servant.
• Studies at University of Heidelberg and
  University of Berlin. 1882-1884.
• Received his Doctorate from the University of
  Goettingen in 1889 writing on the Roman Agrarian
  System.
• 1893 he married feminist and author Marianne
  Schnitger.
• Appointed to the faculty of the University of
  Freiburg in 1896.

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Academic Interests

• Economic and Social policy.
• Joined newly created professional organization of
  German economists which sought to address
  pressing policy issues immigration,
  industrialization and urbanization.
• Founder of Sociology.

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Sociology of Religion

• Methodology the ideal type.
• Comparative Elaborated a set of categories, such
  as types of prophecy, the idea of charisma
  (spiritual power), routinization, and other
  categories, which became tools to deal with the
  comparative material.
• Value-judgement free not theological, rather an
  analysis of the subjective meaning of social
  action from the viewpoint of ideas as well as
  material and mental interests.
• Rational Action rational action within a system
  of rational-legal authority is at the heart of
  modern society.
• Human Agency Social action is not mechanical
  reaction of the law of material interests, but
  the dynamic of ideas and interests which give the
  actor the conscious or unconscious meaning of
  life and the world.

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Self Deception of Objectivity

• Weber argued that the description of an empirical
  fact cannot escape from the presupposition, or
  fundamental world view. Instead he attempted to
  understand facts via an empathetic understanding
  of the religious culture.
• Thus, the validity of value-ideas cannot be
  deduced from empirical facts alone, but from the
  adequacy of the relationship of a value-idea to
  reality.

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The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism,
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Human Agency

• In the past, it was the work of the
  intellectuals to sublimate the possession of
  sacred values into a belief in 'salvation.' The
  conception of the idea of salvation, as such, is
  very old, if one understands by it a liberation
  from distress, hunger, drought, sickness, and
  ultimately from suffering and death. Yet
  salvation attained a specific significance only
  where it expressed a systematic and rationalized
  'image of the world' and represented a stand in
  the face of the world. For the meaning as well as
  the intended and actual psychological quality of
  salvation has depended upon such a world image
  and such a stand.
• Not ideas, but material and ideal ideological
  interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet
  very frequently the world images that have been
  created by ideas, like a switchman, have
  determined the tracks along which action has been
  pushed by the dynamic of interest.
• Max Weber. Sociology of Religion. Introduction.
  (1920)

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Elective Affinity

• A general theory of radical social change which
  attempts to conceptualize in nondeterministic
  fashion the coincident interaction of components
  from different socio-cultural systems in
  comparative analysis. These convergent factors
  provide positive sanctions for pre-modern people
  to to abandon traditional ways.
• e.g. English Calvinism and Capitalism there was
  an elective affinity between Puritan ethical
  norms and emerging capitalist business practices
  in 17th century England. In other words, a
  particular economic status along with a
  particular political status along with a
  particular religious practice all coincide in
  such a way that each is especially favorable to
  the other, and the whole form a culture complex
  that is especially powerful for the advancement
  of all of these sociocultural spheres.

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Calvinism Capitalism

• Free Will
• Discipline
• Rejection of Arminian Theology
• Predestination/Elect
• Introspection/Signs
• Vocations (Call)

• Individualism
• Discipline
• Social Stratification and Mobility
• Accumulation of Wealth
• Democratization of Vocations