Max Weber's Theory of Modernity

The Endless Pursuit of Meaning

Michael Symonds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317099246
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This book illuminates an important dimension of the work of Max Weber. Weber's theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by the loss of Western religion and how such pursuit gives sense to the phenomena of human suffering and death. Through a close, scholarly reading of Weber's extensive writings and Vocation Lectures, the author explores the concepts of 'paradox' and 'brotherliness' as found in Weber's work, in order to offer an original exposition of Weber's actual theory of how meaning and meaninglessness work in the modern world. In addition to making a substantial and highly original contribution to the sociology of modernity, the book applies the theory of meaning extracted from Weber's thought, addressing the claim that Weber's work has been rendered out-dated by the supposed re-enchantment of the modern world, as well as discussing the ways this theory can contribute to our understanding of the development of specific forms of modernity. A rigorous examination of the thought of one of the most important figures in classical sociology, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in modernity, Weber and the concept of meaning.

Chapter 1Preparatory Remarks

DOI: 10.4324/9781315594361-1

Introduction

In his 1917 lecture, ‘Science as a Vocation’, Max Weber tells his audience of university students how the great questions of meaning, that have been central to the intellectual projects of humanity in religion and philosophy, can no longer be answered within the academy, the place of institutionalised, legitimate reason in the modern world.

… what is the meaning of science as a vocation, now after all these former illusions, the ‘way to true being’, the ‘way to true art’, the ‘way to true nature’, the ‘way to true God’, the ‘way to true happiness’, have been dispelled? Tolstoi has given the simplest answer, with the words: ‘Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: “What shall we do and how shall we live?”’ That science does not give an answer to this is indisputable. (SV¹: 143)

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¹ Following most of the secondary literature, the now standard English translations are used, e.g., by Gerth and Mills in their From Max Weber collection, and by Parsons for The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. A few challenges to these standard English translations will, however, be needed. Parallel quotations from the German are given when the argument benefits from such inclusions. Also in keeping with current practice, the idiosyncratic names that Gerth and Mills gave to their translations of ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’ and ‘Einleitung’ (both from GARS) have not been retained and here these texts have been designated as Intermediary Reflection and Introduction to the Economic Ethic of the World Religions.

Earlier in this lecture, he had also used Tolstoy to answer this question of the relation between science and meaning, from a different angle.

You will find this question raised in the most principled form in the works of Leo Tolstoi. He came to raise the question in a peculiar way. All his broodings increasingly revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a meaningful phenomenon. And his answer was: for civilised man death has no meaning. (SV: 141)

Even if intellectual reason can no longer engage in answering the questions of meaning – the ultimate questions of life and death – Weber himself continues to be concerned with meaning as part of his intellectual task. The argument to follow will try to demonstrate how, through this focus on meaning, Weber in fact provides us with a complex, precise theory of modernity.

Interpretations

Before beginning this argument in detail, the vast interpretative literature on Weber – some of which directly engages with meaning and modernity – will have to be confronted.² In their magnitude and breadth of topic the primary writings of Weber himself are daunting enough, but the secondary literature is so extensive that it might now well lie beyond the reach of any one human life of devoted study.³ Weber's own stress on the fate of specialisation in modernity (PE: 182), and especially in academic work (SV: 134–5), proves eerily apt when reflexively applied to his own legacy.

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² After this brief survey of the secondary tradition, for the rest of the following argument detailed accounts of the interpretive literature are only given when the relatively new concepts of ‘paradox’ and ‘brotherliness’ are discussed, although some further references will also be made as aids to the understanding of specific points.

³ Sica (2004) lists 4,600 entries in his bibliography of works in English on Weber.

Some sense of the scope of the secondary literature might be made by means of three broad points.

Firstly, the great bulk of work that uses and/or interprets Weber pays scant attention to modernity and its relation to meaning. It is often the case that sections of Weber are employed as foundational in a range of studies of social life – from the sociology of bureaucracy to theories of universal social action – and, in such limited use, questions of meaning and modernity can simply be ignored. It is also the case that, when his work is given a more overall depiction or interpretation, from Weber's usual place at the start of introductory sociology textbooks to the array of more advanced academic accounts of his extensive writings, meaning (in terms of the Protestant Ethic thesis, the sociology of religion and disenchantment) might rate a mention but only as a small part of such general accounts. The present argument is not overly concerned with these standard utilisations and interpretations of Weber, where meaning is absent or notional, although there will be some intersection of ideas at times.

Secondly, when the extent of the secondary accounts is taken into consideration, and in opposition to the claims of some of the most important interpretations of Weber, it now seems futile to try to maintain the position that some essence or golden thread can be discovered which somehow provides the means of thematically unifying all of Weber's writings.⁴ It follows that all that can be offered here, with the present argument, is one more interpretation which, it is hoped, will provide a fresh understanding of just part of Weber's overall oeuvre.

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⁴ Following Gane (2002), who rejects the search for the unitary theme. Exponents of the essential theme approach include: Tenbruck (1980) with the theme of rationalisation; Hennis (1988) with life-conduct (Lebensführung); Schroeder (1992) with culture (meaning); Goldman (1992) with self and power. It might be added that this basically essentialist, reductionist approach to Weber's thought would itself seem to be highly ‘un-Weberian’. Weber is at pains to caution against using a one-sided explanation of the social reality. So, for example, an empirical, historical example of religion has to be explained through a huge number of causes. Also, Weber's understanding of the intellectual task as one of devising ‘ideal-types’ is directly pitched against essentialist claims to truth. If Weber's work itself is regarded as the reality to be understood then the attempt to find thematic unity smacks of a methodological view that is in opposition to the methodological outlook of that which is being investigated. This is not contradictory – the investigators might well be opposed to Weber's position or refuse the connection between Weber's writings and social reality – but it is a tension that is worth noting. For an argument in favour of regarding the myriad interpretations of Weber as examples of ‘ideal-types’, i.e., applying Weber's own theory and method back onto the very tradition that has sought to interpret Weber, see Pudsey (1996).

To give some sense of this interpretative tradition, which has conjured up a series of ‘Webers’ as well as many, highly varied appropriations of his work and which leads to the conclusion that there is no one essential Weber to be discovered, an image might be invoked where Weber's works are imagined as a mountain rich in ore and minerals. This mountain has been mined many times, with shafts and tunnels crisscrossing the rock, and various valuable materials have been extracted in great quantities. These tunnels might meet up at times, and some areas might be mined out, but no one mine can succeed in extracting all the wealth that is available in the whole mountain. This process has now been going on for a very long time, but, as it will be shown, there is still more wealth to be found when we pass into the mine-shaft of meaning and begin to follow some seams of ore that have not yet been thoroughly explored.

So, thirdly, let us enter this tunnel of interpretation and consider the work that does explicitly deal with meaning and modernity in Weber. There are two groups that might be roughly identified here. The first group includes those who seek to understand how meaning functions in the modern world, and while Weber plays a significant role in providing the theory of how modernity arrives at its current meaningless state, his role is lessened when it comes to what happens to meaning thereafter, i.e., in modernity itself. In this camp we might position: the American Durkheimians like Robert Bellah⁵ (e.g., Bellah, 1970, 1975); the philosopher Charles Taylor (e.g., Taylor, 2007, 2011); and Jurgen Habermas (e.g., Habermas 1984, 2008).⁶ In all these cases Weber is, on the whole, regarded as the theorist of disenchantment, secularisation and meaninglessness, and the answers to questions of the continued place of meaning in the modern world lie in testing, beyond and against Weber, the tense relation between reason and religion itself.⁷ Beyond this approach to meaning it will be argued that Weber's theory of the development of Western meaninglessness lays the foundation for an additional theory on the working of meaning in modernity, but that this theory, although based on the history of religion in the West, precludes the strategy of seeking answers through some sort of return to religion.

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⁵ Seidman has provided a neat summary of the relation between the Weberian and Durkheimian legacies: ‘The Durkheimians take issue with the Weberian claim of the dissolution of sociocultural unity and the thesis of the secularisation, segmentation, and privatisation of moral and existential meanings. The Durkheimians argue that every society rests upon a religiously based set of shared moral understandings which by virtue of integrating the personal and social system provide a basis for identity and societal community as well as a transcendent standard of judgment … Thus, Durkheimians insist that the Weberian notion of a great transformation from a “religious” to a “secular”, or communitarian to utilitarian individualist, society is mistaken’ (Seidman, 1985: 111). The assumption Seidman shares with the Durkheimians, i.e., that Weber just provides a secularisation thesis on the development of modernity, will be disputed in the coming argument.

⁶ For other variations of this outlook, see: Luckmann, 1967; Berger, 1967; Wilson, 1976.

⁷ As examples of this tendency see: Bellah's ambivalent relationship to his notion of ‘civil religion’ (e.g., Bellah, 1967, 1975); Taylor's attempt to overcome Weber's distinction between science and the irrational realm of religion in modernity (Taylor, 2007: 550 esp.); and Habermas’ dialogues with Catholic theologians in what he calls a ‘post-secular age’ (Habermas, 2007, 2010).

The second group of scholarly interpreters of Weber is composed of those who have taken up his theory of meaning, including its place in modernity, as their pivotal theme.⁸ Indebted as this present study is to this particular tradition of Weberian interpretation, a fundamental difference needs to be noted before the argument is engaged in detail. The disagreement here is one of method. The strong tendency in this scholarly tradition is to try to complete or make sense of Weber's theory through employing three strategies, either separately or in some sort of combination:⁹ firstly, the use of external intellectual debates or other theorists,¹⁰ particularly from Weber's time; secondly, the attempt to explain difficulties in Weber's theory through reference to Weber's biographical circumstances; and thirdly, the introduction of modern values and concepts that are largely extraneous to the Weber texts in question (like freedom and subjectivity).¹¹ Now, illuminating as these interpretations can be – and they often display an extraordinary level of intellectual virtuosity – it will be argued that they are flawed, at least in terms of the ability to develop Weber's viewpoint on meaning. In contrast then, this study will adopt the approach of explaining Weber's theory of meaning and modernity by piecing together what Weber himself has said on the topic, and will not introduce other theorists, the biographical background, or values external to those Weber himself has used in his understanding of meaning. There is no d...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Preparatory Remarks
• Part I The Paradox of Meaning
• Part II Meaning, Modernity and Brotherliness
• Part III Implications
• Bibliography
• Index