There are numerous works discussing Max Weber’s religious, political, and economic sociology and his value-free methodology, but few of them picture the world in Weber’s eye as a whole. Enlightened by the rational...There are numerous works discussing Max Weber’s religious, political, and economic sociology and his value-free methodology, but few of them picture the world in Weber’s eye as a whole. Enlightened by the rationalization-modernity approach to Weberian study, which owes much to K. Lowith and W. Schluchter for its establishment, I intend to put Weber’s often-separately-discussed ideas about the modern world together into one picture. To accomplish this, I find Weber’s three well-known metaphors-“disenchantment of the world,” “struggle of gods,” and “iron cage”-to be a good integrating point. The “disenchantment of the world” refers to the religious rationalization accompanied by the development of scientific rationalism, which impelled the world into a modern era featured by “struggle of gods” and “iron cage.” “Struggle of gods” brings to mind a kind of nihilism and thus conflicts in the field of value while “iron cage” evokes a picture in which modern man, who has lost the sense of vocation, is dominated and shaped by an impersonal and objectified social system. The three metaphors together present us with a Weber in tension in regards to his image of modern man. In the concluding part of this article, I include a discussion of some of the contemporary theoretical endeavors to overcome Weber’s ambivalence and cultural pessimism by restructuring the conceptual framework of rationality.展开更多
文摘There are numerous works discussing Max Weber’s religious, political, and economic sociology and his value-free methodology, but few of them picture the world in Weber’s eye as a whole. Enlightened by the rationalization-modernity approach to Weberian study, which owes much to K. Lowith and W. Schluchter for its establishment, I intend to put Weber’s often-separately-discussed ideas about the modern world together into one picture. To accomplish this, I find Weber’s three well-known metaphors-“disenchantment of the world,” “struggle of gods,” and “iron cage”-to be a good integrating point. The “disenchantment of the world” refers to the religious rationalization accompanied by the development of scientific rationalism, which impelled the world into a modern era featured by “struggle of gods” and “iron cage.” “Struggle of gods” brings to mind a kind of nihilism and thus conflicts in the field of value while “iron cage” evokes a picture in which modern man, who has lost the sense of vocation, is dominated and shaped by an impersonal and objectified social system. The three metaphors together present us with a Weber in tension in regards to his image of modern man. In the concluding part of this article, I include a discussion of some of the contemporary theoretical endeavors to overcome Weber’s ambivalence and cultural pessimism by restructuring the conceptual framework of rationality.
