Disenchantment and the Sacrifice of Intellect

Disenchantment and the Sacrifice of Intellect May 12, 2016

Theology often lays claim to scientific status, Weber observes, but in doing so does something that no genuine science does: It operates with substantive presuppositions, especially the assumption that the cosmos is meaningful.

In “Science as a Vocation,” he writes, “All theology represents an intellectual rationalization of the possession of sacred values. No science is absolutely free from presuppositions, and no science can prove its fundamental value to the man who rejects these pre- suppositions. Every theology, however, adds a few specific presuppositions for its work and thus for the justification of its existence. Their meaning and scope vary. Every theology, including for instance Hinduist theology, presupposes that the world must have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so that it can be intellectually grasped” (using translation in Stephen Kalberg, ed., Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity, 337).

“Scientific” theology also makes the assumption that “certain ‘revelations’ are facts relevant for salvation and as such make possible a meaningful conduct of life. Hence, these revelations must be believed in” and “presuppose that certain subjective states and acts possess the quality of holiness, that is, they constitute a way of life, or at least elements of one, that is religiously meaningful.” Theology acknowledges that these presuppositions lie outside of science and do not constitute “knowledge.” He argues that “in every ‘positive’ theology, the devout reach the point where the Augustinian sentence holds: credo non quod, sed quia absurdum est.” Theology thus inevitably involves a sacrifice of the intellect. Theology thus unveils the fact that “the tension between the value spheres of ‘science’ and the sphere of religious salvation is unbridgeable” (338).

The modern age of scientific progress forces this sacrifice. Weber writes that “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.” In place of monumental public art, “our greatest art is intimate” and it is not “accidental that today only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal human situations, in pianissimo, that something is pulsating that corresponds to the prophetic frenzy, which in former times swept through the great communities like a firebrand, welding them together.” Attempts to revive public religion create monstrosities: “If we attempt to force and to ‘invent’ a monumental style in art, such miserable monstrosities are produced as the many monuments of the last twenty years. If one tries to construe new forms of religion, through musing and pondering, and without a new and genuine prophecy, then, in an inner sense, something similar will result, but with still worse effects. And academic prophecy, finally, will create only fanatical sects but never a genuine community” (339).

Some are incapable of bearing “the fate of the times like a man,” and to such, there is only one response: “may he rather return silently, without the usual publicity build-up of renegades, but simply and plainly. The arms of the old churches are opened widely and compassionately for him.” He is going to have to make his sacrifice: “If he can really do it, we shall not rebuke him. For such an intellectual sacrifice in favor of an unconditional religious devotion is ethically quite a different matter than the evasion of the plain duty of intellectual integrity, which is evident if one lacks the courage to clarify one’s own ultimate standpoint and instead circumvents this duty by feeble relative judgments. In my eyes, such religious devotion stands higher than academic prophecy, which does not clearly realize that in university lecture halls no other virtue holds but plain intellectual integrity” (339).

Helluva good thing that Weber’s social science is value-free.


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