Rationalization and Disenchantment, I: From the Origins of Religion to the Death of God

Abstract

Max Weber’s sociology of religion contains an account of the emergence and development of modern Western culture. This account reads the history of the West in terms of two interconnected processes: the rise and spread of Occidental (instrumental) rationalism (the process of rationalization) and the accompanying dis-enchantment (Entzauberung) of religious superstition and myth.² More precisely, it treats Western culture as the product of two key developmental transitions (Schroeder, 1987, 207; Owen, 1994, 101): the elimination of prehistoric forms of magical religiosity with the rise of universal religion, and the subsequent disenchantment of universal religion with the emergence of modern ‘rational’ science and the advanced capitalist order. The present chapter will examine the logic of these two transitions, and with this analyse Weber’s position on the rise, trajectory and logic of modern culture.³ It will be argued that, for Weber, the transition to modernity is driven by a process of cultural rationalization, one in which ultimate values rationalize and devalue themselves, and are replaced increasingly by the pursuit of materialistic, mundane ends. This process of devaluation or disenchantment, gives rise to a condition of cultural nihilism in which the intrinsic value or meaning of values or actions are subordinated increasingly to a ‘rational’ quest for efficiency and control.

What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devalue [entwerten] themselves.

Nietzsche (1970, 14)¹