Resurrecting Charisma: Weber’s Pendulum

Abstract

The concept of charisma is among the most successful cases in the social sciences of the reverse-translation of a technical term from academic discourse into everyday speech (Derman, 2012:176–215). Weber’s distinctive approach to this idea perhaps surpasses the popular dissemination of Marx’s concept of alienation and Durkheim’s anomie, which have been stripped of their social and historical connotations and transformed into psychological clichés, and even Freud’s concept of the ego, at least in everyday speech where it refers to some kind of narcissistic control centre. By contrast, Weber’s classic keyword continues to carry much of the political and rhetorical charge it had in his later writings and speeches, and in his canonical definition in Economy and Society: ‘The term “charisma” will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least, superficially exceptional powers or qualities’ (ES2.III, ¶ 10:241). The ‘gifts of grace’ (from the Greek charismata) that he refers to are personal endowments, and may include the talents of the artist (discussed in Chapter 1), the insight of the wise person (Chapter 2), the persuasive speech of the demagogic leader (Chapter 3), the commanding force of the war hero (Chapter 4), and the eloquence and erudition exemplified by the prophet (examined in this chapter).

Nowadays, however, we have the ‘religion of everyday life’. The numerous gods of yore, divested of their magic [entzaubert] and hence assuming the shape of impersonal forces, arise from their graves, strive for power over one another, and resume their eternal struggle among themselves.

(SV:24;MWG I/17:101)