scholarly journals Modern oriental reading (reception) of Islam in the works of Max Weber

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
Nataša Jovanović Ajzenhamer

In this paper we analyse Max Weber's view on Islam as a religion of warriors who lived at the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, and also, we analyse this interpretation in the context of Edward Said’s (orientalistic) theoretical approach. The first part of the paper presents various aspects of the analysis of Islam by Max Weber, which must be taken into the context of comparative theology, that is, in the light of considering the characteristics of Islam against the background of other world religions. In the second part of the work, we will analyse the concept of Said’s orientalism. We will construct the framework of moderate orientalism, which, according to the author of this paper, is an important conceptual adjustment that can contribute to a better understanding and analysis of various oriental discourses, including Weber discourse. Taking into account that we are talking about the most influential classics sociologists, especially in the case of the sociology of religion, it is very important to critically analyse his understanding of Islam so that we can determine which of his conclusions are significant for the sociology of religion and the sociology of Islam today, and which of his hypotheses can we attribute to some kind of reductionism or orientalism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Reinhard

Der Weltruhm Max Webers geht langsam, aber deutlich zurück. An seinem Lebensthema, der Bedeutung der Religion für die moderne Welt, ist er langfristig gescheitert. Das gilt nicht nur für seine Protestantismus-These, sondern auch für den aufwändigen Versuch, die These durch Vergleich mit anderen Weltreligionen auszuweiten und abzusichern. Er landet dabei in der kolonialistischen Orientalismus-Falle, indem er beweist, was er zuvor vorausgesetzt hatte. Umgekehrt wussten und wissen Vertreter anderer Religionen das protestantische Christentum zur Modernisierung ihrer eigenen Kulturen ‚auszuschlachten‘. ‚Das Empire hat zurückgeschlagen‘. Auch Karl Jaspers’ post-koloniale Alternative zu weltanschaulicher Kommunikation auf gleicher Augenhöhe im Zeichen einer ‚Achsenzeit‘ ist gescheitert. Der viel berufene Aufschwung der Religionen besteht global gesehen in pluralistischer Beliebigkeit, die den Charakter von Religion überhaupt verändert hat. ‚Transzendenz‘ ist immanent geworden. Unsere Religion ist längst nicht mehr diejenige Max Webers. Obviously Max Weber’s fame is continuously decreasing. In the end, he failed in his self-chosen task to explain the growth of the modern world through religious experience. This statement does not only refer to his world-famous essay on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is also true of his extensive attempt to confirm and extent his thesis through careful comparison with other world religions. But he fell into the circular trap of colonialist orientalism because he simply proved what had been his own preconditions. On the other hand, members of other religious communities used and still use protestant Christianity selectively to modernize their own cultures. The empire hits back! Karl Jaspers’s Axial Age, his post-colonial attempt in cultural communication on equal level, failed as well. Today, from the global point of view the famous renewal of religion consists in arbitrary pluralism. The very character of religion as such has changed. Transcendence turned immanent. The religion of today is no longer the religion of Max Weber.


Author(s):  
Friedrich Tenbruck

The article of a well-known German social theorist Friedrich Tenbruck, which once provoked a heated debate among Weberian scholars, analyzes the works of Max Weber in terms of their thematic structure and general heuristics. The first section reconstructs the genesis and content of the idea that Economy and Society was the main work of the classic German scholar of sociology, an idea that was initially made popular among scholars by Marianne Weber. The second part is devoted to disenchantment as a fundamental process in the history of religion, the discovery of which is traditionally attributed to Weber’s famous work The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism. The third part analyzes the broad conceptual field used by Max Weber to study Western rationalization. The fourth part critically analyzes the thesis of Western rationalization as Weber’s main, life-long topic, the thesis which was originally introduced by Reinhard Bendix. In the fifth part, an attempt is made to determine the exact place of Economic Ethics of the World Religions in the overall structure of Weber’s work. In the sixth part, the processes of Western rationalization are placed within the general context of Weber’s conception of the universal history understood as a field of tension between ideas and interests. The final section emphasizes the importance of Weber’s writings on the sociology of religion, with Economic Ethics of the World Religions in particular as the core of his entire mature sociology. It also poses the question of the problematic nature of various Weberian notions for contemporary sociology, and points out the persisting validity of Weber’s sociological diagnosis of the time for the analysis of current problems in the perspective of a world-wide historical significance.


Author(s):  
Ivan Zabaev

The article, within the framework of the logic proposed by M. Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, attempts to identify the core ethical category of the Russian Orthodox Church that could function in the same way as Beruf (profession/vocation) does for the analysis of Protestantism and its potential impact on the formation of the economy. The attempt to apprehend this category relies on Weber’s works that analyze the economic ethics of world religions. In particular, an effort is made to interpret the Weberian categorization of Russian Orthodoxy as a “specific mysticism”. The texts of F. Nietzsche and M. Scheler are used to decipher Weber’s thesis. The analysis of the texts of Weber, Nietzsche, and Scheler leads to the assumption that “humility” could be the category in question. In his works on the sociology of religion, Weber used “humility” to describe “mysticism” in the same vein as is “vocation” for “asceticism”. At the same time, Weber reinterprets Nietzsche’s doctrine of ressentiment to construct the typology of economic ethics of world religions. For Nietzsche, humility is often synonymous to ressentiment. In the Weberian interpretation, the thesis on ressentiment becomes a “theodicy of suffering”. In the typology of suffering, humility was associated with contemplation, or the withdrawal from the world, that is, with everything specific for mysticism as it was understood by Weber. M. Scheler also took notice of this and criticized the thesis on ressentiment, contrasting it with humility as the basic Christian virtue. An analysis of the texts of F. Nietzsche, M. Weber and M. Scheler on the ressentiment and ethics of Christianity made it possible to propose a typology of ethics that seems to be suitable for constructing hypotheses about the (potential) influence of Orthodoxy on Russian economic life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-103
Author(s):  
Christian J. Anderson

While studies in World Christianity have frequently referred to Christianity as a ‘world religion’, this article argues that such a category is problematic. Insider movements directly challenge the category, since they are movements of faith in Jesus that fall within another ‘world religion’ altogether – usually Islam or Hinduism. Rather than being an oddity of the mission frontier, insider movements expose ambiguities already present in World Christianity studies concerning the concept of ‘religion’ and how we understand the unity of the World Christian movement. The article first examines distortions that occur when religion is referred to on the one hand as localised practices which can be reoriented and taken up into World Christianity and, on the other hand, as ‘world religion’, where Christianity is sharply discontinuous with other world systems. Second, the article draws from the field of religious studies, where several writers have argued that the scholarly ‘world religion’ category originates from a European Enlightenment project whose modernist assumptions are now questionable. Third, the particular challenge of insider movements is expanded on – their use of non-Christian cultural-religious systems as spaces for Christ worship, and their redrawing of assumed Christian boundaries. Finally, the article sketches out two principles for understanding Christianity's unity in a way that takes into account the religious (1) as a historical series of cultural-religious transmissions and receptions of the Christian message, which emanates from margins like those being crossed by insider movements, and (2) as a religiously syncretic process of change that occurs with Christ as the prime authority.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Anderwald

One of the important tasks of the Church in the temporal order are concern for the work of creation and for man himself, and sometimes even the defense against threats of technical progress, conducted from any ethical and moral references. The concern for the common home is not only a domain of the Catholic Church. Similarly, other churches and Christian communities as well as other world religions reflect on the issues relating to the degradation of human and natural environment. Thus, the aim of these reflections is an attempt to recognize ecumenical impulses of the Pope in the context of integral ecology that takes into account the interlinkages between different dimensions of reality. Therefore, during the considerations will be presented firstly the papal diagnosis of the social and ecological crisis (1), then the proposals of actions aiming at the development of integral ecology (2) as well as an invitation to a dialogue resulting from the care for the common home (3). The main sources of the analysis undertaken are the two papal documents, namely the encyclical Laudato si’ (LS) and the post-synodal apostolic exhoration Querida Amazonia (QA).


2004 ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Ayder Rustamov

The main factors determining the dynamics of the social development of a country, in addition to economic and political, include spiritual components: religion, culture and national traditions. Among the many theoretical developments, a special place is occupied by the social doctrines of world religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism. According to such authoritative scholars as Sergiy Bulgakov, Max Weber and Ivan Ilyin, it is religious foundations that are the sources of social development of various types of civilizations, and, in the figurative expression of Karl Jaspers, their axial (pivotal) and most valuable characteristics around which the course of history unfolds


2021 ◽  
pp. 037698362110520
Author(s):  
Rashmi Rekha Bhuyan

Like all other world religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism, the two prominent religious traditions of India, have histories of development and transformations since their inception. Depending on the socio-economic and political scenario, religions are subject to change, often in their basic beliefs and rituals, and at a certain point of time, the interaction between diverse religious traditions also becomes inevitable. Although opponent by nature in their early philosophies, Buddhism and Brahmanism got entwined at a certain phase of history, when many Buddhist deities and rituals were accommodated within the purview of Brahmanism and vice-versa. In the history of Brahmanical tradition, this interaction is traceable in the narratives of Puranic texts composed during the first millennium years of the Christian Era (ce). For the present study, one such Puranic text: the Kalikapurana, composed in Kamarupa (early Assam) during the early-medieval period, has been taken into account to understand the process of interaction between Brahmanism and Buddhism in the historical context of early Assam. Being primarily Brahmanical religious texts, the Puranas contain traces of Buddhism only in ‘covert’ form: in the form of myth. Focussing on some myths narrated in the Kalikapurana, the present study will discuss the existence of Buddhism in the early-Brahmaputra valley prior to the coming of Brahmanism. It will help us to understand the strategies adopted by the immigrant Brahmins to accommodate the prevailing traits under the purview of Brahmanical Hinduism.


Author(s):  
Adam Dinham ◽  
Alp Arat ◽  
Martha Shaw

This chapter discusses the loss of religion and belief literacy, which it locates in two public spheres: welfare and education. The period before the loss of religion and belief literacy in Britain and the West was, by its very nature, almost entirely Christian. Although there was a degree of plurality, and an awareness of some other religions, these were largely treated as essentially exotic. Yet, at the very moment that people stopped paying (much) attention to religion and belief, they entered a period of dramatic change. This has meant massive declines in Christianity, increases in other world religions, a huge growth in atheism and non-religion, and a shift towards informal and revival forms of religion and belief, especially associated with varying ideas of spirituality. The resulting challenges of religion and belief literacy are rooted here in the post-war period, in which the deliberate dilution of religious socialisation post-1945 has been followed by the accidental invisibility of religious social action and its disconcerting re-emergence after 1980, and then a striking renewal of religion and belief as a public sphere issue around the turn of the century, and especially after 9/11. What emerges is a tension between a loss of public religion and belief and its subsequent re-emergence after a prolonged period in which it was not really talked about.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document