The meaning of culturalism in Max Weber’s approach to religion

Abstract

Weber deals with the topic of religion in methodologically most original and most relevant way in his essay »Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism«. In this work Weber is preoccupied with the explanation of the religious-ethical factors role in the genesis of some specific features of modern capitalism. Generally speaking he investigates some elements of the spiritual culture that influence the economic development as well as the mode of that influence. Weber’s intention was to show that the western form of economic organization, as well as the western cultural circle in general, western rationalism, couldn’t be explained without taking into consideration certain ideational moments. Emphasizing the importance of idetional factors in life and development of society he’s become the originator of a trend in contemporary sociology and philosophy which tends to stress relativelly autonomous but decisive influence of culture and cultural values on social development, called culturalism. In this review of Weber’s significant work it is to be pointed out that he used an abstract-analytical method, i. e. he extracted from a concrete sociological-historical totality two essential factors and investigated their mutual relation. In doing so he pointed out that no single factor of social life determined causaly (monocausaly) all the others, but that they were to be found in a complex determinist concatination, in complex relations of mutual influences.