VAGARIES OF DISENCHANTMENT: GOD, MATTER, AND MAMMON IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

In the lecture “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber gave a reckoning not only of his own scholarly life, but also of our fate in a world bereft of wonder. Self-possessed intellectuals command knowledge with authority. Yet their technical prowess also points up intractable limits. Calculation falters in securing value, whether in its moral or economic guises. If “we live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons,” Weber mused, we nonetheless do so “in a different sense.” Once-knowing entities have shed their skins, to assume the mien of “impersonal forces.” These remarks assemble elements of Weber's religious sociology within a single frame, from the “this-worldly asceticism” of the Protestant ethic to portrayals of rationality as an “iron cage,” where spirits—much less the Spirit—dare not tread.