Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age by Hans G. Kippenberg , Barbara Harshav (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 165 Hans G. Kippenberg, Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age (trans. Barbara Harshav; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 263. ISBN 0691009090. $22.95. Given Max Weber's wide-ranging and penetrating preoccupation with religion, his friendship with Ernst Troeltsch, his justified admiration for the latter's Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (1911), and his friendship with Georg Simmel whose Die Religion (1906) appeared in Martin Buber's remarkable series Die Gesellschaft, Religionsgeschichte should properly be a concern to all those interested in Max Weber's work and the consequences of that work for better understanding humanity and its history. Beyond the specifics of Weber's analysis but entirely in its spirit, one should thus recognize that there is a pressing relevance and importance to the investigation into the modern foundations of the history of religion. First and above all, such an investigation openly confronts the difficult problem of clarifying 'what is religion'? This problem, in tum, can not avoid addressing the character of human understand ing and action. Specifically, such an investigation should not avoid the problem of humanity's place within the animal kingdom, or, alternatively formulated, the con sequences of the ordeal of consciousness, that is, 'mind'.56 Clarifying the nature of the peculiar place of humanity within the animal kingdom has consequences for the social sciences and philosophy, leading to a methodological judgment between, on the one hand, a monistic utilitarianism and, on the other, a pluralistic and conflicting Lebensordnungen, specifically Wertsphären, as Max Weber recognized.57 Second, such an investigation ought to lead to a critical reflection on today's fash ionable categories of analysis that are usually and mostly wrongly taken for granted. The time is long overdue for a critical re-evaluation of the heuristic merit of the cate gory of 'modernity' that would, it is hoped, expose its polemical intentions. Given the persistence and significance of religion in human affairs, such a re-evaluation is surely warranted. In this regard, it is incumbent on scholars of Max Weber's work to set right a misconception of the contribution of Weber's analysis of religion. While it is clear that Weber sought from his studies on religion to provide a 'Beitrag zur Typologie und Soziologie des Rationalismus' ('Zwischenbetrachtung', p. 537, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. 1), that contribution has been woefully misunderstood as indicating a uniform process of rationalization within and across the various spheres of life. In contrast to the never ending and simplistic drivel about the 'iron cage' and bureaucratization that one encounters today, Weber recognized conflicts among the demands of consistency between the different spheres of life and within each. Thus, clarification is badly needed about just what is meant by, and the merit of the use of, the term 'secularization'. These kinds of re-evaluations and clarifications will open other problems for examination: a clarification of the conceptually flabby category of 'civil religion';58 a reconsideration of the boundaries of the categories polytheism, 56. For a recent analysis of this problem, see Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 57. For my views on these philosophical implications, see Steven Grosby, 'Plural ism in the Thought of Oakeshott, Shils and Weber', Journal of Classical Sociology 2.1 (2002), pp. 43-58. 58. For my criticism of the category, see Steven Grosby, 'Nationality and Religion', in Steven Grosby, Biblical Ideas of Nationality: Ancient and Modern (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), pp. 235-56.© Max Weber Studies 2005. 166 Max Weber Studies paganism, monotheism; and the extent to which it is legitimate to speak of religious 'development' and even 'evolution'. All of this is especially in order if Hans Kippen berg is correct (and it seems to me that he is) when he states that 'the genealogy of modern culture is located in religious history' (p. 132). Such are some of the tasks that fall to the students of Max Weber's work. These tasks are not to be pursued by merely repeating Weber's insights into religion and human action, thereby grossly violating the spirit of Weber's contribution. Those insights are to...