Secular justifications of the world. A neo-Weberian typology of cosmodicies

Abstract

This article asks how secular societies cope with suffering and fortune perceived as unjust and undeserved. It investigates secular forms of dealing with the originally religious problem of theodicy. According to Weber’s work, Western societies have solved this problem with the meritocratic ideal based on the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, which gave rise to the capitalistic work ethics. Current sociological diagnoses observe a crisis of these ethics, which begs the question of whether this also indicates a crisis of meritocratism. The article addresses this question from the perspective of sociology of religion and translates Weber’s typology of religious theodicies into a typology of secular cosmodicies. The typology serves as an analytical tool, allowing for systematic comparisons of justifications in different empirical cases.