The Dialectics of Religious Rationalization and Secularization: Max Weber and Ernst Bloch

In: Critical sociology, Volume 31, Issue 1-2, p. 115-151

Abstract

Ernst Bloch stood in intellectual opposition to Max Weber, yet they have a similar framework through which they both analyzed religion. Both Weber and Bloch engaged in a class analysis of the Bible. In Ancient Judaism, Weber provides the historical, political, and socio-economic context in which we can understand the origins of the belief in the Messiah. Bloch's dialectical theory of secularization of Judeo-Christian Messianism into Marxism has a parallel structure to Weber's theory of religious rationalization in Ancient Judaism. For Weber, ancient Judaism experienced a process of religious rationalization that is marked by a dialectic between the charisma of the prophet and the tradition of the priest, between value and substantive rationality, between disaster and salvation. Bloch's dialectical theory of secularization, which takes place from Moses through the prophets to Jesus and from Feuerbach to Marx, views the process of secularization as being driven by a contradiction between faith in God and faith in man. Bloch, who embraced Jewish Messianic beliefs, had hope in the resolution of this dialectical conflict while Weber, who was far more pessimistic, did not. Combining elements from Weber's theory of religious rationalization and Bloch's theory of secularization, provides the basis for a dialectical theory of secularization in which the tensions between the sacred and profane, while driving the process of secularization forward, remain unresolved.