Suchergebnisse

Based on analyses of the essays written by Max Weber on China, India, ancient Judaism and also on the dispersed material about Islam, Eastern Christianity and Occidental Christianity, this book examines the economic ethics of Asian and Christian traditions and their corresponding legal systems. Drawing also on Weber's methodology (particularly the concept of adequate causation), the author reveals that the nature of Asian religions as well as the nature of customary and other not formally rational laws in Asian cultures could not lead to modern capitalism out of their own sources, although capitalism could be adopted from the outside. The culture of the Occident, upon which capitalism is based, is revealed to consist of a double rationalisation: the formal rationality of the exterior circumstances of life (administrative and legal) and the innerworldly practical rationality of the inner motivations of the Protestants, supported by a goal-oriented rational technology.

The issue of the Preah Vihear case (1962) in international law has long been debated and event today creates tensions between Thailand and Cambodia. This article analyses Siam's position within the international law structure in the early twentieth century, when the issue arose; it also reminds the reader of a tradition in international law theory which does not consider international law and municipal law as essentially different, and on this basis it then suggests that there is a regional (Buddhist) customary law and regional principles in Thailand and the surrounding regions of Southeast Asia that could profitably have been considered by the International Court of Justice.

RésuméLa constitution indienne de 1950 était dans l'ensemble une création de l'esprit occidental, surimposée à une société héritière d'un système légal traditionnel complexe. Mais les constitutions sont plus que de simples textes légaux, elles sont aussi des portraits ou des miroirs d'un héritage culturel. Ce fait est illustré ici par l'analyse de l'histoire tortueuse de la doctrine des principes structurants dans le contexte constitutionnel indien. Bien que cette doctrine, élaborée par Carl Schmitt à l'époque de Weimar en Allemagne, ait été introduite en Inde par la Cour Suprême pour réduire la marée des amendements constitutionnels, elle a bientôt subi des réinterprétations majeures, et plus tard elle réfère à des principes englobants de la constitution. Par ce truchement la constitution a été rendue perméable à des concepts légaux traditionnels qui survivent toujours. Un appendice fournit une comparaison avec les principes non écrits de la constitution canadienne. À la différence de la situation en Inde, les principes non écrits canadiens n'ont aucune 'superlégalité' par rapport au texte écrit de la constitution. Des amendements constitutionnels, réalisés conformément à la procédure prescrite, sont légaux, et aucun principe supérieur ne peut assurer la continuité légale.

The comparative sociology of Louis Dumont (1982) explained the rise of modern inworldly individualism as the result of the transformation, initiated mainly by a changing Church/State relationship since the eighth century, of the outworldly individualism of early Christianity. In this paper the question is asked whether a similar transformation took place in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
The enquiry, which examines Orthodox monachism and the Church/State relationship in Byzantium and in Russia, further the Russian Old Believers, the Slavophiles and Populists, arrives at the conclusion that Eastern Orthodoxy has remained a tradition of holism and of outworldly individualism, of 'integral personality' and of individualism as the lower path to salvation. Modern individualism has no cultural basis in this tradition.

In Part I, the patrimonial-bureaucratic Muscovite state and the aspects of Russian-Orthodox religion, which led to an attitude of world-indifference, were analysed. In this second part the economic ethics of the Russian Old Believers and of the major sects are analysed and it is shown that the development of congregational religion led to more self-responsibility and, particularly in the case of some sects, to more congregational discipline. Moreover, the Skoptsy and Molokans seem to have turned away from the mysticism of the Orthodox Church and from magical means of salvation. They developed an ascetic inner-worldly conduct of life and achieved, like many Old Believers, considerable economic success.

The paper, which follows Max Weber's `The Economic Ethics of World Religions' in form and spirit, tries to depict the motivations of economic activity in prerevolutionary Russia. This first part of the paper analyses, on the one hand, the patrimonial-bureaucratic Muscovite state with its system of liturgies and, on the other hand, the Russian-Orthodox Church which, in contrast to the Western development, became integrated in the patrimonial state, and finally the Russian-Orthodox religion which can be characterised by its three aspects as magical-traditional, ritual and mystical. It led to an attitude of world indifference rather than world domination and did not produce independent powers to break open the patrimonial state.