Quotable quotes from Max Weber (1864 1920)

A Truncated Sense of Self?:

I experience myself as being, in these matters also, a cripple, a
mutilated being, whose fate it is to be compelled in all honor to admit
that I understand what is being talked about, without like a treestump, which is able to put out buds, again and again without
playing the part of being a whole tree.
- Letters from Weber to Ferdinand
Tonnies
The Interminable Quest for Meaning:
Many varieties of belief have, of course, existed. Behind them always
lies a stand towards something in the actual world, which is
experienced as specifically senseless. Thus, the demand had been
implied: that the world order in its totality is, could, and should
somehow be a meaningful cosmos. This quest, the core of genuine
religious rationalism, had been borne precisely by strata of
intellectuals.
- The Social Psychology of the World
Religions
Beyond a Materialist Conception of History:
Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern mens
conduct. Yet very frequently the world images that have been
created by ideas have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along
which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. From
what and for what one wished to be redeemed and, let us not
forget, could be, redeemed, depended upon ones image of the
world.
- The Social Psychology of the World
Religions
The Notion of a Calling:
But al least one thing was unquestionable new: the valuation of the
fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the
moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which
inevitable gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance, and
which first created the conception of a calling in this sense The only
way of living acceptable to God was not to surpass worldly morality in
monastic asceticism, but solely through the fulfillment of the
obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world.
That was his calling.
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism
The Psychological Impact of the This-Worldly Asceticism:
On the other hand, though the means by which it [grace] was
attained differed for different doctrines, it could not be guaranteed by

any magical sacraments, by relief in the confession, nor by individual

good works. That was only possible by proof in a specific type of
conduct unmistakably different from the way of life of the natural
man. From that followed for the individual an incentive methodically
to supervise his own state of grace in his own conduct, and this to
penetrate it with asceticism. But, as we have seen, this ascetic
conduct meant a rational planning of the whole of one's life in
accordance with God's will. And this asceticism was no longer an opus
supererogationis, but something which could be required of everyone
who would be certain of salvation. The religious life of the saints, as
distinguished from the natural life, was the most important point no longer lived outside the world in monastic communities, but within
the world and its institutions. This rationalization of conduct within the
world, but for the sake of the world beyond, was the consequence of
the concept of calling of ascetic Protestantism.
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism
The Inexorable Iron Cage of Modernity
The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For
when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life,
and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the
tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now
bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine
production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who
are born in this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with
economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so
determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxters
view the care of external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the
saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.
But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage. Since
asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals
in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an
inexorable power over the lives of men as at no precious period in
history.
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism
The Malaise of Modernity and the Futility of Religion:
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and
intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the
world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated
from public life wither into the transcendental real of mystic life or
into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations To the
person who cannot bear the fate of the times like a man, one must
say: may he rather return silently, without the usual publicity build-up
of renegades, but simply and plainly. The arms of the old churches are
opened widely and compassionately for him. After all, they do not
make it hard for him. One way or another he gas to bring his
intellectual sacrifice that is inevitable.

Vocation

Science

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