OTROS EFECTOS

Weber’s (2001) thesis of the Protestant ethic furnishes a number of insights pertinent to an understanding of secular modernity because they are concerned, as with the religious antecedents, with the developmental causality of characteristics of Western modernity. The Protestant ethic is “important to our understanding of the origin and character of the occidental ethos” (Roth & Schluchter 1979: 42) in its rejection of irrationality, focus on vocation, and denial of emotions.

The emphasis in Protestantism, particularly Calvinism, on asceticism and rationality has transferred, without the religious ethic, to contemporary Western culture. In the Protestant ethic’s rejection of the world, expressed as domination of the world, is revealed the type of rationalism “which is part of the ideational underpinnings of modern society” (Roth & Schluchter 1979: 42). Weber considered the rationality of the Protestant ethic “lay in its inner consistency, in the self-conscious rejection of magical and emotional elements of religion, and in sober devotion to duty and methodical self-control” (Morgan 2002: 308). For Weber (2001), Protestantism was particularly instrumental in the rationalization of the West. Protestant “worldly asceticism” (Weber 2001: 107) unintentionally provided the disciplined internal impetus that, once the religious basis had waned, also contributed to the development of the “specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture” (Weber 2001: xxxviii). In rejecting the magical and emphasizing the rational, the Protestant ethic succeeded in transferring the cultural framing of life from the supernatural world to the human world. “Ascetic Protestantism had championed the rationalism of world mastery ‘in the name of God’; scientific rationalism now propagated it ‘in the name of man’” (Roth & Schluchter 1979: 50).

The inner orientation in universalist religions towards a transcendent goal (Schroeder 1987) developed in the Protestant ethic into “a particular transformation of patterns of discipline and methodology” (Turner 1996b: xxii). Weber saw disenchantment of the world increasing as rationalization increases and considered that in the Protestant ethic, and its subsequent transition to secular modernity, this process was radical and decisive for Western civilization (Roth & Schluchter 1979). In science, in particular, the praxis of this problematic correlation is evident. “Sharp and irreconcilable tensions arise between the deeply rooted demand that life and the world possess a coherent overall meaning and the increasingly evident impossibility of determining this meaning scientifically” (Brubaker 1984: 31). This correlation can also be seen reflected in the growing reliance on and expectation of science to provide answers at the same time as alternative ideas (e.g., Eastern mysticism, New Age spirituality), rejected by science as irrational, are embraced. The rejection of anything deemed irrational by science has resulted in a “‘specifically rational flavor’ to the everyday experience of modern individuals” (Brubaker 1984: 31), but the problems of

meaning, as opposed to scientific answers, have arguably increased (Morgan 2002) as scientism has proliferated.

The Protestant ethic also demanded of all a devotion to a vocation, “a calling, which he should profess and in which he should labour” (Weber 2001: 106) in order to determine God’s grace. The belief in predestination demanded a rejection of irrationality (the supernatural) and an assumption of rationality. Weber (2001) identified the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) rational pursuit of salvation in the emphasis on asceticism and hard work in one’s vocation as crucial to the later development of capitalism and secular modernity. With regard to world-views, the Reformation brought about two irreversible developments:

first, the change of a religious ethic of submission into a non- religious ethic of personal autonomy and personal authenticity, and second, the transformation of salvation interests in the direction of success. The tension between divine will and worldly order has been transformed into the tension between human will and social order, and the primacy of transcendence has been replaced by that of this world. (Roth & Schluchter 1979: 52)

The Calvinist world-view fused elements of worldly causality and control and personal integrity into one attitude: “In the name of God you must control yourself and dominate the ‘world’ through your vocation.” (Roth & Schluchter 1979: 42).

The emphasis in the Protestant ethic was for “a life guided by constant thought” (Weber 2001: 72), for “the systematic, methodical character … demanded by worldly asceticism” (Weber 2001: 107), and for “conscious self-scrutiny” (Brubaker 1984: 25). This religious devaluing of the ‘world’ eventually led to a reversal where the ‘world’ in turn devalues the religious, which Weber saw exemplified in the Western capitalist system (Roth & Schluchter 1979). This Protestant ethic of vocation and its devaluing of the ‘world’ has transmogrified into the modern devotion to career and working in order to determine social wealth, status, and self- value and into the devaluation of the religious. As Protestantism devalued the ‘world’, now science devalues the religious (magical, supernatural) as irrational; as Protestantism valued and elevated vocation on religious grounds, now science values and elevates its professions on scientific grounds. In addition, those working in

professions do so as part of the profession itself (Roth & Schluchter 1979) and the bureaucratization and rationalization characteristics of professions (Ritzer 1975) arise from the internal rationalization and duty to vocation of the Protestant ethic. Weber (2001: 124) feared this asceticism, devotion to vocation, and emphasis on rationality would eventually lead to a world inhabited by “‘specialists without spirit’”.

Furthermore, the Protestant ethic of “worldly asceticism” (Weber 2001: 53ff, 107ff) is “anti-emotional” (Brubaker 1984: 25), stemming not only from a rigorous self- control and self-monitoring but also from “the entirely negative attitude … to all the sensuous and emotional elements in culture and in religion” (Weber 2001: 62). With the waning of the religious basis and imperative, the abhorrence of emotion, per se, developed in the modern secular West into abhorrence for ‘particular’ emotions, such as unhappiness, shyness, or anxiety. Where once hedonistic emotions were reviled, now, without the religious impetus, the rationalism, self-control and self-monitoring has remained but the anti-emotional stance has devolved into an anti-‘negative’- emotional stance. This dichotomy between emotions and reason and the equation of health with happiness is problematic (Williams 2000b). Assigning a negative role to certain emotions, largely reducing them to an illness status, results in problems of adequately dealing with suffering and meaning (Morgan 2002). Where once rigorous hard work, worldly economic success and strict self-control were tied together and indicated God’s grace, now worldly success is made up of not only economic success but also of ‘success’ in health, which includes a moral imperative to be happy. Since the Enlightenment there has been a concentration on thinking and reason rather than feeling and emotion, and, in his thesis of the Protestant ethic, Weber draws attention to further significant developments in the history of the West’s association with emotions and rationality and the consequences of these developments.