Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 9 Connections between formal rationality and charismatic domination over and through free
men: the continuing role of magic in the construction of impersonal patriarchal fraternities; from
Ständestaat to revolution
160
Here Weber again gives a description of a rationalization process, without explaining its
causes. He only suggests that specialized magicians have j
something to do with the abstraction process.
8
The further rationalization of religion according
to him depends on a further rationalization of life:
'But as a rule there is a tendency for a pantheon to evolve once systematic thinking concerning religious practice
and the rationalization of life generally, with its increasing demands on the gods, have reached a certain level (-).
'
9
As Weber describes this process, such a pantheon of specialized deities could exert a
considerable influence. This has been the case in Rome especially. Roman religion was highly
formal, since it had remained a religion appropriate to a peasantry and a landed gentry; it also
contained 'a conception of the impersonal as having an inner relationship to the objectively
rational'. (It. mine).
The endless differentiation of the Roman 'numina', the spirits of all types of the Roman religion,
led to a mind-absorbing casuistry of sacred law.
10
This religious development, which was
relatively autonomous but for its influence on 'the rationalization of life', fostered 'a purely
conceptual analysis', causing 'the development of a sort of cautelary sacred jurisprudence and
the tendency to treat these matters to a certain extent as lawyers' problems. In this way,
sacred law became the mother of rational juristic thinking.' (it. mine)
The lawyers adapted this formalistic law with its clear concepts to daily economic life and
developed it into an analytical whole, which, although it was still empirical, was fit to be
systematized and made more abstract, first by the emperors and later, still more so, by the
medieval jurists on the Western European continent.
11
According to Weber the resulting form
of law is rational in character because general norms are applied to the concrete case; it is
also formal because 'only unambiguous general characteristics of the facts of the case are
taken into account.'
12
The combination of both characteristics makes the kind of law in which
'the legally relevant characteristics of the facts are disclosed through the logical analysis of
meaning and where, accordingly, definitely fixed legal concepts in the form of highly abstract
rules are formulated and applied'.
13
8
'But belief in spirits, like all abstraction *in this realm (auf diesem Gebiet), is most advanced in those societies
within which certain persons possess charismatic magical powers that inhere only in those with special
qualifications', ES p. 401, WG p. 246. Weber sees no connection with any particular economic conditions.
9
ES p. 407, WG p. 250.
10
'Every act and indeed every specific element of an act stood under the influence of special numina.' 'The
Roman interest (Sorge) in keeping the numina satisfied had the effect of producing a conceptual analysis of all
individual actions into their components, each being assigned to the jurisdiction of a particular numen whose
special protection it enjoyed.' ES p. 408/9, WG p. 251.
11
The use of documentation (Urkunden) as a sort of fetish was reinforced by the formal elements of the
'Germanic' law, which still had a predominantly magic character, ES p. 683, WG p. 408; see also ES p. 811, WG
p. 469. In Ch 8,5 I reported that Weber explained that, because of the strong position of the English lawyer's
guilds, the universities did not succeed in breaking the guilds' monopoly on the training of apprentices and that
therefore Roman law was not received there, see ES 976/7, WG p. 565; he does not explain, however, why the
English law - which was also influenced by Roman law - nevertheless had a formal character as well, albeit an
empirical one, ES p. 855, WG p. 493.
12
ES p. 656/7, WG p.396
13
ES p. 657/8, WG p. 397. According to Weber the most rational form of modern legal science results from the
following five postulates: 'first, that every concrete legal decision be the "application" of an abstract legal
proposition to a concrete "fact situation"; second, that it must be possible in every concrete case to derive the
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