Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 4 Relations between men: from routinization of charisma to patriarchal
domination over men.
68
can serve as 'fetish' or those persons can 'achieve the ecstatic states which are viewed, *in
accordance with experience, as the pre-condition for producing certain effects in
meteorology, healing, divination, and telepathy.'
5
These powers are indicated
6
'by such
special terms as "mana", "orenda" and the Iranian "maga" (the term from which our word
"magic" is derived)'.
7
As the power to manipulate those powers was thought to be of the
same order as these powers themselves, he employs the term 'charisma' for them.
As Weber himself points out, a definition of certain practices as 'magic' is made from a
modern, rational viewpoint:
'Only we, judging from the standpoint of our modern views of nature, can distinguish objectively in such *conduct
those attributions of causality which are "correct" from those which are "fallacious", and then designate the
fallacious attributions of causality as irrational, and the corresponding acts as "magic". Quite a different distinction
will be made by the person performing the magical act, who will instead distinguish between the greater or lesser
ordinariness of the phenomena in question.'
In Ueber Einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie Weber had already dedicated some
passages to the difference between modern and 'primitive' interpretations of rational
causation. There he claims that 'primitive' people have a better knowledge of the
circumstances of their existence than people in 'rational society', since in 'rational society'
people believe that there are other people who know what makes the streetcar move
8
.
In ES he repeats that both 'religion' and 'magic' are primarily 'oriented to this world'; they are
linked to everyday purposive conduct, to rules of experience and to economic ends.
9
In other
words: 'primitive' social relations cannot be understood by using the modern terms
'economic' and 'religious', since in such societies 'economy' and 'religion' are not
differentiated.
This standpoint could have been a starting-point for an historical-materialist analysis of the
history of the differentiation between 'economics' and 'religion',
10
if Weber would have
connected it to an investigation of social-economic character of 'magical' relations, which are
probably the same as the 'traditional' ones he analyzes in his sections on household and
tribe. He does not do this, since he wants to treat 'charisma' as an individualistic property of
persons or things. As Weber is convinced that the 'primitive condition' (of relations between
people; he does not mention their relations with things, plants, animals, geological or
meteorological phenomena) was not individualistic,
11
'charisma' appears as a breach with
the 'communism' of early social relations.
5
ES p. 400, WG p. 245. ES adds 'primitive' to 'experience'.
6
'primarily, but not exclusively', ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Einige Kategorien p. 473; the connection between 'magic' and 'rationality' is important for an understanding of
Webers concept of 'formal rationality', because of the influence of magic and of later religious practices and
'rituals' on those of law. See further below, Ch. 9.
9
'Furthermore, religiously or magically motivated *conduct is relatively rational *conduct, especially in its earliest
manifestation. It follows rules of experience, though it is not necessarily action in accordance with a means-end
schema. ( - ) Thus, religious or magical *conduct or thinking must not be set apart from the range of everyday
purposive conduct, particularly since even the ends of the religious and magical actions are predominantly
economic', ES p. 400, WG p. 245.
10
See below, no 6 n. 56.
11
ES p. 358, WG p. 214; he also repeatedly emphasizes the 'communistic' character of 'the household'. See
above, Ch. 3,3.
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