| Max Weber's research on the history of Western culture arrived at the conclusion, among others, that this history led from a predominantly enchanted, religious worldview, to an increasingly rationalized, disenchanted, a-religious worldview. Weber's assessment has often been understood as implying the inevitable secularization of all human culture in a near future, with religion being consigned to a diminishing corner of human social life. In fact, the prevailing view of knowledge, reason and science among Western intellectuals, scientists and scholars has fallen prey to such an understanding. At the same time Weber's scholarship as a whole has been interpreted as contributing to the process of secularization and the progressive marginalization of religion in modern times. This interpretation of Weber also sees his methodology of the social sciences as both embodying and promoting the fact/value and subject/object dichotomies, characteristic of modernist, Enlightenment thought.; The present investigation attempts to demonstrate that an alternative reading of Weber's work is possible—an interpretation that allows for the possibility of investing knowledge, rationality and the life of the intellect with religious value and meaning in a postmodern society. This alternative reading begins by demonstrating that Weber's methodology of the social sciences marks a clear departure from dichotomous logic of Enlightenment thought and overcomes the fact/value and subject/object dichotomies. The works of Ciaffa (1998), Ringer (1997) and Alexander (1983) are used to illustrate the fact that Weber's methodology of the social sciences posits a reflexive relationality between fact/value and subject/object, in contrast to the dichotomous dualism of Enlightenment thought. The present investigation will look at Weber's methodological and philosophical works in light of the valuations offered by Ciaffa, Ringer and Alexander. Building upon these insights, it will be demonstrated that while Weber the historical sociologist documents the emergence and trajectory of the science/religion divide, Weber the methodologist of the social science offers penetrating insights that easily lend themselves to initiating and/or furthering a rapprochement between religion and science in the postmodern period. |
