December 2, 2024

NUMBER 02/ December 2017

NUMERO 02 / dicembre 2017

Numero monografico:

Max Weber e la Riforma protestante

a cura di Lucia Felci

I presenti contributi sono frutto della giornata di studio internazionale Max Weber e la Riforma protestante da me organizzata a Firenze il 23 febbraio 2017 nell’ambito del Laboratorio di Storia moderna del Dipartimento Sagas e del Dottorato di Storia dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze. L’iniziativa, inserita nel contesto delle celebrazioni dei cinquecento anni della Riforma protestante, ha mirato a offrire una riflessione sull’apporto del movimento riformatore alla storia mondiale attraverso un’angolatura particolare: l’analisi dell’opera L’etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo (1905) del grande sociologo tedesco Max Weber (1864-1920). La tesi interpretativa del rapporto tra religione riformata e sviluppo sociale da lui proposta è stata molto discussa, ma si rivela sempre ricca di spunti di riflessione sul significato storico della Riforma e sull’evoluzione della società contemporanea. Della sua persistente fertilità dà conto la lettura interdisciplinare operata da storici, filosofi della politica e sociologi nei saggi qui presentati, con cui si intende contribuire ad una discussione critica, e per questo fonte di stimoli intellettuali e civili, sul fenomeno della Riforma protestante e sulle sue conseguenze storiche complessive.

Tra conservazione e rivoluzione. Gli effetti politici delle confessioni protestanti secondo Borkenau e Weber

How is it possible for similar religious beliefs that share most of the same underlying theological assumptions to develop such different ways of dealing with the phenomenon of politics? Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists all had beliefs grounded in the Reformation, yet related very differently to the “fact” of politics. This question was for both Weber and Borkenau a social-political enigma, which they tried to solve by mobilizing the idea of Weltbild, world-image. The two thinkers use the same concept, but with different meanings. So by analyzing how Borkenau and Weber explain the political diversity of these beliefs, it will be possible to define more precisely what is meant by ‘world-image’.

Keywords: Max Weber; Borkenau; world-image; materialism; politics; Calvinism.

Rationalisation occidentale et modernisation de l’Allemagne? Max Weber, la Réforme et la plus horrible des horreurs

What was the significance of the Reformation for Max Weber? This article examines the question from two different viewpoints. In the first part, the Author demonstrates that the real place of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in Weber’s theory of the emergence of the modern capitalist economy and of the process of western modernization can only be understood if Weber’s essay from 1904-05 is read in the context of his later writings on the ancient economy, the medieval city and the economic ethics of the religions in China and India. In the second part of the article, the Author analyzes the reasons why Weber attributes to Lutheranism a large part of the responsibility for the difficulties encountered by Germany on its path to political modernization.

Keywords: Max Weber; Protestant Ethic; capitalism; politics; religions in China; religions in India.

La genealogia della libertà dei moderni tra autogoverno e indifferenza. La setta come fenomeno anti-politico in Max Weber

The article analyzes the meaning of and the reasons for the Weberian definition of the sect as an anti-political social formation. The anti-political nature of the sect is, on the one hand, a not negotiable demand for freedom from political power (negative freedom); on the other, it lies in the intertwining between the unavailability of obedience and the disinterest in the command that defines the sect as a form of religious anarchism. The origin of the anti-political nature of the sect is identified in the principles that define the sect as a specific social formation: horizontality of interaction and electivity of belonging on the one side, particularism and lack of responsibility on the other.

Keywords: Max Weber; sects/churches, anti-politics, freedom, democracy, tolerance, Puritanism.

Dichiarazioni dei diritti e religione riformata in Georg Jellinek

In 1895 the jurist Georg Jellinek published Die Erklärungen der Menschen und Bürgerrechte on the comparison between the American Bills of Rights, dating back to the American Revolution, and the French Declaration of 1789. From the perspective of the History of Political Thought, the Author analyzes Jellinek’s essay as a pioneering work for understanding Max Weber’s historiographical perspective, which relates religion to social development. Jellinek was the first to focus on the relevance of the religious dimension and in particular Protestantism for reconstructing the origin of the Bills of Rights and human rights. The Author analyzes Jellinek’s insight in relation to his juridical and political theory with the purpose of stressing how his interpretation of the Bills of Rights is functional to a positivist and historicist foundation of rights.

Keywords: Max Weber; Georg Jellinek; Declarations of Rights; Protestantism; positivism; natural law theory; freedom; revolutions.

La Riforma protestante come idealtipo. Weber e la riforma del liberalismo tedesco alla svolta del sec. XX

This article seeks to dissipate some doubts about the main aims of Weber’s study on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It suggests that rather than as an historical issue in itself, Weber saw the Reformation as a turning point in the cultural explanation of the long-term passage to mass capitalism, mass labor and modern mass manufacture in the late nineteenth century. Starting from the observation that there is a territorial correspondence between the countries where the Reformation asserted itself politically and those where modern capitalism first spread, Weber builds an ideal-type for historical comparison over time and space. He locates in the Reformation the birth of a new intramundane ethic, thereby proposing a cultural explanation in opposition to the economic orthodoxy of his time, as well as of the conditions that made possible the political rise of the bourgeoisie and a formally free mass labour.

Keywords: Max Weber; Protestant ethic; modern capitalism; ideal-type; labor; liberalism.

Bleibe in deinem Beruf». L’interpretazione weberiana di Lutero

The article deals with the Weberian interpretation of Luther. Its starting point and main argument is that Luther had an ambivalent position with regard to the development of the spirit of capitalism and, more in general, of Western rationalism. An analysis is made of the premises to this particular “position”: the identification of Lutheranism with a form of inner-worldly mysticism; the central importance of the principle of sola fide and Lutheranism’s tendency to assume the features of a Glaubensreligiosität; and, above all, the presence of an attitude such as indifference to the world (Weltindifferenz), radically different from the rationalism of world mastery (Weltbeherrschung) in Calvinist asceticism. All these elements, in the Author’s opinion, helped to form a deeply traditionalist economic and social ethos and a conservative political orientation.

Keywords: Max Weber; Martin Luther; Weltindifferenz; traditionalism; quietism; conservatism.

Note e documenti

Federico ZulianiGessner, Mainardo, un anonimo e la “tora venenata”. Notizie di storia valdese da due carteggi a brandelli

Rassegne e discussioni

Pietro Adamo, Il mito della Rivoluzione puritana. Politica e religione nell’Inghilterra della prima età moderna

Cronache

Francesca Tasca, Arnaldo ritrovato. Odoardo Tabacchi e Antonio Tagliaferri per il monumento ad Arnaldo da Brescia

Emmanuel Bain, Recherches sur les hérésies médiévales: bilan et perspectives

Elza Ferrario, La Bibbia e le donne a partire dalla Riforma: 500 anni di cambiamenti

Davide De Franco, Riforma e poteri. Élites, aristocrazie e movimenti religiosi ai confini occidentali dell’Italia

Lavori in corso

Federica Fiorini, L’ideale crociato tra reconquista e conquista. L’azione politica e culturale di Bernardino Lopez de Carvajal (1484-1509)

Dennj Solera, I familiares del Sant’Uffizio romano. Un profilo istituzionale e sociale dei servitori dell’Inquisizione papale

Rosa Matucci, “La Repubblica di Cristo”. Il mito di Savonarola dal XVI al XIX secolo

Giovanni Tarantino, Entangled Histories of Emotions in the Mediterranean World

Recensioni

Irene Bueno, Definire l’eresia. Inquisizione, teologia e politica pontificia al tempo di Jacques Fournier (F. Tasca)

Roberto Rusconi, Immagini dei predicatori e della predicazione in Italia alla fine del Medioevo (M. Fratini)

Natale Vacalebre, Come le armadure e l’armi. Per una storia delle antiche biblioteche della Compagnia di Gesù. Con il caso di Perugia (M. Fratini)

Hétérodhoxies croisées. Catholicismes pluriels entre France et Italie, XVIe-XVIIe siècles, sous la direction de Gigliola Fragnito et Alain Tallon (D. Carpanetto)

Vita della Società

Relazione del Seggio della Società di Studi Valdesi, anno 2016-2017

Gabriella Ballesio, L’Italia è cultura. La cultura e l’identità europea