Weber & Bureaucracy (was: MO's Vision...

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2000, Terrance wrote:
> 
> Specifically, modernization involves a process
> of secularization; that is, it systematically displaces
> religious  institutions, beliefs, and practices,
> substituting for them those of reason and science. This
> process was first  observable in Christian Europe toward the
> end of the 17th century. (It is possible that there is
> something  inherently secularizing about Christianity, for
> no other religion seems to give rise spontaneously to
> secular  beliefs.) At any rate, once invented in Europe,
> especially
> Protestant Europe, secularization was carried as part of 
> the "package" of industrialism that was exported to the
> non-European world. Wherever modern European cultures  have
> impinged, they have diffused secularizing currents into
> traditional religions and nonrational ideologies.

Just a stab, but did any other religion set about to analyze and
rationalize itself with Aristotle? Did Islam? 

Does thinking too hard and precisely about the sacred tend to destroy it?
Substitute something else?

Protestants weren't big on Aquinas's legacy. Augustine's approach
seems more suitable to any possible modernist reconciliation to
religion I'd think.

Who's to know?

		P.