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Max Weber's The Religion of China : An interpretation
Author(s) -
Huang SuJen
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(199401)30:1<3::aid-jhbs2300300102>3.0.co;2-9
Subject(s) - capitalism , contradiction , china , interpretation (philosophy) , politics , reading (process) , product (mathematics) , sociology , neoclassical economics , political science , economics , philosophy , law , epistemology , linguistics , geometry , mathematics
The Religion of China is an overlooked but pivotal key to understanding Weber's life work. A careful reading of this work shows that Weber's analysis of the rise of rational capitalism in the West and its absence in China is intrinsically contradictory. While Weber's official position is that the ultimate cause of the absence of capitalism in China (and inversely, its presence in the Occident) was to be found in religion, his political analysis indicates that the politico‐legal conditions alone were sufficient to prevent the rise of rational capitalism in China. Moreover, he finds that the Chinese religion, which was unfavorable to the rise of rational capitalism, was to a significant extent the product of Chinese political conditions. This contradiction reflects the tension, never resolved, between Weber's institutional and religious explanations of the Occidental development.