RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND RATIONALIZATION: MEANINGS OF SOCIAL ACTION FROM THE WEBERIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This chapter discusses religion, theodicy, and spirituality from a Weberian perspective, highlighting their implications for social action in modern and disenchanted societies. Based on Max Weber’s sociology of religion, religion is addressed as a form of rationalized social action, linked to different modes of religious domination and to the process of the disenchantment of the world, in which rationalization and bureaucracy weaken the institutional centrality of the sacred. The chapter then explores the concept of theodicy as a set of religious explanations for suffering, evil, fortune, and misfortune, emphasizing its role in moral and social legitimation. Drawing on the comparison among traditions such as Protestantism, Catholicism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, it analyzes how distinct religious ethics produce specific rationalizations of economic and social life. Finally, it examines the emergence of spirituality as a contemporary, less institutionalized and more subjective category that engages with central questions formulated by Weber, especially the search for meaning, the experience of suffering, and the orientation of social action. It is argued that even in highly rationalized contexts, religion and spirituality continue to act as decisive dimensions in the construction of meaning and in the legitimation of forms of life.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2025.036-089