A Systematic Summary of Max Weber’s Sociology of Religion: Part II

This paper is the second part of an attempt to provide a systematic summary of Max Weber’s description of the historical development of the world religions. This part covers the East and South Asian religions: ancient Chinese religion, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism (including Tantrism), Jainism, and Buddhism (early, Theravada, and Mahayana). The systematic description of Weber’s work reveals several important patterns in the development of the world religions. The first is a movement from ancient religions, which rely on hedonistic festivals and ecstatic deification, to religious activities, which can be connected to Weber’s ideal-typical solutions of the theodicy problem. The second pattern is the association of orgiastic ancient religions to the worship of goddesses. And finally, the third pattern is a tendency to water down the ethical demands for the laity in the maturation process of the world religions. Ascetic Protestantism and Jainism are here an exception.