Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Individualism in Sociology

Weber is important, because he reversed the approach to life that, from time immemorial, gave precedence (and power) to creeds. In Weber’s theory of religion, all forms of social authority can be traced back to the ecstatic, inner resources of personality. The charismatic renews culture in and through his magnetic personality. He is the Nietzschean superman who shatters ordinary limits and remakes our ideals. Creeds are simply dead reminders of powerful personalities.
-R.R. Reno

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The past couple days on the Frist Things blog with this entry by Reno and the Other by Charles Chaput have been the best ever. There is a great depth to these two pieces. I hope they are a sign on a new direction for the magazine, buth Chaput and Reno are deeply critical of western liberalism here and while this critical attitude is certainly not new to Chaput (I'm not familiar enough with Reno to comment), it is striking and encouraging to see such open criticism of liberalism on FT.

ben

Kevin J. Jones said...

I think FT has always been of a split mind on the question of liberalism. Democratic welfare state liberalism=somewhat bad, libertine individualist liberalism=very bad, capitalist liberalism=mostly good, confrontational militarist liberalism=mostly good.