Disenchantment of the world: Weber,Judaism,and Maimonides

Disenchantment of the world

Weber borrowed the phrase “disenchantment of the world” from the philosopher and poet Friedrich Schiller. In his 1788 poem, “Die Götter Griechenlandes” (“The Gods of Greece”), Schiller coined the expression Die entgötterte Natur, the ungodding of nature, as part of his turn back to Greek mythology and ancient texts, in which he argued that the Greek pantheon, driven from the natural world by the emergence of Christianity, may find refuge in Romantic poetry (Schiller, 1873: 66–72). Weber transformed Schiller’s Die entgötterte Natur into die Entzauberung der Welt, conventionally translated as the “disenchantment of the world.” ² Die Entzauberung der Welt, however, literally translates into English as the “de-magification of the world” or “elimination of magic from the world.” These cumbersome translations more accurately reflect Weber’s approach to “rationalization” because they preserve, in the words of Philip Gorski (2011), “the crucial connection between Weber’s theory of disenchantment and his theory of magic” (p. 292). ³ Weber’s theory of disenchantment is not synonymous with theories of secularization, as some often present it (e.g. Berger, 1967), because disenchantment does not presuppose the inevitable decline of religion through processes of modernization, whereby Christianity is deemed “a religion for departing from religion” (Gauchet, 1997: 101), nor does it reflect Charles Taylor’s (2007) nuanced version of secularity, which recognizes that in the contemporary age belief is only one of many options and unbelief is the default position. Rather, disenchantment refers to the initial eclipse of magic by ethical monotheisms, Judaism in particular, and culminates, for Weber, with the emergence of Calvinism. The world-historical process of disenchantment therefore reflects the Western transition from magical forms of social action to religious forms. As such, I will now review Weber’s approach to magic and its relationship to religion.

Weber’s (1978a: 422–439) sociology of religion contrasts magic and religion as different forms of social action, thereby entailing different means and ends. The aim of magic is this-worldly (innerweltlich), while the aim of religion is otherworldly (ausserweltlich). Magic is concerned with such ends as “progeny, prosperity, and longevity” (Gorski, 2011: 293) in this world, while religion is concerned with salvation in the world to come. Magic employs rituals as a means to “‘compel’ natural or supernatural forces … to behave or act in a certain way so as to bring about the desired end” (Gorski, 2011: 293). Religion, however, according to Weber, “uses ‘worship’ and ‘prayer’ to ‘supplicate’ or ‘appeal’ to a God or Gods or, alternatively, it employs ascetic or contemplative techniques such as yoga or meditation to access or unite with the divine” (Gorski, 2011: 293; Weber, 1978a: 424). Thus, magic is oriented to this-worldly manipulation of the Gods through “sorcery” (Weber, 1978a: 424), while religion by definition precludes such notions; the otherworldly God of religion cannot be subject to coercion. The Gods of religion are “worshipped and entreated religiously,” whereas the Gods of magic, what Weber (1978a) calls “demons,” are “magically coerced and charmed” (p. 424). Furthermore, a magician, according to Weber, does not ordinarily “minister” to a community of likeminded individuals, but rather, services disparate individuals, and his or her success as a magician is based upon this-worldly material results. A religious prophet ministers to a religious community, denouncing materialism and advancing ethical behavior; thus, the charisma of an ethical prophet is based entirely upon a divine message and not on material success.

Gorski (2011) notes that outside of Weber’s action-theoretical framework, there are also organizational and cultural differences between magic and religion. For instance, magical worldviews conceive of Gods or powers as “local, plural and manipulable and also as corporeal, superhuman, and immanent” (p.293). By contrast, for religious worldviews, Gods are “more frequently conceived as universal and single, sovereign, and immaterial as well as radically suprahuman and world transcending” (p. 293). The paradigmatic example of the former are thus the local, corporeal, and superhuman Gods of the Greco-Roman world, while the paradigmatic example of the latter is the single, immaterial, and suprahuman God of the Jewish prophets who “ponders … alternative [ethical] modes of behavior” for the Israelites (Weber, 1967a: 213, 1978a: 412–415, 439–451). As such, according to Weber (1978a), there is a continuum running from magic to religion, with the Greek and pagan pantheon on one end and the “strictly monotheistic” world religions of prophetic Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity on the other (pp. 415–420). Certain traditions within Hinduism and Christianity fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum of ideal-typical magic and religion:

The Hindu and Christian forms of the sole or supreme deity are theological concealments of the fact that an important and unique religious interest, namely in salvation through the incarnation of a divinity, stands in the way of strict monotheism.

For Weber (1978a), the religious dogma of the Trinity and Incarnation, as well as the belief in sacramental transubstantiation, separate Catholicism from ideal-typical forms of pure or disenchanted religion. As ideal types, however, Weber notes that the historical and sociological distinctions between magic and religion are not absolute because “the cults we have just called ‘religious’ practically everywhere contain numerous magical components” (p. 424) that persist long after local and folk magical conceptions of religion – religion of the masses – are suppressed by new rationalizing religious forms – religion of the virtuosi. Thus, according to Weber, “the crystallization of developed conceptions of supernatural forces, even as a single transcendent God, by no means automatically eliminated the ancient magical notions, not even in Christianity” (pp. 419–420).

The place of Judaism in the historical process of disenchantment is central for Weber. “In the Yahweh cult, the most important instance in the history of religion, there evolved at least a first approach to universalistic monotheism, namely monolatry, as a result of a concrete historic event – the formation of a confederacy” (Weber, 1978a: 418, my emphasis). The covenant between God and the Israelites gave rise to monotheism and established an ethical and formal rational ethos unique in world history, laying the foundation for Western rationality and the elective affinity of Protestantism and capitalism (Weber, 2005). ⁴ Weber thus contrasts the “distinctively and eminently historical character of the theorizing of the Hebrew prophets” with the “speculations concerning nature characteristic of the priesthoods of India and Babylonia” (p. 418). Weber (1967a) writes,

Ritually correct conduct, i.e., conduct conforming to caste standards, carried for the Indian pariah castes the premium of ascent by way of rebirth in a caste-structured world thought to be eternal and unchangeable.

The maintenance of the caste status quo involved not only the continued position of the individual within the caste, but also the position of the caste in relation to other castes. This conservatism was prerequisite to salvation, for the world was unchangeable and had no history.

For the Jew the religious promise was the very opposite … The world was conceived as neither eternal nor unchangeable, but rather as having been created. Its present structures were a product of man’s activities, above all those of the Jews, and of God’s reaction to them …

There existed in addition a highly rational religious ethic of social conduct; it was free of magic and all forms of irrational quest for salvation; it was inwardly worlds apart from the paths of salvation offered by Asiatic religions. To a large extent this ethic still underlies contemporary Mid Eastern and European ethic. World-historical interest in Jewry rests upon this fact.

Judaism thus represents a de-magified religious outlook, whereby the world is described “without recourse to myth” and “God is not in nature but above it, transcending it and ordering it according to His word” (Sacks, 2000: 70). As such, the disenchantment of the world in fact begets ethical monotheism; disenchantment cannot occur without the coterminous emergence of religion, whereby humankind is conceived by Judaism as a vessel toward forms of rationality. But, according to Weber, the eclipse of magic by Judaism would not be complete until the Protestant Reformation, when a Protestant ethic of this-worldly asceticism would develop and come to replace otherworldly salvation. This, Weber (1967a) contends, is because the Jewish people are a “pariah people” (Pariahvolk), bound together by ritual commonality and particularisms, self-segregated from others, and scorned by the general population. ⁵ In referring to Jews as a pariah people, Weber was really seeking to understand the essence of Jewish survival throughout history, in which “the religion of Israel developed into a structure able to resist all disintegrating influence from the outside” (p. 263). While Weber’s conception of the Jews as a pariah people is controversial and contested on sociohistorical (e.g. Maccoby, 1996; Momigliano, 1980; Shmueli, 1969) and methodological grounds (e.g. Abraham, 1992; Schluchter, 1981), for the purposes of this explication, it suffices to note that for Weber (1967a), only Christianity, ultimately Protestantism, was fully capable of producing the rationalizing ethic constitutive of the West because it was not bound to “those aspects of the ethic enjoined by the Old Testament which ritually characterize the special position of Jewry as a pariah people” (p. 4). ⁶

While not the central argument of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which Weber principally analyses the elective affinity between this-worldly Puritan asceticism and modern capitalism, Weber (2005) nonetheless emphasizes as follows:

That great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world which had begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion. The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in.

Weber (1977b) further reiterates the centrality of Protestantism to his theory of disenchantment in his essay “The Social Psychology of the World Religions”:

The path to salvation is turned away from contemplative “flight from the world” and towards an active ascetic “work in this world.” If one disregards the small rationalist sects, such as are found all over the world, this has been attained only in the great church and sect organizations of Occidental and [this-worldly] asceticist Protestantism.

While there is more than a hint of Christian supersessionism that pervaded the German Protestant scholarship of Judaism that Weber relied upon, Weber (1977b) acknowledges Judaism’s unique role in providing the foundations for religious disenchantment and Judaism’s “historic and autonomous significance for the development of the modern economic ethic of the Occident” (p. 267). Ultimately, however, it is “the providential order of Calvin’s God [that] becomes the mechanical order of the modern West” (Gorski, 2011), in which this-worldly asceticism and vocational “calling” are not signs of eternal election, but rather, ends in themselves of modern secular capitalism (p. 296). ⁷

Maimonides’ program of disenchantment

With Weber’s theory of disenchantment explicated, I now turn to Maimonides and his ideal-typical program of disenchanting Judaism. Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), known as Maimonides in Latin and the Hebrew acronym Rambam, was one of the great philosophers of the medieval period. He was so highly esteemed that, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the following literary adage was coined to express his intellectual oeuvre: “From Moses to Moses none has arisen like Moses” (Twersky, 2006: 15–16). Maimonides was born in Córdoba in 1138, but was forced to flee just 10 years later due to religious persecution at the hands of the Almohads, invading North African Muslims. All non-Muslims were given the choice of conversion, death, or exile, and as such, Maimonides’ family spent the next 12 years traveling throughout Andalusia, eventually settling in Fes in 1160. His first philosophical works were written in Fes, including his Treatise on the Art of Logic. He began the writing and preparation of his Commentary on the Mishnah in Fes and completed the work in 1168 in Egypt. Maimonides arrived in Egypt in 1166 and settled in Fustat, the Old City of Cairo. For a period of time, Maimonides’ intellectual pursuits were financed by his older brother, David, who was a successful merchant until his death by shipwreck in the Indian Ocean. Maimonides also earned a living as a physician, seeing patients and writing medical treatises, and served as the physician of the Grand Vizier of Egypt toward the end of his life. Maimonides’ two most famous works are Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Torah), compiled between 1170 and 1180, which codified biblical and rabbinic law into 14 thematic volumes, and Moreh Nevukhim (Guide of the Perplexed), written in Judeo-Arabic and completed in 1190, which presented Maimonides philosophical synthesis of Judaism and Greek philosophy, in particular Aristotle. ⁸ These works were of considerable importance both contemporaneously and posthumously for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. The section of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah entitled “The Book of Knowledge,” as well as the Guide of the Perplexed, were especially controversial, eventually being banned and burned as heretical by Dominican friars at the behest of certain groups of anti-rationalist and proto-mystic Jews in the thirteenth century. Despite the controversy over his philosophical works, Maimonides would inspire numerous medieval and early modern Jewish commentaries of his works and had a major impact on the Western philosophical tradition by influencing philosophers as diverse as Aquinas, Spinoza, and Leibniz. ⁹

The following presentation of Maimonides’ philosophy of Judaism is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it is meant to situate Maimonides within the theoretical framework of disenchantment. Accordingly, I limit my presentation to just two interrelated central features of Maimonides’ intellectual legacy: his codification of Jewish law and his approach to the reasons for commandments. Together, these examples from Maimonides’ philosophy of law demonstrate that Maimonides’ intellectual program should be seen as an ideal type for the disenchantment of the world. In the tradition of Twersky (1966, 1967, 1980) and others (e.g. Fox, 1990; Goldman, 1986; Novak, 2005), I view Maimonides’ legal and philosophical writings as a more or less integrated and complimentary corpus rather than as separate and bifurcated literatures; Maimonides’ legal works are in fact saturated with philosophical material (Fox, 1990; Novak, 2005; Ravitzky, 2005; Twersky, 1967, 1980) that go well beyond the utilitarian assumptions made upon them by scholars who argue that Maimonides covertly subordinated exoteric law to esoteric philosophy (e.g. Strauss, 1952, 1990). In what follows, I therefore argue that Maimonides’ program of disenchantment relies upon both his legal and philosophical works.

The codification of halakha (Jewish law)

The history and philosophy of halakha is a vast and complicated story, but one of the key players in this story is Maimonides. Maimonides codified Jewish law found throughout rabbinic literature into 14 thematically organized volumes written in Mishnaic Hebrew with subdivided topical chapters of laws. He called this work Mishneh Torah, which literally means the “Repetition of the Torah,” a rabbinic appellation originally used for the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, Devarim (“Words”; e.g. Berakhoth 21b), in which Moses repeated many of the commandments, including the Decalogue, to the Israelites just prior to their crossing the Jordan river (hence, the translation of the book of Devarim as Deuteronomy, from the Greek deuteros, meaning “second,” and nomos, meaning “law”). Maimonides subtitled his work Sefer Yad HaHazaka (“The Book of the Strong Hand”), an allusion to Mishneh Torah’s 14 volumes based upon the numerical value of the Hebrew word yad (hand). The Mishneh Torah was the first complete code of Jewish law and represented a revolutionary change in the way Jewish law was studied and written because it made the Talmud expendable. Maimonides made the audacious claim in his introduction to Mishneh Torah that one would no longer need to consider the Talmud for questions of Jewish law:

A person should need no other work in the World in the rules of any of the laws of Israel; but that this work would collect the entire Oral Law, including the positive legislations, the customs, and the negative legislations enacted from the time of Moshe [Moses] Our Teacher until the writing of the Talmud, as the Geonim interpreted it for us in all of the works of commentary they wrote after the Talmud. Thus, I have called this work the Restatement of the [Oral] Law (Mishneh Torah), for a person reads the Written Law first and then reads this work, and knows from it the entire Oral Law, without needing to read any other book [i.e. the Talmud and rabbinic literature] between them.

In codifying Jewish law, Maimonides institutionalized halakha as a normative and apodictic legal system, which was “systematically organized and conceptually ordered” (Goldman, 1986: 18). ¹⁰ The rationality of the halakhic system under Maimonides’ stewardship is an example of what Weber (1978a) terms “formal rationality,” which rests “on a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands” (p. 215). Maimonides is therefore a jurisprudent and not a prophet. His Mishneh Torah presents definitive and straightforward legal opinions, which, according to the Eliezer Goldman (1986), divest “prophecy of any standing in the interpretation and application of law” (p. 18). This approach stands against views that Talmudic sources are by definition ambiguous and defy legal definitiveness, whereby the only way of encountering the principles of Jewish law is to practice the dialectical tradition of Talmudic jurisprudence. Maimonides upends such conceptions of Jewish law with his “great codificatory undertaking,” which “resulted from a historic process of formal rationalization” (p. 18).

While Weber (1978a) himself noted that “Jewish sacred law,” by which he meant rabbinic law, was “only imperfectly systematized and rationalized” (pp. 827–828), it is argued here, following Goldman (1986), that Maimonides “realized an encompassing formal rationalization of the halakhic system” (p. 18). Certainly, as sacred law, there remained “substantive” ethical and religious motivations for Maimonides’ codification process. Maimonides was first to formulate Jewish dogma with the “Thirteen Principles of Faith” contained in his Commentary on the Mishnah (1965, Sanhedrin, chapter 10). ¹¹ At the core of Maimonides’ halakhic system are therefore fundamental religious beliefs. This reflects a “substantive rationality” rooted in a traditional authority based upon “an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them” (Weber, 1978a: 215). The religious and ethical values expressed by Maimonides that underlie his legalistic works are thus geared toward ultimate ends or “value rationality” (Wertrationalität). Nonetheless, Maimonides codification of Jewish law into a systematic legal code is representative of formal rationality and a program of disenchantment. Halakha for Maimonides is not arbitrary or ambiguous; rather, it is a “body of law” entailing “a consistent system of abstract rules which have normally been intentionally established” (Weber, 1978a: 217). Maimonides’ Jewish law is both systematic and intentional, what Weber deems “instrumental rationality” (Zweckrationalität). As such, the intentionality and purposiveness of law as constitutive of the formal rationality of Maimonides’ halakhic system will now be explored by introducing Maimonides’ philosophy of mitzvot (commandments).

Ta’amei hamitzvot: Reasons for the commandments

At least half of the third volume of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is dedicated to an exploration of the reasons behind Biblical commandments, and as such the entire halakhic system, which takes as its starting point the commandments of the Torah. Maimonides’ approach to the reasons for the commandments is directly related to his program of creating a formally rational system of law and his broader program of religious disenchantment. To be sure, the search for the reasons behind the commandments has a long history and does not start with Maimonides. The Hebrew Bible itself presents reasons for certain commandments (e.g. Exodus 23: 9), as well as sections of the Babylonian Talmud (e.g. Niddah 31b). However, the rabbis of the Talmud present no systematic approach to understanding and formulating reasons for the commandments. Alexander Altmann et al. (2007: 85) note that certain rabbinic passages are in fact antithetical to the search for reasons for the commandments (e.g. Pesahim 119a; Sanhedrin 19b). The first systematic attempt to discern the reasons for the commandments was made by Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 BCE–50 CE), the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher. Philo contended that every law of the Hebrew Bible “is a philosophic virtue … has a rational purpose … [and] is in accordance with the nature of man and the nature of the world” (Wolfson, 1962: 306). He attempted to demonstrate this through both allegorical explanations of commandments and by applying Greek philosophy to scripture. Specifically, Philo endeavored to present the Hebrew Bible as a form of government that featured the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of rule: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (Altmann et al., 2007: 86; Wolfson, 1962: 374–395).

While Philo’s work on ta’amei hamitzvot can be seen as foundational for the study of the philosophy of Jewish commandments, it had little influence on medieval Jewish philosophy because it remained unknown to Jews until the sixteenth century when it was rediscovered (Jospe et al., 2007: 76; Stern, 1998: 161). In the medieval period, it was Maimonides’ approach that would eclipse all others, especially that of Saadia Gaon (882–942 CE) who argued for distinguishing between “laws of reason,” such as the prohibition against murder, which are obligatory because they are rational, and “laws of revelation,” such as refraining from sewing wool and linen together (shatnez), which are obligatory because they are revealed by God (Ben Joseph, 1946: 100–101). Whatever influence Philo may have had on Maimonides was only through the indirect transmission of Philo’s ideas. While Maimonides was certainly similar to Philo in so far as they both attempted a synthesis of Greek philosophy and Judaism and advocated allegorical explanations of scripture, Philo was a mystical Platonist, whereas Maimonides was a rational Arabic Aristotelian.

According to Maimonides (1963), all of the commandments of the Hebrew Bible have a reason, or, in Maimonides’ own words, “all Laws have causes and were given in view of some utility” (p. 507). Maimonides therefore denies Saadia’s distinction between “rational” and “revelational” commandments. In some cases, says Maimonides, such as the prohibitions of murder, adultery, stealing and so on, the reason is clear. These laws Maimonides calls mishpatim (“ordinances”). In other cases, the reasons are less clear, like the above mentioned prohibition of shatnez. Maimonides calls these latter laws huqqim (“statutes”). The uniqueness of Maimonides’ approach to the reasons for commandments is that he refuses to believe that any of the commandments could be without reason. He thus attempts to establish reasons for the huqqim in his Guide of the Perplexed, which are often historically and sociologically contingent and directed toward the abolition of idolatry and magic. In so doing, Maimonides argues that seemingly meaningless commandments actually are intended to wean the Jewish people of pagan practices and therefore the rationale of huqqim can only be understood within their sociohistorical context. Maimonides’ Judaism thus represents an ideal-typical form of “pure” religion on Weber’s continuum of magic and religion. To draw this point out more clearly, I will explore Maimonides’ approach to the institution of sacrifices in the Guide of the Perplexed. ¹²

While the sacrificial service was a central ritual component of Israelite and Temple worship, according to Maimonides the institution of sacrifices actually represents a sociohistorical accommodation. To demonstrate this, Maimonides (1963) provides the following anatomical analogy to Biblical commandments:

The deity made a wily and gracious arrangement with regard to all the individuals of the living beings that suck [i.e., mammals]. For when born, such individuals are extremely soft and cannot feed on dry food. Accordingly breasts were prepared for them so they should produce milk with a view to their receiving humid food, which is similar to the composition of their bodies, until their limbs gradually and little by little become dry and solid.

Many things in our Law are due to something similar to this very governance on the part of Him who governs, may He be glorified and exalted. For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed.

As such, the God of the Hebrews established a sacrificial cult as a religious compromise and not as an ideal because “man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed” and “no other mode of worship was known at the time” (Maimonides, 1963: 526–527). During the time of the Exodus, the Israelites had become accustomed to animal sacrifices as a primary method of religious worship and therefore it would have been impossible, according to Maimonides, for the Israelites to worship God through prayer, Torah study, and the practice of doing good deeds, as the rabbis of the Talmud would later stipulate (e.g. Berakhoth 15a, 32b, 55a; Menahoth 97a, 110a). Therefore, the pagan practice of offering sacrifices to the Gods was institutionalized in Judaism, but it would be thoroughly Judaised and transformed in order to combat idolatry. The animals used principally in the Israelite sacrificial cult were sheep, goats, and oxen, animals worshiped by polytheistic religions according to Maimonides (1963):

The Torah, according to the interpretation of Onqelos [c. 35-120 CE, a Roman national who converted to Judaism and authored an important translation and commentary of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic], states literally that the Egyptians used to worship the sign of Aries and that they therefore forbade the slaughter of sheep and abominated shepherds … Similarly certain sects of the Sabians worshipped the jinn and believed that they assumed the outward forms of goats and therefore called the jinn goats. Hence these sects also used to prohibit the eating of goats. As for the slaughter of oxen, nearly the majority of the idolaters abominated it, as all of them held this species in very great esteem. Hence you will find that up to our time the Indians do not slaughter oxen, even in countries where other species of animals are slaughtered.

The institution of sacrifices in Judaism was therefore a sociohistorical compromise that deliberately effaced the Gods of other religions by making their symbolic representations the primary animal sacrifices of the Israelites. Thus, Maimonides continues,

It was in order to efface the traces of these incorrect opinions that we have been ordered by the Law to offer in sacrifices only these three species of quadrupeds [i.e., Goats, sheep, and oxen] … In this way an action considered by them [i.e., idolaters] as an extreme act of disobedience was the one through which one came near to God and sought forgiveness for one’s sins.

The institution of sacrifices therefore serves as a key example of commandments with a less than clear rationale, but for Maimonides actually serve a vital disenchanting purpose. As huqqim, sacrifices are not like mishpatim, which have clear and logical reasons for their being commanded. However, according to Maimonides, huqqim are integral for weaning the Jewish people of polytheistic rites. While I have only demonstrated this with regards to the sacrificial cult, Maimonides applied this approach to numerous other commandments, which have seemingly no purpose other than serving as a sign of obedience to God (e.g. laws regarding dress, shaving, crossbreeding seeds, and tattoos etc.). Maimonides historicizes many of the commandments of the Torah with the practical aim of disenchanting Judaism from idolatrous and magical practices.

Conclusion

Max Weber introduces the first volume of Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie with the following statement of purpose:

Anyone who is heir to the traditions of modern European civilization will approach problems of universal history with a set of questions, which to him appear both inevitable and legitimate. These questions will turn on the combination of circumstances which has brought about the cultural phenomena that are uniquely Western and that have at the same time … a universal cultural significance.

Weber’s theory of disenchantment entails one such set of questions of “universal cultural significance,” which is essential to his comparative-historical studies of the world religions and deeply connected to his political and economic sociology. In this, he recognized the centrality of ancient Judaism, laying the foundations of Western rationality and resisting re-enchantment. “With the exception of Judaism and Protestantism,” Weber (1978a) writes, “all religions and religious ethics have had to reintroduce cults of saints, heroes or functional Gods in order to accommodate themselves to the needs of the masses” (p. 488). This does not mean, however, that enchanted elements did not endure in some form in disenchanted religion; mystical and magical orientations still persisted in Judaism in the late antique and medieval periods. Weber recognized this and also recognized Maimonides for his efforts to systematically rationalize medieval Judaism.

Weber’s (1978a) comments on Maimonides, while significant, are only cursory remarks in a much larger survey of sacred law, including Indian law, Chinese law, Islamic law, Persian law, Jewish law, and Canon law (pp. 816–838). He did not devote serious systematic attention to the work of Maimonides, nor for that matter any medieval religion; Weber died before he could extend his analysis of Judaism to the medieval and modern periods ¹⁴ and before he could address the history of Catholicism and Islam. ¹⁵ However, a closer look at Maimonides’ philosophy of Jewish law reveals the extent to which Maimonides represents an ideal-typical form of disenchantment. Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah achieved a formal-legal rationalization of Jewish law unprecedented in Jewish history and his approach to the reasons for Biblical commandments was directly tied to the de-magification of Judaism. Supposedly irrational commandments are presented by Maimonides as actually serving a key sociohistorical function: namely, to wean the Jewish people of the polytheistic and magical practices reflected in the social milieus of Near Eastern civilizations. By emphasizing Maimonides, I extend a Weberian analysis into the medieval period, demonstrating that the role of Judaism in the historical development of Western rationality is not alone a product of ancient Judaism. Judaism continued to play an active role in disenchanting the world through the works of Maimonides and beyond.