Occidental rationalism
Occidental rationalism is a term coined by the German sociologist and economist Max Weber (1864–1920). By this he means the originally western new type of culture , which since the Renaissance has been increasingly based on rationalism and secularism . According to Weber, its emergence is the central prerequisite for the development and expansion of capitalism in the early modern period . At the beginning of his collected essays on the sociology of religion (published in 1920), Weber posed the question of the causes of Western development in relation to the emergence of a rationalist- bureaucratic capitalist spirit:
"What chain of circumstances has led to the appearance of cultural phenomena on the soil of the Occident, and only here, which - at least as we like to imagine - lay in a direction of development of universal importance and validity?"
His answer was: "Only in the Occident is there ' science ' in the stage of development which we recognize as 'valid' today". =
Weber described the emergence of Occidental rationalism through a process that he called the " disenchantment of the world ". It is about an intellectualization process, a process of modernization , primarily of the economy and society , from a society characterized by feudal - traditional economic and power structures to a bureaucratically organized capitalist industrial society based on rationalization and technologization .