ABSTRACT
In ‘Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions,’ Weber develops a typology of asceticism and mysticism that will be useful to our discussion of post-war composers. The sociologist of religion compares the ‘abnegation’ of the world found in ‘active asceticism that is a God-willed action of the devout who are God’s tools’ to that of the ‘contemplative possession of the holy, as found in mysticism’ (Weber, 1948a: 325). He continues the typological comparison by drawing on his familiar distinction between a religious ethos based on ‘inner-worldliness’ and one that cultivates or promotes a type of ‘flight from the world’:
Active asceticism operates within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world, seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly ‘vocation’ (inner-worldly asceticism). Such asceticism contrasts radically with mysticism, when the latter draws the full conclusion of fleeing from the world (contemplative flight from the world) … Inner-worldly asceticism … proves itself through action. To the inner-worldly asceticist the conduct of the mystic is an indolent enjoyment of the self; to the mystic the conduct of the … asceticist is an entanglement in the godless ways of the world combined with complacent self-righteousness. With that ‘blissful bigotry,’ usually ascribed to the typical Puritan … Asceticism executes these resolutions as given in the God-ordained rational orders of the creatural.
