ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Max Weber's vast sociological studies of religion to make sense of the ethic of the brotherly love. Brotherliness is the central idea of the Intermediary Reflection, and it is here that this ethic is most clearly set against the antagonistic value-spheres of modernity. Bologh discusses the idea of love as presented in the Intermediary Reflection as part of her overall critique of Weber, which is aimed at Weber's alleged advocacy of public 'greatness' over love as part of a feminine, private realm. Mystic forms of brotherly love maintain an acosmic, uncompromised universalism but, like the Puritan form, they tend towards the impersonal and can avoid tension with the economic and political world. The driving force here is the ideal interest in death and salvation and as this becomes more rationalised in the Puritan and mystic forms then the response to the problem of theodicy is altered accordingly.
