ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Robert Bellah's contribution to the sociology of religion through a commentary on his relationship to the legacy of Max Weber and Karl Jaspers. The critique of universalism has also thrown doubt on such large-scale historical and comparative claims, and the legacy of the secular Enlightenment, specifically Immanuel Kant's philosophy of religion, is seen to be problematic. Bellah was inspired by both Durkheim and Weber, because he is one of the few major figures in mainstream American sociology to have taken Asian cultures seriously. His use of the Axial Age framework to analyse the transcendental character of Confucianism. Weber concluded the study of China with the famous analysis of Confucianism as an ethical system and Taoism as a magical heterodoxy within which he argued that the notion of Tao in emphasizing stability and tranquillity never offered a radical challenge to the secular world.
