ABSTRACT
The structural heterogeneity, the structural pluralism that marks the medieval West, was lacking. In this way, however, the historical preconditions arising from it, prerequisites for the genesis and development of rational capitalism, were also missing. Thus, as opposed to the West, both in terms of form and spirit the overall constellation of political domination in the Islamic state formations was ultimately a hindrance to the developmental prospects of rational industrial capitalism. Max Weber provides not only a typological classification, but also a genetic reconstruction of Western cultural phenomena. Weber’s view of the practical effects of Islamic law, therefore, can be summarized in the paradoxical formulation: because stereotypification of Islamic sacred law increased rather than diminished, sacred law intensified the already low level of stereotypification of Oriental patrimonialism. Weber first distances himself from any purely technological explanation of modern and indeed of any capitalist development.
