ABSTRACT
This feature of the notion of charisma-on which Max Weber was most insistentis the most often neglected in its current usage. It is often said that a ‘likeable’ and ‘charming’ (in the ordinary sense of this term) person has charisma. In everyday language charisma, popularity, attractive personality are treated as synonyms. Yet these terms are separated by differences of meaning which for good reasons should be maintained. A popular, pleasant individual-even one who is continually in our thoughts-is not necessarily someone with whom we would share the most personal of commitments. In the case of a popular person, we would not be ready to let him decide our course of action in our place. Such a person is popular in most cases because he demands nothing from us-which is not at all the case with the charismatic leader, who on the contrary is a very demanding master, as is clearly suggested in Jesus’s injunction to the rich young man: ‘sell all your possessions and follow me’. To this rather negative qualification another more positive qualification can be added: the individual for whom we have a liking is popular because he has an affinity with us (he is ‘one of the boys’) and because he reflects a favourable image of ourselves with which we feel capable of identifying without having to haul ourselves up to the ideal of an inaccessible model. This is a situation clearly very different to the distance maintained by the charismatic figure from his disciples and his lieutenants, as exemplified by John the Baptist’s remarking of Jesus that ‘I am unworthy to unloosen his shoes’.
