ABSTRACT
One of the more common objections to the way of thinking represented by Weber’s use of the cage image is that it implies we are trapped in a way we are unlikely ever to escape, which, it is sometimes said, is a recipe for fatalistic thinking. Weber proves the point, the argument goes, because he himself was a thinker of just that type. This chapter is designed to challenge that view, both as an interpretation of Weber’s thinking and on the merits. It does so first on exegetical grounds, claiming that even though Weber clearly believed that what happened in human affairs was determined in no small measure by “fate,” he did not think the course of future events was fixed. Not in a manner human beings could grasp with any certainty, at least. Though he also believed it was possible to infer from existing trends what was likely to take place in the foreseeable future, he thought it was silly for an empirically minded person to claim anything more because events could take unexpected turns. And in The Protestant Ethic he indicated quite explicitly that he thought it was not out of the question that events would take such a turn in the future. The point of his use of the cage imagery was not, therefore, that escape from the cage was impossible – only that it would be exceedingly difficult to do and that if such a thing were to happen, it would not be because human beings had orchestrated it. It would be, instead, because “fate” had willed it. But the passage in question does also tell us what Weber thought it would take to bring about such a development: it would take nothing less, he proposed there, than a rebirth of the kind of strong idealism that had inspired significant change in times past.
