Eros e pulchritudo nell'orizzonte politeistico del mondo razionalizzato

In the Zwischenbetrachtung Weber maintains that religious ethics of brotherliness is not only in tension with the autonomous legality of the worldly spheres within which rationality takes the characteristic form of the “means-end rationality” (economic and political spheres). «In no less degree, this tension occurs between the religious ethic and 'this-worldly' life-forces, whose character is essentially non-rational or basically anti-rational [in the sense of the “means-end rationality”]. Above all, there is tension between the ethic of religious brotherliness and the spheres of aesthetic and erotic life». This essay analytically examines the way in which Weber sets out, in its peculiar dynamics, the tension possible (meaning-oriented) but also became real, between religious ethics of brotherliness on the one hand, and pulchritudo and eros on the other. This tension gradually becomes more marked as each sphere rationalizes itself in the sense of the “values rationality”, becoming the reference point of an autonomous Gesinnung.