Il rifiuto del mondo dell’ascesi e della mistica e la loro differente tensione con gli ordinamenti politici nella Zwischenbetrachtung di Max Weber

The essay takes as its starting point the idea of a typically German approach to the study of religion, which does not aim to treat it as a factor in social and political coexistence, but to emphasise its possible role as a sanctuary of subjectivity and its freedom of movement which, at least potentially, puts it in tension with the worldly orders. Within this horizon, the essay dwells on the typological distinction between asceticism and mysticism that Weber proposes in the second paragraph of Zwischenbetrachtung (1915) according to the articulate investigation of the directions and degrees of religious rejec- tion of the world that is carried out in the following paragraphs of the text. Starting from this distinction, the essay then examines what Weber specifically says about the tension between the consistent ethics of brotherhood of the prophetic religions of redemption and the political orders of the world, as well as about its different declensions and possible outcomes.