Intolleranza zero. Etica protestante e spirito del liberalismo in Max Weber

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine Max Weber’s genealog y of liberalism as a political turn paradoxically rooted in two aspects of ascetic Protestantism’s world view: obsession with the purity of our own conscience, and indifference towards other people. This “heterodox” approach to the birth of tolerance is then analyzed in the light of the concept of polytheism. I will argue that Weber’s normative stance on how we should face polytheism is deeply indebted to the ascetic Protestantism’s solution to it, whereas our age tends to conceive of pluralism as relativism, driving the spirit of liberalism away from its origins.