PARTISAN
R~ V IE\\,
expound his conceptual and analytical aims:
The ()llowing study may thus ... f() rm a contribution
to
und el'standing
of'the manner in which ideas become effective forces in histor y....
[W]e al-e me rely attempting to clarif'y the part which religious f()rces
have played in formin g th e developing web of our specifica ll y worldly
modern culture, in th e complex interaction of innume rable historica l
f'aelOJ-s.... At the same time we must free ourselves from th e idea
th a t it 'is possible
to
d ed uce th e Re formation , as a histol'ica lly neces–
sa ry result, from ce rtain economic cha nges. Countless historica l cir–
cumstances, which ca nnot be reduced to any economic law, and are
not susceptibl e of economic exp lana tion of any son, especially purely
political processes, had
to
concur in OJ-d e r that th e newly cl'ea ted
Churches should survive at all.
On the other hand, howeve r, we have no intention whatever of'
maintaining such a foolish or docl rinaire thesis as th a t th e spirit of
ca pitalism ... co uld have arisen only as the result of ce rtain e ff ects of
the Re formation ....
I
n view of the tremendous confusion o f inte rde–
pe nde nt influences between the mate rial basis, the forms of social and
political organization, and the ideas current in the time of th e Refor–
ma tion , we ca n proceed only by investigating whether and at what
po ints cenain correlations be twee n fOJ-ms of I-eligious be li e f a nd
practical ethics can be wOl-ked out.
If Schama's work is devoted to recreating the political cultu re of the
French Revolution , then Weber's project was to analyze the spiritual and in–
tellectual culture of the capitalist revolution. In addition, Weber's essay is one
of th e preeminent early examples of the kind of discourse analysis that
Schama and other contemporary historians sometimes seem to assume was
invented in the late 1960s. I introduce this example at such length in order to
demonstrate that a historical analysis which disagrees with certain Marxist
interpretations ofthe past need not be as one-sided as the readings it aims to
replace. For one of the points about Weber's interpretation is that it provides
room within itself for the perspectives that it is also disputing. Schama's does
not, and in the degree that it does not falls short of the highest standards as
either narrative account or historiographical argument. In being bound so
closely to polemical and ideological contentions, his history loses some of the
additional distinction which it might otherwise have attained.
An
event of such
incomparable magnitude and depth as the French Revolution requires from
its historians a larger amplitude and generosity of intellectual spirit.
