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community and Switzerland is not. Despite the fact that electoral partici–
pation in the last election for the European parliament was not as high as
we expected, I think Austria takes its role in the United Europe very, very
seriously. This is a basic difference.
Peter Diamandopolis:
In the movement in this century from rationali–
ty to subjectivity it may appear that we've reached a certain impasse. Are
there grounds for believing this truly to be the case and are there are any
grounds for thinking that one can get beyond this impasse in some impor–
tant way either in this nation or anywhere else?
James Davison Hunter:
I'm not sure there is a way to overcome this
impasse. I think the sociological significance of looking at religion and in
particular at orthodoxy, like American evangelicalism-although it could
be other forms of religion and other kinds of orthodoxies-is that you
have the possibili ty, at least theoretically, of communi ties of resistance to
either hyperrationality or hypersubjectivity. Yet I argue that within religion
and within the orthodoxies, and I would say in evangelicalism in particu–
lar, you have the full unadulterated, unmitigated embrace of precisely the
culture of subjectivism that has come on the heels of its own embrace of
rationalism. This kind of accommodation or assimilation on the part of
religion and religious orthodoxy is done deliberately, explici tly, and yet still
unwittingly. In fact, it thinks it is maintaining continuity with the historic
traditions, but it is doing so in such a way that it is gutting its traditions
from the inside out.
Stephen Kalberg:
I mentioned a manner in which, according to Weber's
analysis of the U.S., there has been a decline in the civic sphere's viability.
He did not conclude that this would result in an enormous strengthening
of the subjective; rather he forsaw more bureaucratization. I concluded, on
the other hand, that a triumvirate of forces now compete against each
other: world-mastery individualism, the consumer-entertainment indus–
tries,
and
civic sphere ideals. Yes, within this triumvirate, the "free space,"
so to speak, for the development of egocentric individualism is wider and
deeper than was the case under conditions of the earlier world-mastery
individualism/ civic sphere dualism.
Your question still remains: are we truly at an impasse? Weber, time
and again, in looking very broadly historically and comparatively, found
that periods which seemed to be impasses and appeared to be ones in
which really nothing could be resolved, started moving again a few gener–
ations later. Usually the turn resulted from a combination of forces-forces
already there, yet new forces as well, causing some shifting and then a reju–
venation. Given his "long view"as a sociologist who practiced something
