Depersonalized Charisma in Institutional History
Reinhard Bendix separates personal charisma from institutional charisma
Reinhard Bendix wrote:
Familial and Institutional Charisma as Aspects of Domination on the Basis of Authority [1]
[Footnote 1: Charisma in an impersonal sense may be combined with “domination on the basis of authority” in its traditional or legal form, or with ‘"domination on the basis of constellation of interest." In this section I discuss Weber’s definitions of familial and institutional charisma and his use of these concepts in the analysis of church and state …]
Domination on the basis of charismatic leadership alone is highly unstable because the desire to preserve the original charisma can be "satisfied'' only by its transformation. However, this amorphous wish of the charismatically led community is only one reason for transformation and not the most important one. Much more important, according to Weber, are the interests of the disciples and retainers, who wish to appropriate the leader’s powers of control, determine the rules of succession and recruitment, and monopolize the economic opportunities that the leader's influence has made available. The pursuit of these interests is in jeopardy as long as charisma is bound up with a concrete person, i.e., as long as it is incompatible with any type of regularization. The pursuit of these interests becomes easier, on the other hand, when the idea of charisma has been transformed into a “depersonalized” quality. In this sense, charisma may be transmitted to the members of a family or become the attribute of an office or institution regardless of the persons involved. In Weber’s view one is justified in speaking of charisma in this impersonal sense, as long as
… the characteristics of an extraordinary quality are preserved, which is not accessible to everyone and which in principle possesses pre-eminence as over against the endowment of those who are subject to charismatic rule. Precisely and only because [families or institutions are believed to possess extraordinary powers] can the members of such families or the incumbents of offices exercise the social function of charismatic domination. [2]
[Footnote 2: … The last sentence is a translation of the meaning rather than the wording of Weber's text. “Depersonalized” or “impersonal” charisma is my translation of Versachlichung des Charisma. Depersonalization is the precondition of "routinization" … This differentiation between personal and “depersonalized” charisma parallels to some extent Weber's distinction between “constellations of interests” and “orders of authority”.]
Impersonal Charisma and its Implications:
An impersonal charisma has been attributed to families in the belief that this extraordinary quality has been transmitted through blood ties. Thus the household community of a kinship group is regarded as immortal and magically blessed from time immemorial. Because of this magical blessing the "house" is believed to possess certain unattainable qualities that elevate it above all others, and only persons born in this community are believed to be endowed with charisma. It is in this sense that we speak of a princely house or a royal dynasty as a sequence of rulers from the same family or stock. The same idea applies to an aristocracy that derives historically from the disciples of a charismatic leader or the followers of a royal house.
As a principle of domination, familial charisma has generic problems of its own, especially in regard to succession. The belief in the charisma of a family does not make the choice of a successor unequivocal. Familial charisma may lead to wild palace intrigues and revolutions, particularly where polygamy is practiced and the wives' struggle for the future of their children is added to the ruler's interest in eliminating rival contenders. In such cases the only alternatives are to divide the realm among the descendants like any other property or to select a successor among them according to some regular procedure, such as combat among the sons or priestly oracles or public acclamation. All these methods are fraught with uncertainty, and royal power has become stabilized only where the principles of monogamy and primogeniture (inheritance by the first-born) prevailed, though even in such a case the rule of succession is jeopardized when a royal house dies out — like the Carolingian kings — or when the properly chosen successor proves himself too inept to rule. In any case, the whole meaning of charisma is changed in the process. From a quality that authenticates and ennobles a person through his own actions, charisma becomes an attribute of the forefathers through whose deeds a man's authority and privileges become legitimate. Thus the Roman nobility came to consist of men whose ancestors had occupied offices regarded as ennobling, and these men sought to monopolize office-holding within their own group. In the United States the reverse was true: the Puritan tradition glorified the charisma of the self-made man, while the “heir” counted for little. On the basis of his observations before World War I, however, Weber concluded that this evaluation was gradually being reversed, so that descent from the families of the founding fathers or membership in families of "old" wealth were ranked more highly in America than individual success and "new" wealth. Such attempts to increase prestige by creating a monopoly of privilege for the select few are similar to tests of ancestry or to the rejection of the newly rich as socially inferior. In this way familial charisma serves to monopolize political and economic as well as social opportunities.
The “depersonalization” of charisma also may occur through institutionalization. In this sense charisma is thought to be transmitted through a magical ceremony rather than through blood ties. The Catholic idea of "apostolic succession" is an example: the priest acquires the indelible charismatic qualification through the bishop's ceremony of consecration. By this symbolic act charisma is transmitted to the new priest, not as a person but as the new incumbent in an established office. Such institutionalization of charisma is necessarily a gradual process. Originally, the pre-eminent position of the Bishop of Rome in the Catholic Church was based on the belief that God would not permit the church of the world capital to err; hence the Roman church possessed authority despite the intellectual superiority of the Hellenistic Orient, where most of the great church fathers originated. Rome as a fountainhead of doctrine with universal jurisdiction over all local churches is a later development, and the full bureaucratization of the church is a modem phenomenon. But from the beginning it was the church as an institution that possessed charisma, not the Roman bishop as a person.
Although the idea of institutional charisma is not confined to the church, Catholic theory represents the most complete separation between the charisma of office and the worthiness of the incumbent. Through a magical act the priest acquires charismatic qualification as a functionary of the hierarchy. This depersonalization of charisma was the means whereby the organization of the church was grafted upon a world in which the belief in magic prevailed. The church as an institution could be removed from all the accidents of the personal only if the charismatic qualification of the cleric remained unquestioned, however depraved the priest himself might be.
In this way charisma loses the sense of an extraordinary personal gift that can be tested and proved, and becomes instead an impersonal capacity that in principle can be taught and learned. This, too, is the product of a long development, for originally heroic and magical capacities were regarded as inborn, and charismatic education consisted only of the appropriate selection and training of the qualified. Children who were believed to possess such qualifications were separated from their native environment and were perfected and tested through ascetic practices until, through a graduated and ceremonious reception, they were admitted to the circle of those who had proved their charisma. In all this, emphasis was placed on the evocation of qualities that the pupil was believed to possess already, not on the inculcation of specific skills, and important elements of this charismatic education remain, especially in the case of priests and soldiers. But, with the bureaucratization of the army and the church, ever increasing emphasis has been given to specialized knowledge on the assumption that such knowledge must be taught and that no one is born with it.
Weber drew several contrasts between familial and institutional charisma. Familial charisma depends on kinship ties and institutional charisma on a separation from these. In the former the individual qualifies for the exercise of authority on the basis of blood relationship and in the latter on the basis of education and investiture. For a ruling family the great problem of continuity is succession; the personal qualification of the ruler is by comparison secondary. For a ruling institution the process is reversed: the great problem of continuity is the personal qualification of its functionaries, and the problem of succession is by comparison secondary. This is related to the fact that familial charisma refers primarily to the identity of the rulers and their descendants and has little bearing on the functioning of an organization; institutional charisma, on the other hand, refers primarily to the organization and depends little on the personal identity of the ruler. In familial charisma the typical problem of deterioration is the drift of aristocratic privilege toward social snobbery and the monopolization of advantages without commensurate performance. In institutional charisma the typical problem of deterioration is the drift of functionaries and their education toward specialized performance at the expense of personal inspiration or substantive rationality. These implications of Weber's concepts suggest that each type of "impersonal charisma" possesses what the other lacks, and this complementary quality may be one reason why historically neither of these authority structures has gained full ascendancy, at least in the long run. Where the two principles have been embodied in kingship ( familial charisma) and the church ( institutional charisma), as in western Europe, they have almost always arrived at some compromise between their more or less conflicting claims. [3]
[Footnote 3: Kingship and the church are not the only embodiments of familial and institutional charisma. Familial charisma is present in some form in all aristocracies and finds its most intensive development in the Indian caste system. Institutional charisma, on the other hand, is present to some extent in all government. The belief in the sanctity either of tradition or of the legal order has usually some affinity with religious concepts and loses this affinity only under very special conditions. Weber pointed out in this connection that the German tradition tends to endow all offices with a special halo, partly because of the very widespread view that the authority of government was ordained by God and that hence it was each man's duty to accept his place in the established order … All this leads to the view that rulers and officials are merely cogs in a government that is necessary for certain purposes, and these holders of offices possess no charisma whatever since the institution of government itself possesses none. Thus, Puritanism typically discouraged respect for office since it vigorously opposed all idolization of mundane affairs. This opposition to the institutional charisma of government also was bound up with very specific ideas and historical conditions. The Calvinist principle that only Christ rules the church, the principle of the believer's church according to which no authority must intervene between man and God, or such expressions of asceticism as the Quaker's refusal to kneel or bow before secular authority because veneration belongs to God alone — such traditions are still reflected in the relative immunity of England against dictatorial tendencies, as well as in the American's lack of deference to formal authority …]
Weber's analysis of these compromises illustrates the use he made of his concepts, but to clarify this a recapitulation is in order. He defined charismatic domination as a relation between a leader and his followers characterized by a belief in the leader’s extraordinary powers and a loose organizational structure. In their desire to preserve the benefits of charisma the disciples introduce a gradual “depersonalization”. As a result charisma comes to be seen as either an attribute of blood and hence of heredity or an attribute of an institution that is transmitted through education, consecration, and appointment. Since familial charisma refers only to the succession of rulers rather than to a correlative administrative organization, Weber did not discuss it apart from the legal or traditional systems of domination.
Institutional charisma, on the other hand, represents a strong and enduring system of domination wherever priestly rule has developed into the organization of a church. Because this institution is believed to be endowed with extraordinary powers it has had a lasting effect, both as a guarantor of and as a check upon the exercise of secular authority.
The Source:
Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, University of California Press [1960] 1977 [pp. 308-313]
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