Arpad Szakolczai

This paper argues for the need of a sociology of grace, based on a sociology of the Renaissance, central – among others – for understanding the modern condition. Such an approach takes its point of departure in Max Weber’s comparative study of the rise of world religions and his concept of charismatic power, yet goes beyond Weber in emphasising the significance of a series of renascences, culminating in the European Renaissance starting from the Duecento. The paper starts with a short linguistic and historical background analysis. The linguistic study reveals that terms related to «grace» have three distinct meanings: theological (the power and mercy of God), aesthetic (the power of graceful beauty), and socio-anthropological (charity and gift relations). The historical analysis goes back to the axial age hypothesis but argues that – as the three great monotheistic world religions, redefined as «religions of grace» – each developed outside the time horizon of the axial age, this period, though an extremely important moment of liminal crisis, cannot be considered as the «centre» of world history. Emphasis is placed, instead, on the more or less parallel emergence of ancient Judaism and Minoan culture, each based on epiphany experiences, one male and the other female, thus establishing two distinct and unique traditions of grace. European culture, rooted in Christianity, is based on the attempt to forge a unity between these two traditions; a unity that always remained precarious and in need of constant renewals, in the forms of reforms and renascences. The most important such period of renewal was the Italian Renaissance, which started in the Duecento, combining «rebirth» and reform, and ending in the liminal crisis around 1500. Central for this project was an attempt to unify the three meanings of grace. The failure of the Renaissance as a project led to its fragmentation into Protestant predestination (Weber), court society etiquette (Elias) and the disciplinary institutions of the modern state (Foucault); or the rise of modernity. The argument implies that the crisis produced by modern nihilism can only be ended by a return to the spirit of the Renaissance project.