Max Weber on Islam and Confucianism : the Kantian theory of secularization

There has been considerable academic debate about the coherence or otherwise of Max Weber's sociology as a whole. Much of the analysis has focused on the notion of rationalization as the master theme of his sociological work. By rationalization, Weber referred to a set of interrelated social processes by which the modern world had been systematically transformed into a rational system. Among these various processes, rationalization included the systematic application of scientific reason to the everyday world and the intellectualization of mundane activities through the application of systematic knowledge to practice. Rationalization was also associated with the disenchantment of reality that is the secularization of values and attitudes.