That’s a profound question. Weber’s sociological imagination was both prophetic and bounded by his historical moment. He was among the first to see how modernity’s rationalization would shape the world — yet many aspects of our late-modern or digital society were outside his horizon.
🌍 The World Weber
Did
Foresee
1.
Rationalization & Bureaucracy
- Weber foresaw a world increasingly dominated by formal rationality — calculable rules, predictable systems, bureaucratic organizations.
- He described modern institutions (state, corporations, universities, hospitals) as governed by impersonal procedures and hierarchical offices rather than charisma or tradition.
- His metaphor: the “iron cage” (stahlhartes Gehäuse) where efficiency and rational order eclipse freedom and meaning.
2.
Disenchantment of the World (Entzauberung)
- He anticipated the decline of magic, myth, and religious authority in everyday life, replaced by science and technical control.
- Life becomes more predictable, but also spiritually “flatter,” with fewer transcendent horizons.
3.
Politics & the Struggle for Power
- Weber foresaw politics as an arena of conflict and leadership charisma, especially in mass democracies.
- He warned of the rise of “charismatic leaders” who could cut through bureaucracy but risked authoritarianism.
4.
Capitalism’s Durability
- Unlike Marx, Weber doubted capitalism would collapse under its contradictions.
- He saw it as stabilized by law, rational enterprise, and cultural ethos (e.g., the Protestant ethic).
🌑 The World Weber
Did Not
Foresee
1.
Digital & Algorithmic Rationalization
- Weber could not imagine algorithmic governance: machine learning, big data, surveillance capitalism.
- Bureaucracy in his time was human-staffed and paper-based. He didn’t foresee automated bureaucracies that act without human discretion.
2.
Globalization & Postcolonial Worlds
- Weber was Eurocentric. He didn’t fully anticipate the rise of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as intellectual, political, and economic forces shaping modernity.
- He saw the West as the “carrier of rationalization,” overlooking alternative modernities.
3.
Welfare States & Liberal Democracies
- He was skeptical of mass democracy’s stability. He didn’t foresee the 20th-century expansion of welfare states, social rights, and democratic resilience (at least until late 20th-century crises).
4.
Ecological Limits
- He didn’t anticipate the environmental costs of rationalized growth (climate change, ecological collapse).
- For Weber, rationalization seemed limitless — he didn’t foresee planetary boundaries.
5.
New Forms of Meaning
- While he saw disenchantment, he did not foresee the re-enchantment of the world through nationalism, consumer culture, new religions, and digital mythologies (conspiracy theories, online cults).
- Nor could he imagine existential therapies, poststructuralist critiques, or “van-life philosophies” as counter-movements.
✨ In Sum
- Weber foresaw: the bureaucratized, rationalized, disenchanted, capitalist, charisma-punctuated modern world.
- He did not foresee: algorithms replacing clerks, the global South re-shaping modernity, ecological catastrophe, or the return of enchantment in postmodern/digital forms.
👉 Would you like me to sketch this as a two-column table (Foreseen vs. Not Foreseen) — something you could directly insert into your seminar materials on the “iron cage and its afterlives”?
