Theodicy

Max Weber thought that the problem of theodicy was the stimulus for the "rationalization of religious ideas" in all—not just monotheistic—religious traditions. Alongside "theodicies of suffering," accounts of the nature and distribution of misfortune in the world that console those who suffer, Weber discerned another kind of view that reassures those who do not suffer that it is just and right that they be spared. He deems this the "theodicy of good fortune" (ch. 6).

The idea seems to have roots in Marx, but Weber adds the idea that those theodicies that last are those that speak both to the fortunate and to the unfortunate. He thought only three have ever done so: Zoroastrian dualism, the Calvinist understanding of the hidden God (deus absconditus), and the Indian doctrine of karma, "the most complete formal solution of the problem of theodicy (ch. 8).

Weber's is the most impressive effort to expand the meaning of theodicy beyond its monotheistic origins. No longer a problem only for theists, theodicy arises in response to the general problem of the "the incongruity between destiny and merit" (a Kantian problematic), which challenges all human efforts at making theoretical and practical sense of the world. Weber's understanding of theodicy as a species of the problem of meaning has shaped important theories of religion by Clifford Geertz and Peter Berger.