alchemist, who speaks of ‘mutual affinity’ (reciprocam affinitatem);1 and most notably in the writings of Hermannus Boerhave, the eighteenth-century Dutch alchemist. In Elementa Chemiae [Basic Principles of Chemistry] (1724), Boerhave explains that the solvent particles and those that are dissolved gather into homogeneous bodies through the affinity of their own nature (‘particulae solventes et solutae se affinitate suae naturae colligunt in corpora homogenae’). Noting the relationship between gold and aqua regia in a container he asks:
Why does not gold, which is eighteen times heavier than aqua regia, collect at the bottom of the vessel containing the aqua regia? Can you not see clearly that, between each particle of gold and aqua regia, there is a force by virtue of which they seek out each other, are united and join each other?
Affinity is the force that makes these heterogeneous entities form a union, a kind of marriage or chemical wedding, arising more from love than from hate (‘magis ex amore quam ex odio’).2
The term ‘attractionis electivae’ (elective attraction) was first used by the Swedish chemist Torbern Olof Bergman. His work De attractionibus electivis (Uppsala, 1775), was translated into French as Traité des affinités chimiques ou attractions électives (1788) [Treatise on Chemical Affinities, or Elective Attractions]. Bergman explains his use of the term as follows: ‘Several people call affinity what we have named attraction. I would consequently use these two terms interchangeably, even though the former, being more metaphorical, seems less appropriate in a work on physics.’ In discussion with Bergman, Baron Guyton de Morveau, a contemporary French chemist, emphasized that affinity is a particular kind of attraction, distinguished by a specific intensity of attractive power, through which two or more entities ‘form a being whose properties are new and distinct from those that belonged to each prior to combining’.3 In the German translation of Bergman’s book (Frankfurt-am-Main, Verlag Tabor, 1782–90), the expression ‘elective attraction’ is rendered as Wahlverwandtschaft, elective affinity.
It was probably from this German version that Goethe drew the title of his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809), in which one of the characters mentions a work on chemistry ‘that dates back ten years’. Several passages describing the chemical phenomenon seem to be taken directly from Bergman – particularly the analysis of the reaction between AB and CD, which re-combine as AD and BC. Goethe’s transposition of a chemical concept onto the social terrain of human spirituality and feelings was all the easier because, for several alchemists (such as Boerhave), the expression was already heavily laden with social and erotic metaphors. For Goethe there was elective affinity when two beings or elements ‘seek each other out, attract each other and seize … each other, and then suddenly reappear again out of this intimate union, and come forward in fresh, unexpected form (Gestalt)’.4 The resemblance between this and Boerhave’s formula (two elements that ‘seek each other out, are united and join each other’) is striking, and the possibility that Goethe was also familiar with, and inspired by, the Dutch alchemist’s work cannot be ruled out.
Through Goethe’s novel, the expression established itself within German culture to designate a special kind of bond between souls. Thus, it was in Germany that ‘elective affinity’ underwent its third metamorphosis: through the work of Max Weber, that great alchemist of the social sciences, it became a sociological concept. The connotation of mutual choice, attraction and combination is retained from its former meaning, but the aspect of newness seems to disappear. In Weber’s writings, the concept of Wahlverwandtschaft – as well as that of Sinnaffinitäten (affinities of meaning), which denotes something very similar – appears in three specific contexts.
First, it characterizes a precise mode of relationship between different religious forms; for example, between the mission of prophecy (in which the chosen feel like an instrument of God) and the concept of a personal, extra-worldly, irascible and powerful God there is ‘eine tiefe Wahlverwandtschaft’.5
Next, it defines the link between class interests and world-views. According to Weber, Weltanschauungen have their own autonomy, but an individual’s adherence to one world-view or another depends to a large extent on its Wahlverwandtschaft with his class interests.6
Finally – and this is the most important case – it serves to analyse the relationship between religious doctrines and forms of economic ethos. The locus classicus of this use of the concept is the following passage from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism:
In view of the tremendous confusion of interdependent influences between the material basis, the forms of social and political organization, and the ideas current in the time of the Reformation, we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what points certain correlations [i.e., elective affinities – Wahlverwandtschaften] between forms of religious belief and practical ethics can be worked out. At the same time we shall as far as possible clarify the manner and the general direction in which, by virtue of those relationships [Wahlverwandtschaften], the religious movements have influenced the development of material culture.7
We should note that the expression first appeared between quotation marks, as if Weber had wanted to apologize for the intrusion of a romantic and literary metaphor in a scientific analysis. But he subsequently dropped the quotation marks; the expression had become a concept.
It is not surprising that this expression was not understood in the positivist Anglo-American reception of Max Weber. One example bordering on caricature is Talcott Parsons’ English translation in 1930 of The Protestant Ethic from which we have just quoted. Here, Wahlverzvandtschaft is rendered first as ‘certain correlations’, and then as ‘those relationships’.8 Whereas the Weberian concept refers to a rich and meaningful internal relationship between two configurations, Parsons’ distorting translation replaces this with a banal, external and meaningless relation (or ‘correlation’). There could be no better illustration of the inseparability of the concept from its cultural context, from a tradition that gives it all its expressive and analytical force.
In these three Weberian modalities, then, elective affinity unites socio-cultural, economic and/or religious structures without forming a new substance or significantly modifying the initial components – even though the interaction has the effect of reinforcing the characteristic logic of each structure.
Max Weber never tried to examine the meaning of the concept closely, nor did he discuss its methodological implications or define its field of application. It appears here and there in German sociology, but no consideration is given to the conceptual implications of the term. Karl Mannheim, for example, in his remarkable study of conservative thought, writes:
In the confluence (Zusammenfliessen) of two streams of thought, the task of the sociology of knowledge is to find the moments within the two movements which, even before the synthesis, reveal an internal affinity (innere Verwandtschaft), and which, as a result, make unification possible.9
In the course of my study of the links between Jewish messianism and social utopia, the concept of elective affinity appeared to be the most appropriate and fertile tool with which to examine this relationship. Moreover, it seems to me that the concept could be applied to many other aspects of social reality. It enables us to understand (in the strong sense of verstehen) a certain kind of connection between seemingly disparate phenomena within the same cultural field (religion, philosophy, literature), or between distinct social spheres: religion and economy, mysticism and politics, among others. For example, the concept of Wahlverwandtschaft might throw considerable light upon the type of relationship that developed during the Middle Ages between the ethic of chivalry and Church doctrine;10 or, starting in the sixteenth century, between the cabbala and alchemy (see Gershom Scholem’s fine study ‘Alchemie und Kabbala’, Eranos Jahrbuch, no. 45, 1977);
