Michael R. Ott
The Notion of the Totally “Other” and its
Consequence in the Critical Theory of Religion
and the Rational Choice Theory of Religion
A New Paradigm?
As proclaimed by its own proponents, Rational Choice
Theory is expressive of a “new paradigm” in the
field of the sociology of religion (Warner 1993; Stark
1997a). In the face of such an assertion, however,
questions need to be asked, such as “what” is this
paradigm? “Cui bono?”– For whose benefit or inter-
est does this paradigm serve? Finally, is this really
a “new” paradigm for the sociological study of reli-
gion? In the first part of this essay, I briefly will
address these questions. It is my contention that there
is nothing new about this paradigm at all. To put it
metaphorically, this appeal to a new paradigm is
simply the stirring up and re-serving of the same
old stew of the past, only now in a new theoretical
form (Hegel 1967b:2). The substance of Rational
Choice Theory is little else than the contemporary
reformulation and thus legitimization of the early
liberal bourgeois paradigm of the “solus ipse:”the
isolated, monadic individual/Ego whose theoretical
being and practical actions are served by a self-serv-
ing, instrumental, strategic rationality and praxis
over and against a reified “objective” natural and
social world. This is the paradigmatic basis of pos-
itivistic natural and social science as well as what is
known today as “neo-liberalism.” The supposed new
