The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text · 1 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 707 passages
Cite this work
- APAMax Weber. (n.d.). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/max-weber/the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism
- MLAMax Weber. "The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/max-weber/the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism.
- ChicagoMax Weber. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/max-weber/the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism.
What it is about
Weber's essay tracing the origin of modern economic discipline to a religious attitude: the this-worldly asceticism of Protestantism, and of Calvinism above all.
Context and history
It appeared as two articles, in 1904 and 1905. The core is the doctrine of predestination: if you cannot know whether you are saved, methodical success in your calling comes to serve as a sign, work becomes a vocation and thrift a duty. Weber says plainly that he is not proposing a single cause, nor replacing a materialist explanation with a spiritual one: he is offering one strand. It ends with the image of the iron cage — the economic order that outlives the faith which gave rise to it. The classic English translation is Talcott Parsons's, of 1930.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
A PRODUCT of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to ^hat ^combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which(äs we like to think) lie in a line~of development having^ universal significance and value. Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we recognize to-day as valid. Knrpiriral knowledge, reflection on problems of the cosmos and of life, philosophical and theological wisdom of the most profound sort, are not confined to it. thougiTm the case of Ihe last the full development of a_§ystematic theology must be credited to Christianity under the influence of Hellenism, since there were only fragments m Islam and in a few Indian sects. In short, knowledge and observation of great refinement have existed elsewhere, above all in India, China, Babylonia, Egypt. But in Babylonia and elsewhere astronomy lacked — ^which makes its development all the more astounding — ^the mathematical foundation which it first received from the Greeks. The Indian geometry had no rational proof; that was another product of the Greek intellect, also the creator of mechanics and physics. The Indian natural sciences, though well developed in observation, lacked the method of experiment, which was, apart from beginnings in antiquity, essentially a product of the Renaissance, as was the modern laboratory. Hence medicine, especially in India, though highly developed The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism