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Summary Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (notes)
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Notes on Weber's famous text 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'
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Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismIntroduction
● Long statement of the relative advancement in the ‘Occident’ of technology, architecture,
law, science, ‘rationality’ etc
● Suggestion that this is as a result of variation in religious and cultural beliefs
● Acceptance that this may be the product of other factors such as economics, ‘heredity’
etc, but these sciences are either too young or only part of the picture
Chapter Two: The Spirit of Capitalism
● What is understood by the phrase ‘the spirit of capitalism’?
○ if its meaning can be united, it is only as a complex of elements
‘associated in historical reality’ into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their
cultural significance
■ such a historical concept cannot be defined deductively
(according to the formula ‘genus proximum, differentia specifica’
■ instead it must be carefully constructed out of its
constituent parts, and so the definitive concept (the spirit of capitalism) must
come at the end, not at the beginning
● this conceptual formulation will suit us
from our standpoint, but other standpoints would lead to other concepts
with different essential components
■ yet we must start with at least a provisional description
of this spirit
● In order that capitalism should select economic subjects by a ‘process of economic
survival of the fittest’, it must have originated ‘not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of
life common to whole groups of men’
○ refutation of ‘naive historical materialism’: in Massachusetts, the spirit of
capitalism preceded the capitalistic order (straw man?)
Chapter Five: Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism
● Next step would be to show the place of ascetic rationalism in the context of practical
ethics and hence social groups, then humanistic rationalism, philosophical and scientific
empiricism, technical development and spiritual ideas. This would show the movement from
medieval worldly asceticism to pure utilitarianism through ascetic religion
○ this would show us the significance of ascetic Protestantism to the rest of
modern culture
● To complete the study we need to see how Protestant Asceticism was influenced by ‘the
totality of social conditions, especially economic’ (would such conditions not affect the spirit of
capitalism directly?)
○ we generally underplay the significance of religious ideas to culture and
national character
○ ‘it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an
equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. Each is
equally possible, but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of
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