Ascetic protestantism as fatal strategy: religious-economic conflict and the implosion of cultural value

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article engages Jean Baudrillard’s principles of hyperreality and fatal strategy, and Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in comparative analysis. First, it defines hyperreality as the saturation of quality to the degree of antithesis and defines fatal strategy as the self-destructive hyperreality of a system of thought, behavior, or exchange. Then, it assesses Weber’s work on ascetic Protestantism and the secularizing influence of capital. Proceeding from the definition of relevant concepts, this analysis finds that ascetic Protestantism is itself a fatal strategy, as it establishes the framework for an economic system that inevitably subverts its own religious foundations. This determination is crucial to the comparative interpretation of Baudrillard and Weber’s thought; the identification of fatal strategy within the genesis of global network of capital broadens the principle’s scope and clarifies hyperconsumption’s proliferation within traditionally ascetic cultures.