Ascetic Protestantism Research Articles

Culture and Ascetic Protestantism

The article examines the relationship between cultural phenomena and the emergence and expansion of ascetic Protestantism. More specifically, it explores the cultural roots and conditions of original, early Calvinism, as distinguished from its own influences and ramifications in culture and society in general mostly emphasized in the current sociological literature. Calvinism is therefore treated not only as a conditioning and explanatory factor in cultural and other social respects, as largely done in the literature, but also as a culturally and socially overall conditioned and explained variable. This article posits and shows that the overarching and cardinal cultural root and condition of orthodox Calvinism is pre-modern medieval irrationalism, including religious and related superstitions and fanaticism. It therefore rediscovers Calvinism in the new light (or rather darkness) of being originally the effect and subsequently the system of perpetuation of medieval cultural irrationalism, in particular religious superstition and fanaticism. The intent of this article is to contribute to a better understanding, explication, and prediction of the cultural and related social causes and effects of Calvinism in the sociological literature.

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

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.

Islam, Christianity, and the Development of Machine Capitalism: The Weber Hypothesis Revisited

Abstract: Max Weber characterized the values constituted in ascetic Protestantism that resulted in an inner-worldly asceticism. Karl Marx elucidated the first stage of manufacture, a form of capitalism characterized by precapitalist production processes. When these values interpenetrated an economy at the first stage of manufacture, they generated the spirit of capitalism, which resulted in systematic and sustained capital accumulation. My reconceptualization of Protestant religious commitments clarifies how they led to the rationalization of the first stage of manufacture and thus resulted in systematic capital accumulation leading to machine capitalism. My characterization of religious commitment in (Sunni) Islam shows that while the economic preconditions for the development of machine capitalism, the first stage of manufacture, were sometimes present in Islamicate lands, Islamic religious commitments neither rationalized economic production nor created a tendency toward capital accumulation. In consequence, they did not result in machine capitalism.

Between Oriental Orthodoxy and European Modernity: Georgian Orthodox Church, Market Economy, and Social Message

Excerpt: "This article aims to ask what the history of the Protestant ethic might contribute to our understanding of the contemporary relationship between Georgian Orthodoxy, economics, and capitalism. In doing so, we engage with a handful of retrospections that offer engagements with Weber regarding this interface. We begin with the key arguments advanced in The Protestant Ethic. Then we incorporate contemporary Pentecostalism into Weber's genealogical account of the rise of capitalist modernity. Thus, we hope to find parallels between twenty-first-century Pentecostalism and the seventeenth-century ascetic Protestantism as a sort of modernization paradigm.

„Nulla dies sine linea“

Zusammenfassung The article explores the question to what extent Søren Kierkegaard’s journals, unpublished during his lifetime, manifest a Protestant work ethic in the sense of Max Weber. The journals bear witness to a daily writing process that provides information about Kierkegaard’s conception of his profession as a religious writer. They can be placed in the tradition of pietistic diaries and testify to the awareness of being called as an author. By focusing on the two terms produktivitet and virksomhed, which Kierkegaard uses to reflect on his own activity, numerous parallels can be drawn with Weber’s „concept of profession in ascetic Protestantism“. Accordingly, Kierkegaard speaks of an „intellectual capital“ that he has earned and that he leaves to a posterity without being able to dispose of the use of this inheritance.

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Political Power

This article reconsiders the societal conditions determining ascetic Protestantism such as Calvinism during its early development, as distinguished from its later effects on society. It argues that a multiplicity of social conditions impacted the rise and expansion of Calvinism. These involve political, religious, cultural and economic conditions of the rise of Calvinism. They indicate the original societal conditioning of Calvinism, as distinct from and empirically prior to its subsequent effects on societies. This analysis specifically focuses on the sociopolitical conditions and conjunctures influencing Calvinism. The article concludes that early Calvinism was the outcome of political and related societal conditions and historical conjunctures, specifically of the Ancien Régime, and only subsequently producing its social outcomes emphasized in the sociological literature. The article aims to contribute to abridging a gap in the sociological literature, which centers on Calvinism’s outcomes in society, including economy and politics, and decenters on its own societal, including political, conditions.

So Who Cares? Taking Livingston out of Africa

So Who Cares? Taking Livingston out of Africa

Dwarves at the Foot of the Giant: Max Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’ and Historical Research

When Max Weber died in 1920, he had just finished the revised version of ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ (PESC). While it is still a key text for sociologists, most historians seem to have come to disregard it. The present article pleads for a historical reconsideration of PESC. It argues that most historical criticism of PESC is unfounded and that recent research into the conceptual and social history of work and poverty does in fact support Weber’s key point that the work ethic of ascetic Protestantism brought about a shift in economic mentality which contributed to the rise of modern capitalism. It also questions the scope and validity of recent econometric variations on the PESC theme, urging the need for more judicious consideration of historical context.

Pentecostalism, economics, capitalism: putting the Protestant Ethic to work

ABSTRACTIn recent years, academic interest in the nexus between Pentecostalism, economics, and capitalism has grown significantly. Notably, the vast majority of publications that have addressed this interface are to some degree conceptually framed by Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this article I consider what The Protestant Ethic might contribute to our understanding of the relationship between Pentecostalism and capitalism. First, I assess a particularly noteworthy attempt to draw Pentecostalism into Weber's genealogical account which draws a series of parallels between Pentecostalism and ascetic Protestantism. Second, I discuss the merits of an approach that is not primarily genealogical but remains indebted to the concepts that Weber introduces, elaborating a new affinity between Pentecostalism and capitalism in its present iteration. With this article, I seek to comprehensively extend the scope and sharpen the conceptual underpinnings of future analysis and empirical work in this area.

O ethos puritano, o espaço absoluto newtoniano e a geografia inglesa dos séculos XVIII e XIX

Este artigo parte da premissa de que a ética puritana, enquanto expressão de valor e de atitudes para o protestantismo ascético geral tornar-se-ia a principal responsável pelo desenvolvimento científico inglês nos séculos XVIII e XIX. Essa construção, elaborada por Robert K. Merton em seu artigo Puritanismo, pietismo e ciência de 1936 teve como pano de fundo a obra A ética protestante e o espírito do capitalismo de Max Weber publicada em 1904. Nesse trabalho Merton buscou ressaltar algumas especificidades da conduta social advinda do ethos puritano, e que estariam claramente associadas à conduta dos cientistas ingleses. Em nossa construção buscou-se estabelecer um paralelo entre as reflexões de Merton e a leitura do “sistema mundo” presente na estruturação da ciência newtoniana. Por fim buscou-se compreender como o espaço newtoniano acabara influenciando a construção da Geografia inglesa.

Max Weber's theory of personality: individuation, politics and orientalism in the sociology of religion (review)

Book Reviews 145© Max Weber Studies 2018. Sara R. Farris, Max Weber’s theory of personality: individuation, politics and orientalism in the sociology of religion. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, xii + 228pp. Asked by Karl Jaspers why he put himself through so much as a scholar, Weber is said to have replied, ‘to see how much I can take’. We can have a debate about where he is most obviously trying to see this: in writing Economy and Society all by himself? In the long essays on the stock exchange? In the study of music? The chances are that we wouldn’t put the studies of the world religions that occupied him for much of his final fifteen years in that category, for having given the world the two long essays on the Protestant ethic in 1904/5 and replied constantly to critics, he was perhaps bound to pursue more systematically the comparative study the thesis itself demanded. The Protestant ethic was also a kind of autobiography, or the genealogy of a sensibility Weber recognized as his own. Not all scholars have seen an intimate link between the confessional and the comparative project. Sara Farris does so. The sociology of religion as a whole may be read as a comparative study not so much of the conditions for the emergence of industrial capitalism, as of the idea of personality. In this, Weber concluded that only in the West, and in the Christian West, did there emerge an idea of the personality that we associate with autonomy and the rational mastery of the external world. That personality, Farris claims, was a normative ideal for Weber, and was embodied most starkly and significantly in the member of the voluntary Puritan sect and in the figure of the ‘charismatic’ political leader. We have been here before but what is distinctive about Farris is that she frames the discussion around the idea of orientalism, in which Weber works out the world historical significance of his own ideal of personality through highly stylized and overgeneralized contrasting accounts of ‘the’ Hindu and ‘the’ Confucian mentality, or even ‘Asiatic religiosity’, as in the last chapter of the Religion of India. Or rather, she does not so much frame it this way as book-end it; for while the reader’s heart – or this reader’s heart – sinks rather at the opening gambit, which suggests a series of rather predictable postcolonial ‘readings ’, in which the Western scholar is traduced for his ignorance, the bulk of the book is made up of very careful summaries of the each of the separate studies without much reference to the specialist literature on Ancient Judaism, Hinduism, or Confucianism. As with many before her, whatever her initial assumptions may have 146 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2018. been, indeed, whatever thesis she wants to push, Farris finds herself entering into the richness, and surprising materialism, of his historical sociology, and doing so with considerable skill and care. Only in the final chapter is the orientalism theme emphasized at any length. The result is a slightly uneasy combination of Reinhard Bendix and Edward Said, but a very readable one. There is so much after all to try to understand, and this book will provide an admirable guide for the advanced student. But it doesn’t give us the sort of sustained encounter with what Weber got right and what he got wrong, and of where his studies fall short of today’s standards, that we find in, say, Stefan Breuer’s Max Weber’s Herrschaftssoziologie. And where criticisms are offered (190) they don’t owe much in particular to the orientalism thesis. A number of questions arise. One is that, given her emphasis on the normative aspects of the Protestant personality, it is odd that Farris downplays the role of Catholicism in the list of non-Protestant confessions with which Weber compared his own commitment (90, 95). It is of course true that, with Troeltsch’s Social Teachings appearing at the same time, Weber never studied Catholicism as he did Judaism, Hinduism, and Confucianism, and also that ascetic Protestantism is unthinkable without the ascetic traditions already developed in the West. But it is also...

Дуальная система образования Германии: исторический контекст

The article deals with the genesis of the dual system of education in Germany in the historical context: from medieval craft guilds and the formation of Protestantism labour ethics to modern problems associated with the globalization of the educational space, the digitalization of the economy and production, migration crises. It is shown that the dual education in Germany is a unique system, (1) having the established technological parameters of the ratio of theory and practice, the contract interaction of the student and the employer, the economic support of the learning process; (2) based on the paradigm of labour education; (3) involving social partnership of vocational schools and industrial enterprises, supported by the Federal government and the Government of Germany States, Federal Institute of vocational education, public organizations. The stages in the history of the development of the dual education in Germany are described: a creation of the labour schools during the early and ascetic Protestantism, the emergence of the educational theory that combines the idea of work ethic and moral culture in the era of pragmatic Protestantism, Kerschensteiner’s reform of labour (national) school in the era of neo-Protestantism, disintegration of education in the era of world wars and ideological crises, the revival of the dual system of education and its problems in the era of globalism. The results of the analysis of historical and pedagogical research of Russian and foreign authors, official normative legal documents regulating the process of dual education in Germany, the materials of the Congress on professional education, held in Berlin in June 2018 are presented, which allowed to determine the patterns and prospects of development of the dual system of education in Germany.

The Economic Ethics of World Religions and their Laws: An Introduction to Max Weber's Comparative Sociology by Andreas E. Buss (review)

[MWS 17.2 (2017) 297-321] ISSN 1470-8078 http://dx.doi.org/10.15543/MWS/2017/2/10© Max Weber Studies 2017, Rm 4-12, London Metropolitan University, 84 Moorgate, London EC2M 6SQ. Book Reviews Andreas E. Buss, The Economic Ethics of World Religions and their Laws: An Introduction to Max Weber’s Comparative Sociology (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2015), 219pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-84872424 -6. €44.00. The title of this book is unquestionably accurate, but it does not really tell the reader what to expect from the book. In contrast, the subtitle does tell the reader what to expect, but whether it does, or does not, meet the reader’s expectations depends largely on what the reader thinks an ‘introduction’ should be. If one expects an ‘introduction’ to be a survey of most of the major points then Buss’s book almost always succeeds; but if one expects an ‘introduction’ to be carefully and clearly written then his book does not always succeed. There are chapters in which Buss sets out Weber’s concepts and arguments rather plainly, and a few which seem to be written for the more advanced reader; some provide a more general overview, while others seem to be highly focused. Both contribute to sense that the book may have been composed from two different studies. Chapter Three, the book’s longest, is devoted to ‘The World Religions and Their Ethics’, and is probably the most successful of all of the chapters. Buss introduces and explains many of the basic tenets of the six religions that Weber examined, and competently shows how and why Weber’s conclusions from his investigations were largely correct. For those who do not know much about Hinduism , Buddhism, and Taoism, Buss provides welcome insights into Weber’s understanding of the economic ethics of these religions. Weber recognized the impact of the caste system on Hinduism, but as Buss notes, he did not think that it prevented any major economic developments. Instead, it was Hinduism’s emphasis on tradition and the lack of interest in rationalism that made the difference (77-78). Buss suggests that what prevented any significant economic development in Buddhism was its lack of interest in planning and its ambivalent approach to wealth, which was viewed not as wrong in 298 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2017. itself but rather as a source of temptation (83-84). While Taoist mysticism shared the general tendency of mysticism to minimize action, it never led to the complete rejection of the world because it espoused the ideal of the educated gentleman (62). The notion of the educated gentleman is also found in Confucianism: study leads to grace and dignity, but not to profit and wealth (60-61). The question why economic development did not occur in China is a perplexing one. Weber acknowledged that there were certain similarities between Chinese rationalism and Protestant rationalism, but he pointed to the importance of tradition and magic for the former, which were superseded in the latter. Buss makes these important points but very briefly (65-66). When it comes to Weber’s interpretation of ancient Judaism, Buss discusses the Jews’ status as a pariah people and how it affected their views about money. In this, Buss’s treatment is largely correct , except for the suggestion that it was Nietzsche’s Antichrist that inspired Weber (96); more likely it was Zur Genealogie der Moral. Though Weber never published an essay on Islam, Buss takes inspiration from Wolfgang Schluchter and attempts to outline how Islam’s exterior factors (institutions) and interior factors (motivational spirit) would have likely contributed to its particular economic ethics (101-102). Weber stressed the differences between medieval feudalism and Islam; while both tended to be traditional forms of rulership, feudalism was an ‘approximation of a rule based on law’. In contrast, Islam’s military institutions of slaves and taxation ‘lessened the calculability of the administrative/legal processes’ (103). In characterizing the ‘spirit’ of Islam, Buss suggests that Weber thought there were significant similarities with ascetic Protestantism: both Islam and Calvinism believed in a transcendent God and asserted that the gulf between this omnipotent deity and human beings cannot be...

Ascetic Protestantism and capitalism

This is a review essay of the volume of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe which contains the version of Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus that was published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904-1905. This volume also contains the major criticisms of Weber’s work and his replies. In addition, it includes some of his other writings from 1904 to 1911 as well as Ernst Troeltsch’s lecture on natural law which he gave at the first conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie in 1910. Together, these writings provide a relatively complete view of Weber’s ideas concerning ascetic Protestantism and the rise of modern capitalism.

THE WEBER THESIS OF CALVINISM AND CAPITALISM--ITS VARIOUS VERSIONS AND THEIR "FATE" IN SOCIAL SCIENCE.

The paper identifies and examines various multiple renditions of the so-called Weber Thesis of an historical association and convergence between ascetic Protestantism, above all Calvinism, and the emergence and development of modern capitalism as an economic spirit and system. Specifically, it detects at least four different versions and formulations or interpretations, thus casting doubt in the common view of the Weber Thesis as a single and monolithic theory or hypothesis. The paper also considers the status of the multiple versions of the Weber Thesis in post-Weberian and contemporary sociology and related disciplines like economics and history. It concludes that the weaker, relaxed renditions of the Weber Thesis have attained a greater success and more endured in contemporary social science than have its stronger, stricter versions.

The Duality of Structure and Action: Outline for a Weberian Research Programme

In my book Foundations in Sociology, I depicted Max Weber's approach as an alternative to Marx and Durkheim on the one hand, Parsons, Mead, Habermas and Luhmann on the other. I tried to demonstrate that Weber has provided us with a viable research program which merits further elaboration. In this essay, I want to spell out the outline of such a Weberian research program. It can be regarded as a third sociology, overcoming the opposition between methodological individualism and holism. It is based on methodological relationism and on a two-sided and multi-level explanatory model, employing the notion of the duality of structure and action. Its analytical power is illustrated with reference to Weber's study on ascetic Protestantism and on the economic ethic of the world religions.

Statistical origins of the “Protestant ethic”

Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has raised numerous questions, but one that has not been raised often is the question of its origins: What and who prompted Weber to write his work? My answer is that its origins are found in a series of statistics generated by Weber’s former student Martin Offenbacher. Offenbacher’s thesis that was the economic and social superiority of Protestants could be traced to better education and better jobs. Weber and Offenbacher have been attacked for ignoring an “alternative thesis”; I argue that on the contrary, they examined its possibilities and decided correctly that the Protestant “character” was crucial in explaining the economic differences between Protestants and Catholics. The statistical origins of the Protestant Ethic answer the question of what prompted Weber to write this work and also indicates that he realized that the subject of ascetic Protestantism was more complicated than he originally thought.

'How Ideas become Effective in History' Max Weber on Confucianism and Beyond

Max Weber's interest in East Asia starts as early as 1898, but it comes to fruition only after 1910. Instead of continuing his essays on ascetic Protestantism, as promised to the public, he embarked on a comparison of world religions, in which he included Confucianism, although he did not regard it as a religion in the strict sense of the term. As a matter of expediency, he used Confucianism, however, as the most pronounced counterexample to ascetic Protestantism, seemingly similar from the outside, but totally different from the inside. So Confucianism is included in his attempt to provide a sociology and typology of religious rationalism. Confucianism is also used as a backdrop to understand the singularity of the Western development. The sketch, as he calls it, is not meant as a full-fledged analysis of this intellectual and social movement nor of Imperial China at large. Therefore, it is very dangerous to apply Weber's analysis to the current situation in China (after the 'Cultural Revolution' and the one-child policy). I call this the fallacy of misplaced application. This does not rule out, however, using Weber's methodology and conceptual tools to a certain extent for such an analysis. How this can be done, is shown in the last section of this presentation.

Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America (Allison P. Coudert)

<i>Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America</i> (Allison P. Coudert)

Max Weber's comparative-historical sociology today: major themes, mode of causal analysis, and applications

Contents: Introduction Part I Reconstructing Major Themes: Introduction Max Weber's types of rationality: cornerstones for the analysis of Rationalization processes in history Should the 'dynamic autonomy' of ideas matter to sociologists? Max Weber on the origin of other-worldly salvation religions and the constitution of groups in American society today The past and present influence of world views: Max Weber on a neglected sociological concept. Part II Weber's Mode of Causal Analysis: Introduction The perpetual and tight interweaving of past and present in Max Weber's sociology Macro comparisons: precautions, possibilities, achievements and limitations The theoretical framework and causal methodology. Part III Reconstructing Significant Developments from Weber's Oeuvre: the Rise and Expansion of Confucianism, the Caste System, and Monotheism: Introduction The rise and expansion of Confucianism in China The rise and expansion of the caste system in India The rise and expansion of monotheism in ancient Israel. Part IV Utilizing Weber I: the Importance of Deep Culture: Introduction: The legacies of ascetic Protestantism and American uniqueness: the political culture of the United States The cultural foundations of modern citizenship. Part V Utilizing Weber II: Multi-Causal and Contextual-Conjectural Analysis: Introduction The origin and expansion of Kulturpessimismus: the relationship between public and private spheres in early 20th-century Germany Culture and the location of work in contemporary Western Germany: a Weberian configurational and comparative analysis. Part VI Conclusion: Bringing Weber Back In: Appendices References Index.