Protestant Ethics and the Secularization of Vocation

Journal of Classical Sociology, 2010

Weber's account of the iron cage of capitalism, which once might have stirred readers to resist the alienation it describes, has by now lost much of its critical force, as if the metaphor itself had turned to steel. And yet, just as Weber thought there was in the notion of 'duty in a calling' a ghost of capitalism's religious origins, I argue that there is in the language of The Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism a ghost of the text's once critical nature. With this in mind, and following Weber's lead as he conjures the 'spirit' of capitalism and traces its roots to the Reformation, this article finds in The Protestant Ethic evidence of a certain 'spirit' of Weber's science -a science that decides on the meaning of its evidence in ways not always avowed, and finds its own antecedents in the hermeneutic practices it analyzes.

What would have American sociology been like without Talcott Parsons’s translation of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism? To try to answer such a question inevitable takes us to the domain of counter-factual thinking, so pervasive and profound was the impact of that work of translation. If we are to remain within the realm of social-scientific inquiry, however, one should pose a different question. Assuming that Parsons’s rendering of Weber’s words into American English created “world images” of Weber and his sociological significance that were to act “like switchmen” on a railroad, changing irrevocably the course of history (Weber, 1946: 280), how is this “cyclopean moment” (Foucault 1991: 77) to be explained? This is why this chapter is as much about Weber and his ideas as it is about Parsons’s mediation of those ideas through the translation of the “sacred text” (Scaff 2005) of Weberian scholarship.

This essay will seek to explain and analyse Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism thesis. In doing so, a thorough description of Weber’s thesis will consist of half of this piece, whilst offering an analyses upon each point made. Firstly this essay will discuss Weber’s view on Capitalism, and what it is. Focus will then shift towards Weber’s theological explanation for the rise of modern capitalism. In which he describes The Protestant Reformation as an accelerating force of Capitalism. Weber’s theory offers an insight into the dynamics of capitalism, but it is also open to scrutiny, of which focus will turn towards conflicting theories on capitalism and its origins, with particular attention focused on the writings of Karl Marx.

2020

Jordan J. Ballor, “Review Essay: The Reformation of Vocation,” Journal of Markets & Morality 20, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 325-41.

Sociological Theory, 2010

Although scholars have long recognized the importance of “elective affinity” as a key word in Weber's sociology, surprisingly little systematic research has gone into understanding this metaphor in Weber's writing, or the source from which he drew the term. For Weber, this was an implicit reference to Goethe's novel, well known to Weber's educated German audience, entitled Elective Affinities (1807). In this article, I provide a systematic account of Goethe's conception of elective affinity as a chemical metaphor, and of the way that it is related to Weber's uses of the term in the Protestant ethic essays and in his critical rejoinders. By understanding elective affinity as a Goethean chemical metaphor we can better understand the causal claims that Weber makes in his famous essay: Weber's argument is best understood as an analysis of emergence in the chemistry of social relations.

Berzsenyi, Emese, 2024

The social teaching of religions has shaped the bases of cultures for thousands of years. My writing relation between faith and profession that has become the basis of the European citizenship's worldview through the tradition of Judaism and the social impact of Christianity will be presented by a broad historical arc. Protestantism considers work in the human world a task of life, a prerequisite for an invitation to salvation. What does the Bible teach about this? How did the need for tasks to be accomplished become the basis of moral order? What kind of philosophical explanations link the invitation to salvation and the profession as the everyday, functional level of social utility? Perhaps the most spectacular and best-preserved engineering achievements of a man who turned to God in the light of faith are the buildings erected as eternal symbols of the desire for salvation, the cathedrals.

Telos, 1988

Weber once observed that it is the fate of any piece of scientific research or scholarship to become antiquated within fifty years of its production. Pellicani has recently argued that this fate is long overdue for Weber's most celebrated and widely read work: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1 Is it time to bid farewell to The Protestant Ethic? In the ensuing, I examine the case Pellicani makes for this position. In section (I), I provide a brief reconstruction of the two arguments he employs against Weber's conception of the relation between die Protestant ediic and die spirit of capitalism. In sections (II) and (III), I assess diese arguments. My general strategy is twofold. I contend diat Pellicani's arguments are nullified by several critical errors: diey misconceive Weber's own position; diey ignore essential distinctions and qualifications he introduces; and, perhaps most importandy, diey fail to take into account central doctrines of his historiography. For diese reasons, Pellicani's critique of Weber collapses. I also hold that his charges can generally be refuted on die basis of materials widi which Weber himself provides us-not intimations or digressions drawn from his voluminous writings in odier areas, but premises diat can be found in his work on die Protestant ediic.

Studies in recent years have revived interest in the impact of values. In particular, comparative work has utilized the newly available range of cross-national survey datasets. Yet the theoretical antecedents of this work are rooted more deeply in political sociology, notably in the controversial claims Max Weber made more than a century ago about the role of religious values in the birth and growth of modern industrial free-market economies.

Weber’s description of rationally legitimate domination makes it clear that the conventional form of rationality instantiated in legitimate domination does not coincide with ethical rationality (ES584). Insofar as the legitimacy of procedurally rational forms of legitimate domination depends on their pretensions to ethical rationality, Weber’s intervention ethically delegitimates rationally legitimate domination. “People with rigorous ethical standards” (ES587), “religious virtuosi” (ES542) and finally Weber himself, respond to this ethical delegitimation in at least three different ways: (1) by attempting to overcome legitimate domination (revolution, reform); (2) by attempting to flee legitimate domination (inner-worldly asceticism, world-rejecting asceticism, world-fleeing contemplation, disability); or (3) by attempting to describe and document the perverse rationality of legitimate domination with unflinching detachment and scientific precision (pariah intellectualism). This paper represents my attempt to document and understand these responses.