ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to the key terminological distinctions central to PE’s arguments. Pivotal is the distinction, on the one hand, between capitalism and modern capitalism and, on the other hand, between the “modern economic ethic” (or spirit of capitalism) and the “traditional economic ethic.” To Weber, the “shattering” of the latter and the formation and expansion of the modern ethic must be recognized as a long-term transformation, one that endured over generations and even over centuries. Always constituting a “revolution” (PE, p. 89), the spirit of capitalism found its source in part in the sphere of religion, he became convinced. Its origins can be investigated. In all cases, this modern ethos must be analyzed in reference to its content and influence.
These terminological distinctions paved the way for a consideration in this chapter’s latter section of the intense debate that surrounded “the Weber thesis” for nearly a century. By summarizing briefly eight major axes of this wide-ranging controversy, this section aims to define its substantive themes and to delineate its boundaries. Many of Weber’s critics remained unaware of the various ways in which the Doctrine of Predestination and an Old Testament view of God remained central for seventeenth-century Puritans. Both features eventually formed background aspects that underpinned the legitimation of the systematic and values-based orientation by the faithful to work, profit, and wealth. This chapter examines the “psychological dynamic” at the foundation of the Protestant ethic’s methodical-rational organization of life and “this-worldly asceticism.”
