Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lehmann, Hartmut
• Roth, Guenther

Titel

WEBER'S PROTESTANT ETHIC: ORIGINS, EVIDENCE, CONTEXTS

Erscheinungsjahr

1993

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Sociological Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This collection of 18 essays, part of a series published by the German Historical Instit, & presented in II PARTS with a Preface & an Introduction by Guenther Roth, reassesses Max Weber's thesis about the relationship between a Protestant ethic & capitalism from several theoretical orientations. The book clarifies theological, philosophical, political, & biographical aspects of Weber's thought that have been previously overlooked, & examines the methodological & historical complexities involved in assessing Weber's thesis. PART I - BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT - contains (1) Friedrich Wilhelm Graf -- The German Theological Sources and Protestant Church Politics -- explores the theological roots of Weber's Protestant ethic thesis, & examines the impact on Weber of the theological debates before & after the unification of the Protestant churches & the nation of Germany; (2) Paul Munch -- The Thesis before Weber: An Archaeology -- draws on popular literature (eg, religious tracts & travelogues) to present an archaeology of Weber's thesis that unearths some of the buried traditions that acknowledged a relation between religion & economy long before Weber; (3) Thomas Nipperdey -- Max Weber, Protestantism, and the Debate around 1900 -- examines the German intellectual context within which Weber's Protestant ethic thesis was debated, focusing on the relation between religion & society, & on the practice of historiography at the turn of the century; (4) Guenther Roth -- Weber the Would-Be Englishman: Anglophilia and Family History -- argues that Weber was the last of a generation of German liberal intellectuals for whom GB stood as a constitutional & imperial model, & that Weber's political ambivalence issues from his ambiguous combination of Anglophilia & German nationalism; (5) Harry Liebersohn -- Weber's Historical Concept of National Identity -- demonstrates how Weber's concept of national identity contrasts sharply with the linguistic, ethnic, & racial theories so popular at the turn of the century; (6) Hubert Treiber -- Nietzche's Monastery for Freer Spirits and Weber's Sect -- examines Weber's relation to Friedrich Nietzche in terms of elective affinity, showing how the two men shared an avid interest in ascetic personality formation but differed in their understanding of science & politics; (7) Harvey S. Goldman -- Weber's Ascetic Practice of the Self -- draws on Michel Foucault's notion of "practices of the self" to analyze the relation between Weber's notions of self-mastery & world mastery as they pertain to rationalization & bureaucratization; (8) Klaus Lichtblau -- The Protestant Ethic versus the "New Ethic" -- shows that Weber's concern with asceticism was closely related to the interests of thinkers like George Simmel & Sigmund Freud in repression & instinctual sacrifice as conditions of cultural achievement & economic exchange; & (9) Harmut Lehmann -- The Rise of Capitalism: Weber versus Sombart -- examines the ambivalent relationship of Werner Sombart & Weber, arguing that Weber's concept of "elective affinity" recalls an alchemical & Goethian way of thinking that Sombart eschewed in his explanation of the rise of the spirit of capitalism. PART II - RECEPTION AND RESPONSE - offers (10) Malcolm H. MacKinnon -- The Longevity of the Thesis: A Critique of the Critics -- offers a critique of three generations of Weber criticism, arguing that Calvinism did not give religious legitimation to secular callings because covenant theology obliterated Calvin's predestinarianism; (11) David Zaret -- The Use and Abuse of Textual Data -- examines the seventeenth-century sources of Weber's thesis, arguing that Puritanism was indeed an anxiety-inducing doctrine, which supports Weber's contention that Protestants searched for evidence of grace in their secular vocations; (12) Kaspar von Greyerz -- Biographical Evidence on Predestination, Covenant, and Special Providence -- examines autobiographies & diaries of religiously inspired writers to show, contra Weber, that these writers were concerned not with predestination but with the special providence of a close, personal God who promised the universality of grace; (13) Guy Oakes -- The Thing that Would Not Die: Notes on Refutation -- argues that the viability of Weber's arguments regarding the relation between Protestantism & capitalism rests not on a correct reading of theological sources, but on identifying the ethos of the "consumer" of religious ideas; (14) Gianfranco Poggi -- Historical Viability, Sociological Significance, and Personal Judgment -- discusses the generalizable significance of Weber's thesis, contending that the thesis is difficult to verify because of the heterogeneity of the elements connected by it; (15) Philip Benedict -- The Historiography of Continental Calvinism -- explores the reception, influence, & current status of Weber's thesis among historians of European Calvinism; (16) James A. Henretta -- The Protestant Ethic and the Reality of Capitalism in Colonial America -- challenges Weber's thesis via an examination of the tension between religious individualism & collectivism among Puritan & Quaker virtuosi in mid-seventeenth-century New England; (17) Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer -- The Economic Ethics of the World Religions -- argues that the methodology of Weber's Economy and Society structured his parallel studies on The Economic Ethics of the World Religions, & examines Weber's closeness to the religionsgeschichtliche Schule & the historical sociology of rationalism; & (18) Hans Rollmann -- "Meet Me in St. Louis": Troeltsch and Weber in America -- examines Ernst Troeltsch's & Weber's visit to the US to contextualize the 1904 World Congress of Arts & Sciences, held in St. Louis, MO, from the vantage point of the two thinkers. References are footnoted. W. Howard