Table Of ContentThe Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism
‘Max Weber is the one undisputed canonical figure in
contemporary sociology.’
The Times Higher Education Supplement
‘Weber’s essay is certainly one of the most fruitful
examinations of the relations between religion and
social theory which has appeared, and I desire to
acknowledge my indebtedness to it.’
R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Max
Weber
The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism
Translated by Talcott Parsons
With an introduction by Anthony Giddens
London and New York
First published 1930 by Allen and Unwin
First published by Routledge 1992
First published in Routledge Classics 2001
by Routledge
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© 1930 Max Weber
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weber, Max, 1864–1920.
[Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. English]
The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism/Max Weber; translated
by Talcott Parsons; introduction by Anthony Giddens.
p. cm. – (Routledge classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-25559-7 – ISBN 0-415-25406-X (pbk.)
1. Capitalism – Religious aspects – Christianity. 2. Sociology, Christian.
3. Christian ethics. 4. Protestant work ethic. I. Title. II. Series.
BR115.C3 W413 2001
306.6 – dc21 2001034800
ISBN10: 0–415–25559–7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–25406–X (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–25559–2 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–25406–9 (pbk)
CONTENTS
Introduction by Anthony Giddens vii
Translator’s Preface xxv
Author’s Introduction xxviii
PART I The Problem 1
1 Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification 3
2 The Spirit of Capitalism 13
3 Luther’s Conception of the Calling: Task of
the Investigation 39
PART II The Practical Ethics of the Ascetic Branches of
Protestantism 51
4 The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism 53
A. Calvinism 56
B. Pietism 80
C. Methodism 89
D. The Baptist Sects 92
vi contents
5 Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism 102
Notes 126
Index 263
INTRODUCTION
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism undoubtedly ranks as
one of the most renowned, and controversial, works of modern
social science. First published as a two-part article in 1904–5, in
the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, of which Weber was
one of the editors, it immediately provoked a critical debate, in
which Weber participated actively, and which, some seventy
years later, has still not gone off the boil. This English translation
is in fact taken from the revised version of the work, that first
appeared in Weber’s Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Collected
Essays on the Sociology of Religion), published in 1920–1 just after
Weber’s death, and thus contains comments on the critical litera-
ture to which its initial appearance had given rise.
Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic at a pivotal period of his intel-
lectual career, shortly after his recovery from a depressive illness
that had incapacitated him from serious academic work for a
period of some four years. Prior to his sickness, most of Weber’s
works, although definitely presaging the themes developed in
the later phase of his life, were technical researches in economic
viii introduction
history, economics and jurisprudence. They include studies of
mediaeval trading law (his doctoral dissertation), the develop-
ment of Roman land-tenure, and the contemporary socio-
economic conditions of rural workers in the eastern part of
Germany. These writings took their inspiration in some substan-
tial part from the so-called ‘historical school’ of economics
which, in conscious divergence from British political economy,
stressed the need to examine economic life within the context of
the historical development of culture as a whole. Weber always
remained indebted to this standpoint. But the series of works he
began on his return to health, and which preoccupied him for
the remainder of his career, concern a range of problems much
broader in compass than those covered in the earlier period. The
Protestant Ethic was a first fruit of these new endeavours.
An appreciation of what Weber sought to achieve in the book
demands at least an elementary grasp of two aspects of the cir-
cumstances in which it was produced: the intellectual climate
within which he wrote, and the connections between the work
itself and the massive programme of study that he set himself in
the second phase of his career.
1. THE BACKGROUND
German philosophy, political theory and economics in the nine-
teenth century were very different from their counterparts in
Britain. The dominant position of utilitarianism and classical
political economy in the latter country was not reproduced in
Germany, where these were held at arm’s length by the influ-
ence of Idealism and, in the closing decades of the nineteenth
century, by the growing impact of Marxism. In Britain, J. S.
Mill’s System of Logic (1843) unified the natural and social sciences
in a framework that fitted comfortably within existing traditions
in that country. Mill was Comte’s most distinguished British
disciple, if sharply critical of some of his excesses. Comte’s
introduction ix
positivism never found a ready soil in Germany; and Dilthey’s
sympathetic but critical reception of Mill’s version of the ‘moral
sciences’ gave an added impulse to what came to be known as
the Geisteswissenschaften (originally coined precisely as a translation
of ‘moral sciences’). The tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften, or
the ‘hermeneutic’ tradition, stretches back well before Dilthey,
and from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards was
intertwined with, but also partly set off from, the broader stream
of Idealistic philosophy. Those associated with the hermeneutic
viewpoint insisted upon the differentiation of the sciences of
nature from the study of man. While we can ‘explain’ natural
occurrences in terms of the application of causal laws, human
conduct is intrinsically meaningful, and has to be ‘interpreted’
or ‘understood’ in a way which has no counterpart in nature.
Such an emphasis linked closely with a stress upon the centrality
of history in the study of human conduct, in economic action as
in other areas, because the cultural values that lend meanings to
human life, it was held, are created by specific processes of social
development.
Just as he accepted the thesis that history is of focal import-
ance to the social sciences, Weber adopted the idea that the
‘understanding’ (Verstehen) of meaning is essential to the explica-
tion of human action. But he was critical of the notions of ‘intu-
ition’, ‘empathy’, etc. that were regarded by many others as
necessarily tied to the interpretative understanding of conduct.
Most important, he rejected the view that recognition of the
‘meaningful’ character of human conduct entails that causal
explanation cannot be undertaken in the social sciences. On the
level of abstract method, Weber was not able to work out a
satisfactory reconciliation of the diverse threads that he tried to
knit together; but his effort at synthesis produced a distinctive
style of historical study, combining a sensitivity to diverse cul-
tural meanings with an insistence upon the fundamental causal
role of ‘material’ factors in influencing the course of history.
