Download Max Weber Sociology 100

Max Weber
Sociology 100
A shell as hard as steel
Origins of the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism
• It seems that the obvious way to understand the
development of the ‘spirit’ of capitalism would be
to focus on the practical moral behavior of
people, not on their abstract ideas
– “This, however, would be a mistake. The dogmatic
roots of ascetic morality died (admittedly only after
terrible struggles). But the original attachment to
those dogmas left clear traces in later ‘undogmatic’
ethics, and only a knowledge of the original thinking
can enable us to understand how that morality was
connected to the idea of the beyond, an idea which
absolutely dominated the minds of the most
thoughtful people of that time.” (68-69)
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Calvinism
• 5 points of Calvinsim
– Total depravity of humanity
– Unconditional election
– Limited atonement
– Efficacious grace
– Perseverance of the saints
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5 Points of Calvinism
• Total depravity of humanity
– “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly
lost all ability of will to any spiritual good
accompanying salvation; so as a natural man,
being altogether averse from that good, and dead
in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert
himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.” (70)
• Humans, being sinful by nature, can neither work
toward their own salvation nor even will that they be
saved by conversion.
• Infinite gulf between God and humanity
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Calvinism
• Unconditional election
– “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His
glory, some men . . . are predestined unto
everlasting life, and others foreordained to
everlasting death.” (70)
• Predestined “before the foundation of the world was
laid,” the elect are chosen by God “in the secret counsel
and good pleasure of His will” and “out of His mere free
grace and love”, not due to any foreseen good works or
qualities, nor for any reason than the grace of God
– Salvation and damnation of individuals destined before the
making of the world by God’s free will and for His own reasons
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5 Points of Calvinism
• Unconditional election
– “To apply the yardstick of earthly ‘justice’ to [God’s]
sovereign decrees was pointless and an affront to his
majesty, since he, and he alone, was free, that is, subject
to no law, and his decrees could only be understood or
known in any way to the extent that he had seen fit to
reveal them to us. These fragments of the eternal truth
were all we had to hold onto; everything else—the
purpose of our individual fate—was surrounded by dark
mysteries which it would be impossible and presumptuous
to inquire into.”
– “For the reprobate, for example, to complain about their
fate as undeserved would be like the animals complaining
because they were not born as men.” (73)
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5 Points of Calvinism
• Limited salvation and efficacious grace
– “All those whom God hath predestinated into unto
life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed
and accepted time, effectually to call, by His word
and Spirit” (71)
• The elect will heed the call of God to the faith, they
cannot do otherwise
• Others, even members of the physical church, may
believe themselves saved, but are not. Christ did not
die for them, only for the elect.
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5 Points of Calvinism
• Perseverance of the saints
– The elect will always hold their faith. Those who
lose the faith have not lost salvation, they were
never saved
• “Saints” in the biblical sense, those close to God
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Calvinism
• “This doctrine, with all the pathos of its
inhumanity, had one principal consequence for
the mood of a generation which yielded to its
magnificent logic: it engendered, for each
individual, a feeling of tremendous inner
loneliness.”
• No one and nothing could help him. Not the
preacher—for only the elect could spiritually
understand the word of God.” Not the
sacraments, not the Church, “not even God, for
Christ had died for the elect alone”. (73-74)
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Calvinism
• “The decisive question for us is how this doctrine was
endured”. (76)
– “One question inevitably very soon arose for every single
believer, and forced all others into the background: ‘Am I one of
the elect? And how can I be certain of my election?’”
– Calvin argues that one must trust in the will of God, and
“fundamentally rejects the assumption that one can tell from
the behavior of others whether they are elect or reprobate,
calling it a presumptuous attempt to penetrate the mysteries of
God. In this life the elect are indistinguishable from the
reprobate.”
– This is all very well for a religious genius like Calvin, but “the
broad category of ordinary people” felt the need to relieve the
psychic stress of Calvinist belief by looking for signs of salvation
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Discipline, Labor, and Salvation
• In pastoral care, two main forms of counseling
presented themselves
– “On the one hand, people were taught that they
simply had a duty to regard themselves as elect,”
to dismiss doubts as satanic temptations
– On the other, “tireless labor in a calling was urged
as the best possible means of attaining this selfassurance” (77)
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Discipline, Labor, and Salvation
• For the Puritans, the world exists to glorify God, and they
can do their part by obeying his commands
– “God willed the social achievement of the Christian, because it
was his will that the social structure of life should accord with
his commands and be organized in such a way as to achieve this
purpose. The social work of the Calvinist in the world was
merely work ‘in majorem gloriam Dei.’ Labor in a calling, in the
service of the secular life of the community, also shared this
character.” (75)
• Productive labor as Christian charity
– Love for another, but only through God
– “For everyone, without distinction, God’s providence has
prepared a calling,” and it is not a destiny to be submitted to,
“but a command of God to work his glory.” (108)
• Life of a “systematic and methodical character” (109)
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Discipline, Labor, and Salvation
• Puritan asceticism worked to enable man to demonstrate
and assert his ‘constant motives’—in particular those which
asceticism drilled into him—against the ‘emotions’ [...] The
goal of asceticism was, in contrast to many widely held
notions, to be able to lead a watchful, aware, alert life. The
most urgent task was the eradication of uninhibited
indulgence in instinctive pleasure. The most important
means employed by asceticism was to bring order into the
conduct of life of those who practiced it.” (81)
– Exactly like Catholic monasticism, only it is expected of everyone
who wants to serve God
– In this way the Protestant ethic discourages consumption,
especially of luxuries, thus “liberating the acquisition of wealth
from the inhibitions of traditionalist ethics” (115)
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Discipline, Labor, and Salvation
• Feelings & moods are subjective and untrustworthy,
“faith must prove itself in its objective effects” (78)
• “Totally unsuited though good works are to serve as a
means of attaining salvation—for even the elect
remain creatures, and everything that they do falls
infinitely short of God’s demands—they are
indispensible as signs of election.” (79)
– Putting faith to the test in secular working life (83)
– “Works are not the real grounds for the state of grace but
only the grounds for recognizing it, and even this only
when they are done exclusively for God’s glory.” (96)
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Discipline, Labor, and Salvation
• “Just as he scrutinized his own conduct, so also the later
Puritan examined that of God and saw the finger of God in
all the vicissitudes of life. And, in contrast to Calvin’s
authentic teaching, he therefore knew why God was
disposed this way or that way. Thus the sanctification of
life could almost assume the character of a business
arrangement.” (85)
– The usefulness of a calling, and thus the degree to which it
pleases God, depends on moral criteria, social importance, and
“of course in practice the most important... private economic
profitability.” (110)
• If the Puritan God, controlling all aspects of life, “reveals to one of his
children the opportunity to make a profit, then there is a purpose in
this. Consequently, the believing Christian must follow this call by
taking advantage of the opportunity.” (110)
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Modernity
• “Those mighty religious movements, whose
whose significance for economic development lay
primarily in the ascetic education they provided,
only developed their full economic effect after
the pinnacle of purely religious enthusiasm had
been left behind, the frenzied search for the
kingdom of God was beginning to dissolve into
sober virtue in pursuit of the calling, and the
religious roots were beginning to die and give
way to utilitarian earthly concerns.” (119)
– Becomes middle class morality of respectability, duty
and profit (118-119)
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Modernity
• “In Baxter’s view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly
on the shoulders of his saints ‘like a thin cloak which can be thrown
off at any time.’ But fate decreed tha the cloak should become a
shell as hard as steel. As asceticism began to change the world and
endeavored to exercise its influence over it, the outward goods of
this world gained increasing and finally inescapable power over
men, as never before in history. Today its spirit has fled from this
shell—whether for all time, who knows?” (121)
– “Victorious capitalism has no further need for this support now that it
rests on the foundations of the machine.”
– Even the optimistic mood of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment,
seems destined to fade away, and the idea of ‘duty in a calling’ haunts
our lives like the ghost of once-held religious beliefs.”
• “The individual today usually makes no attempt to find any meaning” in work
• Economic coercion
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Modernity
• “No one yet knows who will live in that shell in
the future. Perhaps new prophets will emerge, or
powerful old ideas and ideals will be reborn at
the end of this monstrous development. Or
perhaps—if neither of these occurs—‘Chinese’
ossification, dressed up with a kind of desperate
self-importance, will set in. Then, however, it
might truly be said of the ‘last men’ in this
cultural development: ‘specialists without spirit,
hedonists without a heart, these nonentities
imagine they have attained a stage of humankind
never before reached.” (121)
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