Max Weber Classic Theory Essay

Weber"s essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is his most famous work. It is argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber"s later works, especially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic behavior. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber puts forward the thesis that the Puritan ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. Religious devotion has usually been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. Why was that not the case with Protestantism? Weber addresses that paradox in his essay.
He defines "the spirit of capitalism" as the ideas and habits that favor the rational pursuit of economic gain (Weber 2). Weber points out that such a spirit is not limited to Western culture, when considered as the attitude of individuals, but that such individuals ? heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them ? could not by themselves establish a new economic order, which was capitalism (Weber 3). Among the tendencies identified by Weber were the greed for profit with minimum effort, the idea that work was a curse and a burden to be avoided, especially when it exceeded what was enough for modest life. Weber writes, "In order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of man (Weber 3)."
After defining the spirit of capitalism, Weber argues that there are many reasons to look for its origins in the religious ideas of the Reformation. Many observers like William Petty, Montesquieu, Henry Thomas Buckle, John Keats, and others have commented on the similarity between Protestantism and the development of the capitalism, or the spirit of it (Weber 4).
Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism favored rational pursuit of...