Talk:The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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Petty and Buckle[edit]

Any ideas who Petty and Buckle are? I was compiling the info from a book, but it has just the surnames... --Piotrus 15:30, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Most likely William Petty but I have no way of being certain.

Munkee 08:31, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sir William Petty was referenced on pg 179 of "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" in regards to his opinion on Calvinists and Baptists, and Henry Thomas Buckle is listed in the index of the protestant ethic has having a reference to pg 44. It reads - "For Scotland, Buckle, and among English poets, Keats, have emphasized these same relationships." -SubjectiveAnalysis 08:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why has this article been moved from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (book)? Correct me if I'm wrong but adding something like "(book)" to the end of a title is for disambiguation. Is there another The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism? Iota 19:16, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Still with working redirects I don't there is any problem, and eventually they may be a disambig to a more general discussion on that subject, I guess. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:11, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It seems a pointless move, to me. Noisy | Talk 01:50, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

I moved it back. Even if we were to create an article on this topic, it would be at The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (lowercase) or something similar. Guan aco 02:53, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Complementing the suggestion for change lowercase the title, I would suggest that spirit figure between quotes, as original ("geist"). The missing signal reduces slightly the meaning of capitalism essence as a "spirit".

1926[edit]

I changed 1930 to 1926 based upon

"Often contemptuous shortened form Prot is from 1725, in Irish English. Protestant (work) ethic (1926) is taken from Max Weber's work "Die protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus" (1904)."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=protestant++&searchmode=none

That seems to run contradictory to the 1958 edition of the book, on the Preface to the New Edition section (xiii) which lists "When the English Translation first appeared, in England in 1930..." as written by Talcott Parsons, September 1958

and is also listed here http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/header.html

Talcott Parsons[edit]

What about a Reference to Talcott Parsons as the english translator? Does that merit submission? -SubjectiveAnalysis 08:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it does.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 15:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Assurance of Salvation[edit]

I'd have to disagree with the statement that Catholics (Roman) have an assurance of salvation - quite the opposite actually and that's the whole point of the Catholic faith and the reason for their sacraments and continued attendance at mass and the final rites and prayers for the dead (and the Reformation). Protestants have assurance of salvation in a sense but Calvinists are in a peculiar situation as the doctrine of TULIP means that on the one hand they have assurance but on the other they are not allowed to take anything for granted and must prove that they have been saved by their fruits. This puts them in a situation of deep insecurity and in my opinion (speaking as an ex-Catholic and an ex-Calvinist) this is was the great force in the genesis of the work ethic. Nodolan 11:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Virtually every Calvinist would agree that faith is a kind of knowledge, therefore if one knows Christ one knows he or she is saved. See Romans 8: "The spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God." So, no, I don't think what you've written concerning Calvinism is correct. Razzendahcuben (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A serious weakness in the Weber thesis is that many of his quotations concerning Puritanism, if not all of them, are from the English Puritan Richard Baxter. But his thesis particularly concerns Calvinism and Richard Baxter, unlike most of the Puritan ministers/scholars, was probably not a Calvinist in his soteriology.John ISEM (talk) 08:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

reference on work as a burden or curse[edit]

I'm curious as to where is this taken from "The most common tendencies were the greed for profit with minimum effort and the idea that work was a curse and burden to be avoided especially when it exceeded what was enough for modest life." can't find it in the book. 89.138.62.183 (talk) 18:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison with Durkheim[edit]

I just added a 'citation needed' after the "as noted by Durkheim" in second paragraph of "Sprit of Capitalism" section. I am not at all disputing the accuracy of the reference, just reminding the knowledgeable person who wrote it that it's helpful for beginners like me to have an exact citation. Thank you. 137.222.227.82 (talk) 17:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism[edit]

What has been said about this book? Does the notion of Protestantism promoting capitalism still have any currency in intellectual circles? --Adoniscik^{(t, c)} 07:24, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, not much, but that may be due more to ignorance than disdain toward Christianity. See John Robbins' Freedom and Capitalism. I did a lengthy review of it at Amazon.com. See also his shorter book, Christ and Civilization. Razzendahcuben (talk) 16:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This seems a surprisingly stubby section. Has there been no other criticism of this work? 38.124.22.170 (talk) 19:32, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there has, but since this book is central to Weber's works, most of the criticisms can be found in Max_Weber#Historical_critiques, which claims the historical development to be different than what Weber related in The Protestant Ethic ... Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:16, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Chocastic"??[edit]

At present, the article says this: "Weber traced the origins of the Protestant ethic to the Reformation, though he acknowledged some chocastic respect for secular everyday labor as early as the Middle Ages." So far as I know, "chocastic" is not a word. Perhaps it's meant to be "scholastic" or, much less likely, "stochastic", but I don't see anything in the cited passage of Weber's book to suggest that either is appropriate. I'm just deleting "chocastic", but if there's some qualifier that ought to be there then I hope someone will work out what it should be and put it back in... Gareth McCaughan (talk) 17:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reception section and Marx[edit]

The section titled "Reception" needs work-- the way it reads now, there's a strong implication that the only two available explanations for the genesis of capitalism are the protestant ethic or the view of Karl Marx. There are in fact many, many, many other explanations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukacris (talk • contribs) 23:45, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]