The Protestant Ethic after 120 Years

Commemorating a scholarly text now known only by title demands a certain circumspection that would not be required to honor a distinguished song, movie, or novel, each of which would boast a contingent of afficionados for whom allocating respect to the cultural product in question would be “natural.”  Music in particular summons up enthusiastic endorsement long after its composition for reasons that nobody, even musicologists, can rightly explain.  A few famous films bring a knowing grin to people’s faces, and minds, because cinema creates imagined worlds otherwise unavailable, and as such, remains poignantly memorable.  In earlier times of widespread and devoted literacy—Dickens’s novels sold in the millions in his lifetime—even fiction deserved memorialization of a type.

Another aura surrounds The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (hereafter PE), a work which never warmed anyone’s heart, and from the moment of its publication has infuriated readers whose religious or ideological allegiances rejected Weber’s argument tout court.  If ever there was a scholar whose writing did not inspire even modest adoration, but who dealt with subjects of world-historical amplitude, Max Weber fills that bill.  The same could be said for Kant and Hegel, yet philosophers are given free rein to proselytize in obscure prose, while sociologists are regularly accused of being alarmingly pedestrian, and often too readily understandable.

Much of Weber’s most important scholarship lay in manuscript form at his premature death at 56 in 1920, and only through the extraordinary efforts of his wife, Marianne and a few of his students, was his masterpiece, Economy & Society, brought to fruition (1922/25), along with several volumes of previously uncollected essays.   And as she noted in her indispensably unique biography of Max, “He was entirely unconcerned with the form in which he presented his wealth of ideas”—which becomes obvious to anyone not professionally yoked to the task of understanding his achievement.   Yet the centenary of PE was celebrated with book-length treatments (e.g., The Protestant Ethic Turns 100, edited by William Swatos and Lutz Kaelber) as well as numerous essays and international conferences.  Why?  The book is querulous, overgrown in long, argumentative endnotes, is throughout technically demanding, and mostly concerns religious thinking and practices which occurred between 1520 and 1720.  What exactly gives the book its lasting appeal, at least to scholars pursuing the history of capitalism and/or the evolution of Protestantism in Europe and America?

At the age of 32 in 1898, following 10 years of maniacal output as an economist, legal theorist, historian, financial analyst, philosopher of social science, and survey researcher, Max Weber became clinically depressed and therefore unable to work.  His phenomenal publishing achievements in the nascent social sciences abruptly halted because lecturing, writing, or reading scholarly materials became intolerable for him, according to his wife’s biography.  This tragic turn of events was mostly due to the sudden death in August, 1897 of his temporarily and recently estranged father, Max Weber, Sr.  Prior to that disturbing occurrence he had attained a law degree, a first doctorate specializing in medieval economic history, a second doctorate regarding Roman land use practices,  oversaw a huge survey of agrarian workers in Prussia, demystified the stock and commodity markets, taught Marx’s Das Kapital as a novice professor, and thus had become the rising star of the Geisteswissenschaften as publicly proclaimed by Theodore Mommsen, doyen of German humanists of the time (whom even Mark Twain found intimidating).

Eventually Weber overcame some of the emotional crises he had been enduring for a half-dozen years.  Putting aside his crippling depression, he accepted an invitation to address an international congress in St. Louis.  He and his wife left Germany on August 20, 1904, toured the U.S. as seemingly veteran ethnographers, and returned home on November 27.  This trip influenced his thinking and writing far more than would an ordinary scholar’s junket, particularly because he spoke with many people, including William James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, Booker T. Washington’s wife and staff, Samuel Gompers, Edwin Seligman, attended the Penn-Harvard football game, and visited Biltmore in Asheville, NC, the Vanderbilt home (see Lawrence Scaff, Max Weber in America , 2011).  He had written Part One of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in summer, 1904 (published in the fall), took the U.S. tour, finished the longer Part Two in March, 1905, and published it three months later, again in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik.  The book form appeared in 1920, just prior to his unanticipated death, featuring a new “Author’s Introduction” in which he counter-attacked all those who had questioned the accuracy of his original argument on religious, historical, economic, or philosophical grounds.

The wide range of criticism that The Protestant Ethic inspired in the 15 years between its initial publication, as two journal articles, and publication in final book form, not to mention the hundreds of pertinent books and articles that have appeared since then in every scholarly language, raises the inescapable question: Which PE is under examination?  Weber’s own words are less often consulted rigorously than one would hope.  Instead, one sees summaries of the type most readily transmitted to undergraduates: “Weber thought that Protestants created modern capitalism because John Calvin persuaded them they were predestined to heaven or hell, and the only way to hint to an inscrutable God that they deserved salvation was by making lots of money and spending very little of it, thus demonstrating ascetic virtue.”  A good and simple story that bears insubstantial relation to what interested Weber, prompting him to create a document often called “the most continuingly influential work by any sociologist during the classical period” (1870-1920).  Had this easy tale revealed all that was at stake, he would hardly have bothered to write the original articles, plus delivering heated and extended responses to notable specialists of the time who claimed he had concocted an explanation for capitalist development that violated, in one way or another, their own interpretations of socio-economic history.   (The most penetrating analysis of the book’s context is Peter Ghosh’s Max Weber and ‘The Protestant Ethic’: Twin Histories [2014].)

The first difficulty facing those who wish to understand Weber’s point of view accurately is the German in which it was written, or, barring that, the three extant English translations that render his tortuous scholarly language as well as can be expected, discrepant though they be.  Two early translators of Weber memorably wrote in 1946 that “At their best, they [German writers using a non-English style] erect a grammatical artifice in which mental balconies and watch towers, as well as bridges and recesses, decorate the main structure.  Their sentences are gothic castles . . . .Weber pushes German academic tradition to its extremes.  His major theme often seems to be lost in a wealth of footnoted digressions, exemptions, and comparative illustrations” (Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber, p. vi-vii).  If this style proved an obstacle to 20^th century readers, in our current literary climate that sidesteps complex texts, much of Weber’s writing, even via skilled translation, becomes a “non-starter.”   More than other obstacles to comprehension of theoretical works from Weber’s period, today’s routinized hyper-simplification of discourse blocks the way to lucid, reliable use of writing such as his.   Throwing up one’s hands when facing Kant’s or Hegel’s major works has become “normalized,” and Weber’s densest writings seem to have become similarly forbidding for all except the most committed readers.  And even though Weber’s roots do indeed lie within the neo-Kantian tradition, he was not a metaphysician, and intended his socio-economic and political writings to be comprehensible, at least to the “German mandarin” class which he so well represented, and those sectors of the educated bourgeoisie who took such works seriously.

Between 1930 and 2002, Talcott Parsons’ translation of PE was the only version available in English.  Despite inevitable complaints by native speakers and a few experts from other countries, Parsons’ youthful labors—begun with Marianne Weber’s blessing when he was 25, completed two years later—produced a “semantic translation” that satisfied most of its intended audience (Scaff, Max Weber in America [2011], 217-28).  It remains the most often quoted version even with those by Peter Baehr and Gordon Wells (Penguin, 2002) and Stephen Kalberg (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2002/Oxford, 2009) at hand.  When its original publisher, Unwin in England, reissued the book (1976), it reprinted Parsons’ version unchanged, as did Dover Publications (2003), and Norton’s “Critical Editions” (2009).

Given this history of translations, examining a smidgen of the source material as interpreted by each translator will show that “which PE?” is a valuable question when assessing the ultimate utility or disutility of Weber’s classic.  The opening sentence of the first chapter, “Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification,” illustrates some of the various conundra that can arise:

Parsons:  “A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of mixed religious composition brings to light with remarkable frequency a situation which has several times provoked discussion in the Catholic press and literature, and in the Catholic congresses in Germany, namely the fact that business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labours, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protestant” (p. 35).

Baehr and Wells:  “With relatively few variations and exceptions, the occupational statistics of a denominationally mixed region reveal a phenomenon which in recent years has frequently been the subject of lively debate in the Catholic press, in Catholic literature, and at Catholic conventions: business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the skilled higher strata of the labor force, and especially the higher technical or commercially trained staff of modern enterprises tend to be predominantly Protestant” (p. 1).

Kalberg: “A glance at the occupational statistics for any country in which several religions co-exist is revealing.  They indicate that people who own capital, employers, more highly educated skilled workers, and more highly trained technical or business personnel in modern companies tend to be, with striking frequency, overwhelmingly Protestant. The variation in this regard between Catholics and Protestants has often been discussed, in a lively fashion, in Catholic newspapers and journals in Germany, as well as at congresses of the Catholic Church” (p. 61; fourth edition).

Weber:  “Ein Blick in die Berufsstatistik eines konfessionell gemischten Landes pflegt mit auffallender Häufigkeit eine Erscheinung zu zeigen, welche mehrfach in der katholischen Presse und Literatur und auf den Katholikentagen Deutschlands lebhaft erörtert worden ist: den ganz vorwiegend protestantischen Charakter des Kapitalbesitzes und Unternehmertums sowohl, wie der oberen gelernten Schichten der Arbeiterschaft, namentlich aber des höheren technisch oder kaufmännisch vorgebildeten Personals der modernen Unternehmungen.”

The translations do not blatantly contradict one another, but neither do they produce a version of Weber’s writing that offers the reader complete confidence in the tone or direction of his intentions.   This is the norm for Weber’s works in English such that, for instance, for 70 years experts in German language have complained about the alleged imprecision harbored within the three large books he wrote treating religion in India, China, and among the ancient Jews.  They were all translated by Hans Gerth, a native German, student of Weber’s brother, Alfred, at Heidelberg, and noted Weber expert.  Yet nobody has stepped forward to retranslate them given the difficulty of the task.

Worse perhaps even than translation ambiguities are Weber’s infamous footnotes (in the original) or endnotes (as in the English versions).  In Parsons’ edition the main text (pp. 13-183) consumes 49,500 words, and the endnotes (pp. 185-284 in reduced font) uses 52,900 words.  Thus, ignoring the notes means leaving over half the book out of play, and for Weber himself, probably the more important half given his vigorous counter-critiques answering specialists of high scholarly standing.  He also conformed to standard practices of academic writing  in his day by freely using Latin and Greek phrases, thereby his repeated invocations of finitum non est capax infiniti (the finite is not capable of the infinite), certitudo salutis (certainty of safety/salvation), horrendum decretum/ decretum horribilis (horrible decree, pertaining to predestination), fides efficax (effective faith), unio mystica (mystical union, of the mystic with God), among many, throws up another barrier between his story and today’s reader.

A characteristic passage from Parsons’ translation, with accompanying notes [indicated in brackets]  attached to nearly every line, is this:

Thus, however useless good works might be as a means of attaining salvation, for even the elect remain beings of the flesh, and everything they do falls infinitely short of divine standards, nevertheless, they are indispensable as a sign of election [60].  They are the technical means, not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnation.  In this sense they are occasionally referred to as directly necessary for salvation [61] or the possessio salutis is made conditional on them [62].  In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves [63].  Thus the Calvinist, as it is sometimes put, himself creates [64] his own salvation, or, as would be more correct, the conviction of it.  But this creation cannot, as in Catholicism, consist in a gradual accumulation of individual good works to one’s credit, but rather in a systematic self-control which at every moment stands before the inexorable alternatives, chosen or damned.  This brings us to a very important point in our investigation.  It is common knowledge that Lutherans have again and again accused this line of thought, which was worked out in the Reformed Churches and sects with increasing clarity [65], of reversion to the doctrine of salvation by works [66]. (pp. 115-16; emphases added)

Endnote 66 seeks to defend some of his observations at this key juncture in Weber’s argument where he obviously felt the need for irrefutable proof.  In form and content, it resembles dozens of similar notes, and reads in part as follows:

The Calvinistic faith is one of the many examples in the history of religions of the relation between the logical and the psychological consequences for the practical religious attitude to be derived from certain religious ideas.  Fatalism is, of course, the only logical consequence of predestination.  But on account of the idea of proof the psychological result was precisely the opposite.  For essentially similar reasons the followers of Nietzsche claim a positive ethical significance for the idea of eternal recurrence.  This case, however, is concerned with responsibility for  a future life which is connected with the active individual by no conscious thread of continuity, while for the Puritan it was tua res agitur [your own affairs are in question].  Even Hoornbeek (Theologia practica, I, p. 159) analyses the relation between predestination and action well into the language of the times. The electi [the chosen] are, on account of their election, proof against fatalism because in their rejection of it they prove themselves “quos ipsa electio sollicitos reddit et diligentes officiorum” [those whose election makes them anxious and careful about their tasks].  The practical interests cut off the fatalistic consequences of logic (which, however, in spite of everything occasionally did break through).

But, on the other hand, the content of ideas of a religion is, as Calvinism, shows, far more important than William James (Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, pp. 444f) is inclined to admit.  The significance of the rational elements in religious metaphysics is shown in classical form by the tremendous influence which especially the logical structure of the Calvinistic concept of God exercised on life.  If the God of the Puritans has influenced history as hardly another before or since, it is principally due to the attributes which the power of thought had given him.  James’s pragmatic valuation of the significance of religious ideas according to their influence on life is incidentally a true child of the world of ideas of the Puritan home of that eminent scholar.  The religious experience as such is of course irrational, like every experience.  In its highest, mystical form, it is even the experience [par excellence], and, as James has well shown, is distinguished by its absolute incommunicability.  It has a specific character and appears as knowledge but cannot be adequately reproduced by means of our lingual and conceptual apparatus.  It is further true that every religious experience loses some of its content in the attempt of rational formulation, the further the conceptual formulation goes, the more so.  That is the reason for many of the tragic conflicts of all rational theology, as the Baptist sects of the seventeenth century already knew.  But that irrational element, which is by no means peculiar to religious experience, but applies (in different sense and to different degrees) to every experience, does not prevent its being of the greatest practical importance, of what particular type the system of ideas is, that captures and molds the immediate experience of religion in its own way. . . . (pp. 232-233)

This note embraces many angles of analysis, but several parts stand out.  For instance, Weber’s understanding of religious experience as fundamentally irrational, “like every experience,” becomes the crux of his overall argument.  And it could hardly be otherwise given his detailed knowledge of the key religious texts and the ways they had guided private and commercial behavior for centuries.   Consider one small part of Calvin’s own prescription for the proper behavior of a Protestant ascetic:

Hope of the enjoyment of God’s presence makes this life bearable.  Now whatever is abstracted from the corrupt love of this life should be added to the desire of a better.  I grant, indeed, the correctness of their opinion who considered it as the greatest blessing not to be born, and as the next to die immediately.  For being heathens, destitute of the knowledge of God and of true religion, what could they see in it but unhappiness and misery?  Nor was there anything irrational in the conduct of those who mourned and wept at the births of their relations and solemnly rejoiced at their funerals. (John Calvin, The Institutes, Section 9.4; emphasis added)

A modern person speaking this way would be institutionalized, or worse.  And yet Calvinism spread across Europe and into the United States, even if with diminished dogmatic claims on practical behavior.  Weber saw more clearly than did Werner Sombart, Ferdinand Tönnies, and others in his small circle of capitalism’s analysts that the unbalanced, pre-Enlightened dictates of religious zealotry prevalent in the 16^th century, by the time they had been watered down and recorded in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, fit perfectly with the presumed virtues of capitalists’ accumulation.

A few pages later in PE Weber dialectically refines the core of his argument under the heading Die Berufsethik des asketischen Protestantismus (Parsons: “The Religious Foundations of Ascetic Protestantism”), where Berufsethik bears the theoretical weight, meaning “professional ethics” or “worldly ethics,” and not “religious foundations.”  In Weber’s words:

The life of the saint was directed solely toward a transcendental end, salvation. But precisely for that reason it was thoroughly rationalized in this world and dominated entirely by the aim to add to the glory of God on earth. Never has the precept omnia in majorem dei gloriam [for the greater glory of God] been taken with more bitter seriousness.  . . . It was this rationalization that gave the Reformed faith its peculiar ascetic tendency. (p. 118; emphases added).

The conversion of working hard in Calvin’s time to glorify God’s presence on earth—even if He did not pay attention—into “waste not, want not,” and “a penny saved is a penny earned” 200 years later, is the socio-economic phenomenon that fascinated Weber, and for which he willingly carried out vigorous scholarly battle when faced with fierce repudiations, as he was for years.

The word “peculiar” and its cognates crop up many times in PE as applied to capitalism’s development and its relationship with religious ethics.  In the original the German words are usually besondere, eigenartig, or spezifisch. Weber’s application of these words appears on pp. 16, 22, 24 (4 times), 25 (twice), 26 (twice), 39, 40, 45, 46, 51 (twice), 55 (twice), etc., for at least 20 more instances.  With a devout Pietist mother and an irreligious politico father, Weber studied this phenomenon in “real time,” and “peculiarities” became an indispensable analytic term for him in his quest for lucidity, both as a scholar and a son.  His consternation about these overlapping issues becomes clear in a summarizing passage:

In the rules of St. Benedict, still more with the monks of Cluny, again with the Cistercians, and most strongly the Jesuits, it [Christian asceticism] has become emancipated from planless otherworldliness and   irrational self-torture.  It had developed a systematic method of rational conduct with the purpose of overcoming the status naturae, to free man from the power of irrational impulses and his dependence on the world and on nature.  It attempted to subject man to the supremacy of a purposeful will [77]. . . The Puritan, like every rational type of asceticism, tried to enable a man to maintain and act upon his constant motives, especially those which it taught him itself, against the emotions. . . Contrary to many popular ideas, the end of this asceticism was to be able to lead an alert, intelligent life: the most urgent task the destruction of spontaneous, impulsive enjoyment. (pp. 118-19; emphases added)

So there we have it:  crush one’s autarkic joie de vivre under the iron heel of capitalist discipline, pile up the wealth, forget about God’s presence or absence, and—voila!—capitalism thrives even as its subject peoples are smothered in hyper-rationalization on all fronts.