The Deconstruction of Catholic Values by Protestant Ethics The Impression of the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

DOI

10.2991/cesses-19.2019.293How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Catholicism; Labor-for-God belief; capitalism

Abstract

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by German sociologist Max Weber is one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Based on the background of the rise of the protestant movement and the era of Martin Luther, this paper explains the reason why the reformation came into being in Germany in the 16th century. First, the Catholicism has a contemptuous and repellent attitude towards the accumulation of wealth. Second, considering the political situation in the German region at that time, there was never a strong royal power connecting the German region together, so the nominally holy Roman Empire was actually divided. Third, advances in technology (the invention of the movable type printing) have allowed civilians to reclaim their voice from the clergy. Secondly, from Luther's religious reform, to Calvinism, to the rise of Puritan movement in England, and finally to the development of North America, the protestant ethic has been deconstructed from the Catholic ethic.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Xiaoxia Zhou
AU  - Junjie Kang
PY  - 2019/10
DA  - 2019/10
TI  - The Deconstruction of Catholic Values by Protestant Ethics The Impression of the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1321
EP  - 1323
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/cesses-19.2019.293
DO  - 10.2991/cesses-19.2019.293
ID  - Zhou2019/10
ER  -