Weberian Propositions Revisited Based on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-89-3_213How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Max Weber; Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism; Weber’s; proposition; Confucian capitalism

Abstract

As a sociologist on par with Karl Marx and Emile Dürkheim, Max Weber was particularly concerned with the relationship between religious thought and economic ethics, and his masterpiece The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has attracted the attention of many scholars since its introduction to China in the 1980s. Weber's ideas have faced much controversy since their inception. Many scholars’ studies and interpretations of the text based on the current economic situation in East Asia have given rise to heated discussions on the ‘Weberian proposition’ and many misunderstandings and criticisms based on the position. As time progressed, there emerged a Weberian-like doctrine of religious economic ethics. This article is intended to avoid following the crowd, but rather to reduce to zero the interpretations covered by later scholars using the method of ‘subtraction’. We focus on the original text of the Protestant Ethic for a most essential analysis. We begin with a methodological reflection on the scholarly study of the ‘Weberian proposition’. Secondly, we identify the process of spiritual transformation at the heart of the Protestant Ethic and argue for it. Finally, we examine and academically reflect on the logical misconceptions of such Weberian propositions, using “Confucian capitalism” as an example.

Copyright

© 2022 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lisa Zeng
AU  - Yue Zhao
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/30
TI  - Weberian Propositions Revisited Based on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 5th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1862
EP  - 1873
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-89-3_213
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-89-3_213
ID  - Zeng2022
ER  -