nf0090: okay i think we'd better get started i'm namex and i'm just giving a 
lecture er today on Max Weber and er The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of 
Capitalism which is the text er for this seminar and i do just er for the semin-
, the seminar that goes with with this lecture i do just want to stress it is 
absolutely vital that you read this text if you read nothing else for this read 
this text a lot of the essays the additional reading that you have that you 
will find on Max Weber a lot of it is pretty impenetrable some of it is clear 
but the clearest thing you can read and the most er wonderful text you can read 
is just what he wrote himself on this so get the text and read it er it's not 
that expensive if you can't get it from the library it's something you should 
have er in your your own library for time to come it is a great er er er er a 
great er text okay well i want to start off first of all by saying a little bit 
about the life of of Max Weber who was he who wrote The 
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism well Frank Parkin in his er 
little survey for sociologists which is quite readable this is this with 
Giddens is er is a a fairly good summary if you er haven't read anything on on 
Weber before er he provides us with a very brief very brief and pretty 
irreverent portrait of Max Weber as a bourgeois scholar of wilhemi-, Wilhemine 
Germany with a Victorian pater familias er and [sigh] man who had lots of 
Oedipus complexes er that he had melancholia and frustrated political ambitions 
and along the way we see out of this coming enorm-, vast enormous productive 
energies in er studies on the law religious systems political economy and 
authority systems er i want to fill out a little bit about this life er before 
discussing the text er and this tour de force The Protestant Ethic and the 
Spirit of Capitalism Weber was born in eighteen-sixty-four in Erfurt a 
Hanseatic town this is quite important in his formation er one of the towns er 
in the the 
hansea-, g-, er in the Hanseatic League er one of the merchant towns a classic 
m-, early modern er th-, merchant towns of er er of Germany his father was a 
jurist and municipal councillor and he came from a family of linen merchants 
and textile manufacturers er we can see a lot of this text the what he's 
writing in this text being written in that context in response to er his own 
family background amongst er er his community background and his family 
background amongst this er these merchants he moved to Berlin and er er his 
father that is the family mo-, moved to Berlin er which was soon to become the 
booming capital of Bismarck's Reich and er Weber's father was to become a pro-, 
prosperous politician he was a right wing liberal who used his home as a 
talking shop for local academics for businessmen artists and various other 
political bigwigs now in Parkin's er words Weber would have listened from an 
early l-, age to a lot of high-minded chatter and less than enlightened 
politics but he also had a 
mother not just a father we have to look at the role of mothers in er the 
formation of our intellectuals as well as the f-, the fathers er and she was a 
cultured and liberal Protestant but a woman who had become an overburdened 
hausfrau she was religious and felt a vocation to charity and good works but 
these things were of no interest to her husband er and certainly parental 
relations in the family home er were estranged it was clear that Weber senior 
was a martinet to his children and very er overbearing and autocratic er in his 
behaviour to his wife er now what happens er with with Weber is that from his 
school days he drew away from the the piety of his mother and the philistinism 
of his father and er decided that academic pursuits were going to be his his 
way in life and he went off to university in Heidelberg there he certainly 
played the er the role of the the student prince er engaging in all kinds of er 
fun and games as well as a a bit of work er but he later continued his 
studies in Strasburg and Göttingen where he studied law he went he did his 
period of of military service and after his studies went on to take up service 
in the law courts in Berlin er where he worked on a PhD thesis er the first 
thesis he did his PhD sis-, thesis went back to his own origins he worked on 
the trading companies during the Middle Ages and er in eighteen-ninety he 
passed a second law exam and he did what the er followed the the common German 
practice which continues to this day of doing a second thesis the 
habilitatation h-, habilitation and with a treatise on the history of agrarian 
institutions and this was a sociology an economic and cultural analysis of 
ancient societies now finally this is a long period of study that he that he 
went through he then married er the grand niece of his father Marianne 
Schnitger and lived the life of a successful young scholar in Berlin where he 
became a professor of er economics er he er he was in Berlin as a as a as a 
young 
scholar and then he went on to become a professor of of economics at Freiburg 
in eighteen-ninety- four er er what we what he did in frei-, he had a huge 
workload in Freiburg and just seemed absolutely obsessed with work this er 
certainly became a very important characteristic of his life er he went on to 
take a chair at Heidelberg in eighteen-ninety- six er but in eighteen-ninety-
seven he er and he'd oh as i'll just sort of say a little bit he er he when he 
the chair that he took in in Heidelberg replaced one of the er er a m-, a man 
named Kniess who was one of the heads of the German Historical School so he was 
very much part of that er that er general historiographical tradition of the 
time the German Historical School a lot of er er a lot of er people at the time 
writing histories with a great er economic and sociological sort of content to 
them and er but he has what happens then in eighteen-ninety-seven he has a 
crisis his father died er this is was the the onset of his his crisis his 
father died er and he d-, just before his 
father's death he'd had a huge quarrel with him a huge fight with him over er 
the way he was his er Weber's mother was being treated by his father and er he 
didn't see ge-, get to see his father before he died he'd had this big f-, big 
fight with him so felt terrible guilt and remorse after this and had a nervous 
breakdown so and he suffered for the rest of his life from severe depression 
interspersed by manic work and periods of travel so that really was sort of 
marked his life from from that time onward we see er this er this this [sigh] 
conflict with the father and then this period of s-, of er a nervous breakdown 
after after his father's death and er it affecting him for the rest of his life 
well in nineteen-o-two he returned to some duties he did some teaching ad-, and 
administration but he was mainly doing a lot of travelling er after this time 
and er he travelled i-, during this time and he travelled er through to Italy 
he hoped he would recuperate in Italy but he couldn't concentrate and er he did 
start to do some writing and in nineteen-o-four wrote the first chapter of The 
Protestant Ethic so he writes that that first chapter then but immediately 
after that he set off to the U-S and it was his it was you know this was er a 
really a big event for him it was his trip to his first trip to America and he 
went with er other leading figures German figures of the time Werner Sombart 
and er and Troeltsch but particularly Sombart who was someone i'll we we'll be 
mentioning him la-, after who that he he came to debate The Protestant Ethic er 
with now he was enthralled by er the United States by the pace of life in the 
big cities er he was bemused by the democratic customs of the natives there but 
found in in it absolutely exhilarating experience er er seeing it and he came 
to write about it quite a lot in the The Protestant Ethic he he wanted to enter 
sympathetically into the New World er but wanted to retain his capacity for an 
informed judgement on the directions it was taking er he was absolutely er 
fascinated by the characteristics of American capitalism er impressed by the 
extent of the waste of human life in er this frenetic activity of money making 
er in in the U-S and in New York decided he would look for material that he 
could use to develop this the chapter that he'd started before he'd left and it 
started the The Protestant Ethic so that experience in America was also extreme 
was absolutely fundamental to what he came to write in The Protestant Ethic er 
now after he returned to German er Germany he finished the finished the text 
then the Russian er the first ru-, Russian revolution er was something that was 
er redirected his attention and his scholarly interest and this man of enormous 
er energies he he was also you know working flat out er well he had these these 
periods when he sort of went in for this sort of manic work and he managed to 
learn Russian in bed before getting up each morning imagine it [laughter] er so 
that he could follow the Russian daily press and he wrote a piece on the 
nineteen-o-five revolution 
so he's very much one of these er what we find er with er with ver-, Weber he's 
very much one of this generation of universal scholars that we find er in this 
period a lawyer an economist a historian a philosopher he ranged across these 
fields he was also well acquainted with the the thi-, the liter-, all the lot 
of literature on the theology of his day er he did an enormous quantity of work 
and er i have to say it was a rather different kind of setting than er we find 
in universities today there was a lot of research time available to then and 
there was no er pressure for rapid publication so he was d-, er ranging across 
these fields doing a huge amount of research and er learning a a huge amount 
over many fields but er in a rather different setting than er than we face in 
in in universities now er but this was something that certainly allowed him to 
range widely over the humanities er and we find him being transformed er the 
the whole world of the of the the German scholar the German er er the the 
German professor over that period 
was being transformed from er a petty bourgeois sort of character harried by 
money into an upper class academician with a large house and the facilities to 
establish an international salon culture so he's moved certainly moved into 
that that world by this time he was also er Weber was also one of the er the 
last of the political professors er he made contributions er er detached 
contributions to science and er and a-, also acted as a as a political f-, 
figure in the intellectual vanguard of the middle classes er at the time but he 
was much less successful than he would like to have been he was a sort of he he 
tried to have a political career almost did it but didn't er he er at the age 
of fifty-four he allowed his name to go forward as a candidate for the German 
Democratic Party but didn't bother to canvass thought that people should just 
know who he was and er and and vote for him er he thought he expected he would 
be he would be adopted as the party candidate but was passed over for a local 
non-entity and he was very 
deeply hurt by this so at the end of the day this was a man who was better 
about writing about the mechanics of power than dealing in its practicalities 
er so er he he w-, de-, was very disappointed and he actually he ended up dying 
shortly after this at the age of fifty-six but gosh he was just fifty-six and 
the volume of the his his scholarly output by this time was absolutely amazing 
er but this inde-, and indeed this was one of the shortest er tracts that he he 
he ever wrote it was a short and inspired piece of writing er it represented 
Weber's early turning to broader cultural themes and one of er it was very much 
one of the early pieces he wrote after his breakdown er as i said before it was 
written in two parts over the period nineteen-o-four to five er interspersed by 
this t-, er trip to America er now just to say er something on the context in 
which it was written i just want to er to set that out first of all Weber's 
often thought about as a theorist who championed the cause of the independent 
role of er 
ideas and social life but he also had strong materias-, materialist leanings so 
we can sort of er debate that that issue er there's a lot of misunderstandings 
of The Protestant Ethic er really taken from Baudelairizing the thesis creating 
a kind of Baudelairized thesis that Calvinism was the principal cause of 
capitalism of ideas leading er to the to the economic system er but this is not 
er this is not how we should characterize er the argument in this text first of 
all we have to see that there was a very important social and political context 
for this essay er i d-, i want to to to come to the characteristics of of of 
that context it was written in the context of a contemporary debate in Germany 
on the differences between Protestants and Catholics and the impact of this on 
social structure and social status and the broader background to that goes back 
to the context of the Kulturkampf in Prussia that period which Bismarck had 
launched of er er discrimination against the Catholics so 
this turns of course a lot of the the civil service the er the state sort of 
denies this but what it turns into is an academic er aspects of it turning into 
an academic debate on the positions of Catholics er in the society and and the 
the er the the Catholic er Protestant division the other er er context i want 
to draw attention to er in this is the whole approach that that Weber took in 
writing er writing this this essay it's a very simple er simple er si-, simple 
approach a sort of simple er formulation of the question er he combined what he 
managed to do was to combine a sensitivity to diverse structural meanings er in 
this with an insi-, an insistence on an abs-, a fundamental causal role for er 
material factors in influencing the course of history he drew on elements of 
Marx but he was not definitely not a a Marxist never accepted er Marxism 
rejected its politics but he certainly did draw on elements of Marx the essay 
was also as i i it it presents a sort of fairly simple formulation because it 
was highly focused he wanted to make a very 
clear and focused explanation of what he was putting forward he rejected er a 
multidimensional analysis of the whole problem betw-, of religion and society 
and focused on the economic sector was the eco-, he w-, he focused right down 
into the the economic sector and the rise of what he called a rational 
capitalism so he was interested in two things a rational capitalism and its 
religious preconditions now the other interesting thing about the religious 
preconditions that he looks at he doesn't look at all religious preconditions 
by any means he foc-, he doesn't even look at Germans and Lutherans instead he 
focuses in on Anglo-Saxons he talks about Americans a lot here as well and the 
Calvinist world so he centres his argument on on those aspects so he was 
looking to find in this much more focused er approach to to find the guiding 
principles of conduct and the value system governing patterns of behaviour 
that's really what he's trying to do now let's turn to his 
argument which you will find by reading the text okay very clearly set out 
first of all he tells us he wants to tell us about capitalism and you'll find 
on your handout my spelling isn't very good so you'd better correct er er 
perhaps some kind of slip there but er not mens but means okay now if we turn 
to his argument he he tells us first what he er er what he he wants to single 
out in his definitions of capitalism what The Protestant Ethic starts with er 
The Protestant Ethic starts with is a very fairly broad and e-, very 
contestable if you read these you will find these very contestable but er er 
contrasts he wants to set out contrasts between the development of the West and 
the East so we get the West the the East and the West er set out as different 
systems and he looks at rational systems in the West he sees s-, argues there 
are more rational systems developed in the West er in music in architecture in 
perspective er that there's trained officials of the state that the state er er 
itself has sort of a rational structure with a written constitutional 
constitution 
rationally ordained law and an administration bound to rules or laws capitalism 
was not then identified with greed for gain but identified with the pursuit of 
profit an ever renewed profit by means of continuous rational capitalistic 
enterprise so that's what he he sees as as the central er the central point in 
in capitalism it was that pursuit of profit er and ever renewed profit and that 
pursued by rational capitalistic enterprise now he argues certainly ca-, er 
calculation was carried on in India where the decimal system was invented but 
that decimal system was only really made use of by developing capitalism in the 
West he argues er in India it led to no modern bookkeeping er and he cites 
other examples like China where we see origins of er mathematics and mechanics 
t-, er but er the again the technical utilization of this knowledge er was not 
taken up in the way that it was in in the West so we have that East-West 
comparison set out a-, at the beginning er so er 
finally just to to recap er capitalist action as we see in the West involved 
regular pursuit of profit through economic exchange now Weber also goes into 
different types of capitalism okay he's got er the the the different types of 
capitalism he he enquires into these were set out as booty capitalism that is 
the robber barons pariah capitalism now this is a kind of commercial activity 
which he identified with forms of money lending and again sets this discusses 
this in terms of Jewish enterprise now this led to a lot of debate over the the 
text later on er especially the er debate that he has with Sombart who takes 
this further and argues that er we can see sort of origins of capitalism being 
tied up with er the er enterprise of the Jews er but i think it's a very 
interesting er area i won't be able to go into it in any depth today but it's 
something that er you may want to pursue in your seminars and er and your 
essays but that was an a a fair-, a central part of the some of the critique of 
the work the er what he had to say about this area he identified as er i'll put 
it down here pariah capitalism okay er now er partly Weber didn't think that 
this kind of capitalism was central to the whole process because of the er 
partly because the Jews were excluded from the core of economic life er and 
this was a capitalism that opered operated on the fringes of of er the society 
so er he doesn't er he doesn't pursue that er as as he might have now he also 
er set out traditional capitalism that's large scale lending er large scale 
undertakings in all civilizations which were set up for specific ends and then 
finally rational capitalism economic activity geared to a regular market the 
use of bookkeeping systematic pursuit of profit this is the kind of capitalism 
that he's specifically interested in and only in the West do we see he argues 
this kind of capitalistic activity becoming associated with the rational 
organization of formally free labour a disciplined 
labour force 
nf0090: another er [sigh] he he s-, he goes into this in a little more detail 
on the the different types of socio-economic pac-, factors distin-, 
distinguishing the European experience from India and China so we get er more 
detail then provided on India and China er what he sees coming out in the West 
is in contrast to his perception of the East is a separation of productive 
enterprise from the household in in the West the development of the western 
city another characteristic and er a rational practice of juridical er well er 
the the rationalization of juridical practice the development of a nation state 
administered by bureaucratic officials and finally double entry bookkeeping 
double entry bookkeeping always plays a big er big part in these conceptions of 
of the West okay and so out of this we get er a characterization of what 
becomes an ideal type this was a very important for Weber the definition of 
these various ideal types so this kind of rational capitalism that he's 
described with all these various er characteristics i've set out er this became 
his ideal type and it was also associated with a specific character the culture 
of the entrepreneur now where does he find this culture of the entrepreneur er 
now the examples he draws our attention to are American examples he takes us 
back to er Ben Franklin and the philosophy of American capitalism all of these 
these aphorisms that are so famous er in Ben Franklin remember time is money he 
that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour and goes abroad or sits idle 
one half that day though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or 
idleness ought not to reckon that the only expense he has really spent or 
rather thrown away five shillings besides remember credit is money if a man 
lets his money lie in my hands after it is due he gives me the interest or as 
much as i can make of it during that time er this amounts to a considerable s-, 
er sum where a man has good and large credit and makes good use of it 
money can beket beget money er i'm just i'm just er and its offspring can ge-, 
beget more and so on and he goes on to say that er the most trifling actions 
that affect a man's credit are to be regarded the sound of your hammer at five 
in the morning or at eight at night heard by a creditor makes him easy six 
months longer boy now you know it but if he sees you at the billiard table or 
hears your voice at a tavern when you should be at work he sends for his money 
the next day demands it before he can receive it in a lump so these are the 
sorts of er the aphorisms that became that he he identifies with with American 
capitalism and er sees as as an aspect of that culture of the entrepreneur that 
he wants to draw into this analysis and so we get him moving on to where does 
this come from and moving on to this concept of the calling er so we move here 
into religion the calling and er ca-, Calvinism and Weber in a-, as he did 
before in trying to define capitalism in con-, and looking at a comparative er 
analysis 
of East and West does so also with er religion he looks at a comparison of 
religions and er argues that the behaviour of his Protestant en-, entrepreneurs 
differs from that of entrepreneurs under all other world religions and so this 
this t-, er this book then became a fragment in a study of world religions that 
he embarked on er er later er where he studied Judaism Hinduism Buddhism and 
Confucianism er he said of Hinduism that it was otherly er otherworldly 
directed towards escaping the encumbrances of the material world rather than 
rational mastery of that world er he wrote about certainly wrote about the 
period when Hinduism became systematized and trade and manufacture reached its 
peak in India i mean we cannot deny that the great merchants of the er er of 
the world during from the er the or across the early modern period into the 
eighteenth century before they were pushed aside especially by the British er 
the great merchants of the south er the South er China Seas the er the 
whole of the Indian Ocean area that whole area between the Mediterranean and 
China er were that whole area was dominated by Indian merchants trading across 
this va-, vast area so certainly it didn't er mean that the Indians were not 
not good a-, good at this but he argued the affect of Hinduism and the caste 
system inhibited economic development compared to the West in China he noted 
high er levels of evolution but with Confucianism this was one it was one that 
had er lacked the activism of Calvinism now he comes into probably his greatest 
problems with Judaism which did er er certainly introduce the tradition of 
ethical prophesy er involved the propagation of a divine mission but again er 
it lacked the active missionary zeal of ethical prophesy that we find er in er 
in Calvinism okay now but but what he goes er he goes on from those world 
religions to set out then a divide between Calvinism and cath-, Catholicism so 
we get to Christianity Christianity is the one that's going to do it but it has 
to be Calvinist 
Christianity and he notices there a sharp contrast between Catholic and 
Protestant attitudes and draws some broad generalizations from this he argues 
that the Reformation er er the the Reformation brought not the elimination of 
the church's control over everyday life but the substitution of a new form of 
control he argued that the Catholic Church was relatively lax in these controls 
and have er previously and er many of them were scarcely perceptible but 
Calvinism penetrated to all departments of private and public public life 
infinitely burdensome earnestly enforced was er would be today he he argues it 
would be for us t-, us today er er an absolutely unbearable form of 
ecclesiastical control er so this was som-, something that had become the 
strongest of of the fates er Catholicism in addition was associated with magic 
and superstition the cycle of sin repentance atonement release followed by 
renewed sin and mediated by a priest this was his er very much his his image of 
er of of Catholicism er now i have recently found it 
fascinating to see the way that this contrast between Protestantism and 
capitalism was played out in another contemporary and highly influential text 
Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks so i just want to say something about this Thomas 
Mann like er er like er Weber was born into a Hanseatic town was born in in er 
in Lübeck from a line of er prosperous and influential merchants he was one of 
these sons who did not follow his er the path into er er becoming a s-, a 
merchant in turn the story that he describes in Buddenbrooks is in some ways er 
not actually his own story but it follows that er there there is ver-, echoes 
of that right er right through the book but he has an absolute fascinating er 
er penetration in the book of mercantile society and bourgeois family life in 
these north German Protestant towns there's a wonderful character in the bo-, 
the b-, central character of the book i i indeed is a woman er the one of the 
sisters in the family Antoni an-, ant-, or Antonia she would she would have 
been and she's called Toni and she goes off to Munich at one point and 
describes her 
impressions of the Catholics this is er really er really fa-, she she describes 
Munich she says yes one has a g-, has to get used to a great deal it is a real 
foreign country the strange currency and the difficulty of understanding the 
common people i speak too fast to them and they seem to talk gibberish to me 
and then the Catholicism i hate it as you know i have no respect for it er as 
she goes on to dis-, er writes a very amusing letter home about her encounter 
with er an archbishop or a a pri-, er a high level priest who er gave me an 
ogling look out of the window like a lieutenant of the guard [laugh] er this is 
er your your er your protes-, she says to her mother your Protestant er 
missionaries are certainly nothing compared to this rakish old prince of the 
church er so there's this whole this is sort of echoes right right through this 
this er this c-, er conflict between er the the Protestants and the Catholics 
and later Thomas Buddenbrook er who the is the the eldest son in his family and 
carries on er the family firm er this family merchant firm he has er er 
premonitions of his own downfall and that of the family firm and i this think 
it's very striking the way he writes this and i want to also tell you this was 
published first in nineteen-o-two before The Protestant Ethic was published so 
this is the kind of thing that is around at the time that er that er that er 
the The Protestant Ethic was being written er he talks about being in a sort of 
de-, depressed mood he says it may pass but just now i feel older than i am i 
have business cares at the director's meeting of the Büchen railway yesterday 
Council Hegenstorm simply talked me down refuted my connecs-, contentions 
nearly made me appear ridiculous i feel that could not have happened to me 
before it was as though something had begun to slip as though i hadn't the firm 
grip i had on events what is success it is an inner an indescribable force 
resourcefulness power of vision a consciousness that i am by my mere existence 
exerting pressure on the movement of life 
above me it is my belief in the adaptability of life to my own ends fortune and 
success lie with ourselves we must hold them firmly deep within us for as soon 
as something begins to slip to relax to get tired within us then everything 
without us will reb-, er rebel and struggle to withdraw from our influence one 
thing follows another blow after blow and the man is finished er and i have 
often thought of a Turkish proverb which says when the house is finished death 
come it doesn't need to be death but the decline the falling off the beginning 
of the end er and he carries this on but it's an extraordinary statement of 
this er the imp-, er the importance ascribed to this inner force within 
ourselves which becomes in Weber's terms the the calling well let's er let's 
look at the calling [sigh] now the notion of the calling was introduced by the 
Reformation and projected religious behaviour into the day to day world it was 
a moral responsibility the moral responsibility of the Protestant 
which was accumulative responsibility it was not a cycle as in the Catholic 
conception of s-, of sin repentance forgiveness the idea of the calling was 
present in Luther's doctrines it was more developed by the Puritan sects of in 
Calvinism Methodism Pietism and Baptism er it was most focused i-, in Calvinism 
er and it became obligatory under this er this syste-, this idea of the calling 
to regard oneself as chosen a lack of certainty was indicative in-, of 
insufficient faith performance of good works in worldly activity was accepted 
as a medium whereby surety could be demonstrated so success in a calling came 
to regar-, re-, be regarded as a sign of being one of the elect it's very much 
that that religious conception the accumulation of wealth was sanctioned it was 
okay er as long as it was combined with sober i-, a sober industrious career 
and not with the expenditure on luxury so Calvinism er Weber er believed had 
the dynamism to supply the moral energy the drive of capitalist 
entrepreneurs now Weber found much to admire in Calvinism for its effectiveness 
but he also found it deeply problematic so let's look at about at how he he 
writes about it 
nf0090: he he looks at predestination and shows that there were no magical 
means of attaining the grace of God for those to whom God had decided to deny 
it and you didn't know whether you were going to fall into that category there 
were the harsh very harsh doctrines of absolute trans-, transcendentality of 
God and the corruption of everything pertaining to the c-, to the flesh an 
inner isolation of the individual er so he f-, s-, you f-, see in this the the 
reason for the negative attitude of Puritanism to sensuous and emotional 
elements in culture and religion er and the God of Calvinism demanded of 
believers not single good works but a life of good works combined with a 
unified system a consistent method of conduct as a whole now for the Catholics 
by contrast there was absolution a cycle of sin repentance atonement release er 
what f-, happens with Calvinism is the idea of the necessity of proving one's 
faith in worldly activity now if we turn to er er turn er just got another turn 
further to look at er asceticism which is an aspect of of er Calvinism now 
Weber pursues these themes of the relentless the all pervasive character of 
Calvinism er he talks about the waste of time being the first and deadliest sin 
human life infinitely short and precious er it's very precious to make w-, sure 
of one's own election a loss of time would be caused through sociability idle 
talk luxury in the Puritan view we see the providential character of the the 
play of private economic interest taking on a new emphasis the p-, and there's 
this sort of the whole er providentialism of of the the system er the the 
providential purpose of the division of labour was to be known by its fruits 
and again the asceticism is very er er an ascetic er er discipline something 
that is er er an enemy to er hostility to sport to recreation to spontaneous 
pleasure er all of these things would lead away from er work towards er the 
calling er and again if you look at er some of the the further literature on 
this he he finds in the er the fine h-, a-, fine arts a hatred of anything that 
smacked of superstition so critique of the theatre not no participation in the 
theatre er it's very interesting that in er Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks the 
second son who goes off the rails is always going off to the theatre it's er 
he's er that's er the the sort of negative er side of er er er the er the the 
very negative attitudes towards of of Calvinism to er to this okay now er if we 
look at the one of the things that that comes up here is what about the idea of 
possessions er it allowed this this whole ethos allowed for the accumulation of 
possessions but if you look to the idea of a man's duty to his possessions er 
with Calvinism he suborts him-, bo-, subordinates himself as the obedient 
steward a steward of these possessions a steward er or an acquisitive er o-, of 
an acquisitive machine it was the greater the 
possessions he had the heavier the feeling of er responsibility for them er so 
we see this sort of increase attempt to increase the glory of God and so 
increasing these possessions by re-, er restless effort er but worldly pr-, er 
Protestant er asceticism acted against the spontaneous enjoyment of er 
possessions so the possessions that were there they were not to be luxuries 
restricted consumption o-, of luxuries er okay now Weber's Calvinist er at the 
end of the day couldn't bring himself to accept the presumption of salvation 
and so no matter how hard he worked how er how f-, er fa-, great his 
accumulation of wealth was how successful a businessman he was how important a 
member of the business community or a s-, political community he was er he 
suffered the anguish that only rational world activity can mollify and er would 
have t-, had no er er er no sense that he w-, had succeeded in becoming er t-, 
becoming one of the elect er succeeded i-, in reaching God and so [sigh] er we 
have material goods then cr-, gaining an increasing 
an inecexorable power over the lives of men and this is where Weber the text 
seems to be leading in a very i mean it's very interesting direction for the 
text sort of just at this juncture because it looks as you're reading this text 
that Weber is er praising this great cal-, you know this great entrepreneurial 
figure with this sort of er the sense of the calling the er this Calvinist er 
impetus to work but he shows here just how much power these possess-, the 
material possessions the the success in economic life starts to take over his 
whole entire er self er so victoriou-, victorious capitalism he argues rests on 
mechanical foundations and er this is where i just want to er read you thi-, 
this passage because this is where the whole thing it's just you got to get to 
the end and you got to read the whole thing and get to the end 'cause he starts 
to talk about er the iron cage of capitalism that's where it all ends up where 
er everything is er we have this sort of being entirely 
controlled by this effort to work effort to to reach God through through this 
this kind of material success er and the possessions actually taking a total 
grip on on hi-, er his soul and he says er he says here er since ascetic-, er 
asceticism er undertook to remodel the world and work out its ideals in the 
world er material goods have gained an increasing and finally an ec-, 
inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period of history er 
he goes back in a in a previous paras-, he t-, he talks about the the early er 
some of the earlier er writers on this Baxter writing that the care for 
external goods should only lie in the soldiers of the saint like a light cloak 
which can be thrown aside at any moment but Weber says but fate decreed the 
cloak should become an iron cage today the spirit of re-, religious asceticism 
where there finally who knows has escaped from the cage but victorious 
capitalism since it rests on mechanical foundations needs its support no longer 
er the rosy blush of its laughing air the Enlightenment 
seems to be irretrievably fading and the idea of duty and one's cal-, calling 
prowls about in our lives like the dos-, ghost of dead religious beliefs er 
where the fulfilment of the calling cannot directly be related to the highest 
spiritual and cultural values or when on the other hand it need not be felt 
simply as economic compulsion the individual abandons the attempt to justify it 
and so does it without knowing why er so there's where he ends up in the text 
who will live in this cage in the future er specialists without spirits 
sensualists without heart this nullity imagines it has attained a level of 
civilization never before achieved so that's where he he gets us to er you can 
ask to what extent was this an endorsement of the The Protestant Ethic or its 
ultimate critique er now we er have er there's a n-, a whole er series of are-, 
areas in which we could take this text there's a number of issues that arose 
immediately the er The Protestant Ethic was set up there were a lot of 
critiques 
made of it by a whole series of er writers in inside and outside Germany at the 
time it has become a subject of intense debate about its meaning and about er 
the areas where Weber went wrong et cetera er and these covered a whole series 
of er of topics such as his er definition of er different relid-, er what what 
he said wha-, what he said characterized various religions er his 
characterizations of the differences between eastern and western er countries 
er his differences that he set out between Calvinism and er Catholicism what he 
had to say about Judaism these are a whole series of issues where there was a 
lot of er dispute and debate and er you will find that discussion carried on at 
length in the articles about The Protestant Ethic that that are on your reading 
list er and though er okay i i think that that's er i th-, i'll just er take it 
to there i think you will see the disputes ranging over these the-, these areas 
and take them up in your text er and y-, and in your seminar okay er so i'll 
stop there