The Protestant Ethic thesis: Weber's missing psychology

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2005 18: 1History of the Human SciencesRonald Mather

The Protestant Ethic thesis: Weber's missing psychology

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The Protestant Ethic thesis:Weber’s missing psychology

RONALD MATHER

ABSTRACT

Commentators on Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ofCapitalism have tended to view that work within the context of world-historical social processes and change. Recently, more literary forms ofanalyses have come to the fore emphasizing Weber’s indebtedness to thephilosophical/literary efforts of Nietzsche and Goethe, among others.The following offers the preliminary observation that the concept of‘drive’ understood as a mode of psychological operation and processconsiderably complicates any possible interpretation of the essay itself.Weber’s refusal to specify the exact nature and extent of the psycho-logical Antriebe underlying his rational actor may make a decisiveinterpretation of the text impossible. Nevertheless, there may be goodreason for supposing that Weber’s usage of the terms ‘drive’ and‘maxim’ is indicative of a Fichtean synthesis of anthropologicalimpulses and the operations of the rational intellect via his reading ofHugo Münsterberg.

Key words drives, maxims, psychology, transcendentalarguments, utilitarianism

INTRODUCTION

Of all the great sociological theses of modern times none is more famous orwell discussed than the thesis espoused by Max Weber’s Die protestantischeEthik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus (Weber, 1993). The volume and

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 18 No. 3© 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 1–16[18:3; 1–16; DOI: 10.1177/0952695105059303]

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intensity of this debate has shown little tendency to subside. Polemics for andagainst Weber’s argument, indeed polemics on the exact nature of theargument itself, have ranged since its publication. At the macrosociologicallevel, attention has been paid to Weber’s views on the emergence of theOccident, its unique nature, and the mode and manner in which the greatreligions can be said to be constitutive of wider social relationships. Thisapproach has informed perspectives as divergent as Collins (1986), Mann(1986: 77), Turner (1981) and Schluchter (1981) to name but four. All of theseperspectives place Weber’s work of 1905 within much wider historical andsocial processes. In addition, there is much disagreement on the exact natureand scope of the ‘causal’ (or otherwise) variables Weber identifies, theologicaldoctrine, ‘spirit of capitalism’ and so forth, and, indeed, on the accuracy ofthose variables themselves (MacKinnon, 1988). Add the contention that thethesis is just empirically wrong, a myth (Delacroix and Nielsen, 2001), andthe problems with Parsons’s famous translation (Ghosh, 1994; Baehr, 2001)and ‘interpretation’ of the text, however broadly conceived, become a vexedquestion indeed. The moment of a decisive historical retrieval of Weber’s‘meaning’ will probably never arrive, one need not accept postmodernmantras to discern that fact. But one possible source of the radical uncertaintythat surrounds this text has been the notion of individual agency and actionthat seems to lie at its basis. For example, the idea that persons act on the basisof ‘maxims’, so central to the argument of chapter 2 of the text, is at leastquestionable or open to debate. It is not the world-historical forces that ragearound the individual actor that constitutes our focus but the fundamentalindeterminacy of that actor itself. To the nature of that actor the followingcan add little, indeed the following only proposes a mock Socratic humilityin terms of ‘knowing that we do not know’. For the text itself is in somesenses quite bizarre and we have deliberately refrained from attempting eitherto interpret the text in the light of Weber’s other writings (with one excep-tion) or to offer some other sociological, or, as is the current fashion, philo-sophical or literary luminary as a source of a possible rational reconstruction.It is Weber’s silence on the mode of subjectivity with which he operates, andthe peculiar nature of the aspects of the subjective actor that he is preparedto specify, that constitutes our area of interest. Nevertheless, there are inti-mations (no more than that) to philosophical and psychological antecedentsin the text, intimations that by their very paucity and underdeveloped natureare resistant to anything approaching such a reconstruction.

It is of course customary to divide Weber’s early and later work with 1912being a possible watershed (Sahni, 2003). However, we prefer Swedberg’s(1998) tripartite classification of the period: up until 1898; Weber’s re-emergence from illness and subsequent middle period, 1903–9; and then thelater period of 1910–20. As Swedberg notes:

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 18(3)2




There are two groups of writings from the 1903–9 period, which areusually seen as being of a sociological character rather than aneconomic-historical or economic-theoretical character: The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5) (as well as Weber’s inter-ventions in the ensuing debate), and his writings on industrial workersfrom 1908–9. (Swedberg, 1998: 196)

The latter, known as Zur Psychophysik der industriellen Arbeit (1995; in MaxWeber Gesamtausgabe [MWG], 1, 11: 162–380) is a commentary on the workof a psychiatrist, Emil Kraepelin, and his research on the physiological andpsychological constitution of individuals and their attitude to work. Weberreviews this work at some length and in some detail. As Kraepelin undertookhis work under the most controlled laboratory conditions, Weber’s criti-cisms, that these ignored pressing sociological factors such as class solidarity,the role of alcohol consumption, etc., can hardly be reckoned either surpris-ing or particularly illuminating. What is most interesting in regard to thisinvestigation is that Weber concluded that it would be possible, in principle,to unite anthropological, psychopathological, experimental psychologicaland physiological disciplines in an overarching explanation. This positionwas affirmed consistently throughout his academic career even if he wouldstrenuously affirm the much later advice of the famous concluding passageof the Introduction to the Sociology of Religion that such a unity, underpresent conditions of knowledge, was, methodologically, highly inadvisable;and underlain by substantive factors unknown.

The author admits that he is inclined to think the importance of bio-logical heredity very great. But in spite of the notable achievements ofanthropological research, I see up to the present no way of exactly oreven approximately measuring either the extent or, above all, the formof its influence on the development investigated here. It must be one ofthe tasks of sociological and historical investigation first to analyse allthe influences and causal relationships which can satisfactorily beexplained in terms of reactions to environmental conditions. Only then,and when comparative racial neurology and psychology shall have pro-gressed beyond their present and in many ways very promising begin-nings, can we hope for even the probability of a satisfactory answer tothat question. (Weber, 1930: 30–1)

This passage is well known, even notorious. A promissory marker penned bya scholar of scrupulous academic honesty, or a forewarning of a dangerouscentral European obsession with ‘biological race’, dependent on the predilec-tion of the commentator.

However, it is our contention that Weber, at least the Weber of the middleperiod identified by Swedberg, the Weber of The Protestant Ethic and ‘The

THE PROTESTANT ETHIC THESIS 3




Psychophysics of Industrial Work’, was prepared to intimate or speculate onthe role of biological/psychological drives within the human being. An inti-mation or speculation that is radically incomplete by Weber’s own admission.Interestingly enough, Swedberg quotes approvingly Weber’s admonition,one that ‘deserves to be repeated’:

It appears methodologically inadvisable, when analyzing [topics of thiskind] not to take as one’s starting point hypotheses of heredity, but everconscious that the ‘ancestral estate’ may play a part at any point, alwaysto examine first the influences of social and cultural background,upbringing and tradition, and to proceed as far as humanly possible withthis principle of explanation. (Swedberg, 1998: 152)

The emphasis as Swedberg fully acknowledges is his own (1998: 276, n. 29).But is it Weber’s? The answer of most commentators has been in a mostdefinite sense, yes: on ‘human nature’ ontologically mute, if futuristicallyconfident; on the methodology of the human sciences, presciently modest.But Weber does speculate on the nature of humanity, one can discern his‘ontological anxiety’ as easily as the ‘salvation anxiety’ of the typicalCalvinist. Weber’s subject occupies an ill-defined theoretical space that canonly be approximated to, characterized by a ‘system of drives’, anthropo-logically grounded, but always interacting in a historical and social environ-ment (contained within The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).The latter gestures towards the future possibility of such a unified humanscience even as the ‘Psychophysics of Industrial Work’ affirms not yet, andnot ever, under Kraepelin’s laboratory-based conditions of investigation.Weber once professed shock in a letter that he could work so conscien-tiously without a ‘psychic drive’ [psychischen Trieb] (MWG II, 5: 426, 26December 1907). That was a luxury that was not extended to Weber’s earlycapitalists.

The preceding must be immediately qualified by recognizing the import-ance of Fichte’s ethical idealism. Several passages of The Protestant Ethic dorecall, in particular, the system of drives outlined in The System of Ethics of1798. We would suggest that the more substantive allusions to a system ofdrives have their origins in this text, an origin heavily mediated by hisencounter with Hugo Münsterberg’s Grundzüge der Psychologie (1900). Thelatter marks an attempt at synthesizing physiological psychology withFichte’s writing on ethics. It is in the System of Ethics that both morality andreligiosity become drives, drives furthermore that affect cognitive behaviour.The significance of Münsterberg has been noted before, as has Weber’s greatadmiration for his work (Schluchter, 2000). However, what commentatorshave failed to note is Weber’s continual slippage into the terminology of thedrive and the way that religiosity is encountered as a drive. Schluchter’sreading of Weber’s hostile attitude to psychology, a reading shared by others





(and in a definite sense, perfectly valid), must be seen in this context. Webelieve that Weber appropriates, consciously or unconsciously, Münster-berg’s terminology and that this underlies the curious terminology ofreligious drives that lies at the basis of Weber’s thesis.

FICHTE AND MÜNSTERBERG

Münsterberg begins his seminal work by informing the reader, afterapologizing for his Schopenhauerian leanings in the past, that ‘my themeis the synthesis of Fichte’s ethical idealism with the physiological psychol-ogy of our time’ (1900: vii–viii). A long and rather rambling text, it showshow various contemporary versions of psychology of both the Wundtianand the Gestalt school of psychology might contribute to this connection(or just as frequently, how this connection might remedy theirdeficiencies). Like the System of Ethics the text promises a synthesis ofhuman freedom, the ‘absolute soul’, with the concomitant recognition ofthe inescapability of human finitude. Corporeal and social limitations leadto an actual self characterized by a lack, or, in Fichtean terms, a ‘longing’(Sehnen) to actualize itself via a system of drives. In actual fact, Münster-berg’s reading of Fichte has its modern counterpart in the anthropologicalreading of Fichte first proposed by Baumans (1972: 74). It becomes reason-ably clear from the early system that Fichte considered actual subjectivityto be a series of interconnected drives, dynamic goal-seeking properties ofpsychic energy, that seek satisfaction in the material and social world. Ihave described this at greater length elsewhere (Mather, 1997). These drivesmaterially affect our perceptions of the external world, a point actuallyrehearsed by Münsterberg at some length throughout the Grundzüge andwhich constitutes the real basis of his attempt to synthesize the insights ofmodern psychology with regard to perception with the system of driveselaborated by Fichte’s system.

Münsterberg’s reading of Fichte is, in large measure, derived from theSystem der Sittenlehre. The drive to actualize is very much located in the bio-logical nature of the species and its attendant cognitive apparatus.

This feeling of drive, which we merely recall in passing, is called longing[sehnen], an indeterminate sensation of a need . . . the drive is an activitywhich necessarily becomes cognition in the I and this cognition is notan image or something of the activity of the drive, it is this activity itselfimmediately presented. If the activity is posited, so is cognition itselfimmediately posited, according to its form as feeling. (1, 5: 106)

The author immediately contrasts the above with actual or genuine repre-sentation.





The objective, in the case of genuine representation, is supposed toexist itself, in a certain respect, independent of its representation, eitheras actual thing, or as law of reason, for only thereby does it becomeobjective, and only thereby is the distinction of a subjective possible.(ibid.)

The above suggests that natural drives have the ability to cognize in a matterseparate from, and independent of, actual physical objects. Fichte will alsoidentify these as ‘concepts of purpose’ [Zweckbegriffe] which demand theexistence of physical objects outside us prior to our encounter with them.They are, quite literally, Vor-bilden (fore-imaged), an activity that wouldform the basis of Castoriadis’s (1998[1975]) ‘radical imagination’. A possibleexample might be water, an object we are driven to seek, as beings dependentupon the ‘favours of nature’ (1, 5: 145, 167).

There are passages in the System der Sittenlehre that would make aFeuerbachian blush and Fichte revels in the materiality of the human spirit.Fichte also refers to the maxim of such an animal – ‘I must choose that whichintensively and extensively promises the greatest pleasure’ (1, 5: 180). Drivesbecome maxims under the direction of the Intellect, and, crucially, by theactivity of the ‘moral drive’ – ‘The moral drive is a mixed drive as we haveshown. From the natural drive comes the material. . . . Its form it has solelyfrom the pure drive. It is absolute, like the pure, and demands something,without any external purpose, absolutely by itself’ (1, 5: 152). This drive, andthere are others, like the social and aesthetic drives, affects the natural driveto self-preservation, and with it come the feelings and cognitions of duty andbeauty and so forth. These are arranged in a hierarchy and are describedthroughout the early system. Münsterberg throughout the Grundzügeattempts to upgrade Fichte’s theory of cognition with the insights of thecognitive science of his day. The details are unimportant and mostly of onlyhistorical interest. But, like the System der Sittenlehre itself, it represents aradical attempt to detach Kantian insights from the formalism inherentwithin the Kantian system itself. Maxims are drives under the control of theintellect. They are not bloodless formal rules and there is a most radicalcommitment to the way that drives affect the way we see the world andchange it.

THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

Reading Weber’s text it seems as if he could hardly be bothered defining the‘spirit of capitalism’. At the beginning of the 1905 text he pleads the typicalWeberian defence of the partial nature of any ideal-typical construction butthe reader may be naturally resistant to the idea that the homilies drawn from





Benjamin Franklin are indicative of a world-historical ideological force.However, it is another aspect of Weber’s neo-Kantian heritage that is at issue,namely, the fact that we are here faced with a ‘transcendental argument’(indeed, the whole text is nothing but a transcendental argument). Thegeneric nature of this form of argumentation is a matter of some dispute(Allison, 1983) but transcendental argumentation moves from presupposingthe phenomenon under discussion to considering the conditions ofpossibility of that phenomenon itself. This mode of argumentation createsnumerous difficulties. First, it is not clear how this differs from a straight-forwardly regressive argument. Secondly, it may be possible to show thatcertain conditions of possibility underlie a certain phenomenon but not thatthese conditions are uniquely a priori (that is, these conditions and no others;the distinction is best understood by examining Seyla Benhabib’s [1992]partial defence of the Habermasian project of grounding the ‘ideal-speechsituation’ in contradistinction to the stronger claims made by Habermashimself). Thirdly, transcendental arguments only work if the respectiveparties to a dispute recognize the description of the phenomenon itself. Forexample, in relation to the Kantian philosophy itself it is extremely doubtfulwhether David Hume would have recognized Kant’s concept of ‘experience’,the phenomenon to be explained, as valid. Kant presupposed precisely whatHume denied, a unified stream of consciousness (and it would haveoccasioned Hume no surprise that Kant ‘discovered’ the only possible sourceof this unity in a unifying ego). The nature of transcendental arguments mustalways be borne in mind when reading Weber (and Durkheim), a point madeat some length by Rose (1981). Weber himself never specified the exact natureof his indebtedness to this form of argumentation, instead making referenceto the Wahlverwandtschaften between Protestant ethic and spirit of capital-ism. This Goethean allusion has been the subject of much speculation culmi-nating in the attempted reconstruction of Weber’s theory of social action inthe light of Goethe’s fiction (Sahni, 2001). There may be a rather moreobvious reason, the rather modest nature of transcendental arguments them-selves; we have left Parsons’s translation of Goethe’s term by ‘correlations’ asit is – ‘we can only proceed by investigating whether and at what pointscertain correlations between forms of religious belief and practical ethics canbe worked out. At the same time we shall as far as possible clarify the direc-tion in which, by virtue of those relationships, the religious movements haveinfluenced the development of material culture’ (Weber, 1930: 91–2). Weber,in a famous passage, the real import of which has been missed, explicitlyconcedes that transcendental arguments cannot specify uniquely a priori con-ditions for emergent phenomena

For we are attempting to clarify the part which religious forces haveplayed in forming the developing web of our specifically worldly





modern culture, in the complex interaction of innumerable differenthistorical factors. We are thus inquiring only to what extent certaincharacteristic features of this culture can be imputed to the influence ofthe Reformation . . . we have no intention whatever of maintaining sucha foolish and doctrinaire thesis as that the spirit of capitalism (in theprovisional sense of the term explained above) could only have arisenas a result of certain effects of the Reformation. (Weber, 1930: 90–1)

Transcendental arguments, at least of the Weberian neo-Kantian variety,cannot specify these a priori conditions and no others, all they can specify,or hope to specify, are those conditions which have played some part in theformation of modernist cultural life alongside other ‘innumerable differenthistorical factors’. As a transcendental argument, the Protestant Ethic cannotisolate the total set of antecedent conditions sufficient for a causal link to bespecified or maintained. That is why there can only be elective affinitiesbetween Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism.

What then is the ‘spirit of capitalism’? The initial answer seems to be thatit is a form of ‘rule utilitarianism’ shorn of its hedonistic first principle – ‘allFranklin’s moral attitudes are coloured with utilitarianism’ (Weber, 1930: 52).Indeed it seems to be a very peculiar agglomeration of rule utilitarianism anda Kantian form of moral conduct. The initial characterization of the spirit ofcapitalism is of rule-governed behaviour performed purely for its own sake,not for the sake of the utility of the individual. It is the following of rules ofconduct purely for the sake of those rules themselves. They are not means toan end, human pleasure, they are ends in themselves. What distinguishes thespirit of western capitalism from avarice or greed is the ethos of rule-following (acting on maxims) and the total eradication of any means–endsdeliberation or hedonistic calculus with regard to following those rules. It is,in a very restricted sense as we shall see, a rule utilitarianism in Mill’s sense.Pre-occidental capitalism might be characterized as Benthamite – rules ofprudence, means–end deliberation guiding acquisitive activity and so maxi-mizing human pleasure or utility.

The claim that the spirit of capitalism is tantamount to a rule utilitarianismmight be regarded as at least highly questionable. One may wonder whatutilitarianism stripped of its hedonistic premise and its consequentialismlooks like. The initial suggestion has been the spirit of capitalism itself. J. S.Mill argued, somewhat arbitrarily, for a distinction between higher and lowerpleasures, for a form of rule utilitarianism, rather than a Benthamite actutilitarianism, but the hedonistic premise and consequentialism remainundiluted (even if the former has become a little more elitist). It is clear thatthe ‘rational-economic’ maxims of the spirit of capitalism are neither hedon-istic nor consequentialist. Indeed, that is their negative defining characteristic.The general tenor of Weber’s writing throughout the essay seems to suggest





that utilitarianism constitutes an attempt to instil some minimalist concept ofhuman purpose back into the treadmill of modern capitalistic activity. Inreality, the introduction of a capitalist teleology (utilitarianism in general) wasan ‘accessory after the fact’. Human life had purpose: pleasure; and based onthis self-evident principle a set of hypothetical imperatives could be estab-lished for the maximization thereof. However, the maxims of the spirit ofcapitalism enjoin absolutely, they are categorical in character rather thanhypothetical. It is clear that the spirit of capitalism has a much greater affinitywith the other great moral theory of occidental rationalism, namely, Kant-ianism. The maxims of the spirit of capitalism are performed purely for theirown sake, they are ‘ends’ in themselves –

. . . [t]ruly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one’sway in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of its rules istreated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty. That is theessence of the matter. It is not mere business astuteness, that sort ofthing is common enough, it is an ethos. (Weber, 1930: 51)

The maxims of the capitalist spirit command absolutely, they are ends inthemselves, not to act in accordance is an infraction of duty.

The maxims of the spirit of capitalism allude to a Kantian origin in termsof the theory of social action that they propose. Are they not simply cate-gorical moral imperatives performed in accordance with what duty demands?If this is the case then the argument may be in trouble. Kant has beendescribed as ‘the philosopher of Protestantism’ and the suspicion has tra-ditionally been that Weber has set up his ideal-type in such a way that theonly antecedent causal factor will be some variety of Protestantism(Brentano, 1916). The charge has generally been of the form of regarding theethos of the capitalist spirit as already evincing the concept of the ‘calling’Weber will identify as constitutive of the Protestant ethic. The charge may bejustified if the special nature of transcendental arguments is not borne in mind(or if that special nature cannot be justified). However, the characterizationof the spirit of capitalism as a duty (an end in itself) presupposes only a rathervague orientation towards a ‘Kantian’ theory of dutiful action rather thanProtestantism per se, that is, ‘the idea of a duty of an individual towards theincrease of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself’ (Weber, 1930: 51).The maxims of the spirit of capitalism are not ‘an expression of commercialdaring and a personal inclination morally neutral’, but, rather, the expressionof an ‘ethically coloured maxim for the conduct of life’ (Weber, 1930: 51–2).Weber, rather carelessly, does make reference to success in a ‘calling’ (Weber,1930: 54) but that success is an expression of acting on maxims which are endsin themselves and performed from a sense of duty. Those imbued with thespirit of capitalism are those imbued with the spirit of Kantianism.





The initial pages of Weber’s essay, written in such a matter-of-fact way, pre-suppose a very particular account or theory of rational action in general andrational economic conduct in particular. The terminology is unmistakablyKantian but the spirit of capitalism is far from an unproblematic emendationof Kantian moral theory. A major difficulty lies in Weber’s suggestion thatsuch maxims must have an origin. The defining moment of Kantian moraltheory, the idea of duty, of acting on principle, of Kantianism per se, is therestriction of causation to a limited sphere within human affairs. The Kantiansolution was premised on the idea of human beings as constituting twoseparate spheres: the transcendental sphere of the self-legislating subject; theempirical sphere to that aspect of the self subject to the principle of universalcausal determination identified by Newton. In this way human beings couldbe said to be both autonomous and heteronomous (an intellectual operationthat sociology itself has attempted and not yet achieved). The details of theKantian philosophy are notoriously difficult but it is sufficient simply to notea general principle of Kantian moral theory; that is, that maxims (rules ofconduct) are the ‘result’ of nothing but the result of autonomous humanreason itself. If they are universalizable, then they are moral, they are inaccord with the very structure of human reason itself. Kantian maxims are‘uncaused’. A working definition of Weberian maxims of the spirit ofcapitalism may now be proposed; that is, they elucidate a Kantian theory ofduty without a concept or idea of a transcendental self. It is the spirit or ghostof Kantianism that remains rather than its substance. It is a formal ethos ofrule-following for its own sake, not for increasing human utility or based onautonomous subjectivity. Indeed in case we miss the point Weber makesreference to the fact that the ethic is ‘completely devoid of any eudaemonis-tic . . . admixture’ (Weber, 1930: 53). The spirit of capitalism may be purpo-sive behaviour but is without purpose, no conception of human ‘flourishing’(eudaemonia) lies at its basis. It is striking that Weber refers seemingly enpassant to Aristotle but this is no throwaway remark. These few pagesabound in the language of intellectually sophisticated ethics (Kant, Aristotle,Mill) but it is an ethics without foundation. Weber’s second chapter alreadypresupposes the failure of the Enlightenment project to reconstitute thefailing moral certainties of the Aristotelian and Christian world-views. It canbe read as following, or rather anticipating, a path of reasoning not dissimi-lar to Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (indeed it commences from exactlythe same starting point, the retention of the language of ‘ethics’ but no greatconfidence in regard to either relevance or reference). The diagnosis is thesame if not the cure and MacIntyre’s rather curt dismissal of Weber as an‘emotivist’ (MacIntyre, 1981: 26) should not be allowed to obscure this fact.As MacIntyre pointed out there had been a calamitous failure of the ‘old’ and‘new’ belief systems of the Occident simultaneously. Hypothetical moraljudgements on the basis of a concept of human flourishing (Aristotelian





ethics) and categorical moral judgements on the basis of Christianity hadbeen replaced by utilitarianism and Kantian moral theory respectively.However, both had failed, the terminology had remained, but the autonomyof the substantive base on which Kantianism in particular was based haddisappeared under the weight of the Stahlhartes Gehause. At the end of theessay, Weber makes reference to the decline of religious asceticism assertingthat the ‘rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, also seems to beirretrievably fading’ (Weber, 1930: 182). The argument might have been betterserved if he had placed it at the outset. The reader is presented with a paradox,indeed a mystery, that is, the concomitant adoption of a ‘Kantian’ theory ofrational conduct, and the rejection of the substantive autonomy that lies atits basis. Why use the apparatus of the Kantian corpus to explicate the ‘spiritof capitalism’, a philosophy of transcendental freedom to explicate the rulesof conduct appropriate to the mundane rational-economic conduct ofoccidental capitalism?

RELIGIOSITY AND SUBJECTIVITY

In actual fact, Weber gives very little clue. And subsequent commentatorshave given less than that. They have found the idea of acting on a set ofmaxims that are ends in themselves from a sense of duty a relativelyunproblematic notion scarcely worthy of comment. Furthermore, thereseems little in the way of a link between Calvinistic Protestantism and a verydistinctive philosophical anthropology altered after the fact. What aremaxims? This is an extremely difficult question to answer. At the most super-ficial level they appear to be rules of conduct. However, Weberian maximsare not the result of prudential calculus, nor based on autonomous reason-ing, nor are they based on some conception of eudaimonia. They are not theresult of previous experience or desired future consequences. It is the task ofthe essay itself to inform us of their origination. Are they individual items orare they shared within groups? Weber tends to equivocate on this quitecrucial point but these maxims are not the result of individual adoption ortaste. The spirit of capitalism ‘had to originate somewhere, and not in isolatedindividuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men’(Weber, 1930: 55). Why then call such rules of conduct maxims? The latterhave a distinguished philosophical pedigree and connotations of reflexivity.The answer is straightforward. Weber requires an immediate relation betweenthose items (maxims) and a ‘duty of the individual towards the increase ofhis capital’ (Weber, 1930: 51). This brings them back within the ambit ofindividual reason. But what notion of the ‘individual actor’ remains wheneudaemonistic, hedonistic, rationalistic (broadly conceived) motives aredenied to that actor? The answer of course is an extremely limited concept.





There is a quite radical curtailment of the conceptual resources available tothe reader in imagining this sort of individual. It is only the concept of dutyitself that validates or permits any reference to individuality itself. One mightsay that it is only the concept of duty that allows Weber to make referenceto any ‘subjective sphere’ whatsoever. The concept of duty constitutes thebasis of Weber’s explanandum, the spirit of capitalism. Maxims alone asWeber conceives them would not and could not sustain such a sphere for theyare not the product of individual rationality or individual rationality andindividual understanding of human ‘flourishing’ or the ‘good’ or humanpurpose. They are not the product of individual deliberation. In short, theyare most definitely not what is ordinarily understood as ‘maxims’. They arenot ‘subjective’ rules of conduct arrived at by individual reasoning to securesome perceived good.

The debate on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism will continueindefinitely for the primary impetus of that debate is constituted by thecentral absence of its purported object – the historical actor. It is at thismoment that the Nietzschean temptation arises, the ghost being materializedvia Nietzschean will-to-power. Such an interpretation has been forciblyargued by Hennis (1988) and others. Such reconstructions confirm theeradication of human spontaneity, at least the spontaneity of the Kantian self,but it promises or hopes to deliver us from the fate of the Ordnungsmench,seemingly inevitable in the face of the omnipresent forces of occidentalrationalism. It is Nietzsche who will provide the intellectual resources for there-energizing of modern humanity, or at least a certain minority. That is theNietzsche-as-cure scenario but there are problems with such an interpret-ation. First, it is a reconstruction, an extensive one at that. Very little in theway of direct textual evidence can be cited that Weber supports a Nietzscheancure (or any cure for that matter). Second, Nietzsche’s concept of Wille zurMacht has a direct intellectual trajectory from Schopenhauer’s primal will,the central characteristics of which entail intellectual commitments farbeyond the scope that modern commentators on Weber may be prepared topay. The latter must be reckoned the most radical statement of deindividua-tion in the discourse of modernity. Very little can be adduced that wouldallow a renewal or reappraisal of the possibilities of the ‘self’ or ‘self-empowerment’. The intellectual trajectory of Foucault bears testimony tothat fact, the latter moving from the ubiquity of power so characteristic ofDiscipline and Punish to the ‘care of the self’ of the History of Sexuality.Schopenhauer’s philosophy might be reckoned a reaction to the disenchant-ment of the world rather than a means for its reversal.

There has been a re-orientation of a substantial section of English-languagescholarship on Weber towards more literary forms of analyses (Green, 1999;Hanke, 1999; Sahni, 2001). And, once more, the radical uncertainty about the





nature of the actor at the heart of the thesis must be reckoned a decisive factorin this reorientation. And some of these contributions have been very illumi-nating. Sahni (2001) interprets Weber’s active ascetic actor in the light ofGoethe’s fiction, this ‘will to act’ escaping the nihilism of Nietzsche and re-affirming the central activity of human striving so central in German thoughtsince J. G. Fichte. This is no idealist escape for it was the puritan’s triumphto weld such value-rational action to more instrumental orientations of socialaction. This yields ‘meaningful social action . . . predicated on the individual’srealisation that the deed must consist of an act which transcends finite exist-ence, making him/her responsible for the well-being of future generations’(Sahni, 2001: 422). The central conceptual difficulty of this impressive recon-struction of Weber’s missing historical actor on its own terms is that instru-mental (read utilitarian) actions cannot, without some difficulty, groundactions on behalf of future generations. Only existent individuals can deter-mine or attempt to determine both utility and future consequences (nevermind ‘pleasure’). Utilitarianism is not a future-orientated basis of socialaction (indeed, this is one of the most interesting questions around the socialphilosophy of environmentalism: on utilitarian grounds, what do we owefuture generations?). Furthermore, we would suggest that the real difficultyof Weber’s theory of social action is not so much the synthesis of two formsof human action but rather the synthesis of a form of human action based ona belief-system (Calvinism) with a model of human action based on funda-mental human drives. There is need for reconstruction but we would suggestthat the Kantian heritage of the thesis is intractable, and the neo-Fichteanheritage even more so.

We are of the opinion that the problem around the nature of maxims, andacting on maxims, is indicative of Weber’s indebtedness to Fichte via hisreading of Münsterberg. As identified by the System der Sittenlehre, maximsare primordial drives under the control of the intellect. And later on, in theProtestant Ethic they re-emerge under their own cognizance. The centralcharacter of any proposed reconstruction must focus on the psychologicaldrives of the social actor to which Weber refers throughout the text. This haslargely been obliterated by Parsons’s translation, a point that has been wellmade by Ghosh (1994). The translation of Antriebe as ‘Sanctions’ in someparts of the text is baffling to say the least but the real damage may have beendone by translating Religiosität (religiosity) by religion. Weber clearlyintends to convey a very distinct notion of a psychology of religion. One canimmediately see the difference that Parsons’s translation makes in the follow-ing passage (Parsons translating Antriebe as ‘sanctions’) – ‘We are interestedrather in something entirely different: the influence of those psychologicalsanctions which, originating in religious belief and the practice of religion,gave a direction to practical conduct and held the individual to it’ (Weber,1930: 97).





Weber’s argument is unintelligible without full attention to the psycho-logical drives constituting religiosity. The general tenor of Weber’s sociologyof religion does favour viewing specific religious doctrines as somehowchannelling both the drives to religiosity and ‘Piety’ (Frommigkeit) thatWeber also refers to throughout the text. This formulation provides the bestexplanation of how ‘ideas become effective forces in history’ (Weber, 1930:90). Again, Weber’s text is very instructive (again, Parsons translates Antriebeas ‘sanctions’):

. . . it [the doctrine of predestination] prevented a premature collapseinto a purely utilitarian doctrine of good works in this world whichwould never have been capable of motivating such tremendoussacrifices for non-rational ideal ends.

The combination of faith in absolutely valid norms with absolutedeterminism and the complete transcendentality of God was in its waya product of great genius. (Weber, 1930: 125–6)

The fact is that Lutheranism, on account of its doctrine of grace, lackeda psychological sanction of systematic conduct to compel the method-ical rationalization of life.

This sanction, which conditions the ascetic character of religion,could doubtless in itself have been furnished by various differentreligious motives, as we shall soon see. The Calvinistic doctrine of pre-destination was only one of several possibilities. But nevertheless wehave become convinced that in its way it had not only a unique con-sistency, but that its psychological effect was extraordinarily powerful.(Weber, 1930: 128)

The bottom line is that the above is indicative not merely of an ‘interpretivepsychology’ (Parsons’s translation notwithstanding) but of an underlyingtranscendental psychology. If religious doctrine constitutes the workings ofthe intellect, then the drives to religiosity must be reckoned their content. Butnote the perfect correlation between the concept or idea of predestination(and the intellectual maxim of purposive duty) and the predisposing natureof human beings as precisely ‘driven’ (however malleable the drives of reli-giosity and piety). Add the utter loneliness of the Calvinist, ‘even the amiableBaxter counsels deep distrust of one’s closest friend’ (Weber, 1930: 106), andthe ‘elective affinity’ with Robinson Crusoe and utilitarian maxims maybecome more apparent. It is the psychic energy of the driven human being inabsolute isolation from himself (in knowing himself through any othermedium of self-recognition), from other human beings, and from his God,that leads to the fundamental energy that shaped the Occident. What ismissing is any comprehensive account of the system of drives that lies at thebasis of this (and possibly other works). Retrieving that may prove





impossible. But there may be good reason for supposing that the peculiarnature of the maxims of the spirit of capitalism gives some clue as to thenature of those psychological drives, and, crucially, why Weber leaves thatsection of the text devoted to the Spirit of Capitalism so underdeveloped.That is, he simply presupposes that maxims, the product of the intellect, arelinked to purposive and cognitive behaviour, that they are the outcome ofrationalization processes associated with psychological drives.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

RONALD MATHER is academic area co-ordinator in Psychology & SocialSciences at the Center for Distance Learning, Empire State College (SUNY)in Saratoga Springs, NY. His research interests are in the history and theoryof Psychology. He previously taught at the University of Bolton, UK.

Address: Empire State College, 111 West Avenue, Saratoga Springs, NY12866, USA. [email: [email protected]]





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The Protestant Ethic thesis: Weber's missing psychology