The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In this short opening section to Chapter 4, Weber introduces the core themes that the rest of the chapter will explore. Weber explains that he is interested in a strain of Protestantism that he calls “ascetic Protestantism,” which he will otherwise refer to as “Puritanism.” Such ascetic Protestantism is found amidst four key movements: Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and a number of sects “that grew out of the baptizing movements (the Baptists, Mennonites, and Quakers)” (53). While there are some differences between these movements, Weber believes that they largely agreed on some key dogmatic concepts that connect Puritanism to the previously discussed spirit of capitalism. These include the doctrine of “predestination”, as well their focus on “the moral organization of life” (54). According to Weber, it is only by understanding these foundational dogmatic ideas, which focused on “the next life” or the afterlife (54), that one can understand how Puritanism’s moral focus on worldly work was connected to loftier religious ideas (54). At the core of Weber’s analysis will be a consideration of how religious ideas intervened into believer’s “psychological motivations” and caused them to meticulously organize their entire life and daily work around moral concerns (55).