In Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism", Weber explains the relationship between religion and the economy. Weber argues and claims that the modern capitalistic society was created by many religious groups that had the same interests and believed that success and profit were provided by God. Through this article, Weber is compared to Marx and Marx's ideas of a capitalistic economy. While Marx believes that a capitalistic society is evil and harmful to both the owners and workers, Weber believes that it has both positive benefits and negative aspects to society. Overall Weber has a strong belief that profits of of the economy are the work of God's will and that alone swayed society to be more religious.
I found it interesting how Weber connected religion with the economy. Especially how success and profits were directly related to God and that is what made people religious throughout time. To Weber, religion can almost cause a society to change completely just on the fact that many in society are excelling and have a lot of success. Weber has alot of interesting points but to me some are out there and there really isn't any backing truth to his beliefs.
The only question I have however is how Weber would explain religion many centuries ago and how would he compare religion with a society back then. I just feel like considering religion has been around for thousands of years and followed by many societies that it would not matter if people were successful or not in the economy in order to have a certain faith.
You bring up good points at the end of your discussion. Religion has much less of a presence in today's society than it did back then. I think it would be interesting to see how Weber would explain the relationship between religion and the economy in today's society and how they affect each other.
ReplyDeleteWeber's interpretations are of course from so long, that even the Protestant faith is not in the same form it was back then. Many rules have changed or been tweaked, to fit in with the changing times, so if Weber were to consider that faiths change with time, I'm sure he would have to adapt his ideas, which, in my opinion, would lead to less stress on the influence of religion on the society and economy and focus instead more on the effects of a changing society and economy on religious values.
ReplyDeleteThe way that people look at religion has changed a great amount from the time that this was written. This was a time that religion was sacred to a person's life. Today, religion is something that is optional, and sometimes even taboo. I think his new look on religion would be very interesting also
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