Weber's Thesis as an Historical Explanation

Ehud Sprinzak

History and Theory, Vol. 11, No. 3. (1972), pp. 294-320.

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 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION

EHUD SPRINZAK

The social sciences seem increasingly doubtful that logical positivism can
help them become history-free. This has contributed to rediscovery of the
historical dimensions of social life,l and perhaps explains why many method-
ologists and philosophers of science are hard pressed for a proper formulation
of the logic of historical e~planation.~ The difficulty with many formulations
presented so far is that they are more logical than historical and may sometimes
provide little help to a proper historical analysis. This happens not because of
an inherent deficiency in the nature of philosophy or the philosophy of science,
but because of the inherent gap that exists between the requirements of the
logic of explanation and the capacity of the social sciences to follow these
requirements without becoming either trivial or too general.

Previously published in History and Theory: Gabriel Kolko, "Max Weber o n

America," 1 (1961), 243-260; Otto B. van der Sprenkel, "Max Weber o n China,"
3 (1964), 348-370; Rex A. Lucas, "A Specification of the Weber Thesis: Ply-
mouth Colony," 10 (1971), 3 18-346. I n the next volume: David Goddard, "Weber
and the Objectivity of Social Science."

1. Social theory was, of course, never separated from history, but even the most
"scientific" branches of it seem to be intensively interested in history today. These
interests have to do mainly with the attempts to apply methods and theories developed
apart from the historical context to solve historical questions in an unconventional way.
S; far as psychology is concerned, they can be detected in Erik Erikson's already
classical study of Luther and in his recent research on Gandhi- Young Man Luther
(New York, 1962) and Gandhi's Truth (New York, 1969) -in which historical docu.
ments are manipulated to support psychological theory. Sociology seems also interested
in the subject, an interest that is indicated by volun~eslike Sociology and History,
Theory and Research, ed. Werner J. Cahnman and Alvin Boskoff (New York, 1964);
Sociology and History: Methods, ed. S. M . Lipset and R. Hofstadter (New York, 1968).
Political scientists may benefit in this respect from the studies of Lee Benson, such as
"Research Problems in American Historiography" in Common Frontiers o f tlze Social
Sciences, ed. M . Komarovsky (Glencoe, Ill., 1957).
2. Basic contributions in this respect are Carl G. Hempel's "The Function of General
Laws in History," reprinted in Readings in PIzilosophical Analysis, ed. H . Feigl and W.
Sellars (New York, 1949), 459-471, and E. Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York,
1965), ch. 15. But many further thoughts in this direction may be found in E. H. Carr,
What Is History? (London, 1962); I. Berlin, Historical Inevitability (London, 1954); K.
R. Popper, Tlze Poverty o f Historicism (London, 1961); and numerous articles (par-
ticularly in History and Theory) that go into the details of these problems as well as
discussing their illustrations.
 It therefore seems that in order to comprehend the complexities of historical
explanation, a concrete historical problem must be examined. There is no
lack of historical problems that require explanation, but sometimes it is hard
to translate them into the language of explanation. For it is only when conflict-
ing interpretations exist that the theoretical problem of explanation presents
itself as a substantial and relevant issue. A classic example of such a state of
affairs is the well-known historical debate regarding Weber's analysis of the
Protestant origins of the spirit of modern capitalism.The debate has not
only centered on Weber's thesis itself; it has also, though indirectly, brought
into question the ability of the social sciences to contribute to the settlement of
major historical questions.
Like other pathbreaking theories, Weber's major contention is more quoted
than really known4 Thus, within the social sciences, his reputation is estab-
lished to such a degree that the thesis regarding the close affinity between
Protestantism and capitalism is held without much questioning. Within history,
as a distinctive discipline, the Weber analysis has been subjected to recurring
attacks; and though often alluded to, it is generally held to be untenable. But
neither the approval nor the disapproval rests on a clear vision of what Weber
meant.
The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the understanding of the real
issue involved by projecting the Protestantism-capitalism thesis as an explana-
tory problem, and to clarify the Weber thesis. I believe such an analysis may
be helpful in solving major problems posed by social and political history to
the social scientist. For in a climate of unprecedented growth of disciplinary
and sub-disciplinary specialization, empirical reality often seems to be dissolved
by the social sciences to such an extent that the data compiled and analyzed
by them fail to add up to concrete historical events that we all experience in
our simple and unsophisticated life. Weber's approach, partly because of its
relatively early formulation and partly because of his profound understanding
of the meaning of reality as well as its interpretation, may help social scientists
to regain control of their own productions.
Following a presentation of the conventional version of Weber's thesis, the
four major arguments that have been raised against it will be presented. A
close examination of Weber's conception of the logic of historical explanation
will ensue. In view of that analysis an effort will be made to reconstruct the
real Protestantism-capitalism thesis and to show that most of the substantial
arguments made against it have been anticipated by Weber and invalidated

3. A concise presentation of the debate may be found in Robert W. Green, Protcs-

tantisnz and Capitalisnz - Tlze Weber Thesis and Its Critics (Boston, 1959).
4. Cf. E. Fischoff, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism-The
History of a Controversy," Social Research 11 (19441, 53-55. Fischoff's stimulating
approach has contributed substantially to the present paper.
296 EHUD SPRINZAK

by his cautious remarks. Weber's contribution to a modern conception of an

historical explanation, illustrated by recent validating research, will then be
shown.

There are many popular versions of "what Weber really meant" in his essays,
some of which were published under the title The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalisrn.They vary not only according to the peculiar taste of the
author, but also according to the author's school or discipline. What is common
to most of them is the assertion that, in his thesis, Weber sought to relate
causally modern capitalism to certain ideas of early Protestantism, particularly
to the ascetic Protestantism of Calvinist origins. Most of the writing on the
subject stresses, consequently, Weber's insistence on the spiritual nature of the
thesis, namely the derivation of certain economic behavior from religious ideas
and not from economic factors.6 It is said that in his study Weber tried to prove
that the spirit of modern capitalism was created after the Reformation and as
a result of it. The version of the thesis most commonly referred to is that
capitalism is based on an ethos the core of which is the obligation to make
more wealth in a more rational way, not for the sake of mundane enjoyment
but for the sake of wealth production in itself. This spirit -which, Weber
argued, has appeared only in the modern West -was introduced by the
religious doctrines of Luther and Calvin and their followers. Luther, according
to Weber, denied the inherent Catholic dichotomy between the secular sphere
of life and the religious one. He introduced the concept of the "calling"
(Beruf) in reference to the secular duties of the believer, thus sacralizing that
realm of life that Catholic doctrine had considered inferior. Everything that
the believer engaged in thus was invested with religious meaning.
Calvin is said by Weber to have gone a step further. He developed the
doctrine of predestination. Following the notion that God was a free supreme
being unlimited in space or time, this doctrine asserted that everything in the
world, including the fate of human beings, was predetermined. Nothing could
be done by man to change this predestined course according to which grace
and salvation were extended to very few. What was left for the believers,
anxious to know their fate in the afterworld, was to determine whether they
were chosen by the grace of God or doomed to eternal damnation. Such

5. Transl. Talcott Parsons (New York, 19 ).

6. Since I intend to explore, in a later stage of this paper, the meaning of the
Weberian thesis in Thc Protestant Ethic,I have reconstructed here the alleged thesis from
the writings of Weber's major critics. A direct reference to them will be made shortly
when their counterarguments are presented.
 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 29 7
proof could not be gained through intermediary bodies or institutions (like
the traditional church), but could be acquired by success in one's calling in
the present world. Thus, extending Luther's conception of calling to mean
secular business and economic activity, Calvin and his followers are said to
have given a religious meaning to success in business. In the course of history,
this religious sanction, with all its moral limitations, disappeared, but left
behind the spirit of capitalism.
Whether this version of Weber's argument is a true explication of what he
said is a question that should be left open for quite some time. For what is of
greater importance now is that this is the thesis for which he was - and to a
great extent still is -held responsible. In this respect, the arguments that have
been made in an attempt to discredit him entirely were directed against part
of this thesis and its supporting evidence. Though every critic has his individual
variations of argument, it appears useful to refer not to single contenders but
to common themes. I shall therefore refer to four contentions that summarize
the anti-Weberian arguments: the mislocated capitalism, the misinterpreted
Protestantisnz, the misunderstood Catholicism, and the misplaced causality.
It appears that under these headings most of the points raised against Weber
could fairly be subsumed.
Mislocated Capitalism. The simplest argument that has been voiced against the
Weber thesis is that it mislocated the rise of modern capitalism. According to
this contention, the appearance of what Weber called the "spirit of capitalism"
must have been correlated positively with the rise of modern capitalism as an
economic and social system. Moreover, it must have come after the Protestant
Reformation. If it could therefore be shown that modern capitalism came into
being before the Reformation, it could be argued that the spirit of capitalism
that Weber portrayed out of studies of religious texts either existed before the
Reformation or was a creation of his self-developed imagination. This argu-
ment has been raised with some strength by R. H. Tawney and with stronger
connotations by Robertson, Hyma, and particularly by Fanfani.? By showing
that parts of Europe (particularly Italy and Flanders) had already developed
capitalist systems in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Weber7s critics
believe that they have discredited his thesis.8
Misinterpreted Protestantisnz. Since a major portion of Weber's thesis had
to do with his understanding of the conceptual development of Protestantism,
it is of little surprise that much pain has been taken by his critics to prove that

7. Cf. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise o f Capitalism (London, 1929), 319-320; H.
M. Robertson, Aspects o f tlze Rise of Economic Individualism (Cambridge, 1933), Ch. 11,
"Pre-Reformation Capitalism"; Albert Hyma, Rerzaissnrzce to Refol.mntioi2 (Grand Rapids,
1951), 484-485; A. Fanfnni, Catholicism, Protestniztism and Capitalisin (New York,
1935), 160-162, 201.
8. Tawney, 16,25-26.
29 8 EHUD SPRINZAK

he misinterpreted the development of Protestantism. It was argued that Luther

in his translation of the Bible did not change the meaning of the Latin term
vocatiog (the German Berz~f);that Weber did not study the original writings
of Calvin and his supporters on the continent; and that a selective reading
of eighteenth-century Protestant writers has led him to a distorted picture of
sixteenth-century Calvinism, which was originally very communal and anti-
capitalistic in its orientation.1° The major point made by the misinterpreted
Protestarztisnz School is that Protestantism and capitalism have had unrelated
lines of development and that Weber's alleged "inherent" correlation between
them did not have a real basis.ll
Misunderstood Catlzolicism. To support the "misinterpreted Protestantism,"
the approach of "misunderstood Catholicism" has further raised some points
of centrality. Weber was charged with not studying in depth the economic
doctrines of late medieval Catholi~ism,~"he Pauline doctrine,13 and with not
conducting a comparative study of Catholicism and Protestantism, the only
method that could validate his contention empirically.14Consequently, Weber
was accused of ignoring the strong "capitalist" elements within the Catholic
doctrines of the time and of misrepresenting the crucial fact that the very
emergence of the Protestant movement was a religious reaction from within
the Church to a general process of secularization and acquisitiveness that took
place under the lax Roman pontificate.
Misplaced Causality. It is not necessary to exhaust all the points raised against
Weber to realize that they culminate in a general indictment that the Weber
thesis relied on a "misplaced casuality." According to this charge, Weber tried
to establish a one-directional and unicausal relationship between Protestantism
and capitalism. But once one of his contentions about modern capitalism,
ascetic Protestantism, Catholicism or a combination of them is shattered, the
whole causal chain is broken. If capitalism existed before the Reformation,
if Protestantism was anticapitalistic, and if Catholicism was not different from
Protestantism in its economic doctrines, then the whole thesis falls apart.
Major parts could still hold, but to no avail. R. H. Tawney, who was not
totally hostile to Weber, thought that it was possible to demonstrate certain
influences exerted by Protestantism on modern capitalism but argued that
historical causation could work in two directions and a possibility of
Protestantism being influenced by capitalism should have also been taken into
9. Robertson, 2-3,25-32.
10. Hyma, 455-456, 466, 482-488; Robertson, 14-15; Tawney, 112-113; W. Sombart,
The Quir~tesserzceo f Capifalisin (London, 1951), Ch. XIX. Winthrop S. Hudson, "Pur-
itanism and the Spirit of Capitalism," Cllurch History 18 (1949), 8, 15-17.
11. Fanfani, 207-209.
12. Sombart, 246-249.
13. Tawney, 225; Hyma, 486.
14. Hyma, 500-504.
consideration.15 For more critical historiai~sthan Tawney, Weber's causal
one-sided analysis appeared alien to the "historical method" itself and became
the basic factor that jeopardized the thesis as a whole.lG

It is not until one immerses oneself in the contrasting arguments and in the
historical data that are brought to support them that one realizes that the prior
problem of validating or invalidating the thesis is theoretical, and must be
resolved before the evidence can be introduced. Unless questions pertaining to
the meaning of causality and establishment of a proper conceptual framework
are solved, or at least formulated, no decision as to the validity of the thesis
can be reached. Such questions are hardly raised by Weber's critics; or, if they
are, it is done superficially and casually. However, even a quick look at
Weber's study reveals repeated references to these problems. Of particular
interest is Weber's concluding remark of the Protestant Ethic.
Here we have only attempted to trace the fact and the direction of its ["Pro-
testantism's"] influence to their ["elements of modern culture"] motives, in one
though a very important point. But it would also further be necessary to investigate
how Protestant Asceticism was in turn influenced into development and its char-
acter by the totality of social conditions, especially economic. The modern man is
in general, even with the best will, unable to give religious ideas a significance for
culture and national character which they deserve. But it is, of course, not my aim
to substitute for a one-sided materialistic, and equally one-sided spiritualistic causal
interpretation of culture and history. Each is equally possible, but each, if it does
not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes
equally little in the interest of historical truth.17
Such an argument and many others make it clear that, unlike most of his
critics, Weber was conscientiously engaged in the logical structure of his
argument and that only by tracing his methodological explicit rules could a key
to his thesis be suggested. Since Weber clarified the major issues in his early
methodological works, an examination of his logic is now in order.
If we probe Weber's empirical studies of culture as well as his method-
ological ones, it appears that they are based on two major notions or axioms.
The first one is that empirical reality is composed of infinite facts and factors.
The second is that every historical event is only one set of alternatives that
happened to occur but did not have to. As to the first contention, Weber,

15. See Tawney's introduction to Weber's The Protestnnt Ethic, 8. Cf. Tawney,
Religion, 226.
16. Cf. Robertson's remark on Weber's complete lack of historical method, in Robert-
son, 25.
17. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 183.
3 00 EHUD SPRINZAK

following Rickert,ls insists that by definition any reality must be understood

as having an infinite number of manifestations, be it even a single event that
comes under consideration. Any conception and understanding of such reality
must therefore be based on selection.
The absolute infinitude of this multiplicity is seen to remain undiminished even
when our attention is focused on a single "object," for instance a concrete act of
exchange. . . . All the analysis of infinite reality, which the finite human mind can
conduct, rests on the tacit assumption that only a finite portion of this reality
constitutes the object of scientific investigation and that only it is "important" in
the sense of being worthy of being.19
The critical point in Weber's argument seems to be that it is not a matter of
whether we are consciously engaged in the process of explanation or un-
consciously speak the language of explanatory common sense. The very
process of human analysis is a limited one, finite, while its object, "reality," is
infinite, in the sense that it is open to observation from different angles and
potentially infinite interests. Now, if a selection is to be made, what distin-
guishes science from mere observation is that certain criteria for that selection
are to be decided consciously and in advance. Weber cannot and does not
reject the possibility that an experienced historian, even though not fully
aware of the logic of explanation, might do better than a bunch of method-
ologists. That fact, however, does not make much difference, since a good
science must be able to formulate the logic of proof as well as its formal
procedures.
Much has been said about Weber's belief in the intuition of the historian or
the social scientist, and the insight by which he conceives his original hypoth-
eses. Indeed, Weber paid a high tribute to the so-called "empathy" of the
historical school, and was ready to accept the importance of the artistic presen-
tation of the study as But as a matter of principle, he insisted that a
clear-cut analytical distinction be made between the psychological process by
which the historian arrives at his thesis, as well as the artistic form in which
he presents it, and the procedures for its confirmation. Once the thesis has been
presented, it is its logical structure that decides whether it is to be accepted
as true. According to this conception, the structure of the argument as well
as its empirical support could and should be extrapolated from the manuscript
in order to be tested.21 Mathematical equations no less than the brilliant
expositions of Ranke were a result of intuition:
They all arise in the intuitive flashes of imagination as hypotheses which are then
verified vis-d-vis the facts, i.e. their validity is tested in procedures involving the

18. Cf. R.Aron, Germar~Sociology (Glencoe, Ill., 1957), 68-71.

19. M. Weber, The Methodology o f the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Ill., 1949), 72.
20. Cf. J. Freund, The Sociology o f Max Weber (New York, 1969), 45.
21. Freund, 56.
use of already available empirical knowledge and they are "formulated" in a
logical correct way. . . . We are here concerned only with the logical category
under which the hypothesis is to be demonstrated as vaIid in case of doubt or
dispute for it is that which determines its logical structure.22
If the first assumption emphasizes selectivity as basic to the understanding
of reality and logically justifiable selectivity as the one that science should look
for, the second has to do with the indeterminateness inherent in empirical
reality. Had everything that happens in the world been predetermined in
advance by a powerful supreme being, then instead of an inquiry into empirical
reality, the study of history would have had to do with finding the logical key,
which would in turn inferentially lead to every occurrence. But if historical
events are not predetermined but are rather the alternatives that happened to
occur, then the historian's question becomes not only what happened but also
what did not happen and ~ h y . ~ 3
The absence of certain actions or events, no less than the presence of
others, is important in understanding what happened. What did not happen
may have made possible the event that did happen.
The judgment that, if a single historical fact is conceived of as absent from or
modified in a complex of historical events in a way which could be different in
certain historically important respects, seems to be of considerable value for
the determination of the "historical significance" of those facts.24

Taking off from these two basic contentions, Weber goes to his analysis of
the question of causality. His argument is simple and important. If, on the one
hand, empirical reality - as any "whole" by definition -is composed of an
infinite number of facts or facets and if, on the other hand, it might have been
different, then, in order to understand it beyond the level of the non-
questioning acceptance, two further logical operations must be made. First,
we have to pick from the vast number of events that happened those that are
more relevant than others for our under~tanding.~~ Second, we have to account
for those relevant events in a genetic sense, so as to explain why this set of
events and not others took place. This may seem an easy job to do; and Weber
is, of course, the first to admit that historians have been doing it all along.
Yet he insists that when carried out unconsciously, this operation may have
misleading effects. I t may lead people to believe causality inheres in the

22. Weber, Methodology, 176.

23. Ibid., 165.
24. Ibid., 166.
25. Aron, 79.
3 02 EHUD SPRINZAK

nature of history, whereas it remains, in effect, in the mind of the historian

who asks questions about history.
As to the first operation, Weber argues that unconsciously or not, historians
tend to pick up their events and their questions about these events according
to their conception of world history. This means that they make these choices
not in a direct relationship to the events that happened in the past but rather
to those that happen in their time that make certain events of the past appear
relevant.3G Commenting on Eduard Meyer's reference to the Battle of
Marathon, Weber argues that what makes the battle relevant is not the fact
or time that it was fought, but that it appears to be a crucial moment in the
history of the Western civilization. Had it been lost it might have changed
the whole history of the West." This criterion of relevance Weber fully
justifies, and it is therefore not surprising that the fist sentence of The
Protestant Ethic reads:
A product of modern European civilization studying any problem of universal
history is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact
should be attributed that in western civilization and in western civilization only,
cultural phenomena have appeared which . . . lie in a line of development having
universal significance and val~e.~S
The Protestant Ethic interested Weber not merely because he decided to
develop the new discipline of the sociology of religion but because it seemed
to him to provide a partial key to what he considered an important concrete
phenomenon, the creation of modern capitalist culture. It subsequently became
important in view of world history.
Wow the idea that the Battle of Masathon and the Protestant Ethic are
chosen for study because of their importance to world history may be assumed
to be correct. So long as no one questions it, there is no problem. Every
research or inquiry is established, like an iceberg, on an unspecified number
of unseen foundation^.^^ But what happens if this assumption is challenged?
What happens if we want to prove this assumption, i.e., that the event under
consideration was in fact crucial for the development of modern culture?
This is, according to Weber, the core question that the social scientist and the
historian must be ready to face. In order to answer this question -the most
important in his causal analysis - Weber suggests making a distinction
between two types of knowledge, the "nomological" and the "ontological."
Nornological knowledge is that knowledge which involves knowing the laws

26. Ibid., 70.

27. Cf. Freund, 73.
28. Weber, T h e Protesfont Ethic, 13.
29. A similar idea, and its implications, has been developed in an impressive manner
by Michael Polanyi in his Pei:~onol K~zowledge (New York, 1964), Part 11, under the
concept "tacit knowledge."
according to which people behave under certain circumstanccs. Ontological
knowledge nleans those concrete events that we know for surc to have hap-
pencd (events like the Battle of Marathon, the existence of religious move-
ments like Protestantisin or the cultural phenomenon of capitalism). With
these two distinguishable typcs of knowledge it becomes, according to Weber,
possible to make the decisive step and to establish the causal chain. If we
know the laws under which certain phenomena occur, we have the mechanism
that may, to use modern language, process our data or events. The ontological
knowledge - the knowledge of certain events which are not questionable -
may therefore be considered as an input; and since we already have the
output, we are pretty safe in our causal analysis. We can also infer what could
have happened had the Battle of Marathon been lost, since by the sarnc
logical proccdures we may also process a different set of data -the tentative
loss of Marathon - and get, of course, different results. Weber sums up his
argument in this way:
The "knowledge" on which such a judgment of the "significance" of the Battle of
Marathon rests is in the light of all that a e havc said hitherto, on the one hand,
knowledge of certain "facts" ["ontological knowledge"], belonging to the "his-
torical situation" and ascertainable on the basis of certain sources, and on the other
- as we have already seen -knowledge of certain known empirical rulcs, pdrtic-
ularly thosc relating to the ways in which human beings are prone to react under
given situation ["nornological knowledge"]. . . . When this has been donc, then, we
can render a positive judgment that the joint action of thosc facts . . . "could"
bring about the effect which is asserted to be "objectively possible." This can only
mean, in other words, that if we "conceived" the effects a? having acl~iallyoccurred
under the modified conditions we ivouM then recognize those facts, thus modified,
to be "adequate causes."30
Students who have busied themselves with looking at Weber's ideal typev
as his major contribution to the theory of explanation may be a littlc surprised
by his closeness to some modern, widely accepted, theories of causal explana-
tion. These thcories insist on the need of "postdiction" (prcdiction made
retrospectively), namely, that events that happencd should not bc taken for
granted as necessary in view of some metaphysical genetic deternlinism or a
functional one, but rather should be proved to have happencd out of several
other probable alternatives, due to several well-specified conditions." We shall
later have an opportunity to comment on the ideal type, but a closcr view of
Weber's conception of probability seems now in order. Being fully aware of
the possibility that certain causes could be affirmed in a stronger way than
others, Weber wrote:
The judgment of "objective" possibility admits gradations of degree and one can
form an idea of the logical relationship which is involved by lool<ing for help in
30. Weber, Methodology, 174-175.
3 1. Cf. Ernst Nagel, The Structure of Science (New Yo1k, 1965), 555-556.
3 04 EHUD SPRINZAK

principles which applied in the analysis of the "calculus of probability." . . . One

then asks, how the entire complex of all those conditions with the addition of
which those isolatedly conceived components were "calculated" to bring about the
"possible" effect standing in relation to the complex of all those conditions the ad-
dition of which could not have "foreseeably" led to the effect.32
Now, what is asserted here by Weber, if read carefully, is that the idea of the
logical relationship applied by the calculus of probability is relevant to the
causal analysis. It is indeed disappointing to read further that "one naturally
cannot in any way arrive by this operation at an estimate of the relationship
between these two possibilities which will be in any sense numerical," but the
reason for that is not that the human sciences do not yield themselves to
the scientific methods of the natural ones.
The [numerical estimate] would be attainable only in the sphere of "absolute
.
chance" . . i.e. in cases where . . . given a very large number of cases, certain
simple and unambiguous conditions remain absolutely the same. We can express
numerically the degree of this "favorable chance" of this "objective possibility,"
by sufficiently frequent repetition of the toss.33
So what we are clearly faced with is a technical difficulty viewed by a social
scientist who is involved in questions of analyzing major historical events, when
information in the form of interviews or attitude samples - such as was used
by him when studying contemporary problems of Germany -seemed at that
time unavailable. This of course becomes obvious with his closing remarks:
Despite the familiar and fully justified notice which warns against the transference
of the principles of calculus of probabilities into other domains, it is clear that
the latter case of favorable chance or an "objective probability" determined from
general empirical propositions, or from empirical frequencies has its analogies in
the sphere of concrete causality including the historical.
The alleged conflict that has been recently suggested by Lazarsfeld and
Oberschall to have existed within Weber's empirical studies in contemporary
German society and his "non-empirical" historical studies, and their subse-
quent psychological explanation of seems, according to what had been
mentioned above, a creation of their own minds. Weber might have, as they
showed, some reservations as to the role of psychology within his social re-
search, but it had little relation to either the notion of empirical research or to
its application in the probability theory. Like Nagel fifty years later, he was
fully aware of the permanent gap between the logic of scientific inquiry and the
state of the present knowledge as well as its needs.35

32. Weber, Methodology, 181-182.

33. Ibid., 183.
34. P . Lazarsfeld and A. Oberschall, "Max Weber and Empirical Social Research,"
American Sociological Review 30 (1965), 185-198.
35. On the limitations of the present level of knowledge, note Weber's remark, "But it
So far I have tried to clarify what appears to me Weber's major contribution
to the theory of explanation, his conception of causality. It has been done
through a logical derivation of his causal analysis from his philosophical
argument about the infinite nature of empirical reality. Any reference to the
notion of ideal type has been carefully avoided because it appears to pertain
not so much to the theory of explanation as to the important question of "what
we are about to explain." A clarification of this issue must now be attem~ted.~"
It is obvious that the concept of ideal type can be derived by two simple
logical steps from Weber's basic contention that empisical reality is infinite.
The first one has already been presented. Since empirical reality or history is
infinite, any discussion of meaningful events in it becomes possible only
through a selection of events that seem relevant to the historical consciousness
of the person involved. By the same token, a selection is made also between
events that should be explained and events that form the explaining conditions.
This is, as we remember, an artificial operation made on empirical reality
in order to account for it causally, and this is what Weber has in mind when
speaking about the "decomposition" of the given. ("This means that we so
dec jmpose the 'given' into 'components' that every one of them is fitted into
an 'empirical ~ule'.")~TNow, in the case of single events, like the Battle of
Marathon, there is no need to go further. It is pretty well defined in our
consciousness in terms of time, place, and significance. But if we trace a
cultural phenomenon like capitalism, Judaism, or liberalism, a definable con-
ception becomes more difficult. Not only are time and place hard to determine,
but so are a variety of other facets, institutional and attitudinal. Since we want
to keep it as a cultural unit, and to be able to operate the causal analysis -
though this time on a large scale - a further "decomposition" of the "given"
is called f0r.38 This second decomposition gives birth to the ideal type. The
best and most concise account of the conception has been given by Weber
himself.
An ideal type is formed by a one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view
and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and
occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according
to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct. In

must not be forgotten that every individual causal complex, even the apparently 'simple'

can be infinitely subdivided and analyzed. The point at which we halt in this process is

determined only by our causal interests of the time." Weber, Metl~odology,178. For a

similar view, see Nagel, 507.

36. Much of what shall be said below has been influenced by Aron's interpretation of

Weber. Cf. Aron, 7 1.

37. Weber, Methodology, 173.

38. Freund, 53.
306 EHUD SPRINZAK

its conceptual purity this mental construct cannot be found empirically anywhere in
reality. It is a utopia. Historical research faces the task of determining in each
individual case, the extent to which this ideal construct approxin~atesto or diverges
from reality. . . .
This procedure can be indispensable for heuristic as well as expository purposes.
The ideal typical concept will help to develop our skill in imputation in research.
It is no "hypothesis" but it offers guidance to the construction of hypotheses. It is
not a description of reality but it aims to give unambiguous means of expression
to such a description.89
Without further interpretation of what is made clear by Weber, it is worth
mentioning that the major feature of the ideal type is that it is an auxiliary
construct that helps one to orient oneself to the proposed research. Its explicit
building is therefore a desirable procedure that may, or may not, be useful for
building a hypothesis (and not a proof). It is not an operational concept but
arz orientatiorzal one. It is needed as a preliminary stage for a study of large-
scale and complex p h e n o m e n ~ n . ~ ~
It is sometimes argued against Weber that objective typology could not be
obtained unless some verifiable operations (based on some sort of measure-
ment) have been made. Weber's answer, one of the most delicate arguments
ever made in the history of the social sciences, requires some length for full
presentation. But its core is as simple as it is persuasive. No science could ever
start without some non-scientific decisions as to its orientation. The scientific
problem is not how to pick up its orienting questions or concepts, ideal types,
symbols, or whatever one likes to call them, but how to operate with them in
a justifiable way. The choice of conceptions is a cultural business and may
be different for different people in different times or locations. The way one
operates with them and, particularly, proves one's arguments is, however,
metahistorical and metacultural. It is made according to logical rules which
are deducible and may be tested by everyone who knows logic.
The choice of the object of investigation and the extent or depth to which this
investigation attempts to penetrate into the infinite causal web, are determined by
the evaluative ideas which dominate the investigator and his age. In the method
of investigation, the guiding "point of view" is of great importance for the construc-
tion of the conceptual scheme which will be used in the investigation. In the mode
of their use, however, the investigator is obviously bound by the norms of our
thought just as much here as elsewhere. For scientific truth is precisely what is
valid for all those who seek the truth.41
This, I suggest, is why the notion of ideal type is not an important part of
the explanatory scheme set up by Weber. While this scheme has to d o with the
logical procedure by which the causal relationship is set and proved, the

39. Weber, Metlzoclology, 90.

40. Cf. Freund, 60-66.
41. Weber, Methodology, 84.
 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 3 07
procedure of constructing the ideal type has to do with the question of how
orienting concepts are picked up and the problem formed. The important point
about the latter is not that ideal types are being formed -they have been
formed all along -it is the question of how to form them in a relevant way
that counts. In fact, Weber had well in mind the possibility of building orient-
ing concepts in a statistical way. Those which he named "simple class con-
cepts," were said by him to be "a matter of the simple classification of events
which appear in reality as mass phenomena." These were not ideal types. The
latter were to denote historical phenomena. The difference between them was
clearly marked:
The greater the event to which we conceptualize complicated historical patterns
with respect to those components in which their specific cultural significaizce is
contained, the greater the extent to which the concept . . . will be ideal typical in
character. The goal of ideal typical concept-construction is always to make explicit
not the class or average character but rather the unique individual character of
cultural phenomena.42

Here, I think, lies Weber's decisive answer to the abstract empirical ap-
proach in the name of which he is sometimes attacked. The essence of science
is not its methods but its logic of inquiry. This logic of inquiry may help in
making a good argument. But it is helpless insofar as the relevance of the
phenomenon under consideration is concerned. What makes an orientatioilal
framework relevant are not the methods by which it is picked up but the
phenomena it tries to embrace. Cultural broad phenomena are historical. Being
historical is not merely to be an aggregate of certain historical data, but mainly
to have a unifying system of symbols that can be decided by one's under-
standing of history, which is a philosophical, metascientific question of mean-
ing. By the same token, Weber argues that though nomological knowledge
was important for the process of proof of one's argument, it was by no means
the purpose of the cultural sciences - as distinguished from natural sciences
-to provide laws. The argument deserves particular notice.
An "objective" analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis
that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to "laws," is meaningless.
It is not meaningless, as is often maintained, because cultural or psychic events for
instance are "objectively" less governed by laws. It is meaningless for a number of
other reasons. Firstly, because the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social
reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end;
secondly, because knowledge of cultural events is inconceivable except on a basis
of the significance which the concrete constellations of reality have for us in
certain individual concrete situations. In which sense and in which situations this
is the case is not revealed to us by any law; it is decided according to the value-
ideas in the light of which we view "culture" in each individual case. "Culture" is

42. Ibid., 101.

308 EHUD SPRINZAK

a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on

which human beings confer meaning and significance.43
Weber's argument about the uniqueness of historical events and conse-
quently the distinction between the natural and cultural sciences should be
read with care. It is not a contention that the logic of inquiry of them is dif-
ferent. As we saw, Weber denied this idea. It also does not come out of the
proposition that the "given" (empirical reality) of both is different. Both are
infinite by their nature. The difference is a result of the fact that concrete
events or phenomena which are treated by the cultural sciences are different
because they have an historical connotation which is necessarily cultural-value-
laden, while the natural phenomena are devoid of that sense. The raison
&&re of the natural sciences is the attempt to grasp regularities that occur
repeatedly with no reference to historically meaningful e~ents.~4 Both sciences
have common ground in their logic of inquiry since the causal understanding
which is common to both requires the discovery of laws. But while this knowl-
edge is the end of the natural sciences, the end of the cultural ones is to come
back with this knowledge to the concrete events. The great danger for the
cultural sciences is that, in view of the need of nornological knowledge, it
will be forgotten for what it is sought and that we shall get good laws that
are irrelevant to what is happening in the world. Since reality is infinite so is
the number of possible laws. This distinction, I suggest, is of major impor-
tance. The fact that Weber was not read with care may explain the situation
in which so many studies in social science may be skillfully performed but be,
at the same time, devoid of relevance to the real world. It may help to explain
the so-called new scientific "sub-cultures" that are created within certain
disciplines and help to sustain so much intellectual whistling in the dark and
to alienate social science from social life. This is exactly what Weber tried
to prevent by coining the notion of ideal type as an orientational concept, a
concept that by keeping a grasp on the concrete historical phenomenon would
lead the search of knowledge toward that which is meaningful. The un-
fortunate fact that somehow it became involved with his logic of explanation
led to some damaging effects.
Weber's ideas regarding the ideal type may help to explain another pillar
of his theory of the historical understanding, his conception of one-sided
explanation in history. As was already shown, Weber, concluding the Protes-
tant Ethic, mentioned that what he has tried to do was to trace the direction
in which Protestantism has influenced the development of capitalism, namely
to lay the grounds for a study of the influence of ideas on economic behavior.
Subsequently he said:

43. Zbid., 80-81.

44. Cf. Aron, 68; Freund, 37-40.
 WBBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 309
But it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic, an
equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and history. Each
is equally possible, but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the
conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of his-
torical truth.45
As is the case with abstract "scientism," so, too, in the case of one-sided
"disciplinarism," historical and cultural phenomena cannot be reduced to
and replaced by the partial views that intend to explain them. The materialistic
as well as the spiritualistic conceptions of history are just one-sided tools of
interpretation. As such, they serve as the preparation for the investigation,
not as its conclusion, which is the causal complete explanation. In this spirit,
he warned in the Methodology against the general tendency to see in new
scientific disciplines new "Weltanschauungen" as well, each capable of re-
placing all the others by its breadth and explanatory capacity. Each of these
(including functionalism!), he maintained, could provide a good one-sided
ideal type and instead of trying to replace concrete history -by eliminating
"every historical event which is not explicable" as "scientFfically insignificant
accident"46- should add up to the knowledge of concrete reality. In retro-
spect and to sum up, we may perhaps maintain with Weber:
The type of social science in which we are interested is an empirical science of
concrete reality. Our aim is the understanding of the characteristic uniqueness of
the reality in which we move.47

So far the attempt has been made to demonstrate how Weber conceived the
desirable relationships between the domain of scientific inquiry and the domain
of culture within which this inquiry was to become meaningful. But a word of
caution must be added. Weber did not clarify many of the specific details of
these relationships. He did not make clear the relationship that must exist
between the logic of inquiry and the use of reliable methods for collection of
information. He did not develop an explicit procedure of operationalism.
The distinction that has been suggested to exist between orientational con-
ceptions and operational ones was obtained only by inferential interpretation
of what he said explicitly, - a way that, to some degree, is always arbitrary.
These gaps and others that may hardly be satisfactory to the modern social
scientist reveal themselves in his historically rich studies, and little benefit
may be gained by concealing them. Since Weber, however, would be the first
to agree that the interests of organized knowledge increase in time and with

45. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 183.

46. Weber, Metlzodology, 70.
47. Ibid., 72.
310 EHUD SPRINZAK

them the logical sharpness of the theory of explanation as well as its methods,
he should hardly be blamed for all that he could not foresee or foretell. But
within the limits of his orientational approach, his empirical studies of history
remain as relevant as his theory of explanation.
Since Weber's explicit methodology has not been developed apart from his
empirical studies but in a close relation with them, it is not diflicult to discover
within it the roots of the arguments that have been presented formerly in
abstract fashion. As most of his students noted, his initial focus was, and
remained, his interest in modern Western rationalism. This historical phe-
nomenon and its concrete manifestations -the most important being the
modern legal system, modern bureaucracy, and modern capitalism - occupied
Weber all his life. Deeply influenced by Marx, who tried to do the same thing
(though leaning heavily toward capitalism as the key factor), Weber, how-
ever, became fully aware of the one-sidedness of this approach and its selective
interpretation. As Bendix has shown, Weber's first methodological confronta-
tion with the materialist interpretation of history took place in his early studies
of farm labor in Eastern Germany and the stock exchange. I t was within the
scope of these studies that he first developed the concept of status group as
distinguished from class group. What he discovered was that the formation
and existence of social groups could not be explained according to economic
objective experiences only, but had to be traced back to at least one more
category, the shared beliefs and ideas of the group regarding honor and
social position.4s
Conceiving ideas, then, as a possible source of group formation, it was
natural for him to turn to the historical institution of religion, the most ob-
vious example of a concrete phenomenon whose origins could be dealt with
in terms of ideas. Since he was aware of the remarks made by generations of
observers regarding the affinity between economic success and ascetic Prot-
estants -remarks that seemed to him fully confirmed by studies done by one
of his students4hnd by other contemporary observations -Weber soon
thought of the possibility of a new causal explanation of modern capitalism,
namely what he referred to as the "spiritual" interpretation. Convinced, as he
always was, that Marxism never succeeded in deriving the colzterzt of religious
ideas from economic situations, but equally convinced that once groups have
been formed their existence had to do with economic experiences, Weber was
swift to conclude that the conzplex relationships o f ideas am?ecoizonlic interests
that could have led to the fornzatiorz of nzoderrz capitalisnz had to be dif-
ferentiated. Only such factorial differentiation into mutually exclusive vari-
ables, as artificial as it might be, could have later been integrated into a

48. R. Bendix, A4ax W r b e r , Ail I~ztellccflrrrlPorfraif ( N e w York, 1962), 85-87.

49. Weber, The Ptofesfant Ethic,Ch. I.
 WEBER'S TIJESTS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 31 1
satisfactory causal analysis of the modern phenomenon. It was about that time
that he arrived theoretically at the formulation of his theory of causality as
well as that of the historical ideal type. The first, as we saw, was to help him in
the search for the right types of knowledge in view of which valid arguments
were to be made. The second, as we also saw, was to help him orient that
search so that the end he had in mind - the analysis of the concrete cultural
phenomenon of modern capitalism -would not be lost. It was indeed here,
in the formulation of strict methodology, that Weber transcended Marx as a
scholar. Without losing Marx's ingenious vision of history, he could now avoid
what Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness made by the
former. But Weber did not intend to eliminate the Marxian contribution. On
the contrary, he was fully aware of its fruitfulness, provided it was properly
limited. The task that he assigned to himself was to work out his complemen-
tary approach.
According to the original causal scheme, a proof could be gained if it were
possible to provide evidence that, in view of certain laws of social behavior
(nomological knowledge) and certain events (ontological knowledge), other
events or phenomena did not just happen, but had to happen (postdiction).
But since Weber renounced from the beginning the claim for unicausal analy-
sis, he never did try to prove that capitalism had to be the result of ascetic
Protestantism. Instead, he tried to advance the hypothesis that ascetic Prot-
estantism had to contribute much to the creation of modern capitalism. Such
a proposition, it should be stressed again, m ~ ~be s tby definition an accentuated
one-sided argument, excluding political, ecoaomic, legal, and other important
factors in order to demonstrate the relevance of the spiritual factor. But how
was he to accomplish that job, gigantic as it was? Had he immersed himself in
the infinite mountain of facts, he would have lost sight of the forest wander-
ing somewhere around in the bushes. The only possibility was to work, like
Marx, within the framework of powerful ideal types and hypothetical plausible
arguments, but this time to nzake lzis liinitatiorzs explicit. It was this conviction
that led Weber, through the use of Franklin's dairy, to his most famous ideal
type, the spirit of capitalism.
Weber, like Marx and Sombart before, never argued that capitalism as a
distinctive phenomenon came into being only in the modern era. For he was
well aware that certain modes of capitalist activity had always been in existence
and could be traced back to some human basic traits such as pcrsonal greed
and a desire to accumulate wealth and to enjoy what it could buy. The question
that he, like his predecessors, faced was, however, to explain the process
through which capitalism became the donzinant feature of the socio-economic
culture of the West. The Marxian contribution to the understanding of this
modern complex has been the analysis of the social and economic trans-
formations that took place in the passage from the Middle Ages to the modern
312 EHUD SPRINZAK

era. It has contributed to the understanding- of the breakdown of the feudal

closed society and the growth of urban centers, a process that has created
free labor and that, when coupled with the new technological breakthroughs
and with the discovery of the rich overseas territories, has produced favor-
able conditions for a capitalist economy on a large scale. But Sombart, and
particularly Weber, argued that these transformations, as important as they
might be, could not explain the typical capitalist mentality that emerged as a
dominant characteristic of the bourgeoisie as the class sustaining the new
activity. For a mentality of devoted and morally purposive hard work, wealth-
producing for the sake of economic aggrandizement and perpetual reinvestment
could not be explained as a natural outcome of either traditional greedy capi-
talism or of new economic developments, reflected, as vulgar Marxism would
maintain, in the minds of the pe0ple.~0The traditional dominant orientation
toward work, according to Weber, has been characterized by the attempt by
the very many to maintain constant standards of living, or by the very few to
accumulate in order to spend luxuriously. Thus, he showed how di£Ecult it
was in a traditional social atmosphere to stimulate in a time of need a moti-
vation toward higher productivity by higher pay and piece rate system. For
instead of aspiring to earn more, traditional workers tended to maintain the
same standard of living. If that meant to work harder but for a shorter time,
they did exactly that, bothering very little about the possibility of earning
more by maintaining the previous work schedule.51 On the whole, then, Weber
argued that modern capitalism could be said to involve a spirit of capitalism,
an ideal typical set of orientations, that gave to the capitalist activity moral
purpose and that could be contrasted with that of traditionalism. That ideal
type, in order to be explained, had first to be made clearer. Weber did this
by using Franklin's dairy.
Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour,
and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of 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, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is
due, he gives me the interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time.
This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and
makes good use of it.
Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget
money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six,
turned again it is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds.
The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise
quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding-sow, destroys all her offspring to the

50. lbid., 7 5 .
51. Ibid., 59-61.
 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 313
thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have
produced, even scores of pounds.
Weber7s use of the term spirit of capitalisin should be underlined; for by
using this term he made explicit his intention to exclude all the other direct
economic and social factors that could be held responsible for the growth of
capitalist mentality. His major theoretical problem became, consequently, to
find out what was the historical mechanism through which traditionalism
as a dominant feature gave way to the spirit of capitalism. Weber noticed
that ever since the seventeenth century and in different modes it became
common to associate Protestantism with capitalist growth and entrepreneurial
activity. Many sets of data, composed both of authoritative historical observa-
tions and of contemporary studies, indicated the same fact. But rather than
solving the historical enigma, they helped to complicate it. For the Protestant
teaching, as Weber clearly saw, could in almost no sense be associated with
a direct promotion of modern capitalism. It came out strongly against the
moral laxity of the Catholic church of the time, and attacking its mundane
character, it took clearly an ascetic moral direction. Thus Weber mentioned:
It is not to be understood that we expect to find any of the founders or representa-
tives of these religious movements considering the promotion of what we have
called the spirit of capitalism as in any sense the end of his life-work. We cannot
well maintain that the pursuit of worldly goods, conceived as an end in itself was
to any of them of positive ethical value. Once and for all it must be remembered
that programs of ethical reform never were of the centre of interest for any of the
religious reformers. . . . They were not the founders of societies for ethical culture
nor the proponents of humanitarian projects for social reform and cultural ideals.
The salvation of the soul and that alone was the centre of their life and work.62
We can see now that the major theoretical problem for Weber became not
to prove that Protestantism, in contrast to Catholicism, was expressly oriented
toward capitalism, but to pick up those clues in an avowedly religious anti-
materialistic and anti-capitalistic teaching that could eventually and in an un-
intentional way help to generate and sustain capitalist behavior.53 Catholi-
cism, as Weber maintained, never objected in principle to hard work and to
systematic ascetic behavior. But for it and in contrast to Calvinism "the con-
crete intentio of the single act determined its value. And the single good or
bad action was credited to the doer determining his temporal and eternal

52. Zbid., 89-90.

53. Aware of the subtleties of his argument as well as of future criticism, Weber noted
cautiously: "We shall thus have to admit that the cultural consequences of the Reforma-
tion were to a great extent, perhaps in the particular aspects with which we are dealing
predominantly, unforeseen and even unwished for results of the labors of the reformers.
They were often removed from or even in contradiction to all that they themselves
thought to attain." Zbid., 90.
314 EHUD SPRINZAK

fate."54 For Calvinism, however, it was the whole systematic behavior that
counted.
The God of Calvinism demanded of his believers not single good works, but a life
of good works combined into a unified system. There was no place for the very
human Catholic cycle of sin, repentance, atonement, release, followed by re-
newed sin.55
The Calvinist self-strife involved a profound commitment to strenuous life
in which, due to the elimination of the mediatory function of the church -in-
strumental in Catholicism to attain atonement - one was psychologically
left alone to face his destiny. Such elimination of the traditional magical func-
tions and performances of the Church, coupled with the psychological isolation
that was one of its by-products, produced a style of life which was highly
individualistic (in a psychological, not social manner) and highly rational.
Thus, Weber describes Sebastian Frank as striking "the central characteristic
of this type of religion when he saw the significance of the Reformation in
the fact that now every Christian had to be a monk all his life."" And as
Hudson has maintained, this type of behavior, when applied to all the be-
lievers, created a dominant character who was bound to consunze less and to
produce more. Such a personality, Weber argued, was therefore not acquisitive
by nature but was eventually bound to develop an ethos, the ethos of
capitalism, which combined at once a strong earthly activity with profound
moral commitment to modest and productive life. Franklin's diary became
in this respect not what the Protestant apostles aspired to but what was pro-
duced by their gospel in the process of time.
In view of what was said above, it appears justified to argue that Weber's
purpose in his study was to sort out those ideational elements in the Protestant
teachings -particularly the Calvinist - that contributed to the emergence
of ascetic self-disciplines and highly rational behavior as a dominant factor
in the Western modern culture. Such an hypothesis had to be done mainly in
terms of ideal types on the one hand and to be demonstrated by empirical
illustrations on the other. Only in this way could a general line of argument be
drawn along which some more systematic work could be initiated. And as was
mentioned above, it was in no respect Weber's intention to present his ap-
proach as the exclusive way to the explanation of the emergence of capitalism.
Nor was he, owing to the very methodological nature of his argument, in a
position to say how much the spiritual factors contributed to the rise of
capitalism or whether they were a necessary condition or not.
We have no intention whatever of maintaining such a foolish and doctrinaire thesis
as that the spirit of capitalism . . . could only have arisen as the result of certain
54. Ibid., 116.
55. Ibid., 117.
56. Ibicl., 121.
 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 315
effectsof the Reformation, or even that capitalism as an economic system is a crea-
tion of the Reformation. In itself, the fact that certain important forms of capital-
istic business organization are known to be considerably older than the Reformation
is a sufficient refutation of such a claim. On the contrary, we only wish to ascertain
whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative for-
mation and the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the

In view of what was argued so far, it becomes obvious that most of the argu-
ments raised against Weber missed their target, for they fought a straw man.
Weber did not mislocate capitalism. Not only was he aware of the existence of
"important forms of capitalistic business organization (that) are known to be
considerably older than the Reformation"" but also even regarding post-
Reformation capitalism he was ready to talk only in terms of Protestant
contributions. Weber did not nzisplace causality either. Having in mind not an
impressionistic conception of causal analysis but a systematic one, he was
fully aware of his one-sidedness and ideal typical approach. But rather than
naively believing, as the historians did, that such shortcomings could be
avoided by talking the language of gradations, he had sought to do that openly
as a preliminary operation without concealing the apparent difficulties. Re-
garding the anti-Weberian arguments of misinterpreted Protestantisnz and
misunderstood Catholicism, the task that Weber assigned to himself was not
the one that his critics believed he misperformed, of analyzing the official in-
tentional doctrines of early Protestantism, but a more subtle one. It was, k s t ,
to suggest what persovlality chnracter the teaching of ascetic Protestantism was
bound to develop; and, second, to find clues in early Protestant teaching that
could hint at eventual development of justification for capitalism. As for the
first, by far the most important argument in the Weberian thesis, he has pro-
vided sufficient evidence for the contribution of ascetic Protestantism to "a
systematic rational ordering of the moral life as a whole"5g and had argued
convincingly that such behavior - once it was dominant - could be held
responsible for economic prosperity. The existence of this rational, unmagical,
and orderly behavior has long been recognized by Weberians and anti-
Weberians alike. As for the second, a more debatable question, Weber's
arguments regarding the "clues" to capitalism and awareness of economic
theory on behalf of the reformers were never refuted by his critics. What they
did was to present other conceivable versions that, through a different selection
of quotations, played down Weber's theme and emphasized other aspects that

57. Ibid., 91.

58. Loc. cit.
59. Ibid., 126.
316 EHUD SPRINZAK

he did not. Since Weber's intention was not to provide an official interpreta-
tion of the Protestant teaching on an intentional level, such interpretations,
as valuable as they might be, could hardly harm his point.
What becomes, thus, the characteristic feature of the historians' historical
approach is not only a lack of sufficient awareness of the methodological
questions of historical explanation but also an avoidance of the major theoreti-
cal problem of Weber's study, the question of how ideas could be shown to be
influential in social life in a significant way. That such problems concerned
Weber, not only as a special case of historical explanation but as a matter
of social theory, could well be realized from the first chapter of The Prates?
tant Ethic entitled "Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification." There he
clearly approached the issue in a sociological way, using, as a comparative
sociologist, empirical data obtained from various sources without paying
great attention to either time or place. The historians may perhaps be said to
have been aware of the problem, but by equating social behavior with official
doctrine (or, at least, by deriving evidence regarding the one from the other),
they have jeopardized the ability of history as a discipline to grasp the real
impact of ideas not on a handful of intellectuals but on mass behavior on a
large scale. Weber's contribution to the study of social history was in this
respect to avoid two common types of historical reductionism, the idealist -
reducing history to the history of ideas - and the materialist -reducing
history to non-behavioral elements, economic and technological factors.
But the even greater damage of the historians' approach has been the fact
that in the heat of the argument, Weber's major weakness has not been
really challenged. Far beyond the importance of the textual interpretations or
the selections of the most fitting illustrations for one's arguments, it remains
a fact that Weber did not specify the psychological mechanisms through
which ideas could be said and empirically demonstrated to have changed be-
havior. What he did so brilliantly was to bring an ideal typical argument to
the growth of the spirit of capitalism without providing a measure to determine
such growth independently of the growth of capitalism. Even regarding the
assessment of the second, he did not go beyond some plausible ideas but
vague operations. Thus he had failed many under-cautious students who
hastened to examine the thesis by testing the first by the second. For it never
occurred to them that such a test could have been legitimate only if a positive
correlation between the growth of capitalism and the growth of the spirit of
capitalism had first been established - and that it was not.
For such a task to be accomplished, some major difficulties like excluding
all the other political and economic intervening variables from the scheme
should have been overcome. Proper time units in which the growth of the
spirit of capitalism could be comparatively assessed should have also in this
respect been selected, specified, and justified. For the lack of these criteria,
 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 317
the whole thesis became, for those who did not understand it on both sides,
a matter of contrary examples; and Weber's dclicate argument was subjected
over and again to arbitrary interpretations and vulgar refutations. Judging
from most of what was written on and around the thesis, it can justifiably be
argued that for more than half a century, the real theoretical problem re-
garding it remained concealed. For once the argument has been made by
Weber in the subtle way that it was, the question stopped being one of proper
interpretations or illustration and became one of operationability and test-
ability.60
Only recently has the great potential of Weber's thesis been recognized and
a proper operational and testable formulation of this theory devised. For be-
havioral psychology has discovered that his great achievement was that he
differentiated the theoretical equation of the growth of capitalism to three
factors standing in a consequential line: influencing ideas (Protestantism) +
orientations and motivations toward certain types of life (a combination of
rational systematic behavior and a strong sense of ethical calling in one's
life) + social action (entrepreneurial and productive behavior) leading to
economic growth. Such differentiation could well fit the basic stimulus +
motivation + action model according to which the three variables could be
justifiably separated and measured for the sake of potential correlation estab-
lishment. Moreover, for some years, behavioral psychology has sought to
formulate in its own terms a psychological theory of economic growth.
Especially under Parsons' impact, it has arrived at the same conclusion that
Weber reached: that there was some room to explain economic growth by
non-economic variables and that it was possible to do that not in terms of the
direct impact of a potential capitalist ideology or a sheer interest theory but by
a set of orientations that could be called achievement. David McClelland, the
leader of this effort, has noticed that the argument that could sustain all that
has been provided by Weber.61 For Weber defined the new capitalist character
as a man who "gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational
sense of having done his job It was exactly in this way that the achieve-
ment motive has been understood by the psychologists. The diEculty that
became apparent was, however, how to pull all the strings together into a
testable theory that would relate the achievement motive to economic success

60. An exception to the somewhat nontestable arguments raised by Weber is the use
that he made of the data analyzed by Offenbacher, a student of his. Offenbacher related
attendance of "modern language" schools as contrasted with "classical language" ones
with religion, and found a significant Protestant preference for the first category. (See
Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 188-189.) It was, however, recently shown by Samuelsson
that Offenbacher's figures failed to take base rates into account [see S. M. Lipset, R.
Bendix, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley, 1959), 54-55].
61. David McClelland, The Achieving Society (Princeton, 1961), 47-50.
62. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 71.
318 EHUD SPRINZAK

and both to religious affiliation. It could easily be shown that, in general,

Protestant countries scored higher than Catholic ones in economic develop-
r n e ~ ~But
t . ~such
~ a demonstration could hardly be considered satisfactory in
terms of psychological theory, the central interest of both Weber and Mc-
Clelland. A pioneering study by Winterbottom of the achievement motive
in children opened the way to such a theory, for it showed that mothers of
children who scored high on McClelland's scale (of n Achievement) tended
to implant in their children very early in their life a sense of strong indepen-
dence, hard work, competitiveness, and achievement.G4 Further tests of the
impact of the mother's religion on such behavior have confirmed that Protes-
tant mothers differed significantly from Catholic ones in their early insistence
on independence and achievement. Thus - despite some theoretical daculties
regarding the tests that cannot be specified here -these findings provided
initial support and clarification to Weber's argument. For the root of the
achievement need detected in Protestants and Calvinists could be said to have
centered in the family and early practices taught and implanted by the parents
and particularly the mothers. Imaginative tests to examine the need for achieve-
ment through the study of fantasy in literary forms were further devised and in
this way it became possible to approach the historical question in a more
systematic way than before. The major hypothesis of McClelland's Achieving
Society was not limited to Weber's argument only, for he tried to develop a
general psychological theory of economic growth, sustained by the achievement
motive which was itself stimulated by various factors, not only the religious
one. But it lent itself to the examination of Weber's contention in that it made
it possible to measure n Achievement independently of Protestant teaching in
such a way that literary forms of Protestant origins could be matched with
similar forms emerging from other religions. In the same way it became
possible to examine periods of religious upheavals with an eye to entrepre-
neurial effort and economic growth. An attempt of this nature has been made
by some of McClelland's associates regarding the British economy between
1600 and 1800. Though facing some difficultpractical problems regarding the
literary samples (one way of approach was to match Anglican sermons with
sermons delivered by Non-conformists), Bradburn and Berlew showed that
a rise in n Achievement in the sixteenth century preceded the first wave of
economic growth in the seventeenth century and that a fall in n Achievement
in the years 1650-1700 preceded the economic stagnation of the early
eighteenth ~entury.~5 A decisive rise in n Achievement beginning around the
middle of the eighteenth century preceded the economic growth of the industrial
revolution. Both the sixteenth- and eighteenth-century increases in n Achieve-
63. McClelland, 50-53.
64. For a short summary see McClelland, 46-47.
65. McClelland, 145-149.
 WEBER'S THESIS AS AN HISTORICAL EXPLANATION 319
ment level were accompanied by strong popular Protestant movements within
the church, and the falls in the n Achievement corresponded to a time when
Protestantism in England was not very active but was becoming respectable.
In a study conducted by Hagen of the origins of the entrepreneurial in-
novators of the industrial revolution, it was found that out of six to eight
percent of the British population belonging to Non-conformist Protestant
groups (Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians) came more than one-third of the
known innovators of the time. It should be noted that an establishment of a posi-
tive correlation is not a causal analysis, and McClelland did well to mention that
such examination in itself could not prove whether it was Protestantism that was
responsible in this case for the high ~z Achievement within certain influential
groups, or whether it was their need for achievement that induced them to be-
come Protestants. But insofar as a proof of such historical occurrence could be
obtained at all, McClelland's team has shown that there were grounds for such a
contention. For in a classic study of two similar Mexican villages that were
fortunately discovered to have been converted at the same time to Catholicism
and Protestantism respectively, it was demonstrated that residents of the
Protestant village scored much higher on the n Achievement scale and that the
village as a whole was more prosperous than the other.'jK
There is little doubt that, despite the high degree of sophistication, skill,
and imagination of McClelland's project, it still leaves many questions un-
answered, and it does not exhaust the subject. But what is perhaps of greater
importance - at least regarding the controversy on the origins of capitalism
-is that it brought the Weber thesis up to date, in the sense of improving on
it according to the present capabilities of organized knowledge. As such it has
contributed not only to the reinvigoration of the old thesis itself but also to the
creation of an outstanding example of llistorical explanation and its com-
plexities. Weber's profound scholarship had uniquely brought together a study
of concrete historical problems with fruitful reasoning as to how such a study
could satisfy the requirements of an understanding of history. Weber's con-
tribution in this respect has been that he freed historical and social analysis
from some of the greatest competing fetishes of modern social theory-
idealism, reductionist materialism, and abstract scientism - without losing
the positive contributions of these approaches to a healthy modern social
science. For the old idealist approach, according to which social. history could
be conceived in terms of ideas developed by authoritative observers and
philosophers, had led to the materialist critique according to which history
was not moved by abstract ideas but by somewhat extra-behavioral factors
like technological and economic changes, causing by themselves breakdowns
of old social structures and creating thereby new styles of thinking and be-

66. Zbid., 406-411.

320 EHUD SPRINZAK

having. And both were criticized by positivist scientism which maintained that
meaningful knowledge could not be obtained by either, but had to do with the
application of certain reliable methods of gathering information. Weber
did not accept totally any of these: but rather than rejecting them all, he
sought to modify them. As for the first, he showed that the problem was not
to demonstrate a direct link between ideas and consequent intentional action,
but between ideas and patterns of social behavior interrelated in an uninten-
tional way. Regarding the second, materialism, he showed that under certain
circumstances it became an important contribution to any historical ex-
planation, but that it could not replace all the others and has to be conceived
as a limited explanation. As for scientism, following the neo-Kantian philos-
ophy, Weber argued that scientific method was conditioned neither by the
subject matter of the research nor by the methods of its operations but by the
basic fact that understanding meant human operation of a choice of meaningful
variables in an infinite reality and its ordering in a causal relationship according
to certain demonstrable rules. Thus he could argue that science gets its
meanings for our understanding not from the logic of argument that it develops
(though it gets its validity from it) but from cultural orientation of the milieu
in which it acts - a milieu that could conceivably differ from generation to
generation. Carefully applying these postulates, Weber has tried to work out
the line of argument that could open the way to a systematic non-materialist
explanation of the rise of modern capitalism. McClelland, fully aware of
Weber's delicate specifications, followed his direction and demonstrated how
a proper use of modern techniques could transfer an argument of great cultural
interest into a useful theoretical framework. Such a framework made it possible
to go beyond the traditional way of proof by illustration or by authoritative
quotation so that the theory could be empirically testable.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Weber's Thesis as an Historical Explanation
Ehud Sprinzak
History and Theory, Vol. 11, No. 3. (1972), pp. 294-320.
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[Footnotes]

10
Puritanism and the Spirit of Capitalism
Winthrop S. Hudson
Church History, Vol. 18, No. 1. (Mar., 1949), pp. 3-17.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-6407%28194903%2918%3A1%3C3%3APATSOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W

34
Max Weber and Empirical Social Research
Paul F. Lazarsfeld; Anthony R. Oberschall
American Sociological Review, Vol. 30, No. 2. (Apr., 1965), pp. 185-199.
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