The “Christian Spirit” of Capitalism and the Protestant Reformation, between Structuralist Analysis and Historical Evidence

• Authors: Aurelian-Petruș Plopeanu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

For many reasons, it is true that the Protestant Reformation unleashed the forces that lay behind the emergence of capitalism. Such a system was compatible with the emancipation of individuals, their mentalities, due to specific societal reforms and transformations. Therefore, it gave birth, in an unprecedented way, to a “new form of capitalism”. But the main idea I want to stress in this article is that the capitalist ethos was present before the Reformation, many centuries ago, in what is called now the “Christian spirit”. In this direction, I emphasize many theories which disagree with the Weber’s well-known thesis about the relation between capitalism and religion, especially when it comes to generalize a particular result that is both theologically vague and empirically disprovable.

Keywords

EN

Capitalism; Institutions; “Christian spirit”; Religion

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human and Social Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 117-132

Dates

published

2016-10-01

online

2016-10-21

Contributors

author

Aurelian-Petruș Plopeanu

• Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi,

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/hssr-2016-0026