M Max Weber, Spirit of Capitalism Dan Mills University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA First published in 1904–1905, Max Weber ’ s Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus made an immediate impact in soci- ology and continues to elicit analysis, debate, and criticism. In this text, Weber explores the influ- ence of Protestant thought on the individual alongside the contemporaneous rise of a market- driven economic system in the early modern West. The very title contains the complicated term Geist, which had been important to German thought even before Hegel, as it can mean “mind,”“intel- lect,”“ghost,” and of course “spirit.” Weber ’ s Protestant Ethic elicited immediate critical debate, and in subsequent writings Weber responded with considerable hostility to critics who believed he had not adequately incorporated aspects of psychology into his discussion of the Protestant ascetic ethic. At one point, Weber (2002, p. 226) even refers to “the uselessness of what passes for ‘psychology’ as a means of his- torical explanation of phenomena.” In spite of, or perhaps because of, its polarizing effect on its readers then and now, Weber ’ s text remains rele- vant among sociologists, early modern scholars, Protestant theologians, and Marxist historians. Although much of the early criticism of Weber ’ s text focused on a perceived lack of psychological depth, Weber nonetheless fre- quently refers to psychology and psychological concepts in the Protestant Ethic. Weber (2002, p. 69, Weber ’ s emphasis) writes that he seeks to discover Protestantism’ s “psychological drives [Antriebe],” which controlled people’ s behavior, and not “ethical compendia” that arose through “Church discipline, pastoral care and preaching,” which came about through “purely religious ideas.” Because of its “doctrine of grace,” according to Weber (2002, p. 87), Lutheranism did not explain Antriebe as a “systematic conduct of life” that enforced a “methodical rationalization of life.” Calvinism’ s notion of predestination, however, consisted of a “logical consistency” that provided “psychological efficacy.” In one of his own notes, Weber explains that he does not believe psychology’ s “conceptual basis” useful for his project because its “terminology” would lead of an “amateurish” elevation of the “directly comprehensible and even trivial to the level of scholarly erudition.” This would create, according to Weber (2002, p. 158), a “false impression of an enhanced conceptual precision.” In another of his own notes, Weber (2002, p. 276) criticizes his contemporary Werner Sombart’ s belief that entrepreneurs exhibit “tendencies” that highlight an entrepreneurial psychology, and instead characterizes entrepreneurial behavior as “pragmatic” and “rational” because it serves as a “means to an end of economic success.” Weber wrote elsewhere on religion, notably in his Religionssoziologie, a word he himself coined # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2018 D.A. Leeming (ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27771-9_9059-1