TY - JOUR
T1 - Issue editor's preface
AU - BAEHR, Peter
PY - 2005/3/1
Y1 - 2005/3/1
N2 - This issue of JCS marks the centenary of one of the most debated works of social science: Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism. Originally published in 1905, as a two-part essay, it was reworked in the summer of 1919 and subtly reshaped to fit Weber’s research programme for the sociology of the world religions.1 Probing, passionate, inspired, opinionated, remorseless – the qualities of the essay strikingly parallel the early Protestants who Weber wrote about. His sympathy for them as inner-directed rebels against tradition is palpable. Tormented by inner demons of his own, the writer of The Protestant Ethic saw nothing incongruous about a religious ethos that made forceful spiritual demands on the believer – or one, indeed, that came to suggest that the purpose of life was to be tested rather than consoled.
AB - This issue of JCS marks the centenary of one of the most debated works of social science: Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism. Originally published in 1905, as a two-part essay, it was reworked in the summer of 1919 and subtly reshaped to fit Weber’s research programme for the sociology of the world religions.1 Probing, passionate, inspired, opinionated, remorseless – the qualities of the essay strikingly parallel the early Protestants who Weber wrote about. His sympathy for them as inner-directed rebels against tradition is palpable. Tormented by inner demons of his own, the writer of The Protestant Ethic saw nothing incongruous about a religious ethos that made forceful spiritual demands on the believer – or one, indeed, that came to suggest that the purpose of life was to be tested rather than consoled.
UR - http://commons.ln.edu.hk/sw_master/3938
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=30444444667&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1468795X05050035
DO - 10.1177/1468795X05050035
M3 - Editorial/Preface (Journal)
SN - 1468-795X
VL - 5
SP - 5
EP - 9
JO - Journal of Classical Sociology
JF - Journal of Classical Sociology
IS - 1
ER -