Ghosh Article
-
Upload
tewfiq-al-sharaiyra -
Category
Documents
-
view
216 -
download
0
Transcript of Ghosh Article
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
1/39
History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221
Max Webers idea of Puritanism: a case study
in the empirical construction of the
Protestant ethic$
P. Ghosh*Department of History, St Annes College, Oxford OX2 6HS, UK
Received 31 January 2003; accepted 3 February 2003
Abstract
The article examines the construction of Puritanism in Max Webers famous essays on the
Protestant Ethic, and finds that the principal, empirical source for this lies in a set of neglected
writings deriving from the religious margins of Britain: Scotland, Ireland and EnglishUnitarianism. However, the impulse to construct Puritanism was not simply empirical, but
conceptual. Historical Puritanism would never have aroused so much of Webers attention
except as a close approximation to ascetic Protestantismthe avowed subject of the
Protestant Ethic and an undeniably new and modern idea. The nature of Weberian asceticism
and its relationship to Puritanism is thus the articles second major concern. Besides exploring
the intellectual world of Max Weber, the article also offers a more general, theoretical finding:
that empirical sources are not tablets of stone, eternally available to the truth-seeking
historian; rather they have a history of their own. They rise into prominence (or fall out of
sight) in much the same way as secondary literature, because they can hardly be understood
independently of organizing concepts, and so seldom are.
r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
$Abbreviations: PE, Protestant Ethic; AfSS, Archiv f.ur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; GARS,
Gesammelte Aufs.atze zur Religionssoziologie (T.ubingen, 1920) Vol.i; WL, Gesammelte Aufs.atze zur
Wissenschaftslehre (T.ubingen, 1968) ed. J. Winckelmann; WuG, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (T.ubingen,
1972) ed. J. Winckelmann; MWG, Max Weber Gesamtausgabe ed. Horst Baier et al. (T .ubingen, 1984);
letters by Weber within the latter edition are cited simply as Briefe. Where unspecified, place of publicationis London.
*Tel.: +44-1865-274800.
E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Ghosh).
0191-6599/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0191-6599(03)00002-0
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
2/39
The empirical status of Max Webers Protestant Ethic (or PE) is undoubtedly one
of the most problematic aspects of a legendary, yet problematic text. Weber insisted
that it was a purely historical work offering a purely historical presentation
[XX.53; XXI.109],1 yet it plainly does not offer an historical account based on theideal of the past for its own sake. On the contrary, Weber was emphatic that the
concepts, or leading ideas, which supplied the necessary framework for any account
of the past, could not be derived from the ideas adhered to by past actors, but only
from those of the present-day analyst. It was concepts alone which allowed one to
make any kind of search amidst a practically infinite mass, or chaos, of empirical
matter: life in its irrational reality and the possible significations it contains are
inexhaustible.2 But since historical work was not anchored to a constant foundation
at some particular point in the past, it followed that the concepts of the modern
analyst, and the fundamental value-scheme or Kultur which underlay them, would
themselves become obsolete as the time horizon of the ever-moving present
continued onwards: At some point the colours change: the significance of
perspectives which have been employed instinctively becomes uncertain, the path
is lost in the twilight. The light cast by the great problems of Kultur has moved on.3
There was certainly a magnificent candour to this. When Weber wrote these words in
1904, he was anticipating not merely the general disappearance of his oeuvre at some
unspecified point after his death, but that of the PEin particular, the epicentre of his
own Kultur and scholarly labours at that dateand this even before the text had
been written. On the other hand his conception of built-in scholarly obsolescence
also served a defensive purpose alongside that of theoretical rigour, and there can beno doubt that he would have dismissed out of hand those historians and sociologists,
chiefly outside Germany, who have sought since the 1930s to criticise or defend his
findings empiricallythat is, from their own vantage point and assumptionsbut
who were so far removed from the Kultur of the Wilhelmine Reich, that, had it
occurred to them to inquire as to what Webers value-scheme was, they would have
declared it irrelevant.4 Still, if this kind of intellectual encounter is better described as
1References in square brackets in the text are either to the original text of the PEin AfSSXX (1904) 154,
XXI (1905), 1110 in the form [XX.1], or, as page numbers alone, to new material inserted in the revised
1920 text in GARS i.17206. All translations from German are my own. No disrespect for current English
language translations of the PE is intended thereby; but in my opinion none of these is framed according
to sufficiently historical principleson which point see my comment Translation as a conceptual act,
Max Weber Studies 2 (2001), 5963, or n.62 below. More specifically, none makes any adequate distinction
between the 19045 and the 1920 texts.2 Die ,,Objektivit.at sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis [1904], WL 213; for
chaos e.g. ibid., 177, 197, 207.3 Ibid., 214.4For a scholarly introduction to this literature, Malcolm MacKinnon, The Longevity of the Thesis: a
Critique of the Critics in ed. H. Lehmann and G. Roth, Webers Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence,
Contexts (Cambridge, 1993) c.10; still more recent is R.F. Hamilton, The Social Misconstruction of Reality
(New Haven, 1996), c.3. At first sight it seems surprising that anyone would want to pursue such an
obviously unhistorical exercise into the 1990s. However, it should be borne in mind that the principal
contributors have never been historians of religion or ideas. The only significant historian participants
came from within economic history and are now far in the past (H.M. Robertson, Kurt Samuelson),
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221184
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
3/39
a mismatch, it would appear to yield a straightforward result: that though Weber
remains well worthy of investigation as a product of the Kultur of his own day, and
as the author of ideas and concepts which have a perceived relevance for ours, one
may safely dispense with any further examination of the empirical foundations of thePE in the 17th century. If from a Weberian perspective empirical criticism is now
trivial and irrelevant, from the standpoint of early modern history the PE has long
since joined the unending list of past historical works which are wrong or
superseded.
However, though there is great strength in this position, it surely requires some
refinement. Weber was emphatic that the academic science or Wissenschaft which
was his lifelong vocation was not a matter of Kultur and values alone. Though he
took value positions to be fundamental and ultimately non-negotiable, he did not
accept that this rendered the role of science trivial, or that anyone committed to
the values of science could simply advance their value positions without further
ado, regardless of criticism and discussion by others with different values: the
distinguishing feature of value-free science was precisely that it could render
adherence to values significantly more fruitful and socially productive.5 Now one of
the specific disciplines imposed by science was the check imposed by empirical
testing, and one of the peculiarities of the PE is that, unlike many other classics of
European thought which preceded or eluded a university context, it has an extremely
high empirical and scholarly content. So whatever Webers predictions of
obsolescence for the future, he was extremely anxious to establish its evidential
and scholarly qualifications when he wrote it, just as he was similarly concerned todefend himself against critics in his own lifetime. Statements about the necessary
empirical foundation of the PE abound in the text:
I need hardly emphasise that, insofar as it occupies a purely dogmatic sphere, this
sketch relies at all points on formulations made in the literature on church and
dogmatic history; thus it is borrowed at second hand and to that extent makes
absolutely no claim to originality. Self-evidently I have sought to steep myself
in the sources on Reformation history so far as I can. However, deliberately to
ignore the intensive and acute theological labours of many decades as a result,
instead of allowing oneself to be guided by this literature towards anunderstanding of the sourcesas is simply unavoidablewould have been a
great presumption. I can only hope that the enforced brevity of the sketch has not
led to incorrect formulations and that I have avoided significant misunderstand-
ings of an empirical [sachlich] kind at least.6
(footnote continued)
leaving the field today to sociologists. It would seem that the underlying concern here has not been
historical, but rather to clarify the status of a canonical father of their discipline.5For the classical statement of this position, Science as a Vocation [1917/19], MWG I/17.71111.6 [XXI.3 n.3]. Cf. [XXI.5 n.4] on the appallingy undergrowth of footnotes, which were however
necessary to enable the reader... to make at least a provisional check of the ideas in this sketch; or [XX.19
n.1] lamenting the lack of detailed empiricalor concrete [sachlich] engagement with certain historicaltheses
of Sombart [on the evolution of modern capitalism] by reviewers and critics.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 185
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
4/39
So in order to understand the PE, even as a 20th century construction, we must be
able to offer some account of the role played by Webers scholarship, as of his
reliance on the scholarship of others. Belief in evidential positivism was wholly alien
to him, but still belief in the reciprocal relationship between scientific empiricismand Kultur, and the concepts generated by Kultur, was undoubtedly his. In this way a
study of Webers empiricism remains a study of his ideas. Many possible
empirical examples present themselves to our scrutiny, but in what follows I have
selected the concept of Puritanism, principally because of its range and significance.
As we shall see, it is in large part a synonym for ascetic Protestantism, the declared
subject of Part II of the PE; but whereas the latter is palpably a modern invention,
Puritanism is not. It thus supplies the single most expansive empirical test-case
available to us. After first establishing the terms status and meaning (Section I), I
seek to explain how Puritanism was constructed in fact (Sections II and III), before
finally considering the empirical construction of the PEas a whole, and in particular
the position of ascetic Protestantism (Section IV).
I
Puritanism is a central term in Webers vocabulary yet one of the least discussed.7
No doubt one reason for the absence of comment lies in its apparent self-evidence:
talk about Puritanism was uncalled for because this was not a new idea by Weber.But if this was the assumption, then it is mistaken. The definition he offers of this
many-sided term makes it plain that although the natural or initial association of
this term is English (or Anglo-American), he will not be content with too narrow or
specific a use of the term: Here we always use the expressiony in the sense which it
acquired in the popular language of the 17th century: [that of] the ascetically directed
religious movements in Holland and England, regardless of differences in dogma or
plans for church institutions. [XXI.2 & n.2] So Puritanism is essentially a synonym
for ascetic Protestantism in its English, Dutch and (in fact) American heartlands
[cf. XX.7]. Now this is not merely geographically expansive; it constitutes a generic
term, a half-way house between a specific historical description and a sociologicaltype. Alongside an apparently conventional historical association of Puritanism with
(most obviously) 17th century England, the broader use of the term emerges when
Weber declares that both Sebastian Franck (c.14991542), one of the most
individual thinkers of the early German Reformation, and the deistic Benjamin
Franklin (17061790) are generic Puritans. [XXI.8 n.7, 17 n.22] Puritanism is
indeed of much the same order as ascetic Protestantism in its combination of a
typological element (ascetic) with an historical one (Protestantism), even if in the
former case this is less visible. Yet Puritanism has its advantages over ascetic
7 It is, for example, almost invisible in the recent synoptic compendium Ed. Hans Kippenberg and
Martin Riesebrodt, Max Webers ,,Religionssystematik (T.ubingen, 2001), even allowing for the fact that
this volume focuses primarily on the sociology of religion rather than the PE.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221186
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
5/39
Protestantism, for if, like most of Webers readers, we find the latter too remote and
insufficiently historical, and seek instead for a relatively simple and empirically
recognisable shorthand for the religious concerns of the PE, it is not to be found in
Calvinismagainst which usage Weber strongly protested8 but in Puritanism.Indeed one of many possible improvements to the original title might be to change
Protestant Ethic to Puritan Ethic, since it is evident that in ordinary usage the
traditional and capacious label of Protestant does not denote the novel, sharply
formulated and purely Weberian concept of ascetic Protestant in the mind of the
reader. (On the other hand, once we know that Protestant was intendedby Weber to
denote ascetic Protestant, then the title becomes indefeasible.)
Another obvious reason why Puritanism should have eluded comment lies in the
sheer proliferation of religious labels at work in the PE. In Part I, consistent with its
status as a set of prolegomena, there is almost no reference to Puritans, just as there
is very little reference to asceticism, and the discussion is almost entirely in terms of
Protestantism.9 Of course, Protestantism was then drastically transmuted into
ascetic Protestantism in Part II, and it is this which supplies a first and most general
type of label. There is, next, the specific breakdown of the constituents of this
movement: Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism and T.aufertum (the group of German
and English adult baptisers, which cannot be captured by the English term
Baptists alone). Somewhere in-between these two come Puritans and Puritanism,
so making up a third conceptual stratum. In-between, because although in general
terms Puritanism can and should be taken as an equivalent for ascetic
Protestantism, closer reading of the text reveals a slightly more complicated story,since the profile of Puritanism varies somewhat as Weber moves through the four
component groups within ascetic Protestantism in Part II Section I.
The case of Calvinism is the most straightforward. Here there is in effect an
equation between Calvinism and Puritanism, and the latter term is frequently
deployed. A symbolic reference to steel-hard Puritan merchants [XXI.20] is
particularly striking: after all, steel-hard might well be described as the ultimate
ascetic accolade given its famous deployment at the end of the text, when the steel-
hardness of an ethic is transmuted into the steel-hardness of a modern rational and
capitalist framework, a steel-hard housing [XXI.108].10 Hereafter persistent
8 Antikritisches zum ,,Geist des Kapitalismus, AfSS 30 (1910), 178; cf. The Protestant Ethic Debate
(Liverpool, 2001) tr. A. Harrington & M. Shields, 623. One could compose an entire bibliography of
Webers readers and critics who have disqualified themselves on this ground alone.9There is one, apparently innocuous exception to this in the 1904 text [XX.7] and one footnote reference
which looks forward to Part II, describing it as the historical pursuit of the Puritan concept of the calling
backwards in time [XX.50 n.1]. Then there is a 1920 insertion which, by transgressing the assumptions
underlying the original text, might be deemed thoughtless in a rhetorical or presentational sense [73].10 In German ein stahlhartes Geh .ause. This is the image which Talcott Parsons famously translated as
an iron cage, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930), 180. Having taken on a cultural life
of its own, the phrase has inspired a commentary: David Chalcraft, Bringing the text back in: on ways of
reading the iron cage metaphor in the two editions of The Protestant Ethic, in ed. L.J. Ray and M. Reed,
Organizing Modernity (1994), 1645; Peter Baehr, The iron cage and the shell as hard as steel:
Parsons, Weber and the stahlhartes Geh .ause metaphor in The Protestant Ethic, History and Theory 40
(2001), 15369. Both authors agree that the best rendering of Geh.ause is shell, displaying much virtuosity
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 187
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
6/39
references to Puritans and Puritanism are less frequent, but even so, the strategic
intention of making Puritanism a bridge or linking idea across all the specific
components of ascetic Protestantism remains firm in the cases of Pietism and
Methodism. Thus the treatment of Pietism opens with a reminder that almost allprominent representatives of Puritanism have been included amongst the Pietists at
one time or another [XXI.401]; again, the fact that Methodism is to be seen
primarily as a development of Pietism in no way precludes Webers aligning it in
relation to Puritanism as wellas an emotionally based enhancement of the Puritan
type. [XXI.59] In a revealing usage he notes that where Wesley struggled against the
justification through works typical of his age, he simply revived the old-Puritan idea
[altpuritanisch]y, a remark which carries the underlying implication that some later
ascetic developments via Pietism might be regarded as new or late-Puritan, whilst
Puritan supplies a generic similarity overriding all differences in detail. [XXI.58] It
is only the section on Baptists and T.aufertum where Weber fails to make a link to
Puritanism by name, and prefers instead to invoke Calvinist and Protestant
asceticism [XXI.68, 712]. The obvious explanation lies in his conviction that
T.aufertum represents a distinct and quite separate route to asceticism from
Calvinismvia sect formation rather than by inner religious purityand thus it
raises a separate series of issues for discussion. This brief lapse of Puritanism as a
discursive thread here can be paralleled by occasional references elsewhere, where
Puritanism takes on a more partial and conventional characterhence more specific
references to Puritan, Baptist and Pietist Christianity or to English Puritanism
[XXI.53 n.108; 74, 90]. However, the latter usage continues to imply thatPuritanism on its own is a more general category, and such is the broader truth,
which always prevails when Weber is trying to describe ascetic Protestantism as a
whole: both when he is introducing his general schemewhere he of course includes
the T.aufertum of Baptists, Quakers and Mennonites under the Puritan heading
[XXI.2 n.2]and also when the discussion moves away from the individual religious
groups. Thus at the moment he ceases to talk specifically about T.aufertum the next
sentence begins: We have now to follow out the Puritan idea of the callingy
[XXI.73]. This is indeed what occurs in the final section (II.2), where in contrast to
what has gone before Weber now proposes to treat ascetic Protestantism as one
holistic mass [Gesamtmasse] [XXI.74], and the text becomes densely saturated withreferences to Puritans and Puritanism as a result.11 Here is the clearest testimony
to the conceptual status of Puritanism as a common idea penetrating all the
component groups of ascetic Protestantism; it reveals, too, that even Weber found
it a less cumbrous term to use.
(footnote continued)
and learning in advocating their case. Without entering into detailed criticism, I note, however, that shell
is an organic metaphor quite alien to Weber, and one which implies quite different German equivalents
(Schale, H.ulse). Housing is not merely the elementary and literal rendition ofGeh.ause, but its implication
of a structure which both restrains and provides for modern man, is the term which best captures Webers
original meaning. The point may be substantiated by reference to its appearance in a variety of other
contexts within Webers oeuvre, something which was not undertaken by either of the cited authors.11See e.g. [XXI.89-104] passim.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221188
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
7/39
The consequences of this position, which are only implicit in the PE, become fully
apparent in the pre-war writings for Economy and Society and the Economic Ethics
of the World Religions. Within a comparative focus, it becomes clear that Weber
has crystallised Puritanism/ascetic Protestantism as one of the great historical worldreligions: thus we encounter Puritanism and Islam, Puritanism a n d Judaism,
Romanism and Puritanism, Catholics, Jews and Puritans.12 It is evident from such
remarks that even if his thinking about pre-Puritan Christianity fell well short of any
clear-cut, ideal-typical formulation, still Puritanism possessed that kind of logical
clarity in abundance, and was thus implicitly marked off from previous forms of
Christianity as practically a separate world religionsomething which is of course
also implied by the argument of the PE. The most prominent example of the
handling of Puritanism as a major unit in the comparative history and sociology of
world religions lies in the conclusion to Webers pre-war essay on Confucianism,
published in 1915, a conclusion which he significantly enhanced and entrenched
under the heading Confucianism and Puritanism when it was revised in 19191920.
Both of these world religions were eminently rational and worldly; yet such
similarities masked forms of polar opposition, since their worldliness and rationality
operated in quite different ways. Exposing this contrast led Weber to offer his fullest
and most explicit definition of the term Puritanism:
Now Puritanism represents the most radically opposed type of rational treatment
of the world [to that of Confucianism]. It is a concept with no single meaning.
Practically speaking, and in its most concrete sense, the ecclesia pura [pure
church] signified above all else the Christian community which took communionin Gods name purified of any morally reprobate participants, though it might rest
on a Calvinist or Baptist foundation and, in accordance with this, its church
constitution might be framed either along more clerical [synodal] or congrega-
tionalist lines. But in a broader sense one can understand this heading as including
all the ethically rigorous, Christian-ascetic lay communities; thus as including the
T.aufer, Mennonites and Quakers, with their mystical-pneumatic origins, the
ascetic Pietists and the Methodists. The characteristic feature of this type as
distinct from [Confucianism] is then: that here rationalization of the world, the
reverse of flight from the world, prevails despite ascetic rejection of the world, or
rather it prevails precisely within the form of ascetic rejection.13
All the same, Weber could never dispense with ascetic Protestantism.
Puritanism was an essentially historical term, whether it be used in its specific,
17th century sense or in its wider, and more authentically Weberian frame, as a
component within the long-term evolution of modern Occidental rationalism and
12Respectively Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Religi.ose Gemeinschaften (T.ubingen, 2001) Ed. Hans
Kippenberg, MWG I/22-2.422, 428 (cf. 364f. on Islam); WuG, 717.13 Konfuzianismus IV, AfSS 41 (1915), 375-6; cf. MWGI/19.4645. More predictably, given Webers
assumption of a particular affinity between the two ethics, his treatment of Talmudic Judaism in the pre-
war sociology of religion for Economy and Society is suffused by a comparison with Puritanism: MWGI/
22-2.41432. On the other hand, it is not systematically pursued, and it is by no means the only such
comparison that occurs. In these respects the conclusion to Confucianism stands alone.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 189
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
8/39
asceticism across millennia. By contrast ascetic Protestantism encapsulated
asceticism, a trans-historical (or sociological) type. Together with mysticism it
constituted a central typology within Webers religious sociology, whereas any
equation between Puritanism and the idea of a pervasive or trans-historical typewas almost non-existent.14 Having a mind which was both historically and
systematically inclined, Weber needed both historical and typological (or socio-
logical) terms, even if a broad equation between Puritan religious communities
and all essentially ascetic Protestant communities remained a tolerably stable
resting point both in the PE and thereafter.15
II
Yet within the PE this equation raises an obvious question. As noted, Weber was
quite explicit that the concepts used to structure any account of human reality, both
sociological and historical, were framed by the present-day inquirer; they were not
ultimately derived from concepts pertaining to the subjects or period under
discussion.16 Thus it is clear in fact that Webers root concept was not Puritanism
but ascetic Protestantismhence the titles deployed throughout the PEwhich
was a Weberian, not an historical construct. Yet he commonly equated the two. So
how was it, given his un-historical starting point, that he could light upon a concept
such as Puritanism which was historical in derivation, at least in origin?
There are two kinds of answer to this. One is that, without subscribing to any
na.ve or inflexible view of an objective past, it may be said that a Weberian
construction of Puritanism was at least objectively possible. In the 16th and 17th
centuries the term Puritan could be construed as possessing something of the
psychological quality that Weber was looking for in religious behaviour: it bridged
the gap between the external imperatives contained within theological doctrine and
church government, and the more personal actions of everyday life. If the most
obvious initial meaning of the term lay in the idea cited above of the ecclesia pura, so
making Puritanism a movement for institutional reform of the church, still this
movement took place within an Anglicanism which was itself capacious,
decentralized and relatively ill-defined; furthermore, it first occurred at a time when
institutional secessionthe formation of sectswas not seen as possible. As a result
Puritanism was associated not merely with external and institutional reform, but
14For a rare occurrence see the Zwischenbetrachtung within the Economic Ethics of the World
Religions, when Weber considers the possible revolutionary tendency of virtuoso religiosity under the
(opposed) ascetic and mystic headings. To the former he allocates the Type: the genuinely puritanical
revolutions: AfSS 41, (1915) 403. However, both the political context and the dilution of Puritans and
Puritanism into the more general puritanical indicate that this is unusual. Another oddity is a one-off
reference to Babylonian Puritanism, when discussing the Jews of the exile: GARSiii.372. However, this is
not a typological reference, but merely an attempt to create a proper noun label, so as to distinguish the
Babylonian from the Egyptian exiles.15WuG, 717.16See Die ,,Objektivit.at sozialwissenschaftlichery Erkenntnis [1904], esp. WL 196200.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221190
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
9/39
also with the inner purification of individuals in their local practice and conduct.
This occurred directly through the kind of traditional examples of Puritan conduct
that Weber continues to invoke in Part II Section II (the maypole, the Book of
Sports, the theatre); through the less well-known forms of economic conduct whichstructure this section as a whole (the preciousness of time, commitment to labour,
the vocation and saving); and also through the search for personal election and the
signs thereof, which provides a principal component of Part II Section I. Of course,
in this last case, Weber transmutes traditionally external theological doctrine into an
internal and psychological imperative. Now it is true that after 1640 Puritanism also
developed via the institutional route of sect formationan idea which Weber
preferred to identify with the Baptisers, as a strand set somewhat apart from
Puritanism. Even so, such developments came only at the end of some 70 or 80 years
of an individually based Puritanism, which could never be defined solely in
institutional terms, because it always placed a strong emphasis on personal religious
merit. Thus historical Puritanism made available to Weber a set of general
resources centred on personal election and personal conduct;17 and these resources
supply the foundation for almost the whole of the second part of the PE, always
excepting the brief section on the Baptisers and the sectarian idea (though this too
could be subsumed under the later history of Puritanism). As a result the Puritan
conduct manuals which he cites as being of central importanceRichard Baxters
Christian Directory, Robert Barclays Apology, Philipp Speners Theologisches
Bedencken [XXI.75]really were a treasure trove, offering original texts which could
be mined in detail. In a very general sense, then, we may say that the PE had asignificant empirical basis; and this too was in agreement with Webers prescriptions
in the sphere of method, since although he insisted on an original concept formation
in the present, he also accepted that there would then be a continuous process of
convergence between concept and the empirical data of the past, a process which (as
we have seen) would only be terminated by an alteration in the agenda of the
present.18
Even so, given his presentist assumptions, Weber would hardly have reached
back to a specific historical locus in the 17th century without the assistance of
contemporary thinking in his own dayand here was his second route to
Puritanism. Looking first to Germany, it is clear that the rise of Kulturprotestan-tismus, a Protestantism tacitly freed from church ties and possessing a primarily
individual, ethical and psychological basis, was fundamental. When to this is
added the predictable tendency of Continental thinkers to assimilate the processes of
English history to their own 19th century experience, and so to locate the
revolutionary 1640s as a formative episode, it is easy to see why ideas about
17As is well-known, there was not always a perfect match between the Calvinist theology that Weber
admired for its logicality and potency, and the Puritan practice he associated with it: Richard Baxter, a
weak predestinarian, is an obvious case. Here Weber was prepared to subordinate even dogma to his
primary emphasis on the individual personality [XXI.74 n.1], though it should also be remembered that
Puritan and ascetic practice was never to be traced to one source alone.18See esp. WL, 2039, 214. I do not inquire here whether Webers methodological position is entirely
consistent.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 191
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
10/39
English Puritanism were widely if gaseously accepted beyond the Channel in Webers
day. Even for an author as uninterested in England as Thomas Mann, the Puritan
origin of English ideas of the state and of freedom was as obvious as the force of
1789 in France.19 The same stereotype undoubtedly underlay Webers interest inEnglish Puritanism, but with the major difference that Weber had a serious interest
in England and so he tried to move beyond stereotype, to develop it in an empirical
and wissenschaftlich fashion.20 Even so, despite a general context which was
apparently helpful, there was in fact no substantial discourse regarding Puritanism
within German academic literatureabove all because of a primary assumption that
English Protestantism was to be understood as a local and insular peculiarity, a
deviation either from the Lutheran norm, or else from the most obvious Continental
alternative to Lutheranism, Genevan Calvinism.
If we look at the types of German scholarship that were of importance for Weber,
there was (first) the dogmatic approach, epitomised by Matthias Schneckenburgers
comparative analysis of the dogmatic structures of Lutheranism and Calvinism
dating from the 1840s, a work which Weber went out of his way to praise in the PE
[XXI.21].21 It should be said that this was not merely a work of dogmatics, since it
also penetrated into the psychological sphere which was Webers primary concern;
but still dogmatics did supply the overt frame of reference, and this hinged upon
Calvinism, not Puritanism. Insofar as the work had a regional bias, it looked either
to the Swiss Calvinism of Schneckenburgers lecture audiencewhich was quite the
reverse of Webers viewpoint, with its specific dismissal of Calvins personal views
and of Switzerland in favour of Calvinism as a mass phenomenon in areas ofpotential capitalist Kultur [XXI.6 n.5]or else towards the church politics of
German states, as they sought to fuse Lutherans and Calvinists under the auspices of
united state churches (the Prussian Union of 1822 being the most obvious example).
But none of this came anywhere near England. Schneckenburgers focus became
more English in his supplementary lectures on the small Protestant church
parties, which included accounts of both Quakerism and Methodism, and this
secondary work also exerted an undoubted influence on Weber [XXI.59 nn.115, 117].
But it too remained a dogmatic treatment. Methodism was observed from the
standpoint of Reformed doctrine,22 as a derivative of Calvinist theology, and the
idea of Puritanism with its social and ethical connotations does not feature.The acme of German interest in English religious history, and a work which came
as close as any to breaking away from a purely German construction of the subject,
19Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Munich, 1918), 238. Of course this view has a genealogy going
back (at least) to Voltaires Lettres philosophiques (1734).20For a biographical approach to Webers Anglophilia, see Guenther Roth, Weber the Would-Be
Englishman in ed. idem & Hartmut Lehmann, Webers Protestant Ethic (Cambridge, 1993), 83121, and
then his Max Webers deutsch-englische Familengeschichte 1800-1950 (T.ubingen, 2001), cc.I, II, IV, XIV.21Cf. XX.46 n.2; XXI.5 n.4. Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und reformirten Lehrbegriffes ed.
E. G.uder (Stuttgart, 1855); the text was edited posthumously from the notes of lectures delivered at the
new Bern Hochschule, Schneckenburger having died (aged 44) in 1848.22M. Schneckenburger, Vorlesungen .uber die Lehrbegriffe der kleinen protestantischen Kirchenparteien
ed. K. B. Hundeshagen (Frankfurt a.M., 1863), 103.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221192
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
11/39
was the important book by Hermann Weingarten on Die Revolutionskirchen
Englands (1868), which Weber deemed excellent [XXI.5 n.4]. However, the essence
of Weingartens standpoint was not purely religious, but rather that of religion
coloured by a strong liberal and political agenda.23 Thus his work offers a clearstatement of the thesis more commonly associated with Georg Jellineks famous
essay The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1895): that liberal
Protestantism rather than the French Revolution supplied the origin of European
liberties and of the rights of man.24 Indeed we can hardly be surprised that
Protestant claims of this kind long preceded Jellineks argument from an
emancipatory Judaic and legalistic perspective, and the religious-political agenda
was evidently one root of Webers perception of the books excellence, alongside its
pioneering scholarship in English pamphlet sources and ephemera. However, though
Weingartens views were undoubtedly agreeable, they served primarily as a support
only for Webers mapping of the sectarian idea, rather than for the more general
Puritan theme. Specifically, Weingarten drove a clear but all too restricted narrative
thread through 17th century England, centring on a single, linear transition from
Independentism through to Quakerism after 1653 (the date at which Cromwell
stamped down on politically subversive sectarians), a process which climaxed in the
creation of a free sectarian religiosity as entrenched by the English Toleration Act of
1689. So, even via this Anglocentric routealbeit one which, like most German
authors, Weingarten traced back to its Continental origins in Anabaptism25a
genuinely broad-ranging conspectus of English religious life was largely omitted. For
Weingarten Puritanism served only as a residual and general label: it surfaced in theintroduction to his account, but played little role in the principal action.26
Thirdly and lastly, there was Ernst Troeltschin Webers eyes much the most
important contemporary analyst of religious history. Like Weber, Troeltsch was
deeply interested in English religiosity, and he was similarly concerned with religion
as Kulturas a force shaping the totality of human conduct outside the institutional
sphere; but still this did not lead him to Puritanism. The degree of prominence the
term achieves in his famous later work, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und
Gruppen (The Social Doctrines of the Christian Churches and Groups, 1912), must be
23An obvious sign of Weingartens political views, and perhaps their cause, lies in his closeness to Carl
von Hase, at once university professor, liberal Protestant and deputy at the Frankfurt parliament: see the
entry for Weingarten, Hermann by F.C. Arnold in the Realencyklop .adie f.ur protestantische Theologie und
Kirche (Leipzig 18961913) ed. A. Hauck, Vol. 21.24Die Revolutionskirchen Englands (Leipzig, 1868), e.g. 447. There can in fact be no doubt that
Weingarten was a major (yet unacknowledged) source of inspiration for Jellinek: Die Erkl.arung der
Menschen- und B.urgerrechte (Leipzig, 1895), 315 passim.25Quakerism represented an historically successful and suitably tempered version of the enthusiasm of
the Anabaptists at M .unster in 1535; the comparison between the two then presented an obvious (but
unstated) analogy to the commonplace German liberal view of the revolution of 1848 as compared to 1688
in England: ibid., 2.26See c.1, The English Reformation of the 16th century. Puritanism and Independentism. The sub-title
signifies a transition from a vague and general concept to the more precise one. After the PE had been
published, the kind of criticism I outline here was then readily perceptible to German scholarship: see
Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (T.ubingen, 1912), 752 n.412.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 193
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
12/39
ascribed solely to the negative impact of the PE and the desire to practice a form of
damage limitation as a result;27 even so usage of the term remains a mere detail, and
it in no way explains the scheme of the book. The essence of Troeltschs viewpoint,
which was expounded with greatest clarity in the years 19031906 before the onset oracknowledgement of any Weberian disturbance, hinged on the fundamental
difference between old [alt] and modern [neu] Protestantism,28 that is, between a
church-based and an individual, post-institutional religion. The crucial point of
departure in the search for a new Protestantisma search that was, as Troeltsch
admitted, far from complete in his own daylay in the 18th century Enlightenment,
a distinctly post-Puritan era. Hence the weight of interest in this era displayed
both in his important encyclopedia article on the English moralists (1903), and also
in his major synthetic survey Protestant Christianity and Church in the modern
epoch of 1906a work whose coverage of the period after 1700 was never
superseded by any later writings.29 Both works were commended by Weber in the
original text of the PE,30 but despite obvious general similarities in approach and
interests, the commendation concealed major differences. Troeltsch maintained a
strict separation between institutional and individual religion, a separation which
was marked out (in his view) by a specific historical transition ca.1700 (or 1688 in
England). But this did not allow for Webers typologically messy (or sophisticated)
attempt to analyse religion in terms of the social ethics deriving from the practices of
a mass of individualsfor Troeltsch a modern phenomenonat a time when pre-
modern church-based religion was overtly supreme.31 In short, it did not allow for
17th century Puritanism and the English revolution that went with it. Thus thehistorical account offered by Troeltsch in 1906even though by then he had had the
27Soziallehren, 77380. As will be seen from the text, Troeltschs original and fundamental dividing line
was located c.1688 or (more crudely) 1700, with Calvinism consigned to the dustbin of old Protestant
history. However, the claim of the PEthat there was a modern ascetic Protestantism in the 17th century,
forced Troeltsch to redraw Calvinism, so that it was divided into primitive (and still old) Calvinism, and
new (or Weberian) Calvinism: ibid., 605794. Even so, Troeltschs central ideas about the later period
remained essentially unaltered, and Die Soziallehren did not go beyond 1700 except in a brief Conclusion.28 Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit, in ed. P. Hinneberg, Die Kultur der
Gegenwart (Berlin, 1906) Teil I, Abt. IV., 253458, here 450. The centrality of the distinction was
repeatedly enforced throughout Troeltschs lifetime: egg. Die Absolutheit des Christentums (T.ubingen and
Leipzig, 1902) 123, 94129; Soziallehren, Preface, 1 Nov. 1911, VIIVIII.29 Moralisten, englische (1903) in Realenzyklop .adie f.ur protestantische Theologie und Kirche ed.
A. Hauck (Leipzig, 1896-1913), xiii.436-61; Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit
cit. previous note.30 [XXI.3n.3, 5n.4, 14n.21, 31n.60] In the case of Protestantisches Christentum, this indicates that
Weber knew of Troeltschs text, and had conceivably seen some of it in draft before publication. However,
given their differences, the latter point is marginal at best.31Weber criticised Troeltsch with his customary lack of restraint for the simplistic assumption that
sociological types in religion (church, sect, individual) operated entirely separately and did not
interpenetrate each other: at the first conference of the German Sociological Society in 1910, GazSuS,
4659.My general dissent from the (learned and excellent) essays of F.W. Graf on the nature of Webers
relations with Troeltsch will be clear: e.g. Friendship between experts: notes on Weber and Troeltsch in
Max Weber and his Contemporaries (1987) Ed. W.J. Mommsen & J. Osterhammel, 21533. The obvious
source of disagreement lies in the fact that Prof. Grafs intellectual starting point is Troeltsch, whilst mine
is Weber.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221194
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
13/39
benefit of looking at the PEadhered to a framework which was essentially that of
Weingarten, the crucial section being entitled Anglicanism and Independentism,
with Puritanism making only an occasional entry as a synonym for the latter.32
We see then that there was another sense in which, for all its conceptual andpresent-day emphases, the PE was empirical, since it represented the first substantial
introduction of Puritanism into German academic discoursethis despite the fact
that Weber was neither a specialist historian or theologian. Conversely, however,
without a prior Anglophone literature on the subject, the Protestant Ethic could
hardly have existed. It is here we must seek for the historical and empirical origins of
Weberian Puritanism and to which we now turn.
III
To take the simplest case, it was almost inevitable that studies of Colonial America
would take up the theme of New England Puritanism as a primary identifying trait,
especially given the colonies lack of independent political status, and this is clearly
borne out by the major narrative history used by Weber in 1905, J.A. Doyles The
English in America, where two out of the three volumes then published were devoted
to The Puritan Colonies (1887). Yet though Weber had no difficulty in discerning the
high quality of Doyles work, he only used it once and then in an economic context
[XXI.102 & n.71].33 It is true that Doyle was primarily a narrative historian, but still
he presents a considerable amount of material on American Puritanism in preciselythe period (the 17th century) of most concern to Weber. The same might be said of
Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England and America: an Introduction to
American History, 1892, though Weber somewhat cryptically disapproved of this as
not always critical and impartial [XXI.5 n.4].34 However, the primary reality is that
32 Protestantisches Christentum, 36172; the position is just the same in the brief account of 17th
century England in the article, Moralisten, englische, 4458. Citation of Weingarten is evident in both
accounts, though reliance on the same structural terminology is still more impressive.Mention should
also be made of Eduard Bernsteins essay Kommunistische und demokratisch-sozialistische Str .omungen
w.ahrend der englische Revolution des 17. Jahrhunderts in ed. idem & K. Kautsky, Die Geschichte des
Sozialismus in Einzeldarstellungen (Stuttgart, 1895) i.507718. What most interested Weber [XXI.71 &
n.138, 101 & n.70] here was the emphasis on monetary saving as a bourgeois and ascetic ethic, especially
as displayed by the Quakers (i.6805). However, although Bernstein invoked the Puritan label as a
general description of English religiosity, in essence he did not (as Weber did) treat the English sects as a
group. Thus his account of Calvinism followed the standard Engelsian line that it was a species of
bourgeois revolution: it was not then a precursor of socialism, yet the popular but also Puritan lineage
through Lollardy, Anabaptism and Quakerism was (i.5247). The broader point was that Bernstein was
writing a secular history of socialist antecedents; not a study of religiosity per se. Quite reasonably, then,
Weber was selecting what he considered to be particular insights, but he did not engage with the
conceptual framework as a whole.33Cf. The Puritan Colonies ii.3441.34Campbells book was not a work of original scholarship, but was culled from secondary sources. Its
principal interpretative novelty was to suggest that America and American Puritanism owed as much to
the Dutch as to the English. It may be that Weber objected to this, given that, very crudely, he regarded
Holland as a kind of half-way house, a place where ascetic Protestantism was initially present but failed to
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 195
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
14/39
these writers were neither major sources nor objects of criticism, because America
itself was a secondary concern. It had significance as an English offshoot and as an
extreme example of contemporary capitalism, but in Webers eyes it was historically
primitive: that is, it was still at the beginning of an inevitable historical process ofEuropeanization [XXI.88 n.40], and so could not possibly account for a subsequent
historical development whose fulcrum was located in 17th century Europe. It is
similarly revealing that in 1920 Weber felt obliged to cite two further works on
American Puritanism, yet both had been published well before 19045, when the PE
had been first composed (John Brown, The Pilgrim Fathers of New York and their
Puritan Successors 1897; Daniel Wait Howe, The Puritan Republic of Massachusetts
Bay 1899). Here was a clear sign of an original lack of focus on this area, and even so
these citations were for bibliographical purposes only and made no difference to the
text [88 n.1]. The real centre of attention was England.
However, there were considerable difficulties in the way of mapping English
Puritanism, and the inability of previous German scholars to do this reflected a very
real cultural divide which far transcended any mere lack of perception on their part.
The principal obstacle was the English desire to ignore and conceal the Civil War
period, since this represented a painful rupture absolutely at variance with a
perceived culture of peaceable continuity and stability after 1688. Puritanism was
not quite so disreputable as civil strife, but even so it too was marginalised in
national memory by association. In Webers day English Nonconformity (a label
descended from the 17th century, but with pluralistic and tolerationist overtones
distinct from those of Puritanism)
35
did not see itself as descended primarily fromthe Puritan sects formed after 1640, but rather as the product of a new development,
the mid-18th century evangelical movement, which is most readily associated with
the Anglican and Methodist, John Wesley. Any continuities of a literal kindmost
obviously the continued existence of sects labelled Baptists and Congregationalists
were just that, more literal than essential. The lineal descendants of Old Dissent
were tenacious in preserving its heritage and memory within these sects through
several generations, but after c. 1850 such memory had effectively ceased to exert a
shaping influence: by then the principal public expression of the New Dissent of the
evangelical sects was as supporters of that devoutly constitutional body, the
Victorian Liberal party.36
Now this insular peculiarity was difficult to grasp. Like
(footnote continued)
establish itself. Thus the Dutch were tougher than the Germans but weaker than the Anglo-Americans:
e.g. [XXI.945 & n.54b]. How could they then have decisively influenced the latter?35The original Non-conformists were the Anglican clergy who refused to conform to the Act of
Uniformity of 1662. Their most celebrated representative was Richard Baxter, who was perceived as
inaugurating the tradition of moderate dissent, which continued to seek for church comprehension or at
least toleration, as distinct from the avowed sectarianism of the Independents. For an excellent statement
of this point of view as depicted in one of Webers sources, J.J. Tayler, A Retrospect of the Religious Life of
England (1845), 22038.36For a contrary view see Raphael Samuel The discovery of Puritanism, 18201914: a preliminary
sketch in Ed. Jane Garnett and Colin Matthew, Revival and Religion since 1700 (1993), 20147, though
only the first part (20123) is about Puritanism in any tolerably precise sense. It is typically colourful
assemblage of material, but conceptual argument, and in particular the premiss that the history of ideas
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221196
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
15/39
any Continental liberal (such as Schneckenburger or Weingarten), Weber did not
regard revolutionary epochs as matters for apology, and though the PE is an
avowedly unpolitical text, the association in his mind between Puritanism and a mid-
17th century liberal and progressive revolution is clear for all to see, above all in theattention it devotes to Cromwell and the Civil Wars.37 One obvious consequence of
this was that he entirely failed to grasp the real chronology of English religiosity, and
it was for this reason he could dub Methodism a mere latecomer [XXI.61 cf. 27], a
subordinate phenomenon, thereby inverting the relative importance of evangelical
Christianity and Puritanism in the shaping of English Kultur c.1900.38
The principal empirical difficulty was that, as a result of their desire to bury the
Civil War epoch, there was relatively little English writing about the Puritans for
Weber to make use of. The quintessential exemplar of the orthodox, continuous
approach was Macaulay, and Webers inability to see merit in Macaulays
treatments of Milton and Bunyan, or to make any use of The History of England,
from the Accession of James II (18481861) is glaringly apparent.39 An equally
pertinent case is that of S.R. Gardiner (18291902)by far the outstanding historian
of the Civil War period at the time when Weber was writing, and a man whose work
on the subject encapsulated the idea, or at least the rubric, that the period 16401660
was a period of Puritan revolution.40 He was indeed an Englishman by birth, but on
the crucial question of religion he was (so to speak) half-English and half-Scottish.
Thus he was born into the millennial sect deriving from the Scotsman Edward Irving,
the Catholic Apostolic Church; he married Irvings daughter; and was a deacon in
the church for 15 years (18511866). Here lies the origins of his interest in, and
(footnote continued)
should not have its starting point in the mere whims of literary phenomena (cf. 207), is relegated to the
background. This may seem odd given the authors Marxist origins. However, these disposed him to
assume that the (re-) discovery of Puritanism was inevitable in any case, and so, paradoxically or
indulgently, they allow far more space for the free play of bourgeois literary dilettantism.37Egg. [XX.3, 44 & n.2, 52 & n.1; XXI.5f, 14 n.21, 17 n.22, 30, 36, 42 n.78, 93]. Another contemporary
sign of Webers political interests lay in the suggestion floated to Georg von Below that he would like to
write a brief review of, and supplement to, Jellineks Declaration of the Rights of Man, which had just
appeared in a second edition: in relation to the historical situation which determined the substance of the
individual rights demanded in the Cromwellian epochy touching essentially on the state doctrine of
Anabaptism and the like: 19 July 1904, NachlaX Max Weber, GstA. Berlin, Rep. 92.38There is an obvious contrast with Elie Hal!evy here. His views on Methodism were first set out in two
articles entitled La naissance du M!ethodisme en Angleterre in the Revue de Paris in August 1906, before
being expanded and re-stated in LAngleterre en 1815 (Paris, 1913), though even the latter remained
unknown to Weber. I note here only that, whilst Hal!evy disagreed with Weber as to the relative
importance and novelty of Methodism in shaping English modernity, he nonetheless accepted the
conventional wisdom that its origins lay in Puritanism: The English are a nation of Puritans,
and Puritanism is Protestantism taken in all the strictness of the dogma which constitutes its theological
coreadherence to the doctrine of justification by faith: The Birth of Methodism in England, tr.
B. Semmel, (Chicago, 1971), 33. Thus although Hal!evy was in many ways much closer to English
religiosity than Weber, just as the degree of his physical and social contact with England vastly outweighed
Webers, clear elements of a Continental perspective remain in view.39 [XXI.5 n.4, 8 n.7, 13 n.19].40An obvious example is provided by his early textbook The first two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution,
16031660 (London, 1876).
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 197
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
16/39
valuation of Puritanism. But this was offset by his first wifes early death (1878), the
waning of the Irvingite sect, and an otherwise English environment which led to his
reception into the Anglican Church. All this helps account for the extraordinarily
(not to say implausibly) eirenic reading he put upon the Puritan revolution.41 Thusit was both necessary, as an anticipation of the long-term and natural current of
religious evolution towards freedom and toleration, and yet unfortunate and
unnecessary, insofar as it became an apple of discord; even so discord was a human
tragedy rather than an underlying problem. The kind of perennial value-clash and
struggle within (as well as between) nations which was axiomatic to Weber, as to
most of his German contemporariesan idea which he transferred to England on
the assumption that all national characters were similarly divided by history [XX.52]
[81 n.3]was hardly conceivable to an Englishman such as Gardiner. For this reason
Weber could make little use of Gardiners standard works; nor of Puritan
revolution; and his citations of Gardiner are essentially documentary and not
interpretative.42
In this sense, then, we might say that the empirical basis of the PEwas weak. Its
conception of English history, and of English Puritanism, was certainly not that of
orthodox, empirically grounded and (insofar as the concept can be applied at all)
specialised English historiography in Webers day. Yet this is by no means a whole
truth, since there was a minority strain of writing which took a different view, and
this, though written in English, was largely Scottish and Anglo-Irish. The different
view was the product of a quite different set of historical experiences and premisses.
The only institutional continuity that was known in Scotland and Ireland had comefrom, or been imposed by, England, and though it might be recognised as a good (as
in Scotland), it was to that extent alien. In Ireland in particular there was little real
contrast between the era of Cromwell and that of 1688, or even that of 1900, since all
might be conceived as epochs of English and Protestant supremacy. Thus there was
no sense in which Cromwell needed to be, or indeed could be, hushed up. A further
contrast with England lay in the religious sphere. For most Scots and Ulstermen
Presbyterianism, which might be regarded as the institutional enactment of
Puritanism, had either triumphed politically or was at least an exclusive and central
41For Gardiners biography, see Charles Firth in DNB, Supplement January 1901December 1911
(1912), ii.758. For his interpretative blandness, e.g. The first two Stuarts, 1834, 1906, 199205, or the
Introduction sub section 12 to Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (1889). Weber could
undoubtedly have referred to the latter had he wished, since he cited from the documents. The correlative
to this bland eirenicism lies in Gardiners purely documentary and narrative enthusiasm, so that
message was much diminished in proportion to matter. For this reason even a High Anglican could
find Gardiner simply invaluable: H.O. Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans 15701660 (1887),
vi. Conversely, the same qualities have caused Gardiner to be neglected by historians of ideas, though for a
near contemporary response, R.G. Usher, A Critical Study of the Historical Method of Samuel Rawson
Gardiner (St. Louis, 1915). Virtual omission of Gardiner is an indication that the conceptual framework of
Peter Blaas major work on English historiography in this period, Continuity and Anachronism (The
Hague, 1978), though excellent in its technical scholarship, is misconceived, not to say Continental: it
relies too much on universal categoriescontinuity and anachronismand has an insufficient grasp of
English singularity (and blandness).42XX.44 n.2; XXI.92 n.51; GARS i.73 n.1.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221198
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
17/39
realitysomething which could not be said of England. When to this is added the
fact that secular politics were dominated by the distant Westminster parliament, as a
result of treaties or acts of Union with the English, the attraction of religion as a
focus for discussion allowing more room for national autonomy becomes apparent.However, even in England we should take note of some continuities from the so-
called Old Dissent in the 17th century through into the 19th, even if the adherents
of continuity were only a minority. For example, Congregationalists still looked
back to their exclusion from the Anglican Church by the Act of Uniformity in 1662,
albeit in an increasingly acquiescent fashion, celebrating rather than lamenting the
Dissidence of Dissent.43 In addition there was the small sect of Unitarians,
descended from 17th century Arianism and Socianism. Unitarianism was distinctive
because it was not an evangelical, pietistic and socially popular sect; rather it was
defined by an intellectual theology, thereby displaying some significant resemblances
to the 17th century sects, albeit the theology was of a very different, rationalistic
type. Seen along these various lines and squints, the connections between 17th
century Puritanism and late 19th century modernity became more apparent, and it
was from Scottish and Irish Protestantism, and from the fringes of English Dissent,
that Webers empirical and scientific version of English Puritanism derived. Given
the staunch political Unionism of the Scots at this date and the then current English
convention of equating England with the United Kingdom, it would hardly be
reasonable to expect Weber to have been aware of this; on the other hand, the idea of
three distinct nations within a federal United Kingdom would surely not have
surprised him [XXI.97 n.59], especially since the idea of a fractured nation-state wasa commonplace for him and his German contemporaries.
A seminal figure in the unEnglish portrayal of a relevant, modern Puritanism
was, of course, Thomas Carlyle. Even if his now famous work on Letters and
Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845) was largely excluded because of a political
agenda that lay outside the avowed scope of the PE, Webers sympathy for him is as
clear as his sympathy for the Roundheads or his distance from Macaulay [XX.3].
Within a wider unEnglish or peripheral context, Carlyles influence extends to
almost all the authors who follow below, and who did fit the PEs specific frame of
reference. An obvious example is the Scotsman and friend of Carlyle, David Masson,
author of the monumental six volumes, Life of John Miltoneven if this is a workWeber does no more than mention, because Milton was too individual a figure to be
of use to him [XXI.8 n.7]. One exception, however, is the series of volumes which
appeared under the heading Works of the English Puritan Divines (18451847). These
are in a real sense pre-Carlylean, but they too offer a powerful comment on the
peculiar nature of the 19th century portrayal of Puritanism within the United
43The banner heading of the Nonconformist newspaper, the journal of modern Independents, made
classical for posterity by Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy [1869], ed. J. Dover Wilson (Cambridge,
1932), 56. For a recent treatment of the 1862 anniversary see Tim Larsen, Victorian Nonconformity and
the Memory of the Ejected Ministers in ed. R.N. Swanson, The Church Retrospective, Studies in Church
History, 33 (Woodbridge, 1997), 45973. Notwithstanding the proffered titles, the account is rooted in
19th century church politics, whilst the history of 1662 is largely taken for granted. This is understandable
(if unfortunate), but it shows how remote those events had become by 1862.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 199
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
18/39
Kingdom. So far as Weber was concerned, this was simply a documentary source,
albeit an important one and one of the evidential pillars on which the final section of
the PE was built [XXI.75 & n.2]. Grateful for the reprints it offered of scarce works
and lesser known English Puritan authors from the 17th century, there is no sign thathe reflected on the agencies at work which led to their 19th century re-publication.
Yet the publisher, Thomas Nelson, was Scottish,44 whilst of the fourteen divines
listed as actual or potential contributors to the project, roughly half were Scottish or
Irish Presbyterians, and half were English Congregationalists.45 The latter, in turn,
had strong connections to the Scottish universitiesthe Englishman in this group
who had not acquired a D.D. or Hon. Ll.D. from Glasgow was unusualand also
by descent to their 17th and 18th century forebears in Old Dissent. Indeed the
average age of this group was quite high by the standards of the day, most having
been borne in the 1780s and 90 s, and there were no young authors in this project. It
was a sign that specifically English enthusiasm for Puritanism as a living tradition
was (in contrast to Webers assumptions) in deep decay at the point when English
Nonconformity was definitively subsumed by evangelicalism. The series was thus a
last gasp which, for whatever reason, did not reach its full extentthe initial listing
of contributors implied publication of 1314 volumes at least, but only eight
appeared; nor was it never reprinted, though it had been deliberately issued in a
relatively cheap and popular form.46 Leaving aside canonical works such as those of
Bunyan and Milton which would safely be absorbed into the category of English
literature, the next phase in the publication history of English Puritan texts of a
purely religious and casuistical kind would not come until the end of the 19thcentury, when it would have become increasingly academic.47 A typical example in
44The books are described as published by Thomas Nelson, Paternoster Row, but they were printed
and bound in Edinburgh. The young Thomas Nelson, following in the wake of so many Scotsmen before
him, had just (in 1844) set up a London branch of his fathers Edinburgh publishing house, and the Works
of the English Puritan Divines no doubt seemed to like an enterprising and thoroughly British initiative: cf.
DNB.45An editor and thirteen writers (though we would call them editors) are listed on the front endpaper
of the second volume to be issued in the series: Bunyans The greatness of soul and the unspeakableness of
the loss thereof... (1845) with an essay by R. Philip. Eleven out of the fourteen are listed in DNBand the
other three might easily be found. The elementary prosopographical analysis which follows is based
primarily on the DNB entries.46See the Advertisement leaflet inserted at the end of the fourth volume to be published in the series,
Richard Baxter, Making light of Christ and salvation (1846) ed. T.W. Jenkyn. This specifically emphasised
the cheap publication scheme, p.1.47This is of course a large generalization which applies more to England than to Scotland. For the
Scottish transition to a more academic perception of Puritanism see e.g. p. 33 & n.105 below. Again, the
biography of F.J. Powicke, who produced a highly regarded two volume life of Baxter in 19247 bears
many resemblances to his 19th century forebears: born in 1854 he was a Congregationalist minister, who
possessed both German and Scottish doctorates (Rostock, Glasgow). Nonetheless, his life of Baxter was a
work of retirement, and though undoubtedly informed by religious devotion, it was scholarly biography,
and not (for example) an edition of a devotional work, let alone of Baxters unappetising casuistry: Who
was Who, 192940 (1941). Within the modest academic revival enjoyed by Baxter in the 1920s, Jeannette
Tawneys slim selection was the most exposure that the voluminous Christian Directory received: cit. next
note.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221200
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
19/39
this later vein is supplied by Jeannette Tawneys issue of a selection from Richard
Baxters Christian Directory in 192548the first edition of the work since the 1840s.49
A religious impulse, in this case that of Christian Socialism, remained present; but
still the book would never have appeared at all but for R.H. Tawneys unusualability to read in German the first volume of Gesammelte Aufs .atze zur
Religionssoziologie (T .ubingen, 1920) by an author who, unlike most living Britons,
had actually spent a good deal of energy on the unexplored mine of the Christian
Directory and so signalled its worth: Max Weber.50
In considering the unEnglish origins of Weberian Puritanism, we must also take
account of a book Weber did not read: English Puritanism and its Leaders: Cromwell,
Milton, Baxter and Bunyan (Edinburgh, 1861), by the Scotsman John Tulloch, one of
the most important writers on religious ideas and their history in Victorian Britain.
This is a relatively rare bookit was never reprintedand it undoubtedly eluded
Weber, since it is unthinkable that he could have ignored a work with such a title and
contents, had he been able to get hold of it.51 However, it should not be supposed
that too much was lost or changed thereby. Tulloch (18231886) was very much a
moderate and establishment Presbyterian, close to the royal court, who had nothing
to do with the sectarian departure of the Free Church in 1843, and who could readily
assimilate to Liberal or Broad Church Anglicanism. His account of English
Puritanism is principally a set of heroic and even Carlylean life stories,52 but they
are set firmly in the past, and were deemed to require suitably judicious and critical
comment before being transmitted to the present. For example, he found Baxters
Christian Directory the most cited work in the whole PE simply repellent andunreadable: the contemplation to which the reader is invited is a deeply mournful
48Chapters from a Christian Directory (1925), with a Preface by Bishop Gore, was published a few
months ahead of R.H. Tawneys Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), though the latter, which also
came with a Preface by Gore, was first drafted for the Holland lectures of 1922. It of course includes
substantial reference both to Weber and to Baxter, and so to the new edition of the latter, 322 n.51 cf. 220-5.
Conversely, the introduction to the Chapters (pp. ixxvi), which is unsigned and unattributed, was almost
certainly by Tawney himself, since it repeats (or anticipates) the text of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
almost verbatim at crucial points. Compare (e.g.) p. ix and p. 220 respectively.49Robert Philip (17911858), independent minister and one of the contributors to the Works of the
English Puritan Divines, had edited The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter (183947) in four
volumes.50Quotation from J.M. Lloyd Thomas, Introductory Essay [1925], The Autobiography of Richard
Baxter (1931 Ed.), x.Tawneys interest in the interaction between the Protestant Reformation and socio-
economic change long preceded 1920 and may be said to derive ultimately from William Cobbett; but it is
unclear as to precisely how and when he came across Weber (and thus the real significance of Baxter),
except that it was through the 1920 edition of the PE: cf. J. Winter, Introduction to History and Society:
Essays by R.H. Tawney (1978), 1424. The Acquisitive Society, published in April 1921, reveals that by this
date Tawney was reading modern German sources (140, 147). The conception of religious ethics in relation
to industry which would inform Religion and the Rise of Capitalism was also in place: hence historical
emphasis on the latter half of the seventeenth century and a fleeting citation of Baxter (10, 229).51Weber could have known of its existence since it is cited by Dowden, Puritan and Anglican (1900), 20
n.1; however the citation is very misleading, since it appears only as a study of Baxter.52All of Baxters four characters are heroic, and this is matched by acknowledgement of Carlyles
Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell: English Puritanism and its Leaders (Edinburgh, 1861), 54 & n.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 201
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
20/39
and painful one, over which the heart grows weary, and the conscience rises
affrightedy There is no natural end to the multiplication of questions and cases.53
Now this was hardly an unusual reaction after 1850, as the memory and practices of
Old Dissent faded. The author Weber most admired in this area, Edward Dowden,quoted Tullochs dismissal of the Christian Directory, albeit with a milder gloss,54
whilst the reaction of contemporary liberal Protestants in Germany would almost
certainly have been the same, had they been compelled to confront Baxters manual
of practical ethics, with its endless elaboration of cases and types. Ernst Troeltsch,
who was so compelled by the publication of the PE, managed to confine his reference
to Baxter to one platitudinous sentence,55 and this indicates how unusual Weber was
in going back to Baxter and finding rich meaning in the textanother facet of his
empiricism. All the same, Tulloch stood at a marked distance from Weber, and in
this he was distinct from the authors whom Weber did rely upon. For him
Puritanism was a subject for moral edification, but he showed little appreciation of
its capacity to work in the modern world. His final conclusion was that few things
higher or more beautiful have ever been seen in the world. But we are also bound, if
we would not empty our earthly existence of the beautiful and the grandthe
graceful, fascinating, and refined in many forms of civilisation and artto claim
admiration for much that [Puritans] despised, and [for] a broader, more tolerant, and
more genial interpretation of nature and life than they would have allowed.56
Perhaps it was this uncertainty regarding his subject which explains why English
Puritanism was one of the least known and esteemed of Tullochs works;57 but in any
case the beautiful, the graceful, the fascinating, the refined and (in its English sense)the genial were not categories which could readily be assimilated to Weberian
asceticism.
Tulloch casts into sharp relief the authors whom Weber did use to build up, or
confirm, his picture of English Puritanism. Without pretending that one could simply
translate the men and ideas of the 17th into the later 19th century, they nonetheless
espoused a conception that Weber also shared, but which Tulloch could only utter
with an apology: that Puritanism was continuing to make a vital contribution to
modernity in secular form. There are two significant books to be considered here:
Edward Dowdens Puritan and Anglican: Studies in Literature (1900) and
J.L. Sanfords Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion (1858). Mentionshould also be made of the Rev. J.J. Taylers A Retrospect of Religious Life of
England (1845), though it is of less importance. At this point even the learned
Weberian will be tempted to ask: who? who? A preliminary return to such a question
53English Puritanism, 383.54Puritan and Anglican: Studies in Literature (1900), 1920 & n.1, from English Puritanism, 3834.55Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (T.ubingen, 1912), 776. For a striking parallel
notice Ritschls complaint that Vo.ets Asketika, a work very similar in type to Baxters, was a theoretical
text, which applies the most excessive forms of distinction and the most pedantic schematisation to its
matter: Geschichte des Pietismus, i.124 n.1.56English Puritanism, 488.57T. Bayne in DNB, vol. lvii (1899), 30710, passes over it, aside from a formal bibliographical listing.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221202
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
21/39
is that these writers are all further examples of the minority tradition of historical
writing outlined above. Sanford and Tayler were both Unitarians; but Tayler was a
generation older (b.1797), and he was also a minister. As such he was still locked into
a denominational and less secular frame of mind, which would prove crucial inrendering him less relevant or usable to Weber. Sanford by contrast (b.1824), was
more capable of detaching himself from his sectarian background and so had a more
expansively secular view of the world. The root cause of his historical writing was
not located in Unitarianism per se but was rather an enthusiasm for Cromwell,
which ran parallel to Carlyles, such that the latters publication of Cromwells
Letters and Speeches in 1845 brought the two men into close contact.58
Edward Dowden (b.1843) was yet another generation younger and so entered the
ranks of Webers older contemporaries. He was a Protestant Irishman, albeit more
an Episcopalian than a Presbyterian,59 but he too had found in Cromwell one of my
earliest objects of hero-worship, a remark that illustrates his reading of Carlyle,
which was in fact extensive.60 From such a background he was well capable of
recognising the secular relevance of Cromwellian Puritanism to his own present, and
in fact Webers prominent citation of Cromwell on the subject of professions after
the battle of Dunbar [XX.44 & n.2], though notionally traced (and readily traceable)
to an unreferenced Carlyle, was almost certainly lifted from Dowdens book.61
Another novelty was that Dowden was an academica Professor of English
Literature at Trinity College Dublin. Regardless of Webers distaste for things
literary, which would crystallise in his later assaults on the literati [40n.]62 in his
view literature and art were genres quite alien to Wissenschaft this broughtDowden very much closer to Weber, since literature in a specifically English and
British context was becoming the university surrogate whereby texts with a
significant religious value might live on in secularized form. The 20th century
transmogrification of Matthew Arnold is perhaps the most famous example of this
58See the Preface to Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion (1858), iiivi. For general
biographical data on Tayler and Sanford, see DNB.59His mother was Presbyterian, but he was an Episcopalian. For general biographical and critical
treatments of Dowden, see H.O. White, Edward Dowden (Dublin, 1943); Terence Brown, Irelands
Literature: Selected Essays (Mullingar, 1988), c.3; Who was Who 18971915 (1920).60Quotation from Dowden to E.D. West, 13 Jan. 1874, in Fragments from Old Letters E.D. to E.D.W.
186992, Second Series (1914) ed. E.D. Dowden, 49. Another reflection of the common interests and
concerns amongst these authors lies in Dowdens quoting James Martineau, one of the most distinguished
Unitarian thinkers of the 19th century, with great approval and sympathy: Puritan and Anglican, 68.
Martineau was one of the thinkers who freed Unitarianism after c.1840 from its (always modest) sectarian
restrictions, and thereby effectively dissolved or secularised it into a far broader free inquiry than that
envisaged by Tayler.61Puritan and Anglican, 13. Webers additional mention of S.K. Gardiner at this point makes no
difference to the argument. If he had found the quotation in Gardiner, he could have cited him alone.62The term, as distinct from the distaste, first emerges clearly in Webers essay on Confucianism for the
Economic Ethics of the World Religions, written before 1914, but published in 1915. It then became a
central item in his wartime vocabulary of abuse and appears, for example, in the 1920 Vorbemerkung to the
GARS in a suitably pungent and revealing usage: [14]. Those interested in comparing the historicity and
utility of Weber translations may compare Talcott Parsons translation of this term (p. 29) with Stephen
Kalbergs (Los Angeles, 2002: p. 162).
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 203
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
22/39
process, whilst the 1909 edition of The Sermons of Thomas Adams, the Shakespeare
of Puritan Theologians, produced by Cambridge University Pressa locus classicus
in such casesillustrates what might be done in a specifically Puritan and Weberian
context.63 So, although Weber may have disliked the rubric, literature in Englandwas at this date closely bound up with rational science, a situation very different
from Germany and explained in part at least by the absence in England of an
academic faculty of theology with the kind of power and status it still enjoyed in
German universities. In this sense a book with the sub-title Studies in Literature was
not necessarily a repellent, although Weber would surely have been less interested in
Dowdens other attempts to perceive character value in literary texts without a
specifically religious character.
Another kind of answer to the query who? who? lies in the fact that, leaving
aside primary texts, the books by Sanford and Dowden are two of the four most
cited secondary works on religious history and ideas in the PE, the other two being
Albrecht Ritschls History of Pietism (18803), much the most cited work, and
Matthias Schneckenburgers exposition of Lutheran and Calvinist dogmatics (which
comes roughly second equal alongside Dowden and Sanford).64 Of course, in itself
such a simple measurement tells us nothing about intellectual influences or
relationships. The reason why Ritschl is so often cited reflects intellectual
disagreement as much as reliance, whilst no-one will suppose that the British
Puritan authors stood closer to Weber than, say, Ernst Troeltsch. (If one adds up
all the references to Troeltschs various works, written or projected, he does in fact
creep into the leading group.) But we are not measuring the influence of livingpersons here; we are estimating a resource, the role played by books, and by what I
have described as Webers empiricism, where (following Weber)65 empiricism
must be taken to include not merely primary sources but all that was accepted as the
scholarly work of the period, founded on conventional evidential procedures. Again,
given the inability of German writers much closer to Weber in person and Kultur to
recognise English Puritanism, it is clear that he could hardly have rooted ascetic
Protestantism within this context unless he had had the sanction of some non-
German writers. We should remember, too, that though today we can only describe
them as second-rate sensitive minds,66 Dowden, in particular, was a well-known
man in his own day with not insignificant connections to Germany and Germanliterature, being both a long-serving president of the English Goethe Society
(18881911) and an honorary member of the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft.
There can be little doubt that Weber found Dowdens evocation of Goethe as a
central representative of the higher Puritanism [that] has been preached in our own
day deeply sympathetic, since it coincided so well with his own identification of
63For the relevance of Thomas Adams to Weber, below n.115.64This statement is based on a comprehensive index of citations prepared for my forthcoming English
language edition of the PE. However, most of the actual citations of these little known authors are detailed
in the text that follows.65See the quotation above, p. 3 & n.6.66Cf. Terence Brown, Irelands Literature, 35.
P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221204
-
8/6/2019 Ghosh Article
23/39
Faust as a central exemplar of modern asceticism. [XXI.1078].67 A more general
point is that since all the authors concerned with the history of Puritanism were
formally excluded, or else stood apart from Oxford and Cambridge, which remained
de facto bastions of Anglicanism long after any formal restriction was removed, theircontacts with the alternative Protestant repository supplied by German universities
and German literature were much more extensive and ingrained than those of the
English social elite. Carlyle is an outstanding example of this contact, even though he
did not actually visit Germany until quite late in life; but it is also true that Tayler
and, if not Sanford, then his Unitarian friend R.H. Hutton, spent extended periods
at German universities when young. In this sense Webers lighting on these writers
was not so coincidental as it might seem at first sight. They may even have been
amongst the English writers Weber was reading in Rome in the winter of 19012.
Whoever they were, they were too obscure even for a person as academic as
Marianne Weber to think it worthwhile to specify individually; yet it was at this
point that the pos