A Comment on a Recent Work by Heinz Steinert on Max Weber

Abstract

The article is a comment on a recent book concerning Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis by Heinz Steinert. After producing a summary of its contents, the article raises a number of objections to Steinert’s critical comments, bearing in particular on the clarity, methodological correctness and historical accuracy of the Weber’s thesis; and also on the adequacy of the arguments produ- ced by the secondary literature on this thesis. The article concludes by calling into question Steinert’s scholarship in a number of fields that are related to it, such as theology, history, and his knowledge and understanding of Weber’s own works. Finally, Steinert’s contention that there was a bourgeois cultural hegemony in Fin-de-siècle Vienna is shown to be untenable.

Keywords

• Weber’s Protestant Ethic Thesis
• Origins of Modern Capitalism
• Methodology of the Social Sciences