The Puritan Work Ethic Revisited

Bibliographic Data

ID10066614
AuthorsPaul S Seaver (Stanford University, corresponding author), Paul Seaver
Year1980
Volume19
Issue2
Pages35-53
Publication date1980-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of British Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1086/385754
OpenAlexW1994467307
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited12

Whether Puritanism gave rise to a “work ethic,” and, if so, what the nature of that ethic was, has been a source of controversy since Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more than seventy years ago. Experienced polemicists have waged international wars of words over its terms, and tyros have won their spurs in the battle. With repect to England, there is at present no agreement either about the reality of a peculiarly Puritan work ethic or about the impact, if any, that such an ethic might have had on the attitudes and behavior of the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie, if such a species indeed existed as a distinctive social class or group in the early modern period. In fact, since perfectly sane and competent historians have questioned on the one hand, whether “Puritanism” is more than a neo-idealist reification of a nonentity, and on the other, whether the early modern middle class is more than a myth, it might be the better part of wisdom to inter the remains of these vexed questions as quietly as possible. What follows is not a perverse attempt to flog a dead horse, if it is dead and a horse, but rather on the basis of a different perspective and different evidence to resurrect a part of what Timothy Breen has called “the non-existent controversy.”

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Battle · Bourgeoisie · Capitalism · Environmental ethics · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Protestant work ethic · Protestantism · Reification (Marxism · Sociology · Work (physics · Work ethic · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Religious studies · Religious Studies

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