Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.6i33hh>
Abstract
One of the most popular and altogether most important explanations for the genesis of the modern world with its capitalist order is Max Weber’s study on protestantism. But there is another, almost unknown explanation that Weber’s friend and colleague, Ernst Troeltsch, published only a few years after Weber’s. According to Troeltsch, protestantism is responsible for the development of individualism as a significant feature of modern culture. But in Troeltsch’s view protestantism has been part of global history from its very beginning. That is why he attributed universal significance to this religion. Weber, in contrast, understood protestantism, and its influence on the human conduct of life, as a single phenomenon which gains its importance for the modern world from capitalism. Given this contrast, it is especially interesting to see that both Weber and Troeltsch used Heinrich Rickert’s philosophy of history to develop their positions. Their theories on protestantism, therefore, can be reconstructed as variations of Rickert’s philosophy, trying to grasp the causal connection between Protestantism and the modern world.