e into an all-embracing religious influence.
In the Introduction to this edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Anthony Giddens notes that The Protestant Ethic was written at a pivotal period in Weber's intellectual career when he was recovering from an illness after being away from the academic world for about four years. Before he became ill, Weber had conducted technical researches in economic history, economics, and jurisprudence. In part, these derived from the "historical school" of economics which stressed the need to examine economic life within the context of the historical development of culture as a whole, and Weber remained indebted to this point of view (v-x).
Weber begins with the relationship between religious affiliation and social stratification, and Weber finds an extraordinary number of people involved in the most pious forms of Christianity who have come from commercial circles. He further finds that different denominations have dif
...