The Protestant Ethics and the re-enchantment of the world in a society of labor: notes from Max Weber

Abstract

This article aims to investigate, based on the ideas of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethics and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, the relationship between the disenchantment of the world and the Protestant Reformation, as well as the hypothesis that disenchantment generated, at the same time, a new enchantment in capitalism and its nascent labor society. According to Weber, as the daily life, in modern times, was taken over by a cultural and social rationalization, traditional forms of life also dissolved. In Protestant ethics, salvation is linked to the intramundane vocation and the sanctification of everyday life through work. Hence, we speak of a disenchantment, as Weber conceptualizes, and at the same time, a re-enchantment in light of a new religiosity active in the world of capitalist labor. It is precisely this process that allowed Walter Benjamin, in turn, to consider capitalism as a religion, with its cults, rites and symbols, taking the Weberian analysis forward, emphasizing capitalism as a religion. We aim thus to investigate the hypothesis that Weber’s thesis of the disenchantment of the world also culminates in its reversal, when we speak of a re-enchantment of the world, now under the umbrella of the capitalist labor and its economic rationalization.

Keywords: Weber, disenchantment, protestant ethics, re-enchantment.