The debate between Weber and Sombart on the Protestant ethic and the development of capitalism: Author Antikritiken as footnote

In 1904/05 the first edition of Weber’s Protestant Ethics was issued, where the thematic framing is ‘uncertain’ and not yet completed: religion is linked to a certain kind of ethos (of the economic system) and of ethic (rational), the ethic of «ascetic Protestantism». Around the same years, Sombart outlines the expository path contained in Modern Capitalism, a detailed «picture of the general economic development», which seems to be a ‘more serious’ work – for its content and set of problems – when compared to the research conducted by his friend and colleague Max Weber. Both scholars view the question of the rise and development of capitalism as a rhythmic research: from the historic origins of the phenomenon, to the elaboration, synthesis and change of the economic process that becomes an autonomous and corrosive force in the modern stage. In the Sombartian discourse, however, the particular ‘attitude’ of the Protestant ethic as analysed by Weber can be regarded at most as one of the possible forms of heresy that justifies a certain approach (moral/punitive) to money – and not as the only movement which has roused and regulated the economic or capitalistic processes in the strict meaning of economic surplus, profitable and to be reinvested following entrepreneurial logics. Whereas, what the two sociologists have in common is not only the use of sources (almost identical), but the very concept of Geist and individual predisposition of the subjects who accept the modes of action of this ordering spirit that gives an ethical/psychological boost to men endowed with charisma or with particular energy