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Hume on the Protestant Ethic and the Rise of English Commercial Spirit

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  • Matson, Erik W.

Abstract

This paper interprets the interaction between Protestantism and commercial spirit in David Hume’s account of English development, mostly drawing from The History of England. Hume saw Protestant theology—especially the more enthusiastic strains of English Puritanism—as having fortuitously shifted the landscape of political and economic sensibilities in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by affecting believer’s political, social, and economic psychologies. Those shifting psychologies exhibited affinities with concurrent developments, especially the decline of feudalism, the rise of consumerism, and the creation of an independent middle class of merchants. The peculiar synergy between such changes and Protestant theological innovations led to the emergence of England, by the eighteenth century, as a polite and commercial people—a people for whom commerce became, Hume claimed, more honorable than in any other nation. Hume, like Max Weber, saw a distinctive Protestant spirit as having contributed to the modern commercial order.

Suggested Citation

  • Matson, Erik W., 2023. "Hume on the Protestant Ethic and the Rise of English Commercial Spirit," SocArXiv x5wj9, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:x5wj9
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/x5wj9
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    7. Larbi Alaoui & Alvaro Sandroni, 2018. "Predestination and the Protestant Ethic," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 45-76.
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