| Popis: |
According to Weber, the word 'calling' ('Beruf') with the meaning of the esteem of the daily work as the supreme ethical practice is due to Luther's translation of the Bible into German. It then spreaded all over the Protestant world as the expression of the central doctorine that the execution of one's work given as the divine duty is the only way to serve the glory of God. Luther himself developed this idea in the first decade of his Reformation activity. Originally he thought that the daily work of the ordinary man was one of the natural processes, just so as drinking or eating, without any relation to the morality; the more he deliberated and purified his idea of 'sola-fide', the more he became to appreciate the worldly labour as the expression of the devine phrase 'love thy neighbour as thy-self; finally he believed it to be the Will of God and so the only deed to be pleased by Him. However, Luther's idea in itself had not any 'adequate' relation to the 'capitalistic spirit'. The Bible, from which he believed he had taken the idea of 'calling', has as a whole the tone that makes men wend towards the traditionalism; it does not admit any religious merit in the daily work, but recommends men merely to stay in their status or job as it is. And Luther's idea itself, in spite of its novelty, could not get rid of the traditionalism of this sort : it has another feature that a man's calling is devinely decided and there is no other choice for him than to accept it and adapt himself to it, －this traditional moment overwhelmed the idea of the daily work as the duty devinely given. Now it has become clear to Weber that the mere efforts to study Luther's idea of calling are not enough to solve the problem which Weber set as the main theme of his essay, so he proceeds to other forms of Protestantism i.e. Calvinism and Puritan sects, which seem to exhibit apparent difference in the idea on the daily labour from that of Cathoricism, even of Lutherism, － the inner reason of this difference is to be searched for. |
