Abstract
The significance of Puritan `asceticism' - especially the focal idea of the calling - for rationalized Western culture in all its aspects has been examined as Weber proposed, but its role in shaping the method and substance of Weber's own work has gone largely unexamined. In the present essay a reading of `mainstream' English Puritan writings on the calling is presented, and Weber's representation of the idea is found to be accurate except for an exaggeration of its asceticism, probably due to Weber's reliance on post-Civil War sources. The Puritan themes of chance, proof, and control are then shown to be prominent in Weber's usage of Chancen to define social action and institutions, and fundamental to the method of interpretive sociology. The rationalist biases of Weber's work, the problematic formal-substantive distinction, and Weber's justification of ideal-typical analysis are assessed in terms of the Puritan Berufsmensch who `neither inquires about nor finds it necessary to inquire about the meaning of his actual practice of a vocation within the whole world, the total framework of which is not his responsibility, but his God's'.
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