Besides purely economic factors, such as division of labor, money and capital accumulation,
Of course, ideological factors, ideological components play also a very important role
in economic development and in the formation of societies.
These ideological factors in a way even influence such fundamental things as the attitude towards
and its division of labor that exist in societies, in particular also the attitude towards capital accumulation,
the desire to become wealthier or to be satisfied with low standards of living.
And I want to spend this lecture just discussing some ideological factors, mostly religious factors influencing economic development.
Let me start, for instance, by reminding you that capital accumulation and, based on capital accumulation, also the desire to make inventions, technological improvements and so forth,
can be encouraged or can be discouraged by certain prevalent ideologies existing in society.
Before I start talking about major religions,
Just to give you some examples that make this intuitively clear, imagine for instance people
would believe in a deity that leaves the world with the instruction that things should be
We left the way they are. If such a religion would be, so to speak, a powerful religion
among people, you can easily imagine that such a society does not have much of a potential
to develop and become prosperous. We would likely guess that societies such as this will
will tend to die out, will be taken over actually by other societies.
Or imagine a society that has a very deep and profound ancestor worship.
Of such a society we would expect that it will display to a large extent very ritualistic
type behavior and also will be reluctant to introduce any innovations.
The same is also true for slave societies and of course for many parts of the world and for large parts of human history.
We did have slave societies, the most prominent examples of course being classical civilization,
Greek Roman Civilization and then of course also the example of the United States.
In slave societies it is frequently the case that the slaves do the work so to speak and
The masters lays around, don't do much, are not involved in the day-to-day activities
and because they are not involved in the day-to-day activities, they also contribute little to
Improvements in the technology that can be employed in these day-to-day activities.
Let me give you a brief quote from Carroll Quigley to this effect.
He writes, suppose that a primitive tribe believes that its social organization was
established by a deity who went away leaving strict instructions that nothing be changed.
Such a society would invent very little.
Egyptian civilization was something like that.
Or any society that had ancestor worship would probably have weak incentives to invent.
Or a society whose productive system was based on slavery would probably be uninventive.
Both societies, such as classical civilization or the southern states of the United States
in the period before 1860, have been notoriously uninventive.
No major inventions in the field of production came from either of these civilizations.
This is not to say that these civilizations did not develop other achievements.
The Greek civilization allowed a class of philosophers to emerge and they passed another form of inheritance to us, that is that of rigorous logical thinking, which also has of course a tremendous impact on human development.
But when it comes to improving existing tools that one uses in production, they have indeed been very unproductive, so to speak.
I'll give a few other examples that would show how certain ideologies might prevent that wealth is accumulated in societies.
Most religions, for instance, that prescribe that whenever the master of a household dies, that he should be buried with all of his possessions.
That seems to be, from the outset, a very stupid attitude, at least as far as ever making any progress is concerned.
Every generation would, so to speak, ruin whatever they have accumulated during a generation.
Or imagine societies that are ridden by feelings of envy.
There exist numerous examples of that, that you can find, for instance, in that famous book by Helmut Schöck, a German sociologist on envy.
And you also find many examples mentioned, many of them taking from the Schöck book in Rothbard's little book on egalitarianism as a revolt against nature.
And again, I just want to quote one example of a society such as this from Herbert Spencer.
Spencer writes, there exist reports about the chiefs among the abbey ponies in the Dakotas
that have nothing either in his arms or his clothes to distinguish him from a common man except the peculiar oldness and shabbiness of them.
For if he appears in the streets with a new and handsome apparel, the first person he meets will boldly cry,
Murray, give me that dress, and unless he immediately parts with it, he becomes the
scoff and scorn of all and hears himself called covetous.
Obviously, a society like this is also not suitable to accumulate much in terms of wealth.
For there exist societies that as soon as the big chief has accumulated a certain amount of foodstuff or so, he is obliged to throw a big party for the entire tribe and then in the big party all of the resources that have been accumulated will be wasted away.
that is a continuous process of capital accumulation simply does not take place in societies such as this.
Now it can be safely assumed that these types of examples that I gave are obviously not examples of societies that we would expect to stand the test of times,
to last very long, but instead being displaced by other societies that have different attitudes
and either defeat them in the form of warfare or simply displace them.
That is, just make them, push them out of the territories that they inhabit to ever
more uninhabitable territories and then ultimately die out, so to speak.
What I now want to do is undertake a survey of the major religions and their attitudes
towards work and invention and capital accumulation.
I'm not interested in the pure theological part of these religions, just in those parts
of the religions that have, so to speak, repercussions for the day-to-day conduct that people are
are expected to engage in.
And let me begin with one of the religions that is comparatively bad when it comes to
Capital Accumulation, inventiveness and so forth, that is Hinduism.
Hinduism is characterized as far as its economic doctrines are concerned, first by explicit
taboos of using certain resources. As you all know, for instance, cows cannot be used.
And there exist other taboos that simply make it impossible that resources that could be
put to some useful employment are, based on religion, excluded as something that mankind
should take advantage of.
In addition, Hinduism is a religion that is characterized by some strict association taboos.
That is to say, certain groups of people are not allowed to associate with certain other
And you immediately recognize that this is, of course, some sort of obstacle when it comes to the development of division of labor.
What you would expect of such a society that is a society of castes that are prevented from having any systematic contact with each other is that there is some sort of petrification of production modes.
Each caste sticks to its own techniques and tasks that are assigned to it, and there is no interchange of ideas, there is no social mobility of any kind.
And this obviously again has negative repercussions as far as economic growth potential is concerned.
In addition, Hinduism requires strict obedience to the rules of the caste and has, so to speak,
There are severe obstacles in the way of any economic progress placed in itself.
There is the promise of reincarnation into higher classes,
which leads the lower classes to not rebel against the existing caste system
because rebellion against the existing caste system will precisely prevent that in the future life
There is also the problem that there is no clear-cut distinction, so to speak, in the rank of money and credit.
There is also the problem that there is no clear-cut distinction, so to speak, in the rank of creatures on earth.
Recall, for instance, in Christianity, in Genesis, we learn that mankind is, so to speak,
the highest of all creatures and has dominion over the rest of the world.
On the other hand if you have a religion that does not necessarily see mankind as the highest
development having dominion over the animals but that there are so to speak gradual differences
between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom, then again this is something that hampers
the economic growth potential that leads also to widespread vegetarianism and widespread
And vegetarianism, despite the fact that there are some people who propagate it, even in our societies,
I don't think it is a healthy lifestyle, certainly not a lifestyle that energizes you and makes you an entrepreneurial person
if you only just eat these corns and whatever these people eat there.
Hinduism also permits human sacrifices, which again indicates, so to speak, that the status of humans is not above everybody else.
And it encourages orgies, that is activities that display, so to speak, a high degree of time preference, having fun right now, just overdoing it completely, not disciplining yourself during these orgiastic experiences that you go through.
On the other hand, they also emphasize POMP, that is the display of riches, and do not do what we will see later on, especially puritanical religions do, that is, you don't live a pompous life, you are humble.
Invest, but don't show to everyone how well off you are.
And in general, it is a religion that encourages submission, submission of certain groups vis-a-vis
other groups.
So if we rank various religions, we can say from the outset that Hinduism is not exactly
a religion that promises, as long as people really adhere to it, that promise has great
economic promises in store.
In a way, looking at India, we can see that that is somehow borne out by the facts.
In addition, of course, India has also adopted another stupid system that is mass democracy,
which contributes to that in addition.
But this is, so to speak, a modern development. Traditional India, of course, was not democratic by any means.
Let's then take another Eastern religion, Buddhism, and to a lesser extent what applies to Buddhism
also applies to Daoism.
Buddhism started in a way as a reform movement of Hinduism,
but disappeared essentially from India and gained influence in Southeast Asia
outside of the Indian subcontinent.
The view of the Buddhist of life is that the ultimate wisdom consists in detachment from life, from the earthly, worldly life.
It views life as painful and it considers an ascetic lifestyle as a means to eliminate or to reduce the pain that comes from regular life.
So it advocates a life of ascetic meditation.
Again, it should be perfectly clear that this is not encouraging, so to speak, the type of attitude that we consider to be normal and characteristic for people to withdraw from the world.
The goal of the Buddhist religion is nirvana, and nirvana is a state of affairs that brings, so to speak, about the elimination of all desires.
Now, of course, if you try to eliminate all your human desires, then there will be little need to engage in productive activities,
which are those activities that we consider to be necessary in order to reduce our pains.
The essence and purpose of life for the Buddhist and also for the Taoist in a certain extent is not individual fulfillment and especially not individual fulfillment in this life.
It is the life that anyone lives right now is just one of thousands of lives.
So very little emphasis in personal happiness, in individual achievement.
Taoism teaches the serene acceptance and humility and gentleness and passivity and understanding
acceptance of whatever happens to occur rather than individual accomplishment and individual
Advancement
Let me come to the next major religion.
Again, Buddhism, and again, the empirical evidence bears it clearly out
that devoted Buddhist societies are in fact not exactly highly developed societies.
As the next one, let's take Islam.
Islam also does not encourage in any way individual autonomy.
As a matter of fact, the translation of Islam is submission.
And what we frequently hear from proponents of Islam, that they point out this golden
in an age of Islam during the time that they occupied Spain and rescued some of the achievements
that were generated by the classical Greek culture and transmitted them, so to speak,
to Christianity.
This so-called golden age is more of an exception, a fluke in Islam than typical of the Islamic
religion.
The main proponents during this era of the main intellectuals of this era, the main Islamic intellectuals were by and large intellectuals that had broken with orthodox Islam and were considered to be regarded with utmost suspicion by the Islamic community.
at their time. So it was only by breaking away from orthodox Islamic beliefs that these sorts of achievements became possible.
The Islamic religion is very familistic, that is family oriented, and very hierarchical,
hierarchically structured, rigidly hierarchically structured, not unlike the Chinese societies
These two which I will come in a little bit.
Again the structure, the hierarchical structure you can see in particular in the relationships
between men and females.
Muslims are clearly members of societies with significantly less rights than men have.
In Islam, science and reason are not recognized as in Christianity, so to speak, as a gift
of God. They are not regarded as valuable in and of itself. As they are for instance
in Thomism, that is in certain branches of Christianity.
Islam rather views life on Earth as something
that has no inherent or internal purpose,
But it is mostly a preparation for the eternal life that comes afterwards.
In this regard, Islam is not all that different from very early Christianity, which also had
similar attitude that life on earth was of relatively minor importance, and the main
The main goal of it was just for the preparation for life after death.
This is of course not characteristic for later Christianity, but in the early stages of Christianity, this sort of attitude did prevail also.
In the view of Islam, God, after the creation of the world, does not really retreat.
The Christian view is God creates the world and then he lets things happen, so to speak.
Then mankind is on their own.
They have to prove themselves.
But from the point of view of Islam, God remains continuously involved in worldly affairs.
But if God remains continuously involved in earthly affairs, this then makes also the
The search for universal and eternal laws, some sort of sinful behavior, almost blasphemous.
If you think that God retreats and then lets the world run the way he has organized it,
And of course it makes sense to try to figure out what the laws of the world are.
But if God remains involved in earthly affairs, then in a way it doesn't make any sense to
even look out for universal regularities.
As a matter of fact, to stipulate that there are universal regularities is some sort of
is an insult against the belief that God remains continuously involved in earthly affairs, so this is considered to be somewhat a vain activity and denying almost God's all-mightiness.
What should be perfectly clear from the outset is that if this is, and to the extent that these beliefs are, so to speak, the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of the people, that you should expect little in terms of scientific and scholarly achievement coming from these societies
and the achievements coming from these societies, as I mentioned, are mostly produced by individuals who have somehow broken with the basic tenets of the religion.
Let me quote on this subject a German anthropologist who writes on this feature of Islam.
von Grünebaum, Islam was never able to accept that scientific research is a means of glorifying God.
Those accomplishments of Islamic, mathematical and medical science, which continue to compel our admiration,
were developed in areas and in periods where the elites were willing to go beyond and possibly against the basic strains of orthodox thought and feeling.
For the sciences never did shed the suspicion of bordering on the impious.
This is why the pursuit of the natural sciences as that of philosophy tended to become located in relatively small and esoteric circles and why but few of their representatives would escape an occasional uneasiness which not infrequently did result in some kind of apology for their own work.
Now, after Islam, also not exactly favorable to economic development, and again something that is borne out by the fact, we come now to Confucianism.
Confucianism, we have to admit from the outset, is far more suitable for economic growth,
has a far more positive attitude toward science and investigation,
And it's in a way a very interesting case. Keep in mind that until 1500 or so, China was clearly the most developed region on the globe.
Confucianism is entirely realistic in its outlook and entirely this worldly.
It has no anthropomorphic concept of a god.
It does speak of heavens, but the heavens are some sort of impersonal thing.
This has nothing to do with what we imagine God to be, which has, of course, some sort
of manly image.
They actually do not have a concept of a deity.
They also have no promise of an afterlife.
That can be an advantage, that can be a disadvantage.
That depends in a way on how other religions depict the afterlife.
But in any case, no promise of an afterlife is given.
The entirely realistic and rationalistic attitude of Confucianism is also reflected in the fact that there exist no miracles for them.
In contrast to Christianity where we admit the existence of miraculous events, miraculous events do not exist for Confucians.
That is, everything can be rationally explained.
And accordingly, there also exists no such thing as saints.
Confucius himself is neither a god nor is he a prophet.
This is just a leader, a teacher.
Because of this, some people have even doubted whether it is appropriate to refer to Confucianism
as a religion, that is, without a god, without a prophet, can we legitimately refer to it
and as a religion. Let me at this moment give you a quote from Stanislaw Andreski on Confucianism.
Stanislaw Andreski is a Polish sociologist who taught most of his life in England and is one of those
There are very few sociologists that are not lefties. There are a few others, Robert Nisbett and Helmut Schöck and, as I said, Stanislaw Andreski, a very interesting author.
He writes on Confucianism,
If we want to rank the religions in accordance with their compatibility with the findings of science,
we must place Confucianism far ahead in the first place.
Indeed, its rationalistic and this worldly outlook has led some scholars to deny that it is a religion.
Nonetheless, it certainly is a religion in the etymological sense which is derived from the Latin word to bind because it undoubtedly did constitute a bond which united many millions during two millennia.
However, if we include an anthropomorphic concept of deity and a promise of life after death as essential characteristics of religion,
and Religion, then we have to conclude that Confucianism was not a religion because to the Confucians the supreme entity is heavens, an invisible and impersonal force rather than a personalized god modeled on the image of a terrestrial despot as in the religions born in the Near East.
When asked about what happens after death, Confucius replied,
When you don't know enough about the living, how can you know about the dead?
He never claimed nor was attributed posthumously by his followers any powers which could be called supernatural or magical.
The Confucians expect no miracles, have no saints, and revere their founder not as a deity, but as a great teacher.
So we can say that Confucianism is certainly a world outlook that is clearly compatible with capitalism.
It has a very strong emphasis on filial piety, on family solidarity, and that might have some sort of negative effect when it comes to individual inventiveness,
breaking out of existing traditions and so forth, but in principle, of course,
feudal piety and familialism is nothing that is incompatible with capitalism.
Again, let me, as regards this lack of innovative spirit that you can find among the confusions,
give you a quote from Charles Murray, out of his book In Pursuit of Excellence, which
which I think captures this idea quite well.
He says at the core of the Confucian ethic was the quality called ren, the supreme virtue
in men, a quality that combines elements of goodness, benevolence and love.
This ethic was most essential for those with the most power.
He who is magnanimous wins the multitude Confucius taught.
He who is diligent attains his objective.
And he who is kind can get service from the people.
Indeed, to be a gentleman, which is another concept in Confucian thought, required one
above all to embody this characteristic of Ren.
And lest one think that a gentleman could get by with mousing the proper platitudes,
Confucius added, the gentleman first practices what he preaches and then preaches what he
practices.
Now, Chinese and Japanese children also to a certain extent are then, because of this
familial strong family orientation, are supposed to make their life decisions always mindful
People of first the wishes and the welfare of their parents, then of their extended family,
and then also of the community.
And there is a lack of encouragement that can be found of achieving one's own fulfillment
no matter what.
Something that you do find to a far larger extent, of course, in the Western tradition.
In addition, while there is great emphasis on learning among the Chinese, and while China
China is, so to speak, a meritorious system.
It is where people from all walks of life, from all ranks, can, through some sort of
examination system, reach the highest levels of society.
That is a society that in a way selects for high IQs and thereby also tends to bind the
population to the earthly powers.
It is because everyone can rise and there is a meritocratic system that makes it appear fair who rises and who doesn't rise.
So even the lower strata of society are somehow consoled to live with this system.
What must be said as one of the explanations why China nonetheless was not able to compete ultimately with the West
was its connection that existed between Confucianism and the state bureaucracies from very early on.
That is, you did have, which we will see we don't have in the West, an immediate or more or less direct identity
between the earthly rulers, the Chinese emperor and the top hierarchies of the doctrine of
the Confucian theology for lack of a better word.
So Confucianism had tied its forces very early on, very closely to the state, and because
of that, the inherent reluctance to invent and to innovate
was further strengthened.
Again, let me also point out this.
This combination of Confucianism with the state led to a certain amount of uncritical thinking.
That is what we know in the West and what we have learned in the West in particular from the Greeks
to present an argument and then a counter argument and another counter argument
and try to hammer out, so to speak, what is right and what is wrong,
And try to refute each other in an endless game of back and forth.
This is something that you rarely find among the Chinese.
I must say, based on my personal experience, because we have lots of Oriental students
in Nevada.
I can even detect that among my students up to this day
whenever it comes to writing critical essays.
They are always extremely good when
they do mathematical equations and multiple choice.
They remember everything.
They always rank on top of the class.
But when it comes to writing pieces like we learned it in school, you have the Caesars
and then you have to present the counter arguments and then you have to filter out what arguments
are stronger and which ones are weaker and possibly synthesize this sort of stuff in some
way.
do show a significant weakness in this department.
Another indicator for this, again this is a little bit speculative, another indicator
for this is for instance while you do find a massive over-representation of orientals
in fields like mathematics, physics, engineering,
and so forth, they are significantly under-represented
in law schools.
And in law schools, it is precisely
where this sort of Greek-style arguing
that we all in the West have learned from elementary school
from elementary school on, where this is in particularly high demand in precisely that field, they are under-represented as compared with other fields where they are clearly over-represented.
In the sciences, the disapproval of open dispute took a toll on the ability of East Asian science to build an edifice of cumulative knowledge.
The history of Chinese science is episodic, with the occasional brilliant scholarly discovery, but then no follow-up.
Progress in science in the West has been fostered by enthusiastic non-stop competitive arguments, in which the goal is to come out on top.
East Asia did not have the cultural whistle to support enthusiastic non-stop competitive arguments.
arguments. Even in today's Japan, a century and a half after the nation began westernizing, it is
commonly observed that Japan's technological feats far outweigh its slender body of original
discoveries. One ready explanation for this discrepancy is the difference between progress
that can be made consensually and hierarchically versus progress that requires individual who
who insist that they alone are right.
So much about, and of course you can tell in the West there are plenty of people who
think that they are right, nobody else is right.
So from Confucianism, let me go to Judaism.
From the outset, we will have to say that Judaism was always a very small and an additional
a dispersed group of people, and as such had in a way very little influence on the modern world.
In addition, because they are a non-proselytic religion, that is they do not try to go on missions
and convince other people to convert to their religion, so they always remained small
and as a small group dispersed over many places with relatively limited influence.
There are some people, a German socialist, a Zombard, one of the opponents of Ludwig
von Mises, one of the so-called catheter socialists, who advanced the thesis that the Jews were
are the inventors, so to speak, of modern capitalism, but this thesis is clearly false for the following reason.
Yes, it is true, for instance, that Holland, Venice and a city like Frankfurt flourished
after the influx of Jews into these places.
And it is also true that after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Spain declined.
But this obviously does not show any causal relationship.
They are also contrary examples.
For instance, in Britain, industrial capitalism arose precisely during the period after the
Jews were expelled from England and before they were readmitted to England, which shows,
So to speak, that their presence was by no means necessary in order to develop capitalist institutions.
And there are other indicators that go in a different direction.
For instance, wherever you had large numbers of Jews in the population,
That is, wherever Jews were not a teeny-tiny minority surrounded by a different culture.
As was the case, for instance, in Eastern Europe, there the economic development was always negative.
There the Jewish present went hand in hand with abject poverty.
And the Jews were more numerous in the backward countries, Poland, Russia and so forth,
than they were in the advanced countries, Germany, France, England and so forth.
When they begin to make major contributions to science, which is of course nobody doubts this,
This starts only, this begins only, or takes place only when there are small minorities in contact with dominant cultures surrounding them.
For instance, in the Middle East, in Spain during the so-called Golden Age of the Arab Rule,
and in particular after the emancipation of the Jews by the Christians from the late 18th century on.
I should emphasize that the emancipation of the Jews is a Christian achievement.
The Jews were emancipated from their own rule, and I have to say something about that in a second,
not by themselves, but by external forces, by Christians not longer being willing, so to speak, to oppress them and treat them in the way that they were treated by their own.
So, before 1800, you see comparatively little in terms of achievements coming from Jews,
and the achievements that you do see are typically people who had broken with their religion.
National Orthodox Judaism requires, again, a rigid subordination to your family and to
your community, not quite unlike you find it in Islamic societies.
And in the so-called ghettos, there existed self-administration of the Jews, and this
The Jewish self-administration was frequently, typically given to them by the outside ruler in exchange for paying the outside ruler a part of the fines that the rabbis imposed internally on their own community.
The Jews lived in ghettos, by the way, had something to do with the fact that some of their taboos involved that they have to live very close to the synagogue and cannot walk during certain periods of the day.
So they have to be in close proximity to certain places, they cannot live widely dispersed from each other, at least if you are an Orthodox Jew.
In Spain, for instance, that was precisely the arrangement.
You get self-administration in your ghetto.
You can impose any type of fine, any type of punishment
that the rabbinical law allows to be imposed on other Jews,
but a certain percentage of that you have to give to the Spanish king.
So a mutually beneficial arrangement was found, established between the Spanish ruler on the one hand and the rabbis being in charge of the Jewish ghettos.
Now, the life in the ghettos then was almost completely under rabbinical control, not unlike the control that Islamic ayatollahs exercise over their population.
To make money was permitted, to make money outside of the ghettos was permitted, but only in order to support Talmudic studies.
And in order to do so, the Jews became the tools of the rulers, frequently in the suppression of the endogenous population.
That was in particular the case in places like Poland and Russia.
Russia, that is, where the Jews working outside of the ghetto were used by the rulers as tax collectors and so forth for vis-a-vis the Polish and Russian population.
The Jews were permitted to do this because Max Weber refers to them as having a double ethic.
That is, they had different rules that applied to them internally from rules that applied to them externally.
To give you just one example, for instance, while the Christians for a long time outlawed the taking of interest,
the Jews also outlawed taking interest except from Christians.
So it was not permitted to take interest from other Jews, but it was permitted to take interest from Christians, which of course made them particularly suitable for certain types of professions like moneylenders and so forth.
In the ghettos, I'll give you some quotes on that in a second, the reading of books in modern languages was completely outlawed.
There was no writing even in Hebrew allowed unless it was permitted by the rabbis.
We are nowadays used to the fact that Jews are particularly humorous people. Just think of Woody Allen and think of Murray Rothbard.
But humor was something that was considered to be a taboo in the ghettos. There were rigorous enforcement of eating and sexual taboos.
Education concerned exclusively the Talmud and mystic writings. No mass was taught, no science, no history, no geography, and all violations were severely punished, including flogging to death.
And as I said, the liberation of the Jews, from which point on we see then that dramatic achievements that they were capable of doing, was essentially a Christian achievement and due to the attachment of the puritanical values of the Old Testament,
which was also part of the tradition of Judaism.
As soon as they were emancipated,
combined that with their puritanical attitude that they had,
they then became, indeed, enormously successful businessmen,
As I said, I want to read you a little quote on this atmosphere in the Jewish ghettos.
Before emancipation, there was no Jewish humor.
Humor was taboo like in Sparta. Nor was there learning, except for purely religious learning, which was itself in a debased and degenerate state.
The Jews of Europe and to a lesser extent in Muslim countries were dominated by a supreme contempt and hate for all learning except the Talmud and mysticism.
Large parts of the Old Testament, all non-liturgical Hebrew poetry, most books on Jewish philosophy were not read, and their names were often anasematized.
Study of all languages was strictly forbidden, as was the study of mathematics and science.
Geography, history, even Jewish history, were completely unknown.
Nothing was so forbidden, feared, and therefore persecuted as the most modest innovation or the most innocent criticism.
It was a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and ignorance.
A world in which the preface to the first work on geography in Hebrew published in 1803 in Russia
could complain that very many great rabbis were denying the existence of the American continent
and saying that it's impossible to exist.
So the Jewish contribution begins after the emancipation of the Jews basically from outside
and before they do not play a dominant role in the development of capitalism,
can actually be regarded as some sort of hampering the development.
Now I come to Christianity. Today I have to have a little bit more than I had in other days.
So while Western civilization eventually came to surpass all other civilizations,
one has to admit that this was nothing that was obvious from the very beginning.
I mean, early Christianity was not individualistic, but it was absorbed in the collective community to which a person was rigidly subordinated.
Again, not quite unlike Islam, and earthly life was considered to be as a mere preparation for the afterlife.
And during the first millennium of influence exercised by Christianity
One must admit that Christianity presided over regression in scientific knowledge and the division of labor.
Again, recall, we saw that yesterday when we looked at population figures from 200, 300 after Christ until about 1,000,
there is actually retrogression taking place. Population does not increase at all
and nothing in terms of scientific, scholarly, technological achievements is accomplished during this period.
So what we have to say is that what we describe as a Western Christian outlook developed only gradually,
especially through the incorporation of Greek Aristotelian ideas, culminating then in Thomas Aquinas.
And with Aquinas, so to speak, the modern Christian view developed.
Let me now describe this modern Christian view that turned out to be obviously quite successful in terms of the contributions that they made to science and economic development and so forth.
In this modern Christian world view, the world is viewed basically as good and the greatest good lies in the future.
The material and the spiritual world are seen as a unity.
Recall in Buddhism, for instance, it is somehow the attempt made that the spiritual life separates itself from the flesh, so to speak.
In Christianity, spirit and body form a unity, and the salvation also involves both the body and the soul.
There exists no soul without a body, and only by the performance of bodily actions can the soul be saved.
Men, as I mentioned before, in the Christian worldview, men is considered to be the high point of the creation.
Man is given dominion over the world.
It is clearly separated and ranks above the animal kingdom.
For Christians, there exists no such thing as the Golden Age that is in the past.
Quite to the contrary, progress is possible and the future holds promises for Christians.
The world and the truth is all in all knowable.
We call God withdraws and we can discover the eternal laws.
Wisdom comes as a consequence of efforts.
It is not automatically there but requires achievements and efforts on the part of men and it takes time to develop.
The social world is hierarchical to a certain extent.
There exists God, and the Pope, and the Cardinals, and the Bishops, and the Priests,
and in the earthly realm there exists the King, the Lord, the Father, the Mother, and the Kid.
There is no ridiculous equality. The Christian Church is anti-democratic. At least the Catholic Church is anti-democratic.
But it is also individualistic in the sense that everyone is created by God, and everyone is capable of salvation.
Which attitude, which outlook of course, is mainly responsible for the fact that it was only in Christianity
that one gradually got rid of an institution such as slavery.
Initially, of course, in old Christianity,
of course, slavery existed too.
And there's no clear-cut prohibition against it.
But based on this view that everybody
is a creature of God and capable of salvation and of the attitude that Christians were a missionary religion trying to convert people.
Gradually, the view became the dominant view that slavery is incompatible with Christian attitudes.
by accident, so to speak, some Spanish priests who, after the occupation and conquest of South America, were responsible for, not with immediate success, obvious, but over the time with some success, to give rise to the opinion that the Indians, after all,
are also human beings and not wild creatures that would be automatic objects of enslavement.
In addition, Christianity is social and cooperative,
that views the progress that is possible as a result of a cooperative effort.
So it is cooperation between people that brings us closer to the truth.
Let me just make one remark about Catholicism and then I come to a comparison between Protestant
There is of course one strand in Christianity that has to be regarded with some sort of suspicion when it comes to how suitable is it to allow the development of capitalism and capital accumulation and so forth.
Of course, it would be the extreme Paulist view that one should love everyone like one loves oneself instead of taking the view that one should love one's neighbor as one loves oneself.
It is possible to love your neighbor.
But if your neighbors encompass, so to speak, the entire world, and you are supposed to be charitable to the entire world,
then this would obviously be a main obstacle in the way of capital accumulation.
But nonetheless, this is not the mainstream view as far as I understand it.
Now to the famous Caesars of Max Weber. You are all familiar with this.
Max Weber, of course, explains the rise of capitalism with the development of puritanical religions.
And, as we will see, there is some basic truth in this, in this thesis with some reservations.
Now, capitalism, as we know, was of course born in Italy, and Italy is Catholic.
So that clearly shows that Catholicism is definitely compatible with capitalism.
And in fact, the Roman Church was a major banking institution that represented itself, so to speak, a capitalist institution.
And the first big centers of capitalism were Florence and Venice. Again, Catholic places.
And one can say in addition that as a matter of theology,
Caesalocism is of course far more enthusiastic about human existence and human autonomy and human reason and human intellect than let's say Lutheranism and Calvinism is.
Lucernism and Calvinism are, so to speak, anti-intellectual doctrines to a certain extent.
For the Thomists, face and intellect can somehow be reconciled and combined.
For Lucerns and Calvinists, there exists a strict separation between the two,
between the two, and they emphasize far more the importance of face, of blind face, than they do emphasize reason.
On the other hand, in the Catholic religion, you have, of course, a greater emphasis on the enjoyment of life,
And you have a certain, relatively speaking, a certain disdain of material things that would, relating to the previous lecture, that would indicate that Catholics tend to have a slightly higher degree of time preference.
And again, in looking at the present world, you can somehow see that that is true.
I mean, Dolce Vita is something that is typical of Sassan countries, of Italy and Spain and so forth.
Dolce Vita in Germany in the 19th century was more or less unheard of.
of. In the meantime, of course, we all live in some sort of secular age, so the Germans
also do Dolche Vita plenty in the meantime. But again, talking about the area a few hundred
years ago when, so to speak, capitalism developed, it's certainly clear that there was more often,
As Murray Rothbard would say, life-affirming attitude among the Catholics, then there was among the Protestants for whom life was something less than enjoyable, to put it mildly.
Catholics have more fun.
Catholics have, as I said, in the 20th century, I'm not sure if that applies anymore.
It seems to be everybody has fun all the time, I guess.
But in the old days, I think Catholics definitely had more fun.
Because you could also, your sins could be easily forgiven.
Whereas the sins, of course, stick with the Protestant forever.
You never get rid of it.
In fact, if I'm correct, I mean, we
have some Catholic experts sitting here,
and I hardly dare to look at them.
In fact, it was a private property until 1891
by Leo XIII, when he declared private property
to be a good private property had before been seen by the Catholics as a regrettable, though
unavoidable concession to the weakness of human nature.
Though they say they were not opposed to it, but they thought that was somehow had something
to do with human weakness and one had regrettably to accept this institution and only relatively
with Leo XIII is a positive affirmation. Private property is a good thing.
Nonetheless, despite this more rationalistic attitude among Catholics as compared to the blind faith attitude found among Protestants,
In terms of Protestants, Weber seems to be fundamentally right in the following way.
In mixed populations, like in France or Germany, where large parts of the population are Catholic and large parts are Protestant,
We do find a significant over-representation of Protestants among the capitalists.
In general, we can say that capitalism was further developed and was more successful in Northern Europe and also in the United States
This cannot be explained with the interest question, that is, Protestants had less difficulties with charging interest than Catholics, but in the Catholic doctrine, the interest prohibition here is much more important.
That is, Protestants had less difficulties with charging interest than Catholics, but in the Catholic doctrine, the interest prohibition had been by and large undermined completely at the time.
So this is likely not the explanation for the greater success as far as capitalistic development is concerned of Protestant places.
Certainly, the doctrine of predestination has nothing to do with the greater success of the Protestant religions.
If people would have taken the doctrine of predestination seriously, they would have fallen into some oriental, lethargic fatalism.
After all, if it's all predestined, why should I do anything?
So what we can infer from this is the doctrine of predestination existed on the books, so to speak, was never really taken seriously by anybody.
What likely is the explanation for the greater amount of capital accumulation and success and so forth of the protestant religion is simply their puritanical outlook which involves you work without enjoyment.
Work is the only way to riches. The riches, the wealth that you accumulate are an indicator of grace.
Work is for Protestants almost like prayer.
There is a certain amount of eschaticism that Protestants accept.
You don't enjoy life, you just pain yourself, work harder and harder.
There is among the Protestants a more pronounced rejection
The rejection of ostentatious consumption and of an ostentatious display of wealth.
Again, you can see that even now that rich people in places like Italy or Spain live in places that look like rich people live there.
I know many rich people in Germany that live in places they look no different from the place where I live in.
There is a rejection, of course, of gambling among the puritans and drinking and all the rest of it.
All of this, let me conclude with this, all of this that we might regard as an achievement of the puritanical religions, Lutheranism and Calvinism,
and Humanizationism. However, it might be regarded as some sort of mixed blessing. Because
what was truly unique in the Western world and what might have had a far greater impact
on the ultimate superiority of the Western civilization as compared to others than the
The Christian religion itself is the fact that only in Europe was the power of the church
and the power of the earthly rulers institutionally separated.
You had the Pope in Rome being, so to speak, an international church, counterbalancing
the power of the various local lords, reducing, so to speak, the power of these lords because
They did not control the church at the same time, but this separation of church and state,
which was unique for Europe, that existed in no other part of the world, this unique
separation was of course to a large extent, if not completely, broken up, abolished, precisely
through the Protestant Revolution.
That is, by breaking up the international Catholic Church and founding various national
churches, Lutheran's Calvinists and whatever, and Mr. Knox in Scotland and so forth, all
of a sudden the princely rulers, of course, realize that this gives the possibility for
for me to combine the highest rank in the worldly hierarchy as king or prince with the highest rank also in the church.
Insofar, and this is, so to speak, the mixed blessing, Protestantism has systematically strengthened the power of the state,
And Protestantism has also been responsible to a large extent for the promotion of democratic values.
Remember I explained in the Catholic Church you have hierarchies. The Catholic Church is anti-democratic.
The Protestant churches are far more democratic.
The high churches, the high protestant churches have gone back to a certain extent in the direction of the Catholic Church
because they were aware of the dangers that result if you let every individual, so to speak, interpret the Bible on its own.
If you do that and if you have a document that is not internally consistent, then of course you get a splitting off of all sorts of weird sects.
This is, of course, precisely what one of the side effects of the Protestant Revolution was that you had a multiplication of weird people, of weird things happening all of a sudden.
Which happens, of course, if every individual just interprets whatever he thinks is right and nothing is filtered through some people who have more wisdom than others.
And of course, the Lutheran Church, which was initially quite democratic, has abolished this, has also built up hierarchies, not to the same extent as the Catholic Church, and so has of course the Anglican Church.
And if you look at the present situation, the craziest churches are of course the churches that are most democratic up to this point.
point. And with this I'll end my lecture and I think I have already used up all of my time. We will just have to talk about this at the next lecture or next break or so. Thank you.