Just Work by Russell MUIRHEAD

Author:Russell MUIRHEAD [MUIRHEAD, Russell & MUIRHEAD, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Political, Political Science, Public Policy, Social Policy
ISBN: 9780674041271
Google: gFWM05YpOcwC
Publisher: Harvard UP
Published: 2009-06-30T22:46:17+00:00

The Spur of Devotion

Weber suggests that the Protestant ethic flows from anxiety rather than reason. What mattered to the Calvinist was not earthly achievement but salvation. Yet salvation was reserved for the chosen, and the doctrine of predestination meant that none could be certain of being among the chosen. No free decision, no cultivation of virtues, no laudable actions could affect one's eternal destiny. The generation that accepted this doctrine, Weber speculates, must have known "a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual." Beyond any earthly assistance, each was "forced to follow his path alone to meet a destiny which was decreed for him from eternity." Amid such spiritual isolation, no one could avoid wondering and doubting whether he was included among the elect. The inevitable uncertainty produced, Weber says, a determination to muster-or to feign when one could not muster-complete conviction in oneself as one of the elect, "since lack of self confidence is the result of imperfect faith, hence of imperfect grace." The best way to generate that confidence was through dedication to work. This "alone disperses religious doubts and gives the certainty of grace," by providing visible evidence, through good works, of one's state of grace."

On this view, an anxious uncertainty about one's salvation motivates an impulse to manifest through work the outward signs of salvation. If work is not for the sake of its immediate rewards, it is not exactly for its own sake either. Rather, it aims to support the conviction of one's salvation. Although work itself, no matter how successful, never directly brings about salvation, it may sustain a sense of the salvation that can never be earned or achieved through effort. But even generating this sense or conviction is an achievement, and it demands persistent devotion to labor. For work to produce the signs of grace, both outward and psychological, it must not be oc casional but consistent. The manifestation of grace is not infrequent good works that balance out intermittent sins, but the creation of a life that over its whole demonstrates its blessed character. The object of work is to show oneself as an instrument of God's overall plan, which is why the Protestant ethic demands devotion to work over a whole life. Work needs to be sustained, systematic, and methodical if it is to increase God's earthly glory to the greatest extent-and so also be a convincing signal that the worker is one of God's elect. "The God of Calvinism," Weber writes, "demanded of his believers not single good works, but a life of good works combined into a single system."19 The deep spiritual loneliness and anxiety about one's state of grace is, on this account, the original spring of the work ethic.

The Protestant ethic lifts work out of its natural location as it makes the necessity of work independent of the material needs for which it provides. Precisely speaking, the Protestant ethic does not make work its own end but treats work as if it were a

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