This article reassesses Weber's position on the influence of Confucianism on China's failure to develop the modern form of capitalism by focusing on the conception of wealth among the merchants in the Ming and Qing dynasties. It starts with a review of the criticisms directed towards Weber's theses, including his claim about an affinity between Calvinism and the spirit of capitalism, and his assertion about the lack of moral tensions in Confucianism. We argue that despite the flaws in his analyses, (...) Weber's position that ideas matter is still relevant. The main shortcoming of his argument about the link between the Confucian value system and the failure of China to develop a modern form of capitalism is that he overlooked a critical element in this value system. This was the idea, widely shared among the merchants in late imperial China, of the desirability of disposing of one's wealth. This had the effect of discouraging the accumulation of capital in a period of incipent capitalism. While this idea was intrinsic to the Confucian intellectual tradition, it was also reinforced by the vulnerable position of the merchants under the omnipotent structure of state political power during the Ming dynasty. This shows that while ideas were crucial in preventing China from developing modern capitalism, they did not operate in isolation from the socio-political context as a historical force. (shrink)

This article reads Max Weber’s Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920/1921), in particular the first two sections, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Confucianism and Taoism, as his comparative philosophy of life. While Weber’s thesis about the determining effect of Protestantism on the emergence of industrial capitalism has been taken as a justification for the superiority of Western culture and its uniqueness in the world, this article emphasizes Weber’s critique of Protestant asceticism and his pessimism (...) toward the West in the early twentieth century. Weber’s critique is deeply connected to his concerns about life and freedom and his imagination of an aesthetic way of life in Chinese Confucianism, in which he believes to have found a well-balanced rational culture that accepts and appreciates irrationalism, as expressed in Taoism. And, as the article observes, Weber’s philosophy of life centering on aesthetic self-cultivation inspired Michel Foucault’s concept of the care of the self in the 1980s. Weber’s sociology of religion thus articulates his vision of freedom in the age of global capitalism—it is his Confucian care of the self. (shrink)