Hume on the Protestant Ethic and the Rise of English Commercial Spirit
Erik W. Matson
Abstract:This paper interprets the interaction between Protestantism and commercial spirit in David Hume’s account of English development, mostly drawing from The History of England. Hume saw Protestant theology—especially the more enthusiastic strains of English Puritanism—as having fortuitously shifted the landscape of political and economic sensibilities in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by affecting believers’ political, social, and economic psychologies. Those shifting psychologies exhibited af… Show more
Set email alert for when this publication receives citations?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.