Darrin Triplett
Business PHI
Midterm
18 October 2012

In the quest for freedom, people have abandoned religion and spirituality in claims to it imposing restrictions over individuality, only instead, to become slaves to a materialistic lifestyle. In Max Weber book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he explains that this exchanging of spiritual slavery for material slavery was not necessarily a fair deal, and pointed out that the Protestant reformation was responsible for trapping people inside an invisible prison under the argument of rationalization; which he referred to this as the "iron cage". As Weber gives a historical account for how capitalism was influenced and exercised by religious doctrines, he illustrates a condition of humanity that has led to modern economic conditions, in which we produce ideals about our natural condition that subordinates individuality and imprisons us to a system that we have created. This essay will explore Weber’s idea on the development of western capitalism from the Protestant Reformation and how its belief system created psychological pressures in enforcing conduct. In illuminating the characteristics of the Protestant ethic and its impact on the formation of economic order, it will be examined here how modern capitalism has come to compare in enforcing social conduct. During the reformation, Weber explains that this was not only the time that capitalism developed but also was the period during Protestantism. According to Weber, these two society wide changes of an economic shift to capitalism and the religious and social shift from a controlling Catholic Church rule, to a more competitive religious environment; are intrinsically bound together. Weber says it also signaled a different social view that would also have an influence in economic matters. There might seem to be a contradiction in the idea