Jere Cohen

Rational Capitalism in Renaissance Italy

Although Max Weber believed that rational capitalism developed initially and primarily under Protestantism, it was born and developed extensively in pre-Reformation Italy. Protestant Europe borrowed its rational business techniques from Italy, then later made its own contribution. Thus, capitalist rationality advanced under both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and the religious factor had little effect on its early development.

On R. Stephen Warner's "Toward a Redefinition of Action Theory: Paying the Cognitive Element Its Due"'

Having correctly noted that we assess the individual-versus-society dualism in Durkheim and having located both this dualism and a norms-versusinterests dualism in Parsonss writings on Weber and Durkheim, Warner asserts that our analysis is based on the use of both dualisms. However, our analysis of Durkheim should not be mistaken for reliance on his analytic views. In like manner, although our reinterpretations of Weber and Durkheim entailed, in part, meeting Parsons on his own interpretive grounds to confront his views directly, we did not subscribe to his framework. Warner structures his discussion of our work in terms of these two dualisms; however, since they are not ours (nowhere does Warner cite any passage in which we endorse either), the distortion thereby introduced originates with Warner, not with us. Recognition of this fact destroys Warners own framework for explaining how and why we err.