The Impact of Christianity on Capitalism

This paper represents a preliminary attempt to explore Max Weber’s and Michel Foucault’s distinct accounts of how Christianity facilitated the development of capitalism in the West. Very generally, Weber and Foucault agree that it was the conducts that Christianity inculcated in individuals that aided capitalism’s develop­ment. Yet this paper shows that they disagree about what these conducts were, how they were inculcated, and in whom.