Discussion #41: Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, by Benjamin M. Friedman

<p>Welcome to Citizen Scholar! Since launching last year we’re reaching people all over the world, so we thank you for your support. If you enjoy our writing on civic virtue and individual excellence, we humbly ask you to share Citizen Scholar with your family members and friends who may enjoy it. The contents of the audio and text formats are identical and meant to accommodate your preferences. Please let us know if you have any feedback - we’re always looking for ways to improve!</p><p><strong>Introduction</strong></p><p>This week we’ll begin a mini-series on the often poorly understood origins of systematic ideas. We’ll begin by examining some of the underlying threads of capitalism and of capitalist frameworks. The standard textbook explanation for the emergence of capitalism as we understand it, traces back to the Enlightenment and Adam Smith’s <em>Wealth of Nations</em>.</p><p>Conventional telling of the history dictates that Smith, like other Enlightenment thinkers, pushed back against a thousand years of conventional thinking in Christendom. They sought to replace the notion of a God-centered worldview with one that revolved around human beings. In pursuit of these ends, we’re often told that tools like human reason and the scientific method supplanted prior reliance on tradition and dogma.</p><p>While other thinkers advanced various arts and sciences during this time, Adam Smith applied these principles to the nascent field of economics. <em>The Wealth of Nations</em> became one of the most influential books of all time, and the free-market, individualist framework it argues for has become orthodox economic theory around the world. Few scholarly disciplines can so clearly be traced to one text. However, the scholar Benjamin Friedman believes that the preceding narrative for the rise of modern capitalist thought is incomplete. He wrote <em>Religion and the Rise of Capitalism </em>to fill in the gaps he perceived in the usual narrative.</p><p><strong>The Context of the Scottish Enlightenment</strong></p><p