You are all heartily invited to the symposium “Religious Ethics and Modernity. Weber’s Religious Argument in his Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism”, to be held at KU Leuven, Holland College on Friday, 12 June, 2026.
The symposium’s aim is to bring back into the limelight the founding father of sociology’s argument of continuity between early modern Puritan asceticism and the rational ethos of modern culture and its capitalist spirit. According to Weber, capitalism inspired by Puritan ethics clothed modern humankind in a ‘steel housing (stahlhartes Gehäuse)’ which it seems no longer capable to take off. Puritan ethics contributed to creating the capitalist ‘treadmill … which with irresistible force determines and perhaps will determine the lifestyle of every individual until the last gallon of fossil fuel is spent’.
But what, if any, were the contributions to modern western capitalism of Christian denominations other than those discussed in Weber’s Protestant Ethics? Four invited speakers will take up this question against the backdrop of Weber’s seminal work on modernity and early modern religious ethics. The symposium closes with a round-table discussion moderated by a Weber expert who will stimulate the speakers and the audience to exchange upon the topics presented. By thus reflecting on Weber’s genealogy and characterisation of the spirit of capitalism from their respective expertise, the symposium will facilitate an interdisciplinary exchange that is not only hoped to provide new insights into the relationship between early modern religious ethics and modern society, but also into ways to go about analysing the nature of society we live in today.
The symposium is hosted by the Research Unit of History of Church and Theology of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and organized in collaboration with LHS, UC Louvain’s Lab for Law, History and Society. It is funded by FWO and LECTIO, the KU Leuven Institute for the Study of the Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
For more information and to register (before 2 June, no fee) visit the website.
Prof Wim François (KU Leuven), Prof Wim Decock (UCLouvain), Dr Niels de Bruijn (KU Leuven), Drs Wout Vandermeulen (KU Leuven).
Visual: Hollands College, KU Leuven
