THE FORMATION OF A “SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM” IN UPPER GERMANY: LEONHARD FRONSPERGER’S “ON THE PRAISE OF SELF-INTEREST”

Rainer Klump and Lars Pilz

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2021, vol. 43, issue 3, 401-419

Abstract: In 1564, Leonhard Fronsperger, a military expert and citizen of the Free Imperial City of Ulm in Upper Germany, publishes the booklet “On the Praise of Self-Interest” (“Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen”). Using the form of a satirical poem, he demonstrates how the individual pursuit of self-interest can lead to the common good. Writing long before Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith, Fronsperger presents a thorough analysis of all kinds of self-interested social, political, and economic relations. His praise of self-interest demonstrates how, over the sixteenth century, the interplay of economic success (in particular in major trading cities), a more realistic conception of human behavior, and some aspects of humanism and the Reformation led to a new understanding of the origins of economic dynamics. This becomes the basis for what Max Weber ([1904–05] 2009) would later term “the spirit of capitalism.”

Date: 2021
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