Ethics & Bioethics (in Central Europe), 2023, 13 (3–4), 118–126 DOI:10.

2478/ebce-2023-0014

A Catholic correction of Max Weber’s thesis on Protestant ethic in the view

of Michael Novak

Dariusz Góra1

Abstract
Max Weber’s thesis on the decisive influence of Protestant ethic on the formation and development of modern
capitalism has become one of the best-known and widely shared canonical claims in social sciences. Since its
publication at the beginning of the 20th century, this thesis, supported by subsequent great works by the German
classic, has rarely been the subject of major controversy. The work of correcting Weber’s thesis was undertaken
in the late 20th century by Michael Novak. Novak’s correction is not confrontational, but complementary. The
American thinker abandons the research area of minority Protestant communities, which caught Weber’s attention,
and undertakes an analysis of the broader religious tradition, developing both before and after the Reformation. In
particular, the achievements of Pope John Paul II, interpreted by Novak in terms of the renewal of a liberty current
of Catholic social thought, provide important corrective data.

Keywords: inner-worldly asceticism, Catholic ethic, Protestant ethic, creativity, modern capitalism, calling, John
Paul II

Introduction
The treatise The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (1905) occupies a special place in
the oeuvre of Max Weber (1864–1920). The book develops the thesis that capitalism owes its
success to the religiously motivated foresight of Christian Protestant communities. This thesis
stands in opposition to Karl Marx’s claims that capitalism is the result of the greed of the
possessing classes and the exploitation of man by man. Marxist analysis served as the formal
justification for the communist revolutions, first carried out in the Russian Empire and later
extended to the Central European region. The iron information curtain, stretched around the
communist part of the divided Europe after World War II, filtered arguments opposing the
narrative of Central and Eastern Europe as an area liberated from capitalist greed and
exploitation. Figures such as Max Weber, even if their importance to the development of social
sciences was indisputable, were known in this part of the world primarily as opponents of the
“unassailable” Marx and treated with due suspicion. In Poland, for example, the first full edition
of Weber’s classic text on Protestant ethic was published only after the fall of communism,
with a scandalous 90-year delay in relation to the original.
The ethicist Jadwiga Mizińska, author of the preface to the first Polish edition of the work
(and widow of its translator) wrote: “The lesson (but not the moral) of Weber’s work for us
[Central Europeans transitioning out of communism – ed. D.G.] is, first of all, that it is
impossible to master the «matter» of capitalism without acquiring (or awakening) the «spirit»
inherent in it” (Mizińska, 1994, p. xxi). Referring to the predominantly non-Protestant ethical
foundation that characterizes the people of Central Europe, she noted: “The Catholic vision [...]
of God of the weak and the poor clashes with the aspirations of the faithful, who used to act
like the weak, and resent being rewarded like the strong. How to reconcile a crummy job with
payment at the highest rate – this is the question that a society on the turn from post-communism
to – for the time being – pseudo-capitalism is facing. It will be interesting to see how history
resolves it and what title the book written in a few decades, by the second Weber, will have”
(Mizińska, 1994, p. xxii). If the author of these words at the time of writing them had
looked more carefully around the world publishing market, she would have noticed that

1
Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (Poland); d.gora@uksw.edu.pl; ORCID: 0000-0001-7662-
8812

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a year earlier such a book had been written and such a “second Weber” had revealed himself to
the world.
This text recalls the main theses of the commentary on Weber’s thesis that Michael Novak
developed in the 1990s. I set the theses of the American thinker in the context of the events of
the era and indicate their place within the framework of the author’s overall body of work. I
analyse historical events and their theoretical interpretations. The discrepancy between these
two planes allows me to distinguish the historical figure of Max Weber from the imagined
avatar of this figure, who is charged with formulating ethical norms. I interpret Michael
Novak’s position as an expression of a reaction to the avatar of Max Weber more than to the
historical scientist of that name.

Michael Novak as public intellectual

Michael Novak would certainly not accept being called “the second Weber.” Novak was not a
Weberian, probably sooner a supporter of Joseph Schumpeter in his praise for the role of
“creative destruction” in the development of civilization. In the context of the relationship
between ethical systems (whether grounded in religious doctrines or the ideology of the
Enlightenment) that interests us here, he is close to the position of the British historian Hugh
Trevor-Roper, who emphasized the complexity of their interactions (Novak, 1981, p. 11).
We know Novak as a man of multiple interests and activities. This philosopher, publicist,
social activist, diplomat and philanthropist fitted perfectly into the way of functioning known
in the United States as a “public intellectual.” Although he left behind a multitude of texts and
analyses – he published one or two books every year! – after all, the characterization of his
figure cannot be sealed up within the category of a mere intellectual-theoretician. He was a
publicly engaged intellectual – socially, politically, religiously and internationally. He was
graduated from the Gregorian University in Rome (1958) and Harvard University (1966); he
successfully tried his hand as an academic lecturer, and dabbled in fiction; he represented the
United States at the United Nations, organized annual youth summer schools in Poland and
Slovakia, and advised statesmen, clergymen, and social activists, as well as those who were just
searching for their path in life. As he himself emphasized in the title of one of his early
publications, he felt he was both an American and a Catholic, a member of a “new generation”
of Catholic Americans, proud of both affiliations (Novak, 1964). His affirmative stance on these
two issues often became a cause of amazement, disbelief, even disgust, which in his
irreplaceable, colourful style he depicted by comparing himself to the situation of a man who
suddenly realizes that his hair is green and draws the stares of all the “normal” people around.

These days the religious person feels very much under attack, at least in university
circles, in most of the arts, and in most journalism. In the circles in which the symbol-
makers of our society set the tone, that tone is antithetical to religion. Many secular
persons one meets seem surprised by signs that religion is still taken seriously by anyone
they know; some are amazingly innocent of any intellectual contact with it, and at times
are hyper-alarmed by the emergence of a politically significant religious movement.
Some can hardly believe their eyes concerning the upsurge of religion around them. It
frightens them (Novak, 1998, pp. 239–240).

Michael Novak was grateful to his American homeland for the opportunity it gave his
ancestors, emigrants from poor Spiš, not only spiritually, but also materially. At the turn of the
19th–20th century, when Novak’s grandparents forever abandoned their home villages, Dúbrava
and Brutovce, due to poverty and the lack of prospects there, as many as a third of Slovakia’s
population did the same. America gave these people a chance for life stability, education and
the development of human potential.

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 The intellectual problem in Novak’s work stems from the fact that this opportunity-giving
America was not built by likeminded Catholics, but by culturally alien Anglo-Protestants. At
the time of the founding of the American Republic, only 1% of the population was Catholic.
The rapid growth of the non-Anglo-Protestant population did not occur until the turn of the
19th–20th century. A significant part of this wave was formed by immigrants from Central and
Southern Europe. Mass immigration disrupted the stabilized ideological profile of the United
States, often provoking the rise of radical protest movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, an
organization founded to combat not only the emancipation of the black population, but also the
Jewish and Catholic populations. At the time of Novak’s youth, in the mid-20th century, these
two religious groups still functioned as second-class citizens in America. Painful exposure to
this phenomenon provoked Novak to become involved in the ethnic emancipation movement,
of which he even became one of the leaders. He described these problems in a book with the
unambiguous title, The rise of the unmeltable ethnics (Novak, 1972). In it, he argued that the
cultural melting of Jews and Catholics, enforced by the Anglo-Protestant establishment, would
not only be a process detrimental to the minorities concerned, but would also degrade the
qualitatively superior cultural traits of which the aforementioned non-Protestant cultures are the
carriers. To put it directly, Michael Novak was serious about evaluating Jewish and Catholic
cultures as psychologically healthier and morally more beneficial for human beings than the
dominant Anglo-Protestant culture, which seemed to promote racist attitudes, moral
Manichaeism, spiritual egotism and indifferentism, and mental frustration.
It is interesting to note the fate of this publication, which in its second edition, a quarter
century later, presents a much more balanced reflection on the issue of ethnicity. At the end of
the 20th century, after the moral revolution brought about by the 1960–1970 counterculture,
Michael Novak toned down his radicalism toward Anglo-Protestant culture and its hitherto
dominant establishment. He began to consider it an ally in the work of defending customs and
social practices trampled by the counterculture, and which, as he confessed, in his youth “I was
taking for granted”

Say what you will, the traditions of politics, discourse, and manners that all of us inherit
from the British settlers of this nation are without equal in the civilized world. My father
was always grateful that his father had chosen to bring his family under the sway of
such civilizing traditions, and into a language as vivid, concrete, rich, and beautiful as
English. What other „establishment” in the world carried within itself as many blessings
of liberty rightly understood? In which are daily customs and the common law more
commonsensical, and the manners more civil? (Novak, 1996, p. xxx).

The benefits that America has given Novak and his family in measurable and practical ways
are referred to by various names. One of them is “capitalism.” Novak devoted most of his busy
life to analysing this very word and the corresponding empirical reality. His astonishment was
that the word “capitalism” arouses the worst possible reactions from intellectuals who interpret
social reality, but are, after all, also beneficiaries of the system. The most famous of Novak’s
books, The spirit of democratic capitalism, opens with words as if taken from the Communist
manifesto by Marx and Engels (1848), who, in their own era, were ironical about the spectre of
communism looming over the world.

Throughout the world, capitalism evokes hatred. The word is associated with
selfishness, exploitation, inequality, imperialism, war. Even at home, within the United
States, a shrewd observer cannot fail to note a relatively low morale among business
executives, workers, and publicists. Democratic capitalism seems to have lost its spirit.
To invoke loyalty to it because it brings prosperity seems to some merely materialistic.
The Achilles’ heel of democratic capitalism is that for two centuries now it has appealed
so little to the human spirit (Novak, 1982, p. 31).

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 The book The spirit of democratic capitalism formulates Novak’s characteristic three-part
definition of democratic capitalism as a real existing and developing political, economic and
moral-cultural system. Novak clearly distinguishes this type of regime from the different – neo
feudal, corporatist or socialist – ways of organizing public life, which are erroneously given the
common name of “capitalism.” However, he is not interested in a purely abstract debate about
concepts. Despite his successful academic career, he voluntarily decided at a young age to leave
the academy and undertake activities closer to the experience of the common man. He has
repeatedly stressed in his publications, but also in conversations with the author of this text, that
the purpose of his life is not to analyse abstract concepts. His research is related to human
experience and is intended to serve the well-being of ordinary people.
With Max Weber, we find a completely different motivation. Weber wanted to be and has
gone down in the memory of posterity as an academic, as a classic practitioner of scientific
methodology, which representatives of numerous research disciplines today wish to imitate.
Many of his works analyse the doctrines of the world’s great religions and the ethical and
cultural dimensions of social life. However, he himself, as he claimed, had no musical ear for
religion, and maintained an agnostic and distanced attitude. He preached the ideal of
“axiological neutrality” in scientific research, but this does not mean that he did not have his
own political views and did not defend them in public. These were the views of a modernist, a
progressive liberal and a German nationalist, who was actively and politically involved in
defending the Germanness of the Second German Reich against Slavic, Jewish and Catholic
influences (Abraham, 1991).
Weber declares that in his scientific work he is concerned with seeking the historical genesis
of the analysed phenomena in social terms; nevertheless, his method of “ideal types” bears the
stamp of neo-Kantian idealism. It makes the starting point of considerations not the phenomena
of the empirical world, but ideas, hatching in people’s minds and expressed in words or writing,
and then adjusted back not so much to the external world, but to their own ideas about it. Weber
creates for himself “ideal types” of analysed phenomena: “capitalism,” “Protestantism” or “this-
worldly ascetism,” meaning the practice of virtue without breaking with secular life so as to
realize in incremental material gain. In his search for the historical and social origins of the
phenomenon called modern “capitalism,” he happily does not stop at vulgar-materialist
interpretations in the style of Karl Marx, but he reaches out to the texts of Protestant thinkers
of the Reformation period. He categorizes the ideas contained in these texts into the ideal types
he has established: “Protestant ethics” and the “spirit” of modern capitalism. As a result of the
proof carried out in the book Protestant Ethic, these two ideal types are positively correlated.

This[-]worldly Protestant asceticism, as we may recapitulate up to this point, acted

powerfully against the spontaneous enjoyment of possessions; it restricted consumption,
especially of luxuries. On the other hand, it had the psychological effect of freeing the
acquisition of goods from the inhibitions of traditionalistic ethics. It broke the bonds of
the impulse of acquisition in that it not only legalized it, but (in the sense discussed)
looked upon it as directly willed by God. The campaign against the temptations of the
flesh, and the dependence on external things, was, as besides the Puritans the great
Quaker apologist Barclay expressly says, not a struggle against the rational acquisition,
but against the irrational use of wealth (Weber, 2013, p. 115).

The context of Novak’s intervention and its significance within the author’s
body of work
Max Weber is regarded as an undisputed classic social theorist and one of the most prominent
representatives of various social sciences – from sociology to economics and history to political
science. His current status as a scientific celebrity is far different from the difficulties and

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misunderstanding he experienced during his lifetime. As his leading biographer Dirk Kaesler
argues, the “original” Weber was not the creator of a single theory or concept he developed,
and his legacy resembles a disordered “quarry” from which posterior commentators make use
in the most varied ways (Kaesler, 2010, pp. 270–274). Either way, Weber’s thesis that modern
capitalism is rooted in the ethos of selected Protestant communities almost passes as an
unquestioned axiom in science today. However, the status of an axiom raises the danger of
dogmatism, which can only grow along with an overly superficial reception of the German
classic’s work. One of the few scholars who ventured not just to discuss Weber’s thesis, but
also to substantively supplement it, was the protagonist of this text, Michael Novak. This
analysis took the form of a book with the unambiguously polemical title, The Catholic ethic
and the spirit of capitalism (1993). Between the publication date of that book and 1982, the
date of the publication of the bestselling The spirit of democratic capitalism, a fascinating but
little-known story unfolded.
The bestselling The spirit of democratic capitalism was, on Novak’s part, a form of protest
against the drift of the intellectual elite in the United States toward the ideological positions of
the countercultural Left. It was an attempt at a positive lecture on the empirical reality of
American capitalism, supported by philosophical and theological arguments (in the Catholic
current). The publication brought the author unequivocal and generalized ostracism, although
an unexpectedly positive result of this state of affairs was the crystallization of an original
ideological and political milieu with the moral courage and material means to confront the
mainstream.
In 1986, Novak published a book on the then extremely popular political ideology known as
liberation theology. The book asks the title question, Will it liberate? – and answers it in the
negative. I have argued that this answer by Novak, supported by abundant argumentation and
extensive factual material, marked the beginning of the end of the popularity of the
aforementioned ideology, and on a global scale. For in place of uncritical admiration of
fashionable content, Novak subjected the claims developed within liberation theology to the
test of factual debate, ultimately pointing out their shallowness and harmfulness. In the face of
dogmatic generalizations, the author comes up with an offer of “an open debate about the public
order most conducive to the well-being of human beings; not [another] dogma that the political
messiah Novak would like to impose on the world at the expense of competing political
messianisms” (Góra, 2013, p. 355).
The 1980s were also a time of dramatic debates that Michael Novak – as an organizer of
multi-member expert committees – had with the hierarchy of his own religious denomination.
These debates concern two fundamental issues, the analysis of which resulted in controversial
pastoral letters from the US episcopate. The first concerned the free market economy (a topic
that falls within the scope of interest of this text). The second letter was intended to express
condemnation of the Ronald Reagan administration’s nuclear armament in the face of the Soviet
threat. In the draft version of the latter, protested against by Novak and revised thanks to the
intervention of the Holy See, the bishops wanted to suggest a gesture of evangelical openness
toward the Soviets in the form of unilateral disarmament of the United States. While in the year
of the publication of The spirit of democratic capitalism Novak was acting alone, unaware of
the views of the then recently elected Pope John Paul II, in the ideological battles of the 1980s
concerning free market economics and armaments, he could already count on the approving
stance of the then Bishop of Rome, along with his assistant and later successor, Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger.
In 1991, an envoy from the Holy See asked Michael Novak to consult on the working text
of a papal encyclical to be promulgated under the title Centesimus annus. Novak’s comments
were incorporated into the document. When the text went to press, Novak received a copy of it
48 hours before its official publication in order to help prepare for it a favourable reception by

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the US media (Novak, 2011). Centesimus annus is the most unequivocal affirmation of the free
market, private property and liberal democracy in the history of Catholic social teaching. The
document was enthusiastically received in Novak’s political circle – the Catholic neo-
conservatives (Richard John Neuhaus, 1936–2009; George Weigel) – who would publish
numerous laudations of it in the 1990s. Novak’s 300-page book The Catholic Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism appeared a year and a half after the publication of Centesimus annus.
A decade older, The spirit of democratic capitalism (1982), even if considered the most
important in Novak’s legacy, remains one of more than forty books he wrote. Meanwhile,
Novak’s initiative on the correlation between capitalism and the teaching of Pope John Paul II
is a long-standing project, begun in the 1990s as The Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free
Society, held annually in Krakow and Bratislava. With admirable regularity, Novak raised
funds, offered scholarships to young American and Central European summer school
participants, travelled across the Ocean (in the last years of his life in a wheelchair) and
personally taught classes for another quarter century until his death in 2017. His work continues
today (Tertio, 2023).

A Catholic correction of Weber’s thesis

The book The Catholic ethic and the spirit of capitalism, therefore, cannot be considered as an
optional voice of a mediocre layman. It should be regarded as, in effect, a partly authorized
analysis of normative Catholic teaching, as laid out by John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus
annus. In the book, Max Weber’s well-known thesis is tested by Novak on three questions: the
genesis of modern capitalism; its ideological identity; and alternative realizations.

1) Does modern capitalism have Protestant genesis?

Weber’s thesis is that the “spirit” of modern capitalism developed within the framework of 17th-
century Calvinist sects that preached the theology of predestination and the ideal of an inner-
worldly calling of individual laypersons. Novak accuses Weber of limiting his analysis to
selected factions of Calvinism (Novak, 1993, p. 108) and of considering the ethical features
detected there in a purely abstract manner (Novak, 1993, p. 31). Novak’s objection can be
applied to Weber’s entire scientific method, which consists of an intensive pursuit of a narrow
research topic once chosen. On the other hand, it is not true that Weber does not mention non-
Calvinist ideological positions. Weber’s book extensively refers to the doctrine of English
Presbyterian Richard Baxter, and to the views of American self-made man Benjamin Franklin.
His argument refers to representatives of various ideological camps, such as Adam Smith,
Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.
Novak’s other objection against Weber seems more significant, namely that Weber’s chief
intention is falsely to make the modern – “rational”, as Weber wants – formulation of capitalism
the criterion for distinguishing and breaking the modern world from the classical world. Weber
aims at such a depiction of modern capitalist economics that emphasizes its radical severance
from ties with traditional ethics and traditionally practiced, patrimonial and corporate politics
(Novak, 1993, pp. 229–230). It would thus be a kind of manifesto of modern rationalism in
economics along the lines of Niccolò Machiavelli’s rationalist thesis on modern politics.

2) Is the “spirit” (content) of modern capitalism distinctively Protestant?

As I said earlier, Max Weber’s restrictive definition of capitalism differs radically from the
comprehensive definition developed by Novak. This is also the accusation of the American
theologian against the German classic. Limiting “capitalism” to the economic sphere (Novak,
1993, p. 21) seems as inadequate as reducing it to the role of a tool for restraining human greed
(Novak, 1993, p. 30). Capitalism was developing in European urban centres even before the

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Protestant Reformation. It is also developing outside its sphere of influence – in Latin America,
Asia and the post-Communist part of Europe.
However, it is not the economic aspect, but the theological one that Novak calls “the weakest
part of Weber’s thesis” (Novak, 1993, p. 231). It consists in the erroneous restriction of the
ideal of “calling” and “vocation” to the circle of Calvinist Protestants. Rather, it is an ideal read
from the Bible by all its adherents: Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants. “Every Jew
and every Christian is called to be like God, since each is made in the image of God and called
to be active and creative” (Novak, 1993, p. 118). While it is true that in earlier times Protestants
dominated in the economic flourishing of developed countries, this is no longer true in the 20th
century. Modern times have witnessed the crushing of oppressive institutions that violate
inherent human creativity. “Human beings themselves are the primary cause of the wealth of
nations” (Novak, 1993, p. 237). To frame this as an ethical program is to invoke not only the
doctrine of selected minority Protestant communities. A contemporary Catholic example of
such an ethical program is provided by Pope John Paul II. His offer is not limited to the
institutional framework of his religious community (Catholic, big “C”), but is addressed to
humanity in its universality (catholic, small “c”).

3) Is there a non-Protestant alternative to the development of the spirit of capitalism?

Michael Novak does not deny Max Weber’s thesis about the links between the successes of
modern capitalism and the ethos of Calvinist communities, but, deepening the issue from the
theological side, he extends the validity of Weber’s thesis to all, Jewish and Christian, Bible
believers. For his part, he gives seven elements that he singled out as “a distinctive Catholic
contribution to the universal effort to develop a social ethic appropriate to our time” (Novak,
1993, p. 221). He explains that „to complement Max Weber’s thesis [… we] have followed
Pope John Paul II in stressing the Catholic (and catholic) ethic of the human person as an active
and creative person, in realizing her or his vocation to create, to show initiative, and to accept
responsibility” (Novak, 1993, p. 229).
The “distinctive Catholic contribution” as seen by Novak goes as follows:

• Recognition of the social nature of the human person, exercised in the family,
in friendship, in civil society, and in universal solidarity.
• The principle of subsidiarity, put in practice by the virtue of social justice.
• The liberty and responsibility (hence the dignity) of persons.
• The virtues necessary for exercising personal responsibility.
• Creative subjectivity.
• Unity amid diversity.
• Emphasis on being rather than having; on character; and on grace (Novak, 1993,
pp. 221–222).

In the overview, one can find not only themes read by Novak in the teaching of John Paul
II, but also expressions characteristic of his own work and developed in this and his other
publications.

Conclusion
The analysis here has led us to the identification of a third subject of controversy: the
contemporary public image of Max Weber as a moral teacher. This is a different entity from
the original Weber, a pure scientist who definitely cuts himself off from the moral mission of
science (Kaesler, 2010, pp. 251–252). It was this tweaked image of Weber and his supposed
ethical normativism that Michael Novak confronted, realizing the effect of this transposition,
which was to marginalize and denigrate his own cultural milieu, i.e. Catholicism. Historical
arguments support the position defended by Novak, but, interestingly, the original Weber did

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not deny it at all. The original Weber carried out a successful scholarly proof of a selected,
narrow research, which soon ceded the ground to much more extensive and better documented
studies, such as Ernst Troeltsch’s 1000-page Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und
Gruppen (Weber, 2013, p. 262) or Werner Sombart’s later numerous works. Weber
subsequently passed from this world and is by no means responsible for his contemporary status
as a moral oracle. It was this status as an idol that Novak confronted and successfully overcame.
Novak’s position corresponded, too, with the official teaching of the Catholic Church of his
time, as expressed in John Paul II’s encyclical, Centesimus annus.
“Capitalism” from Weber’s texts is not the same as “capitalism” from Novak’s definition.
Weber’s “capitalism” falls within the domain of the history of ideas. It is the discursive effect
of doctrines identified in texts from the closed past. For Weber, the future of these doctrines is
morally irrelevant. Meanwhile, Novak’s “capitalism” belongs to the field of public
management. It is a reality empirically experienced by people belonging to a certain political
culture, testable by comparisons with different real-world political systems, and, as he himself
liked to point out, was the best of all those known so far. The name of this reality was ultimately
unimportant to him; what is important is the benefit of the effects that its practice has
measurably brought to previous generations, and still is bringing to the current generation, while
it has the chance to bring similar beneficial effects to future generations, including especially
those liberating themselves from oppressive authoritarian or totalitarian regimes (Novak, 1993,
p. 237).
Novak and Weber agree in treating “capitalism” as a manifestation of social progress and
rationalization. However, absent in Weber’s case is the theme of the moral obligatory nature of
research results. Weber the social scientist presented merely an efficiently executed problem
dissertation, which was, as he himself declared, non-conclusive, if only because of the works
of his friends Troeltsch and Sombart, which were published in parallel or were to be published
in the future, and which supported conclusions different from Weber’s own. The opposite is the
case with Michael Novak – the research procedure carried out by this author had the explicit
goal of building an ethical normative and political recommendation for the modern world.
In this text, I have presented the controversy between Michael Novak and Max Weber not
so much as a dispute between two theoretical positions, but as a three-element problem, played
out in the relationship between: the scientist Weber, the Weber who was made into an idol of
modernity, and Michael Novak as a critic of the utilitarian treatment of the classics by a
superficial but morally thirsty public. I have an irresistible feeling that if Weber and Novak
were presented with this three-element scheme, both of them, as solid scholars, would
respectfully shake hands and jointly turn to attack the imaginary celebrity idol.

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