Calvinist determinism paradoxically generated extreme practical initiative and collective will.
Evidence
The classical form of these passages from conception of the world to practical norm of conduct seems to me to be that through which out of Calvinist predestination there arose one of the greatest impulses to practical initiative the world has ever known. Similarly, every other form of determinism has at a certain point developed into a spirit of initiative and into an extreme tension of collective will. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1312
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis; also a mechanism useful for understanding how fatalistic religious worldviews yield political mobilization.