Through self-interest to the common good: individualization, reformation and the “spirit of capitalism” : on the origin and significance of Leonhard Fronsperger’s 1564 pamphlet “Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen” (In praise of self-interest)

In 1564, the military expert and writer Leonhard Fronsperger from Ulm published the treatise “Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen”, in which he argues that the consistent pursuit of one’s own benefit as an individual maxim for action ultimately leads to the promotion of the common good. The work, which is just over a hundred pages long, is published in Frankfurt am Main, a center of European book printing and trade, and is mentioned in the first published catalog of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Fronsperger presents his thesis, which was quite revolutionary for the time, in the form of a satirical encomium and underpins it with a comprehensive social analysis. He states that political forms of rule, social institutions and economic trade relations are based on the consistent pursuit of the personal benefit of all actors and that the orientation of individual action towards the common good demanded by the Church cannot be found in reality. On the contrary, he considers the theologians’ criticism of the selfish actions of the individual to be wrong, as he considers the state, economy and society to function well on the whole.

In the following, we first document the biography of the author, the creation and dissemination of the work and its particular literary form. We then discuss the central thesis in three different intellectual-historical contexts, each of which is of particular importance for the development of modern social and economic theories. In terms of epistemology and state theory, Fronsperger’s work shows clear parallels to the analyses presented by Niccolò Machiavelli and later Giovanni Botero in Italy on the significance of the reason of state based on individual princely interests and on the driving forces behind successful urban development. In contrast, there are striking differences to the views of the German-speaking reformers following Luther, who propagated the distinction between the spiritual and secular spheres and thus promoted the development of an independent morality for economic life, but for the most part propagated an orientation towards the “common good”. By calling for the pursuit of self-interest, Fronsperger anticipated economic and social theoretical insights into the nature and effects of the division of labor, which were only formulated 150 years later by Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith in England and Scotland. Fronsperger’s work thus offers an outstanding example of how the interplay of economic success, a realistic view of human nature and some aspects of the Reformation led to the development of a new normative understanding of the driving forces of economic and social dynamics, which was later referred to as the “spirit of capitalism”.