“Confucianism and Puritanism” is one of the most important treatises of Max Weber's comparative sociology. But there are several serious mistakes in his understanding of Confucianism, especially in his “external” charactering of Confucianism. We show, from texts of Confucianism and treatises of Chinese history and Chinese thought, Confucianism is a “Gesinnungsethik”, and make it clear why Weber couldn't see Confucianism as a “Gesinnungsethik”. The Cause of his misunderstandings is his overlooking of the concept of mind of Confucianism, or of relativity of concepts (=“primary theory”) of mind. The ethics of Confucianism depends on its own concept of mind, and the ethics of Protestantism depends on another concept of mind, which is also of its own, not universal. On the assumption of its own concept of mind, Confucianism is a “Gesinnungsethik”.
On this viewpoint of relativity of concepts of mind, through analysis of the concepts of mind of Confucianism and Protestantism, we reconstruct comparison-contrastation of these ethics, then rethink their influence on each society, Traditional China and Modern West-Europe.