Good Works & what Weber actually wrote

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: Terrance Flaherty <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:00 PM
Subject: Re: Good Works & what Weber actually wrote
>
>
> David Morris wrote:
> >
> > God knows what you mean by "hostile anti-Catholicism" on this list.
> > EVERYTHING is subject to critical analysis, including Roman Catholicism.
>
> It is,  as I have said many times, a given:  You simply can't avoid it
> if you are going to subject Western Civilization to critical analysis.
> No problem with me.
>
> As to the Anti Catholicism on this list. If you want examples from the
> archives I'll provide them.
>
> And another thing, while I can agree with the sound and wise reminder
> from Jbor that M&D is also not Anti Agnostic or Anti Atheistic (and I
> agree with this) the novel, being a "historical novel" set in the 18th
> Century in America, is full of anti-Catholic and Anti-Pietist,
> Anti-Jesuit, Anti-Quaker, and so on, statements by the characters that
> can be misconstrued and have been and have been misapplied to the the
> sentiments of the author of the fiction.
>
> Couple this with the fact that America has a very long and horrible
> history of Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Jesuitism and the fact that Pynchon
> deliberately foregrounds (setting the Jesuits at the center of
> conspiracy) this history in the text and we have the potential for a
> terrible misreading of the fiction that would have some on this list
> (again, I will provide the posts if need be) confusing Jesuits with
> Standard Oil of New Jersey and misreading the development of the
> American economy as the Invisible Hand of Rome.
>

That would be indeed a misreading because Business itself has become the
Invisible Hand, the driving force behind history, as the narrator explains.

In Weber's religion-sociology I've read indeed what I'd known before as a
prejudice that in former times Roman-Catholic had meant more poverty and
less education.

But maybe the 17th & 18th-century belief in the Jesuit or
Popish conspiracies have been a necessary impulses for the development of
the Puritan belief that God loves you for being economically successful:

"In those days (...) passing as in a glide, thro' the Country, safe inside a
belief as unquestioning as in any form of Pietism you could find out there
he, yes little JWL, goeth likewise under the protection of a superior
power,-- not, in this case, God, but rather, Business. What turns of earthly
history, however perverse, would dare interfere with the workings of the
Invisible Hand?" (411.6-11)

This refers to Adam Smith (1776) and turns the phrase used at GR 30.30
upside down:

"A market needed no longer be run by the Invisible Hand, but now could
*create itself*--its own logic, momentum, style, from *inside*."
(GR 30.30)

Steven Weisenburger:
"An allusion to Adam Smith's famous metaphor in *The Wealth of Nations*.
Arguing for the beneficial prospects of a true laissez faire economy, Smith
reasons that anyone seeking his own benefit will also be guided, as though
by an unseen force, to benefit his society. Such a person, he claims,
"neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is
promoting it. By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign
industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry
in such a manner as its product may be of greatest value, he intends only
his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by *an
invisible hand* to promote an end which was no part of his intention" (456,
emphasis by W.). A large vein of Protestant belief in Providence and
election lies beneath Smith's metaphor (...)." (Weisenburger, 1988, p. 31)

This is much more critical of Protestantism than of Catholicism. JWL's
business has a lot to do with metal, is "against living Bodies,-- cutting,
chaining, penetrating sort of activities,-- a considerable Sector of the
Iron Market, indeed, directed to offenses against Human, and of course,
animal flesh (...)" (412.3-6), but nevertheless he draws some kind of
religious experience of "purity" out of this (6-9), a point of view that is
rejected and criticised by Cherrycoke (11-21).

Otto