Max Weber on Puitans and Art (gold is tougher than dirt)

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, he says oversimplifyingly....

Let me ask your detailed questions in perhaps another way:

is it ourselves and THEREFORE an intimate other we cannot recognize?




________________________________
From: cfabel <cfabel at sfasu.edu>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; alice wellintown 
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: braden.andrews at gmail.com
Sent: Tue, May 31, 2011 3:38:27 PM
Subject: RE: Max Weber on Puitans and Art (gold is tougher than dirt)


In this work, is detachment (ir-Religare) present implicitly always? And are 
detachment and dissociation born out of anxiety? Anxiety over fabricated 
absences of intimacies; fabricated as intimacy is settled into our minds as 
crucial to the meaning of our existence, as a hallowed state the absence of 
which we must be watchful against always? Is this an investigation of 
exteriority, objectivity, the public workings of mind and relationships as ways 
of unbinding (profaning), of escaping from bondage?  Is it at many times tracing 
(the genealogy of?) intimacy-detachment, working a de-conceptualizing (a 
de-imagining) of relationships (a re-cognitioning)? 

 
C. F. Abel
Chair
Department of Government
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas 75962
(936) 468-3903
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of 
Mark Kohut
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 9:21 AM
To: alice wellintown; pynchon -l
Cc: braden.andrews at gmail.com
Subject: Re: Max Weber on Puitans and Art (gold is tougher than dirt)
 
And a tidbit learned elsewhere re Puritan America (maybe..that is, it is just
suggestive)
 
"Peyton Place" became the fastest-selling book in America in 1956, i relearned, 
with the person noting this---Ruth Franklin in Bookforum on bestsellers in
America----
reminding that this book's sales success was universally thought to happen as a 
blow against Puritanism in America, especially its hypocritical 
version............
 
 
 
----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, May 30, 2011 8:01:59 PM
Subject: Max Weber on Puitans and Art (gold is tougher than dirt)
 
As against this the Puritans upheld their decisive characteristic, the principle 
of ascetic conduct. For otherwise the Puritan aversion to sport, even for the 
Quakers, was by no means simply one of principle.
Sport was accepted if it served a rational purpose, that of recreation necessary 
for physical efficiency. But as a means for the spontaneous expression of 
undisciplined impulses, it was under suspicion; and in so far as it became 
purely a means of enjoyment, or awakened pride, raw instincts or the irrational 
gambling instinct, it was of course strictly condemned. Impulsive enjoyment of 
life, which leads away both from work in a calling and from religion, was as 
such the enemy of rational asceticism, whether in the form of seigneurial 
sports, or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public-house of the common 
man.
 
Its attitude was thus suspicious and often hostile to the aspects of culture 
without any immediate religious value. It is not, however, true that the ideals 
of Puritanism implied a solemn, narrow-minded contempt of culture. Quite the 
contrary is the case at least for science, with the exception of the hatred of 
Scholasticism. Moreover, the great men of the Puritan movement were thoroughly 
steeped in the culture of the Renaissance. The sermons of the Presbyterian 
divines abound with classical allusions and even the Radicals, although they 
objected to it, were not ashamed to display that kind of learning in theological 
polemics. Perhaps no country was ever so full of graduates as New England in the 
first generation of its existence. The satire of their opponents, such as, for 
instance, Butler’s Hudibras, also attacks primarily the pedantry and highly 
trained dialectics of the Puritans. This is partially due to the religious 
valuation of knowledge which followed from their attitude to the Catholic fides 
implicita.
 
But the situation is quite different when one looks at non-scientific literature 
and especially the fine arts. Here asceticism descended like a frost on the life 
of “Merrie old England.” And not only worldly merriment felt its effect. The 
Puritan’s ferocious hatred of everything which smacked of superstition, of all 
survivals of magical or sacramental salvation, applied to the Christmas 
festivities and the May Pole and all spontaneous religious art. That there was 
room in Holland for a great, often uncouthly realistic art proves only how far 
from completely the authoritarian moral discipline of that country was able to 
counteract the influence of the court and the regents (a class of rentiers), and 
also the joy in life of the parvenu bourgeoisie, after the short supremacy of 
the Calvinistic theocracy had been transformed into a moderate national Church, 
and with it Calvinism had perceptibly lost in its power of ascetic influence.
 
The theatre was obnoxious to the Puritans, and with the strict exclusion of the 
erotic and of nudity from the realm of toleration, a radical view of either 
literature or art could not exist. The conceptions of idle talk, of 
superfluities, and of vain ostentation, all designations of an irrational 
attitude without objective purpose, thus not ascetic, and especially not serving 
the glory of God, but of man, were always at hand to serve in deciding in favour 
of sober utility as against any artistic tendencies. This was especially true in 
the case of decoration of the person, for instance clothing. That powerful 
tendency toward uniformity of life, which today so immensely aids the 
capitalistic interest in the standardization of production, had its ideal 
foundations in the repudiation of all idolatry of the flesh.
 
Of course we must not forget that Puritanism included a world of contradictions, 
and that the instinctive sense of eternal greatness in art was certainly 
stronger among its leaders than in the atmosphere of the Cavaliers. Moreover, a 
unique genius like Rembrandt, however little his conduct may have been 
acceptable to God in the eyes of the Puritans, was very strongly influenced in 
the character of his work by his religious environment. But that does not alter 
the picture as a whole. In so far as the development of the Puritan tradition 
could, and in part did, lead to a powerful spiritualization of personality, it 
was a decided benefit to literature. But for the most part that benefit only 
accrued to later generations.
 
Although we cannot here enter upon a discussion of the influence of Puritanism 
in all these directions, we should call attention to the fact that the 
toleration of pleasure in cultural goods, which contributed to purely aesthetic 
or athletic enjoyment, certainly always ran up against one characteristic 
limitation: they must not cost anything. Man is only a trustee of the goods 
which have come to him through God’s grace. He must, like the servant in the 
parable, give an account of every penny entrusted to him, and it is at least 
hazardous to spend any of it for a purpose which does not serve the glory of God 
but only one’s own enjoyment. What person, who keeps his eyes open, has not met 
representatives of this viewpoint even in the present? The idea of a man’s duty 
to his possessions, to which he subordinates himself as an obedient steward, or 
even as an acquisitive machine, bears with chilling weight on his life. The 
greater the possessions the heavier, if the ascetic attitude toward life stands 
the test, the feeling of responsibility for them, for holding them undiminished 
for the glory of God and increasing them by restless effort. The origin of this 
type of life also extends in certain roots, like so many aspects of the spirit 
of capitalism, back into the Middle Ages. But it was in the ethic of ascetic 
Protestantism that it first found a consistent ethical foundation. Its 
significance for the development of capitalism is obvious. 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.
 
But this irrational use was exemplified in the outward forms of luxury which 
their code condemned as idolatry of the flesh, however natural they had appeared 
to the feudal mind. On the other hand, they approved the rational and 
utilitarian uses of wealth which were willed by God for the needs of the 
individual and the community. They did not wish to impose mortification on the 
man of wealth, but the use of his means for necessary and practical things. The 
idea of comfort characteristically limits the extent of ethically permissible 
expenditures. It is naturally no accident that the development of a manner of 
living consistent with that idea may be observed earliest and most clearly among 
the most consistent representatives of this whole attitude toward life. Over 
against the glitter and ostentation of feudal magnificence which, resting on an 
unsound economic basis, prefers a sordid elegance to a sober simplicity, they 
set the clean and solid comfort of the middle-class home as an ideal.
 
On the side of the production of private wealth, asceticism condemned both 
dishonesty and impulsive avarice. What was condemned as covetousness, Mammonism, 
etc., was the pursuit of riches for their own sake. For wealth in itself was a 
temptation. But here asceticism was the power “which ever seeks the good but 
ever creates evil”; what was evil in its sense was possession and its 
temptations. For, in conformity with the Old Testament and in analogy to the 
ethical valuation of good works, asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as 
an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of 
labour in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing. And even more important: the 
religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly 
calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and 
most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most 
powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which 
we have here called the spirit of capitalism.
 
When the limitation of consumption is combined with this release of acquisitive 
activity, the inevitable practical result is obvious:
accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save. The restraints which 
were imposed upon the consumption of wealth naturally served to increase it by 
making possible the productive investment of capital. How strong this influence 
was is not, unfortunately, susceptible to exact statistical demonstration. In 
New England the connection is so evident that it did not escape the eye of so 
discerning a historian as Doyle. But also in Holland, which was really only 
dominated by strict Calvinism for seven years, the greater simplicity of life in 
the more seriously religious circles, in combination with great wealth, led to 
an excessive propensity to accumulation.
 
That, furthermore, the tendency which has existed everywhere and at all times, 
being quite strong in Germany today, for middle-class fortunes to be absorbed 
into the nobility, was necessarily checked by the Puritan antipathy to the 
feudal way of life, is evident. English Mercantilist writers of the seventeenth 
century attributed the superiority of Dutch capital to English to the 
circumstance that newly acquired wealth there did not regularly seek investment 
in land. Also, since it is not simply a question of the purchase of land, it did 
not there seek to transfer itself to feudal habits of life, and thereby to 
remove itself from the possibility of capitalistic investment. The high esteem 
for agriculture as a peculiarly important branch of activity, also especially 
consistent with piety, which the Puritans shared, applied (for instance in 
Baxter) not to the landlord, but to the yeoman and farmer, in the eighteenth 
century not to the squire, but the rational cultivator. Through the whole of 
English society in the time since the seventeenth century goes the conflict 
between the squirearchy, the representatives of “merrie old England,” and the 
Puritan circles of widely varying social influence. Both elements, that of an 
unspoiled naive joy of life, and of a strictly regulated, reserved self-control, 
and conventional ethical conduct are even today combined to form the English 
national character. Similarly, the early history of the North American Colonies 
is dominated by the sharp contrast of the adventurers, who wanted to set up 
plantations with the labour of indentured servants, and live as feudal lords, 
and the specifically middle-class outlook of the Puritans.
 
As far as the influence of the Puritan outlook extended, under all circumstances 
– and this is, of course, much more important than the mere encouragement of 
capital accumulation – it favoured the development of a rational bourgeois 
economic life; it was the most important, and above all the only consistent 
influence in the development of that life. It stood at the cradle of the modern 
economic man.
 
see
http://www.williamgaddis.org/critinterpessays/zeidlerweberjress.shtml
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20110531/a7c9b597/attachment.html>