Max Weber & Two Cultures in [Puritan] Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism

[alice wellintown]

Why did the Puritan reject Art, the Humanities, and embrace Science?
And, what does this tell us about how this legacy informs our current
"Two Cultures", not C.P Snows, but ours, post-modern Two Cultures?

Also, where are the trade unions in all this? The Luddites?

How it tangles, the lines twist and turnm knot into. Still, we can
unravel it a bit and see that Science is a member of the Elect not the
Preterit.


Let us now try to clarify the points in which the Puritan idea of the
calling and the premium it placed upon ascetic conduct was bound
directly to influence the development of a capitalistic way of life.
As we have seen, this asceticism turned with all its force against one
thing:

**the spontaneous enjoyment of life and all it had to offer.**

[ I have set this phrase in stars]


This is perhaps most characteristically brought out in the struggle
over the Book of Sports which James I and Charles I made into law
expressly as a means of counteracting Puritanism, and which the latter
ordered to be read from all the pulpits. The fanatical opposition of
the Puritans to the ordinances of the King, permitting certain popular
amusements on Sunday outside of Church hours by law, was not only
explained by the disturbance of the Sabbath rest, but also by
resentment against the intentional diversion from the ordered life of
the saint, which it caused. And, on his side, the King’s threats of
severe punishment for every attack on the legality of those sports
were motivated by his purpose of breaking the anti-authoritarian
ascetic tendency of Puritanism, which was so dangerous to the State.
The feudal and monarchical forces protected the pleasure seekers
against the rising middle-class morality and the anti-authoritarian
ascetic conventicles,

[** just as today capitalistic society tends to protect those willing
to work against the class morality of the proletariat and the
anti-authoritarian trade union.**]



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.