Theoria

The best thing about aging faculty is that not only do they eventually retire, hence opening up the possibility of up to three more tenure-track jobs (depending upon salary levels and faculty politics insofar as the distribution of salaries/positions is concerned), but also they often clean out their offices as that day approaches and, consequently, dump books outside their door. The primary advantage here is that they often dump books long out of print – how else does one get a first printing of Talcott Parsons’ The Social System in hardcover with dust jacket? – or, at least, “classics” of varying sorts that you might not otherwise spend your own money on.

Once I happened upon a cache of books dumped by a retiring anthropology professor. Among the finds was a paperback copy of the Scribner Library edition of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This would be the standard Parsons translation with Tawney’s introduction (same translation, but introduction by Giddens in the Routledge 1992 & 2001 reprints).

But, the very best thing are the marginal notes these eminent retiring men leave behind. I’ll point out, because it is amusing, that the hand writing these notes was unsteady, as though printing didn’t come naturally to the commenter, and as though the person never encountered a straight and tidy line they liked. Also, written in cheap ballpoint. Marginalia, from Weber’s book formally owned by an anthropologist in bold; his underlining is also reproduced in italics:

For the damned to complain of their lot would be much the same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as men. For everything of the flesh is separated from God by an unbridgeable gulf and deserves of Him only eternal death, in so far as He has not decreed otherwise for the glorification of His Majesty. To assume that human merit or guilt played a part in determining this destiny would be to think of God’s absolutely free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to change by human influence, an impossible contradiction. [really infantile {arrow points to "settled from eternity"}] The Father in heaven of the New Testament, so human and understanding, who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach of human undersanding, who with His quite incomprehensible decrees has decided the fate of every individual and regulated the tiniest details of the cosmos from eternity. God’s grace is, since His decrees cannot change, as impossible for those to whom He has granted it to lose as it is unattainable for those to whom He has denied it.

In its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency. that was a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual. In what was for the man of the age of the Reformation the most important thing in life, his eternal salvation, he was forced to follow his path alone to meet a destiny which had been decreed for him from eternity. No one could help him. No priest, for the chosen one can understand the word of God only in his own heart. No sacraments, for though the sacraments had been ordained by God for the increase of His glory, and must hence be scrupulously observed, they are not a means to the attainment of grace, but only the subjective externa subsidia of faith. No Church, for though it was held that extra ecclesiam nulla salus in the sense that whoever kept away from the true Chruch could never belong to God’s chosen band, nevertheless the membership of the external Church included the doomed. [very deterministic <=> symbol(?) 0 cross {circled}] They should belong to it and be subjected to its discipline, not in order thus to attain salvation, that is impossible, but because, for the glory of God, they too must be forced to obey His commandments. [disgustiy {arrow points to "the glory"}] Finally, even no God. For even Christ had died only for the elect, for whose benefit God had decreed His martyrdom from eternity. This, the complete elimination of salvation through the Church and the sacraments (which was in Lutheranism by no means developed to its final conclusions), was what formed the absolutely decisive difference from Catholicism.

The title of the post, by the way, refers to this girl-woman in a fourth year class I had as an undergrad, listed under the title “Special Topics in US Studies” on US interventions in Central and South America and human rights, who, before she said anything, prefaced her comment, “Coming from an anthropological perspective.” It usually ended up being about her; as in, “Coming from an anthropological perspective, I ate hummus and pita while ‘reading’ this article.”