Puritanism and Social Authoritarianism Continued

Abstract

In addition to and conjunction with its moral-religious forms, Puritan social authoritarianism comprises artistic-cultural and educational-scientific authoritarianisms, including authoritarian uses of knowledge, science, and art. Antiartistic or anticultural authoritarianism is an eminent attribute or outcome of Puritanism, grounded in and conjoined by its authoritarian morality and religion. By assumption, its moral and religious authoritarianisms tends to extend into and predict its antiartistic authoritarianism, i.e., the Puritan elimination or suppression of liberty in morality and religion into eliminating or suppressing freedom in the arts and other culture, just as the second reinforces via feedback effects the first. Puritan antiartistic authoritarianism has essentially moral-religious sources and rationalizations, as the suppression or restriction of personal freedom and creativity in the arts or aesthetic culture is induced and sanctified by the quest for Puritanical morality and godliness through purifying artists into saints, “godly” or monks in the service of the ultimately theocratic or totalitarian design of Puritanism. In turn, this anti artistic and anticultural, as well as moral-religious, authoritarianism leads to or reinforces, just as it reflects, Puritan authoritarian antihumanism or what Weber calls inhuman “inner-worldly asceticism” in general.