'Iron
cage' is in fact an unfortunate translation. The Protestant Ethic speaks
of 'the care for external goods,' which Baxter says should 'lie on the shoulders
of the "saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment",'
turning into ein stahlhartes Gehause: a casing, or housing, as hard
as steel. If we are to translate metaphorically, a better choice than Bunyon's
man in the iron cage ... might be the shell (also Gehause) on a snail's
back: a burden perhaps, but something it is impossible to live without, in
either sense of the word. A cage remains an external restraint: unlock the
door, and one walks out free. This Gehause is a prison altogether stronger,
the armour of modern subjectivity itself. Dependency on 'mechanized petrification'
has become an integral part of who we are.
