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The series of talks recorded in this chapter were addressed to a German audience. Eliot, the poet and editor of a famous literary journal, the Criterion, was invited to speak on the theme of European unity, and he begins his talk, somewhat provocatively with the claim that English is the language that is:
“the richest for the purposes of writing poetry”(P.110)
Eliot then proceeds to outline the myriad of European influences upon the structure of the language: its German foundation, a Scandinavian element, a Norman/French element, a succession of later French elements, a Celtic element, and elements of Latin. Eliot also notes:
“the influence of generations of study of Latin and Greek”(P.111)
Eliot himself, we know, insofar as his poetry was concerned was influenced by poetry from the East, classical literature from Greece and Rome, and various translations of the Bible.
He again takes up the issue of the relation between politics and culture, and regrets the tendency to confuse these two areas of concern. He points to two examples: firstly nationalism, and secondly a dogmatic idealist view of a future world-culture. He also takes the opportunity to criticise Hitlers Germany for assuming:
“that every other culture than that of Germany was either decadent or barbaric.”(P.118)
Eliot elaborates upon his objection to the idealistic vision of a possible future world-organisation by claiming that the project is reminiscent of many social engineering products, all of which fail to acknowledge the importance of the organic nature of culture. Social engineering suggests, of course, that there is a materialistic mechanistic aspect of organising society in the spirit of techné, which operates on different principles to those related to epistemé(knowledge) and diké(justice). Eliot formulates his interesting mixed position on this issue in the following way:
“But culture is something that must grow: you cannot build a tree, you can only plant it, and care for it, and want for it to mature in its due time, and when it is grown you must not complain if you find that from an acorn has come an oak and not an elm-tree. And a political structure is partly construction, and partly growth; partly machinery, and the same machinery, if good, is equally good for all peoples.”(P.119)
Eliot attempts a definition of the use of the word “culture” and begins this account with a distinction between “the material organisation” of Europe and “the spiritual organism” of Europe:
“If the latter dies then what you organise will not be Europe, but merely a mass of human beings speaking several different languages”(P.119)
Post WWII judgements of the developments in Europe during the first half of the 20th century, ranged from the extreme claim that Europe had committed suicide by unleashing two world wars upon the world, to the less extreme view that the world wars were in fact cathartic moments necessary for the defence of freedom and democracy for the whole world. Seen from the vantage point of 2022 both the EU and the UN can be seen, at least in the long term perspective, as institutions embodying the spirit of European freedom and democracy but there are nevertheless short term concerns that the spirit is not exactly flourishing. It would not be true to claim, however, that this spirit is dead. It would also not be true to claim, that the spirit of totalitarianism and autocracy is dead or even dying. Some commentators view the situation much as Freud did in 1929 as a life/death(eros, thanatos) struggle with the forces of darkness.
Eliot claims that European culture possesses a variety in unity, which is not mechanical, but organic and natural. He characterises this state of affairs in the following manner:
“By “Culture”, then, I mean first of all what the anthropologists mean: the way of life of a particular people living together in one place. That culture is made visible in their arts, in their social system, in their habits and customs, in their religion. But these things added together do not constitute the culture, though we often speak for convenience as if they did. These things are simply the parts into which a culture can be anatomised, as a human body can.”(P.120)
Gestalt Psychology might have been on Eliot’s mind when he wrote the above words. Atomism, associationism, and sensation-psychology were all “reductionist” positions rejected by the Gestalt school in favour of a thesis that “The whole is greater than the parts”. The school was composed of principally, scientists who were dissatisfied with the results of atomism and reductionism in the arena of Psychology. They focussed principally on problems of perception and interpreted the workings of this largely sensible function in terms of the workings of the brain and the “hypothesis” that “the parts of any whole are defined by the whole”. It is also of interest to note that almost the entire school were forced to leave Germany by 1935. Underlying these seemingly holistic theses, however, is a reliance upon the role of the brain that was regarded as a material source of psychic phenomena. This mechanistic view followed essentially mechanistic principles and promoted a physicalist-functionalist view of the relation between the brain and the mind.
Eliot elaborates upon this theme of the spirit of culture by claiming that this spirit is shared by artists, poets, philosophers, politicians and workers alike. Part of what is shared is the language the people speak and Eliot characterises this in the following way:
“Generally speaking, the same language means thinking and feeling, and having emotions rather differently from people who use a different language.” (P.120-121)
So, even if Europeans speak different languages, the different groups do influence one another. What, then, is the common feature that binds these groups together. Eliot argues that it is primarily religion( “a common tradition of Christianity” P.122) that is responsible for unifying these groups. This entails that the Culture of Europe would disintegrate with the disappearance of the Christian faith. Eliot does not specifically mention Ethics in this discussion, but surely Christian morality must also be a key feature of this unity. He does, however, refer to the unifying role of European Universities with their common system of academic standards embodying a respect for epistemé, arché, diké. A significant percentage of the population sojourn for a number of years behind the walls of these institutions. These institutions, in Eliot’s view, ought to be independent of government control, especially insofar as the academic standards relating to truth, knowledge and wisdom are concerned.
Eliot, speaking during the darkest hours for Europe, concludes this essay darkly with the warning that the spiritual possessions of cultural Europe are “in imminent peril”.