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Eliot begins his Introduction to his “Notes..” with a challenge that remind us of the ancient prophecy of the Greek Oracle, namely, “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction.” This prophecy like many prophecies is not intended as a prediction of future events, similar to the predictions of Nostradamus, but serves more as a challenge to man to lead an examined life. Eliot’s challenge to us is formulated thus:
“The most important question that we can ask, is, whether there is any permanent standard by which we can compare our civilisation with another, and by which we can make some guess at the importance and decline of our own. We have to admit, in comparing our civilisation with another, and in comparing the different stages of our own, that no one society and no one age of it realises all the values of civilisation…..Nevertheless, we can distinguish between higher and lower cultures; we can distinguish between advance and retrogression. We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline:that the standards of culture are lower than they were 50 years ago and that the evidence of this decline are visible in every department of human activity.”(Notes…London, Faber and Faber, 1958)
There is much to unpack in the above message, that comes to us like a “message in a bottle”, from a distant land and perhaps a different time. Firstly, let us recognise the developmental view of civilisation, transitioning through different stages. Secondly we need to recognise that in the above quote there is no acknowledgement of the Kantian distinction between the “phases” of civilisation and culture as accounted for in the following:
“We are cultivated to a high degree by art and science. We are civilised to the point of excess in all kinds of social courtesies and proprieties. But we are still a long way from the point where we would consider ourselves morally mature. For while the idea of morality is indeed present in culture, an application of this idea which only extends to the semblances of morality, as in love of honour and outward propriety, amounts merely to civilisation. But as long as stats apply all their resources to their vain and violent schemes of expansion, thus incessantly obstructing the slow and laborious efforts of their citizens to cultivate their minds, and even deprive them of all support in these efforts, no progress in this direction can be expected. For a long internal process of careful work on the part of each commonwealth is necessary for the education of its citizens.”(Kant’s Political lectures, trans by Nisbet, H., B., Cambridge, CUP, 1970, P.49)
Kant, in his work, “The Critique of Judgement”, supplements the above account with the claim that when one can speak meaningfully of the feelings which our judgements are founded upon, we attain the heights of civilisation, and cross the threshold into the realm of Culture. He also adds that developing a taste for fine art created by genius, takes us further into this realm. Yet it is morality and its relation to freedom and human rights that firmly establishes our cultural standing. We do not, unfortunately, encounter this insight into the relation of civilisation and culture in Eliot, but it is clear from his remarks in “Notes..” that Culture as envisaged by Eliot probably does not differ significantly from that envisaged by both Aristotle and Kant. We should also recall that “Notes..” was first published in 1943, four years into the second world war that dwarfed in magnitude and intensity any war Kant may have had in mind.
The works of Plato and Aristotle are important inaugural influences, insofar as the shape and direction of our Western Culture is concerned. The superficial surface-value of honour, and war, have been connected with one another since the Peloponnesian war and the wars against the ancient Persians. It was, in fact, Greek Culture that promoted a new type of hero in the person of Socrates who manifested not courage combined with aggression but courage combined with humility(Socrates genuinely claimed that his “wisdom” consisted in knowing that he did not know everything). Socrates led his examined life in a Greek context of areté, arché, diké, epistemé, and phronesis, and this battery of terms defined the agenda for this new type of “hero”, who was prepared to die because he so respected the crucial cultural elements of Philosophy and The Law. “The long internal process of careful work” which assisted in the crossing of the threshold of civilisation began, then, with the work of Socrates, and this process continued with the work of Plato and Aristotle. The Enlightenment continued this momentum with the work of Kant, but the rate of cultural progress slowed significantly with the work of Hegel, and his active attempt to “turn the work of Kant on its head”. The momentum of progress was further slowed by the followers of Hegel working in the traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. Kant’s view of science was supplanted by the naturalism of mathematical-empirical science and its techné-inspired revolution. This slowing of the rate of progress was probably also assisted by the Kantian attacks on ecclesiastical religion, which Kant specifically dissociated from what he termed “universal Philosophical religion” of the kind espoused by Aristotle.
Yet it is in the context of what Eliot called the decline of Culture that we encounter the attempt firstly to define Culture in Aristotelian-Kantian terms that, for example, manifest themselves in the articles declaring the purposes of UNESCO:
- To develop and maintain mutual understanding and appreciation of the life and culture,, the arts, the humanities and the sciences of the people of the world as a basis for effective international organisation and world peace.
- To co-operate in extending and in making available to all peoples, for the service of common human needs the worlds full body of knowledge and culture, and in asserting its contribution to the economic stability, political security and general well-being of the peoples of the world.”(“Notes…”, P.14)
Secondly, the articles above are certainly interesting from the point of view of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Economic stability is obviously necessary to meet human physiological and security needs. Political security, on the other hand, appeals to the higher maintenance needs of security and belongingness. Higher growth needs such as self-esteem , cognitive and aesthetic needs, refer obviously to general well-being, and this form of life(to use an Aristotelian expression), would not espouse the honour-model of heroism, but rather appeal to the Socratic/Aristotelian models that lead us to the examined/contemplative life. Aristotle would have little objection to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which he would believe is supported by his 4 kinds of change, 3 media of change(space, time, matter), 4 causes of change, 3 principles of change and the Aristotelian canon of the theoretical, practical and productive sciences. Freudian theory is another possible hylomorphically-based theory with close connections to Kantian Philosophy and Anthropology.
Eliot outlines 3 conditions of Culture which also have connections to Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. The first condition refers to the growing cultural structures that facilitate the transmission of theoretical, practical ,and productive knowledge in the community. The second condition, refers curiously to the division of this culture into “regional cultures” which have some relation to overall culture but differ in what seem to be superficial respects. The third condition relates to Religion, which Eliot argues has a necessary connection to the existence of a Culture, i.e it is claimed that culture has never existed without a religion. Eliot is not, however, clear about the causality of this relation. He is not sure, for example, whether it is “Culture” that causes religion or vice versa:
The third is the balance of unity and diversity in religion, that is, universality of doctrine with particularity of cult and devotion.”(Notes, P.15)
This resembles the Kantian distinction between historically based ecclesiastical religion and philosophical universal religion. For Kant, all that instantiates the latter concretely in the former, is retained, and those rituals and beliefs that cannot be defended on universal grounds are discarded and regarded as unjustified.
Eliot unfortunately appeals to elite groups of leaders in society(cf Plato’s Philosophers governing the Republic), which will be “honoured” thus raising a question of the importance of Greek and Enlightenment ideas of The Golden Mean or Equality that will create an educated middle class which respects but does not “honour” or worship its leaders. Leaders, regarded by this Aristotelian middle class are, in this new form of society viewed as advisers or “water-bearers”. The imperative form of language that all use in such a society respects the freedom and responsibility of the groups/communities that are being organised. This is the role of class in a Culture that has crossed the threshold of civilisation which previously relied upon an inward looking principle of self-love(manifesting itself in nationalism and war-like behaviour), but now looks forward to a cosmopolitan peace-loving society. On this view, leaders or races of men were not supermen possessing a will to power that appeals to a vision of the Absolute or an ultimate proletarian dissolution of the state. Rather these cosmopolitan knowledge-loving equals use their understanding, judgement, and reason to evaluate advice and action in a spirit of areté, arché, epistemé, diké, phronesis. Happiness, which might have been the telos of the inhabitants of a civilisation that had not crossed the threshold into a culture, is sublimated by a communal demand for Eudaimonia(a good spirited flourishing life).