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“Oh do not ask “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit
These two lines of “The love song of J Alfred Prufrock” lead Eliot in his Four Quartets to an “overwhelming question”, requiring both religious and philosophical answers. In the context of this discussion we ought not to forget two important facts: firstly,Eliot converted to Anglo- Catholicism with is rituals, smells and bells, and secondly, he also wrote a doctorate on the Philosophy of Bradley, the idealist. In relation to this latter fact we can clearly see traces of Bradley’s interests in Eliot’s poetry, in spite of the fact that Eliot, like many academic philosophers of the time, rejected the metaphysics of the Absolute.
The thesis of this review, however, is that Eliot’s poetry can be seen to fall into a tradition of thought extending from Aristotle, through Kant, Freud, and the later work of Wittgenstein (and some of their followers). Kant, undoubtedly is concerned with the question Prufrock does not wish to address, but he is less concerned with consulting “experience” and its consequences. Kant, we know, was a rationalist, and like Bradley, would have rejected the idea of the absolute proposed by his critic Hegel. Kant would also have rejected the role of “experience” in empiricist accounts of the relation of man to Being, or Reality.
The question “What is Time?” for example, is not answered by Kant in Newtonian fashion via an appeal to absolute and relative Time. Kant instead, elaborates upon the Aristotelian answer to the above question, and regards Time as a medium of change which was defined by Aristotle as “the measurement of motion in terms of before and after”. Kant’s elaboration upon this seemingly “objective” definition takes the form of :
“time is nothing but the subjective condition under which alone intuition can take place in us. For that being so, this form of intuition can be represented prior to the objects, and therefore a priori.”(Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. trans by Kemp Smith, N.,London, Macmillan, 1963)
Time, on this account is the:
“form of inner sense, that is, the intuition of ourselves and of our inner state(A41)…It has to do neither with shape nor position, but with the relation of representations in our inner state”(A,33, B50)
The “relation” referred to here is that of “before and after”, and this is the condition of seeing, for example, the motion of a boat sailing downstream. Kant is, notwithstanding the above remarks, very clear about the universal validity of Time, which he conceives of as both empirically real and transcendentally ideal( being, as it is, an a priori condition of experience in general)
Both Time and Space, Kant argues, are “sources” of knowledge and can be related to the Mathematics of number and geometry. Indeed all truths about our experience of the world presuppose the sensible relation we have to Time and Space. Kant’s account of consciousness surely includes this region of sensibility, in which the imagination plays an important role in, for example, the unity of apperception where representations are combined and separated. Kant specifically has this to say on the theme of consciousness:
“The consciousness of self(apperception) is the simple representation of the “I” and if all that is manifold in the subject were given by the activity of the self, the inner intuition would be intellectual.”B 68)
This means that intuition is the sensible capacity for receiving representations and the objects of these representations are given to us in this mode of cognition. Time, then, is a sensible potentiality, but nevertheless it is a necessary a priori vicissitude of consciousness(which, for Eliot is not in time but rather a condition of time). Time past and time future meet in the present, Eliot argues. For Aristotle and Kant, it is consciousness of before and after that is important for the measurement of change, which is always given via motion of some kind. The use of the mathematical number system to quantify otherwise qualitative experiences of “before and after”, allows man to collectively lift himself out of the now of the present, and thereby make it possible to organise, not just his own daily life, but also the institutions of society.
Eliot’s opening lines can, without doubt be regarded as a reflection on the logos of time. He is clearly responding in a philosophical way to the question “What is it?” The depth of his response to this question is therefore best measured in terms of philosophical criteria. Kant’s account insists we are in immediate relation to phenomena via our intuition, and what is meant by the term “phenomenon is designated best by the Greek verb which means ” to show itself”. This in turn relates to the Greek term for “truth” which is aletheia, a term that Heidegger claims relates us to Being in a fundamental way. The “Phenomenon” Kant uses to illustrate our intuitive relation to the world, is that of a ship sailing downstream on a river. We see the motion of the ship, and immediately measure it in terms of “before and after”. Yet it is not this everyday consciousness of time that Eliot seeks to explicate. He appears to be mostly concerned with the unity of apperception of the representations of this phenomenon, more interested, that is, in the time of my life(the beginning and the end). This aspect of time is more the concern of the “I think” than the “I perceive”. Eliot is reflecting on the relation between the past, present, and future, in particular insofar as ones conception and death is concerned. The Book of Ecclesiastes is the inspiration for a number of lines in the poem. East Coker carries the message that even if there is a time for every purpose under heaven, humanity appears to be fully engaged with the project of self destruction. There are clearly echoes in this biblical work of the Greek oracles prophecy that “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. Eliot attempts to spatialise our experience of time via the mathematical image of a spinning object and the postulate that there is a still point at the geometrical centre of this spinning mass that does not spin. That it is not mathematics that Eliot is concerned with, becomes obvious in his claim that the dance of life is occurring at this still point of the present where past and future meet.
Mathematics gives way to science and art as the poem proceeds to evoke the image of a “wounded surgeon” who uses “sharp compassion” to heal his tumored patients. Howard interprets this in terms of an implied reference to “the Great Physician”, who fulfils the prophecy “All shall be well and all manner if things shall be well”. This image then gives way to a reflection on the meaning of the catholic mass, where the startling savage image of the drinking of the blood of Christ and the eating of his flesh appears in some sense to be occurring.
The poem ends with Little Gidding, the final quartet, and the final moments take us back to our beginnings in the Garden of Eden. We are, Eliot argues, the explorers who, have after a long journey, arrived back at our origins with the awareness that we now “know the place for the first time”. This is particularly relevant for any Aristotelian/Kantian interpretation of the meaning of the Garden of Eden narrative. In this context, it ought to be pointed out that both Aristotle and Kant prioritise areté and epistemé in their different but related accounts of the Origin of History and mankind. On the Biblical account, Adam(the ruined millionaire on Howards interpretation), evokes the wrath and punishment of God, because he failed to understand mans place or position in the divine order of things. On a hylomorphic/critical reading of this tale of the genesis of man, Adam is an explorer who places his faith in the fruit of the tree of knowledge to take man to the end of his journey and enable a dignified return to his beginnings. For Kant, it is clear that Adam was exercising his freedom in this critical moment in Time, and this was a celebrated moment for the History of mankind.
Paradoxically, it may seem, it is Kantian Philosophy and its battery of arguments outlining the limitations of knowledge and the necessity of faith, that permit us to view Eliot’s poetry through the prism of Kantian Philosophy. The reference to the doctrine of trans-substantiation, of course, raises philosophical issues, and Kant would be skeptical of any identity claim relating to the bread and wine and blood and flesh of Christ. Perhaps Kant would agree to a “symbolic” relation between these entities. In the context of this discussion it is important to recall that a symbol for Kant is not a conceptual mode of representation but merely an intuitive mode of representation which we use to evoke concepts via a law of association : a law that operates when we make conscious connections between different entities. There is, in other words, an analogical relation between the blood and the wine, the flesh and the communion wafer.
Insofar as our knowledge of God is concerned we can only think the ideas of God, immortality of the soul, and Freedom, and this form of thought is best embedded in a metaphysics of morals rather than a metaphysics of nature. Insofar as God is concerned, Kant argues, the only viable argument for the existence of God, is as a moral author of the world, an author whose will is divinely holy, and which I as a human being must imitate in my chosen actions, if I am to be saved. This holy will is part of the noumenal world which we can only access through our moral belief system. Kant’s argument here is clearly “anti-utilitarian”, and takes the form of a system of imperatives rather a system of facts. These imperatives are expressed in ought-judgments, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”, and “We ought to respect the freedom of all men”. This imperative system is end- or telos-related and refers to ultimate moral ends, which of necessity must be unconditionally accepted. The fact, for example, that man desires to be happy, and believes in a variety of means to achieve such happiness, is irrelevant for Kant, who sees in happiness the principle of self-love in disguise. Such a solipsistic solution to one of the central problems of morality would be self-defeating for Critical Philosophy. Instead Kant argues, in the spirit of Aristotle, that the telos or end of the imperative system of judgements is, the good spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia), and this brings with it ethical duties and obligations which must be respected. If, these duties and obligations become an integral part of ones life we may have faith that the end will supervene as part of the divine plan of the moral author of the world.
The narratives we possess of the life of Jesus are, of course, an attempt to ground the above abstract account of the genesis and meaning of life in a concrete life-story. Kant is on the record for approving of such narratives, but reserving judgement on the super-natural events and happenings reported. Kant is also, incidentally on record with his disapproval of various clerical ceremonial rituals(.e.g. the smells and bells of the mass) but he nevertheless believes that the church as an institution plays a very important role in the improvement of society. It is therefore a reasonable supposition that he would have approved of Eliot’s poetry on similar grounds, especially considering Eliot’s shared scepticism of appeals to supernatural causes and forces in the phenomena of horoscopes, seances, tarot card readings, etc. Eliot’s metaphors are often more Kantian than Bradleyian when he is referring to the moral author of the world. Eliot, in a sense, may be less hopeful than Kant for the future of humanity, and it is difficult to say what he might have thought about the postulated cosmopolitan “kingdom of ends”. Eliot sometimes appears to count himself as one of the Freudian “discontents” insofar as his judgement on the progress of civilisation is concerned, given the decline in cultural standards that appeared to him to accompany the wave of secularisation sweeping across the world. A clue to his position on this issue is given in his work”The Idea of a Christian Society”:
“However bigoted the announcement may sound, the Christian can be satisfied with nothing less than a Christian organisation of society–which is not the same thing as a society consisting exclusively of devout Christians. It would be a society in which the natural end of man–virtue and well being in community-is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end–beautitude–for those who have the eyes to see it.”(ICS pp33-4)
Beauty, for Kant, we know is subjective, but it is nevertheless important for the cultural development of man, a telos that is manifested in the insistence that when we speak about something being beautiful, we speak with a “universal voice”—demanding agreement from fellow perceivers of the beautiful object. More importantly, Kant regards the soul to be enriched by experiences of beauty, given its trinity of capacities: capacity to know, capacity to feel pleasure or pain, and capacity for desire. The latter two capacities have obvious connections to one another. The judgement of beauty, however, is disinterested, and possesses a form of finality connected to the immediate feeling of pleasure which, in its turn, is related to the feeling of a good-spirited flourishing life. The ground of the pleasure we feel for beautiful phenomena is a harmony of the faculties of imagination and understanding, a harmony which in its turn prepares the mind for intellectual conceptual activity in accordance with the discipline of the categories and the discipline of the various sciences(theoretical, practical, and productive).
We find ourselves, in contemplating beauty, attempting to orient ourselves in a world of reflection and contemplation, but in a non-conceptual form which involves a more intuitive form of consciousness. This form of consciousness also feels the need to communicate ones mental state to others— a form of consciousness based on the feeling of pleasure and the harmony of the faculties which most of us experience in relation to the experience of the reading of Eliot’s “Four Quartets”.
What we find beautiful in a work of art, then, is its design insofar as this manifests the harmony of the faculties and the subsequent supervening of the feeling of pleasure. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” obviously meets the Kantian criteria we have for judgments of taste related to works of art. It is doubtful , however, whether Kant would have approved of using similar criteria to validate religious judgements, which, in his view, were regulated by practical reason .
Kant , in his work “Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason”, speaks of the role of faith in the true church, which he believes is based on universal values. He argues in the context of this discussion against what he refers to as a form of “faith in vicarious satisfaction”(P.124) which may have been the target of the Freudian criticism of religion. Genuine satisfaction, Kant argues, is encountered in true believers in the moral author of the world, in the form of Grace, which in turn is an important element of a life that is led with respect for the moral law and a respect for duty. Kant is careful to point out, however that ecclesiastical faith(which presumably Eliot thought important), is not as important as the faith that is associated with the universal/philosophical religion which is “Religion within the bounds of mere reason”. Tales of miracles abound in historical accounts of the life of Jesus, and these are taken seriously by the ecclesiastical church. The true church, on the other hand, Kant argues, will remain sceptical to the accounts of supernatural events and the true church would have also been appalled by many of the modern day scandals associated with the priesthood of the ecclesiastical church. The true church does however acknowledge the importance of a Canon of important events and deeds that can be used for the purposes of establishing what Kant calls a “Kingdom of Ends”–a union of the many into one. Gods role in this moral process remains a mystery, but no more of a mystery than Newtons gravitational force(P 141, ftnt.) The law of gravity can nevertheless be cognised as can divine and moral law. It is the causes that remain unknown to us. Divine and holy law can, however, be thought and deserve the faith we place in such laws. Insofar as our religious mysteries are concerned, revelation reveals enough through scripture and our reasoning about the scriptures(P145) to our understanding and judgement and this justifies the universality and necessity of our communication in relation to such mysteries.
Howard touches upon the mystery of mysteries which concerns both the nature of time and our mortality, namely, the end of time. For many Christians there will be an end of time when God will convene a tribunal and pass judgement upon humanity . The judgement will be either one of damnation or Grace. The jury may already be out on this question, considering its verdict. In this context, there are so called monists, who believe in the positive judgement of grace, and dualists who believe some will be saved and some will be damned. In this tribunal the love of God for man will also be tested as will the love of God by man. Above all, what will be tested is the oracles prophecy that “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. Eliot is acutely aware of the impending judgement day and therefore insists that wisdom demands the humility of man.