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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)
“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)
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”.
Jurgen Habermas in his work “Theory of Communicative Action” presents a modern primarily functionalist sociological account of action and discourse. He uses systems theory and an instrumental model of practical reasoning to describe/explain/justify human activities in a human life-world. Habermas differentiates the systems of Politics, Economics, the Socio-Cultural and Religion in terms of “steering mechanisms” of power, money, language, and belief in a transcendent form of being. Habermas argues furthermore that, insofar as our modern world is concerned, there is what he refers to as a colonisation and rationalisation of our life-world by these systems. By life-world Habermas means our face to face interactions in society and our personal sphere. His account has been accused of being dualistic and many criticisms have focussed on just this aspect of his theory, questioning, for example, the philosophical basis of the distinction between life-world and systems operating in accordance with pseudo-causal “mechanisms”.
Eliot, in his discussion of Education distinguishes between the definition of the term, and the “purpose” of education, implying that the purpose is not necessarily a part of the definition(as is the case with Aristotelian hylomorphic essence-specifying definitions). Eliot turns to the OED for his definition of the use of the word:
“The process of bringing up(young persons)”: “the systematic instruction, schooling, training given to the young(and by extension to adults) in preparation for the work of life: “culture or development of powers, formation of character.”
It does appear, however, as if the Purpose” of education(in the sense of the Greek “telos”), is a part of the above definition of the use of the word “education”. Eliot’s argument against “purpose” may stem from the way in which several of the authors he considers, conceive of the matter. He also refers to the thoughts from a religious conference held in Oxford(1937):
“Education is the process by which the community seeks to open its life to all the individuals within it and enable them to take their part in it. It attempts to pass on to them its culture, including the standards by which it would have them live. Where that culture is regarded as final, the attempt is made to impose it on younger minds. Where it is viewed as a stage in development, younger minds are trained both to receive it and to criticise and improve upon it. This culture is composed of various elements. It runs from rudimentary skill and knowledge up to the interpretation of the universe and of man by which the community lives.”(P.96 in Eliot, “Notes”)
There is a discernible ambiguity in the above quote, insofar as the connection between a work-process and its result is concerned, and this once again raises the issue of a hylomorphic account of what amounts to an actualisation of a form of life. In such a process, Aristotle maintains, there is no distinction between the process at work and its “potential” result, and this claim is connected to another assumption that, insofar as living organisms are concerned, there is no viable logical distinction between things which result in good consequences, and what is essentially good-in-itself. It is also important in this context to embrace the Aristotelian claim that society itself is an organic phenomenon that is actualising its potential over several stages, over a long period of time(in an analogous fashion to the actualisation processes of life-forms). This is one hylomorphic condition for human life in a human life-world.
Eliot takes up William Godwins utilitarian answer to the question “What is the purpose of education”, namely, happiness , which Eliot claims:
“is often associated with the full development of personality” (P.97)
In the context of this discussion one may be forgiven for asking the question “How is happiness related to the full development of the personality?”, especially in the light of the Kantian objection to the ethical use of the principle of happiness. Happiness, for Kant, is the principle of self-love in disguise, and because of its narcissistic character, it cannot respect the universal freedom and ethical rationality of man. The happiness of a man is a singular individual event, and the objects of, or reasons for, this state can vary for both the same individual at different times of his/her life, as well as vary from one individual to another.
The OED defines the use of the word personality in the following 3 ways:
The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individuals distinctive character
The qualities that make someone interesting or popular
Kant, on the other hand, refers to the absolute of a good will regulated by the categorical imperative, which universally challenges everyone to treat every human being(including themselves) as ends-in-themselves: in other words, we ought to act toward each other and ourselves with dignity. Kant admittedly uses a technical term, namely, “moral personality” to characterise the ethical activity of the will and this probably rests on the idea of a “person” conceived generally as a human being.
Otherwise both the terms “personality” and “intelligence” are theoretical terms embedded in a diverse array of psychological theories. Personality mostly retains its qualitative character, but is “reduced” to a number of traits, the number of which differs with different theories. Intelligence is also reduced to “factors”(e.g. general and specific), which are embedded in an essentially quantitative framework. The personality theory of Freud is a hylomorphic exception to this rule, connecting as it does, instincts to stages of development actualising over time, agencies with responsibility for specific arenas of psychic function, and principles regulating such functioning. Freudian theory, however, focuses essentially upon pathological patterns of functioning, and is in search of a “medical” cure in the form of a “talking cure”. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Freud’s psychoanalytical approach was ” freeing” mental patents from restrictive psychiatric diagnoses and treatments, and became known as “the moral treatment” or the “talking cure”. The philosophical background of Freudian theory(connected to his claim that his Psychology was “Kantian”) is hylomorphic metaphysics, which is constituted of 4 kinds of change, 3 principles of change , 4 causes of change, in 3 different media(space, time, and matter). This metaphysics is expressed epistemologically, in three groups of sciences, namely, theoretical science, practical science, and productive science. Medicine obviously has connections to both theoretical science and productive science, and psychoanalysis shares this connection, but perhaps also requires the moral principles of practical science for the identification of non pathological patterns of behaviour. The metaphysical background of Freuds theory, perhaps explains the possibility of projecting many of the principles and concepts on patterns of community and cultural activity. Freud, in his later theorising, expressed these wider concerns in works such as “Group Psychology and the Ego”, “The Future of an Illusion”, “Civilisation and its discontents” and in several briefer articles on religion and art.
Eliot takes up the idea, raised by several authors that the “purpose” of education is democracy in the modern sense of the word, but this sense is not clearly characterised by these authors. One of the tasks of such an education, it is argued, is to prepare citizens to play a part in the democratic system they inhabit. Eliot, in this context, also discusses the economic principle of “equality of opportunity”, but there is no suggestion of, or reference to, the categorical Philosophical principle of equality implied by the categorical imperative or law that one ought to treat all people as ends-in-themselves. This broader principle will of course include equality of opportunity, but it will also include equality in the eyes of the law. This latter form of equality was qualified by Aristotle’s principle of formal justice in which people ought to be treated equally unless there was a good reason not to do so. What Aristotle meant here can be illustrated by activity in the economic system: if, for example, Jill carries more water up the hill than Jack there is absolutely no reason why she should not receive more renumeration for the task than Jack.
Equality, for Kant, also includes equal human rights for everybody living under any form of government, and this is both a legal and a moral imperative. On this kind of account, our elected political representatives are meant, not merely to represent the totality of these rights, but also have the task of defending these rights both morally and legally. Kant makes a distinction between active citizens, who have the right to vote, and passive citizens, who do not, but he insists otherwise upon everyone in the state being equal in terms of their humanity, and he also insists upon these citizens entitlement to the rights that will ensure that they are treated as ends-in-themselves. All men, Kant argues, are their own master, and thereby possess the innate right of freedom. Education, as a consequence, must respect these rights.
The problem with the more limited notion of equality of opportunity, Eliot argues, is the Milton dogma which argues that:
“superiority is always superiority of intellect that some infallible method can be designed for the detection of intellect, and that a system can be devised which will infallibly nourish it”(P.102)
It is not clear whether the form of elitism Eliot embraces, subscribes to this dogma, because he ends this discussion with the comment that Milton’s dogma can neither be proved nor disproved. Eliot also ends his discussion, on the issue of equality of opportunity, by claiming that this too is a dogma that can only be implemented if the family is no longer respected(P.103), and the state takes over responsibility for a universal public education. Eliot also notes in this discussion that the class system of society is disintegrating and this allows governments to exploit the ignorance and appetites of the masses. These factors give rise to the following problem:
“Education in the modern sense implies a disintegrated society, in which it has to come to be assumed that there must be one measure of education according to which everyone is educated simply more or less.Hence education has become an abstraction”(P.105)
It is no longer clear, Eliot argues, that education in the classical sense which he characterises as:
“everything that goes to form the good individual in the good society”(P.105-6)
is what is being provided by the Ministry of Education or indeed even if that is what they have in mind. Part of the responsibility for the transmission of culture in accordance with the above formula, must lie with the family, and the broader civic environment which includes media and sport. Politics, therefore, must remain a limited force embedded in a larger culture. According to Habermas, the steering mechanism of the system of politics is power. Power, of course, can be used in ignorance or with evil intent, and this too is an argument for the limitation of politics, which Habermas argues has “colonised” our life-world to the detriment of humanity. Both Eliot and Habermas believe that the greater the presumption that Politics is the cultural transformative force in our society, the greater the likelihood of culture suffering as a consequence of “colonisation”.
Education, as far as Eliot is concerned contributes to the malaise of a deteriorating culture in which standards are being systematically lowered over time(P.108)—-for example, subjects essential for the nurturing of culture are no longer being studied. For Eliot the barbarian is standing waiting at the gates of the city. The future looks bleak and the possibilities of changing our situation are minimal:
“I have maintained that we cannot directly set about to create or improve culture.”(P.108)
All we can do, Eliot argues, in utilitarian spirit, is to “will the means”(P.108) to change what we can. This cynicism is connected to Eliot’s theme that much of our culture is unconscious. Freud, too, was cynical about the possibility of bringing repressed material to the light of consciousness. Freud, writing in 1929, saw much pathology embedded in the unconscious of culture, as enormous aggressive forces were being prepared to be unleashed upon Europe and the world. Eliot, writing “Notes” in 1943 was experiencing the reality of these aggressive forces.Eliot’s “therapy” is a form of “talking cure” in which he proposes that we pause to examine what the word “culture” means, presumably in the light of his writings. Wittgenstein, too, would subscribe to the therapy of a systematic examination of “language-games” embedded in “forms of life”, if we are to avoid a collective bewitching of our intellectual powers. The power of language is obviously an important part of the processes involved in the transmission of culture. Being clear about its use in the agora would, on this account, seem to be an important element of our understanding of ourselves and our universe.
Eliot, in his analysis, does not, however, reflect on the problems of Culture or Politics in the above rationalist terms. He, like the OED, prioritises the arts in his discussions. The OED defines the use of the word “culture in the following way:
The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively( a refined understanding or appreciation of this)
The customs, institutions, and achievement of a particular nation, people, or group.
The followers of Aristotle and Kant would of course maintain that the metaphysical accounts of the sciences(theoretical, practical, and productive), together with their accounts of the higher mental powers of understanding, judgement and reasoning would cover all aspects of the OED definition.
Eliot notes the curious practices of governments to establish bureaus to administrate “cultural” activities and he suggests that this fails to acknowledge the fact that one of the purposes of politics is to serve the larger concerns of culture. He also notes that not everybody takes an “active interest” (P.83) in public matters. This appears to be an elitist view confirmed by the following remark:
“The governing elite of the nation as a whole, would consist of those whose responsibility was inherited with their affluence and position, and whose forces were constantly increased, and often led, by rising individuals of exceptional talent.”(P.84)
This position leans more toward Platonic elitism where the philosopher-kings were the proposed elite, but subject to Platonic control-mechanisms which prevented the acquisition of wealth and the building of families. Aristotle, the pupil, did not embrace this form of elitism, proposing instead and enlightened middle class which is in fact more in line with modern political trends in Europe.
Eliot. does, however, propose a diverse elite in which people are selected from different realms of activity, e.g.
“the political, the scientific, the artistic, the philosophical, and the religious”(P.84)
Eliot also complains about the fact that the professional politician of his time does not seem to have the leisure-time for serious reading(P.86), nor is there time for the exchange of ideas and information with leaders from other regions of the culture. Eliot refers to Plato and Aristotle, claiming that they were not concerned with predicting the future. This fails to appreciate the fundamental intention of the good which for both philosophers must be good-in-itself and good in its consequences. Eliot’s remarks also fail to acknowledge 1. the role of the mechanism of the “golden mean” in developing the virtues of the citizens of the society, and 2. the role of the “middle class” in avoiding the prophesied ruin and destruction of all things created by humans(oracular “prediction”). Eliot clearly undervalues the metaphysics of politics and ethics that we find in the work of Aristotle: a metaphysics which presupposes the hylomorphic essence-specifying definition of human nature(namely, rational animal capable of discourse). Eliot argues, on the contrary, that modern politics does not have a theory of human nature, but rather blindly assumes that human beings are malleable entities that can be reshaped to fit any political form(P.88). Modern political theory, it is argued, does not concern itself with individuals, but only the masses and the impersonal forces that moves such masses. On such a view, culture becomes an irrelevant by-product of more serious political activity.
In this context, Eliot like many of his generation, speculates upon the meaning of the Russian Revolution and the Russian argument for the superiority of a non-European way of life and form of consciousness. Eliot claims further:
“Today we have become culture-conscious in a way which nourishes nazism, communism, and nationalism, all at once”(P.90)
Imperialism is also discussed and Eliot points out that the first British rulers spent long periods of time living in India and seriously attempting to understand the mentality of the Indian people. This, contrasted with the later rulers from Whitehall, who spent only short periods in India, and spent their time and efforts in attempting to establish certain British institutions such as the British educational system and British law. They did not, however, make any attempt to uproot the national culture, and there was no attempt to establish Christianity. There was instead, an abiding acknowledgement of the importance of the Indian religions. There was no corruption, brutality or maladministration present in the British form of colonialism. Indeed Eliot points out:
“the most relevant criticism, or abuse, of British imperialism often comes from representatives of society which practise a different form of imperialism.”(P.92)
Eliot, born in America adds the following striking observation:
“America has tended to impose its way of life chiefly in the course of doing business, and creating a taste for its commodities. Even the humblest material artefact which is the product and the symbol of a particular civilisation, is an emissary of the culture out of which it comes; to particularise only by mentioning that influential and inflammable article the celluloid film: and this American expansion may be also, in its way, the cause of disintegration of cultures which it touches.”(P.92)
Freud in his work from 1929, “Civilisation and its Discontents” shared similar views on both Russian and American culture. For Eliot, however, it is Russian imperialism that is the newest form, and best suited to the mentality of our modern era. It works, Eliot argues via the creation of satellite states which are given the impression of independence, but are in reality controlled by Moscow. Any sub-culture which threatens the Russian motherland culture is “eliminated”(P.93). Eliot ends this chapter with the Freudian observation that Culture can never be “wholly conscious”(P.94). Any conscious planning of culture therefore becomes either otiose or counter-productive, Eliot concludes.
Eliot claims to be adopting a sociological view when he is engaged upon the discussion of the unity and diversity of religious movements, and this is somewhat surprising considering his philosophical training and background. Perhaps his reluctance to use hylomorphic or critical analyses is rooted in the marginalisation of Religion that occurred as a result of the anti-metaphysical movements of logical atomism and logical positivism. For many Analytical Philosophers, Religion became an epistemological problem, rather than an issue related to “Justification by Faith”. This particular approach failed to emphasise, (as was the case in Kantian Critical Philosophy), the intimate metaphysical relation between ethical laws and faith.
Eliot argues that the more primitive state of the civilisation concerned, the greater the “identity-relation” between Religion and Culture. His argument is epistemological:
“A higher religion is more difficult to believe. For the more conscious becomes the belief, so more conscious becomes the unbelief: indifference, doubt and scepticism appear…In the higher religion it is more difficult to make behaviour conform to the moral law of the religion. A higher religion imposes a conflict, a division, torment and struggle within the individual.”(P.67)
Clerical sects are less likely than clerical cults to promote the policy of abandoning moral commandments, and both are also more likely to recommend a simpler form of life which distances itself from contemporary society. Mystical sects and cults can, of course, reach further back in time toward pagan belief systems which may, for example, worship idols of animals. The paradox of such movements is that their intuition that, all is not well with society, may have some substance. The response of regression to a more primitive form of life, however, does not appear to be a useful response to the problem of modern discontentment. On these grounds, it is not clear that it would be correct to regard the Protestant split from the Roman Catholic faith as sectarian, simply because the grounds for the split were more to do with the way in which the Church abused its privileges in society, than any disagreement over the “form” of the moral and religious commandments. The Lutheran questioning of institutional practices such as the “monetisation of faith”, is, in fact, an implication of the Socratic/Christian attitude toward the colonisation by the values of ekonomos of human relations in general. We know, for example, that Jesus led a frugal life, and we also know what he thought about Judas and the thirty pieces of silver he received for betraying his leader. Socrates also led a relatively simple life, and although he never objected to the role of money as such , he did object to what he viewed as the reversal of values that can occur when what was of secondary importance in a human transaction becomes the primary focus. He took the example of a doctor who, as a part of Greek teaching and tradition, had an ethical responsibility to save the life of any patient whose life was in immediate danger. For Socrates, if the doctor refused treatment on the grounds that the patient could not afford to pay him, then this would be a reversal of values.
Eliot mentions the thirty years war in which Catholics and Protestants fought over their religious differences, and he points out that Protestantism, in its more modern secular form, is not prone to take up arms to defend its version of the Christian faith. It is in this context that Eliot specifically claims that the sociologist ought to refrain from making “value-judgements”, because this runs the risk of succumbing to a theological form of thinking that cannot ultimately be defended. Given these comments, it becomes unclear how Eliot would view Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysically-laden justifications for value-judgements. In this context we need clarification about what the term “metaphysics” means. Both in Aristotle and Kant it merely refers to “first principles”—so the metaphysics of morals that Kant writes about, means nothing more nor less, than the “first principles” of morals.
Eliot discusses the possible unification of all Christians world-wide, and he judges that such a possibility is extremely unlikely. The reunion of, for example, of the Church of England with Presbyterians or Methodists in America, is certainly a possibility, Eliot argues. He also claims that political unions between two countries is unlikely. When a large body fragments, Eliot insists, a sub-culture is formed in the body that is splitting off, and this sub-culture tends to define the sect as different from the larger body and all other bodies that have split off from the whole. Eliot does, however refer to an important fact, namely:
“It is always the main religious body which is the guardian of more of the remains of the higher developments of culture preserved from a past time before the division took place. Not only is it the main religious body which has the more elaborated theology: it is the main religious body which is the least alienated from the best intellectual and artistic activity of the time.”(P.80)
“It is the instinct of every living thing to persist in its own being”( “Notes” P.55)
This claim by Eliot is a variation of Spinoza’s claim that:
“Everything insofar as it is, endeavours to persist in its own being”(Ethics, Book 3 Prop 6)
Spinoza’s account may, however, be built on a more complex foundation than Eliot’s account. For Spinoza, the foundation stone of the mind, is the idea it has of its own body, and this is compatible with the hylomorphic claim made by Aristotle in which the material of a process always has a form determined by the principle of that form. We know that Aristotle in his work “De Anima” characterised the human soul in terms of potential and an actualisation process. The body, which for Aristotle, was a system of specific organs, has the potential to actualise into a soul which possesses three primary powers: firstly, the capacity for nutrition and reproduction, secondly, the capacity for locomotion and sensation, thirdly a capacity for discourse and reasoning. The essence-specifying definition of a human soul then, is, “rational animal capable of discourse”, indicating that these higher level powers build upon the lower level powers of sensibility and nutrition/reproduction. This does not, of course, mean that all human souls are actually capable of discourse and reasoning at high levels, but rather, that this is a potential that aims to be realised by the human form of life that we call the human soul. Here, it is a number of principles which decide what form the life-form is to take, as well as the complex relation of powers that are generated in this developmental actualisation process This process of actualisation will determine the level achieved by any human form of life. If this teleological process functions well, the result , insofar as Aristotle was concerned, was the ethical telos of leading a good spirited, flourishing life(eudaimonia). Such a life-form would be impossible in a state of nature (which is the condition of the animals) but rather requires a civilisation/culture that in turn requires cooperation amongst large numbers of humans if it is not to fall into a state of ruin and destroy itself. This cooperation often takes the form of “aiming at the good”, “aiming at the truth”, and aiming at the beautiful”: characteristics which Maslow claimed were very important cultural aims. Life, may have many meanings, argued Aristotle, but he also insisted that it was an end-in-itself, i.e. something that was both good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences. This theme of the human form of life being an end-in-itself, would later be taken up in Kantian Critical ethical Philosophy, in the form of a moral categorical imperative. One of the formulations is that people be treated as ends in themselves and this creates the foundational argument for a universal theory of human rights. Respect for human rights, in turn, has become a cultural demand in all civilised societies.
It was, however, left to Freud to investigate the nature of the relation of the powers of the soul, and he used three principles to do this: firstly, the energy regulation principle regulating the physiology of the individual (including nutrition and reproduction) but primarily the nervous activity of his brain, secondly, the pleasure pain principle regulating the sensible level of the human soul, and thirdly, the reality principle regulating discourse and rationality in its various forms. For Freud it is the actualisation of a strong Ego that is the telos of human being: a being that spends such a long time in a state of immaturity(childhood, adolescence, etc).
Eliot wishes to argue that the above human endeavour to persist in being human is a feature of what he calls “regionalisation”, which he insists is a necessary feature of the diversity that he maintains is a healthy characteristic of any culture. He calls this “regionalisation”, a satellite culture, and there is a lengthy discussion of the relation of Wales, Scotland and Ireland to England (in the name of identifying the mutually related cultural mechanisms that are operating in this realm of regional forces). The judgement of History is called upon to testify the extent to which a people culturally contribute to the culture of the peoples of the world. Eliot takes up the role of Language and he is sceptical about the possibility of a world-language unless it has poetic power. These discussions sometimes take on nationalistic tones in the name of loyalty. It appears from this discussion, that the size of the region can vary from a local village, to a large country. If, for example, we are dealing with a country village, it is not always obvious that the lower income peasants will identify their condition with the lower income workers of the city. It does, however, seem obvious that, in wars, (when citizens from both categories find themselves fighting side by side against a common enemy), some loyalty is shared: is this a cultural loyalty or something pathological and nationalistic?
An interesting “regional” institution such as the University is an interesting case to eaxmine in the context of this discussion. The university is a meritocracy, and does not care whether you are an aristocrat from the city, or a peasant from the countryside. The University demands loyalty to, and a general respect for, knowledge and justice. In both of the above cases it is clear that unity prevails over differences. Eliot, however, speaks sceptically of this unity of Culture, and refers to those zealots crying out for a world-government on humanitarian grounds. He incidentally praises the Russians for being especially aware of the irreconcilability between cultures(P.62). Eliot accuses the zealots of being as much of a menace to culture, as those who are committed to violence. The grounds given for this judgement are the empirical grounds of the irreconcilability of certain religions, and the pointless colonisation of one culture by another( where that results in conflict and culture clash).
Eliot concludes with the following claim:
“As I have said, the improvement and transmission of culture can never be the direct object of any of our practical activities: all we can do is to try to keep in mind that whatever we do will affect our own culture or that of some other people.”(P.65)
This is an insightful remark and reminds one of the Aristotelian opening of his Nichomachean Ethics:
“Evert art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good: and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”(NE Book 1, 1, 1-3)
Aristotle points to the transmission of three kinds of form which he claims is important to build and maintain a civilisation/culture. Firstly, there is the transmission of skills such as house-building, bridge-building, road building, and crafted artifacts that are in common use in households and businesses, villages and cities. Secondly, there is the personal transmission of ones family characteristics in the act of reproduction(thus creating the “material” for further transmission of other cultural values). Thirdly, there is the transmission of ideas such as occurs in teaching-learning contexts of all kinds, and this is perhaps the most important “form”of cultural activity for Aristotle.
“From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” is a slogan attributed to Marx and the communist programme of government. Yet we know that the early Christians led a form of life that could be described in such terms. The above slogan has also been connected to the Platonic Principle of Specialisation(used to define justice in the Republic) that was supposed, by Socrates, to be the mark of healthy cities before the wish for a commodious/luxurious form of life became an almost universal object of desire.
The “fevered city” that could not control the above desire became, in Socrates’ view, a divided city where the rich ruled and their disgruntled poor sons sat in the agora stirring up trouble for the city-state. Solon was forced to address this problem in the name of justice and via the mechanism of the passing of just laws. One of the aims of Solon was to ensure that everyone got what they deserved or what they were worthy of. The Socratic Principle of Specialisation was also supposed by Socrates to achieve the end Solon had in mind, even if it failed to address the issues of procedural justice which led to the conviction and death-sentence of Socrates himself. Aristotle’s principle of formal justice complemented this Socratic principle in an account which distinguished between distributive, retributive and restorative justice, and this principle might have saved the life of Socrates if the Socratic defence that Philosophy was one of the children of the Gods could have been formally entered as a plea in his trial.
Eliot does, however, see the limitations of a class-ridden society, but instead of embracing the Aristotelian idea of an enlightened middle class, he settles instead for the idea of a classless society which in Marxist theory is tied to a dissolution or “withering away” of the state. Yet, for Eliot, this classless society will require an elite of leaders who require honours and emoluments. This elite corps will be drawn from a number of cultural domains of society, e.g. politics, art, philosophy, and science and these leaders will, according to Eliot, somehow form a natural homogeneous unified group.
Eliot was writing at a time when two political leaders, Hitler and Stalin had succeeded in mobilising the masses against the elites of their society in the name of perverted ideas of justice and morality. Freud, writing during the same period, used psychoanalysis to analyse both the behaviour of the masses and their leaders in his work “Group Psychology and the Ego”. Freud pointed to the operation of certain pathological processes and mechanisms such as projection, reversal, narcissistic behaviour and identification with the aggressor. Freud’s account pointed to an end for tyrants (obsessed with power and honour), which had in fact been predicted for all tyrants in the last books of Plato’s Republic. The context for this account was the failure of understanding, judgement and reason, and the consequent telos for such a failure, namely justice(getting what one deserves). Tyrants create such a culture of death and hate around themselves that it does not require any advanced form of reasoning to understand the connection between the cause of the culture they have created and the effect of their fate.
Eliot discusses Russia and regrets the removal of the Russian elite class which he believes will eventually prove disastrous for the country. There is also an interesting discussion of the role of the family in the task of the transmission of culture, which is surprising, given the qualified scepticism of both Plato and Aristotle insofar as this issue was concerned. We know Aristotle called for a more formal education of the public, perhaps because of the limitations of the resources of all families to provide all the elements necessary for the transmission of an entire culture. For Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, education and the transmission of knowledge, especially knowledge of “The Good”, was decisive for the well-being of the state. For Eliot, it appears as if Public Education can not bear the burden of transmission, and he believes more in his leaders and the family. Indeed towards the end of this chapter of his work , it is the aristocratic family that emerges as the best transmitter of Culture to the next generation.
Socrates, in Plato’s work “The Republic”, as part of his search for an acceptable account of Justice (in terms of both the individual and in the activities of the city-state), claimed that it would be easier to look at the activities of the state because that is where the soul is writ large.
This is an important strategic recommendation for the more general philosophical search for the “meaning” of Culture. Involved in this search is recognising the differentiation between firstly, a physical artifactual reality, secondly, psuche( any form of life),and thirdly, the human psuche. This is an important matter because there is a modern materialistic view of human creation which views our civilisation as a totality of facts that have an essentially artifactual character. Viewing civilisation in this way is obviously a part of an inward-looking process connected to an instrumental enjoyment of life which contrasts with the more classical view that appeals to the worthiness and dignity of the human form of life.
Eliot wishes to distinguish between the culture of an individual, the culture of a class or group and the culture of the whole society. He prioritises the whole and he speaks of conducting his search in:
“the pattern of society as a whole”(P.23)”
Socrates, in the later books of the Republic, responds to Glaucon’s challenge to provide us with a justification of the term “justice” that meets the criteria of being both good-in-itself and good-in-its-consequences. We can see in the argumentation an appeal to the Platonic Theory of Forms in which the Form of the Good was the primary most important form or principle for the organisation of Society. Eliot makes no mention of the importance of justice in the constitution of the culture of a society. No mention is made either of the Kantian ideas of freedom and human rights as constitutive elements. Instead Eliot refers to:
The refinement of manners(civility and politeness)
Learning
Philosophy in the broadest sense of the term
The arts
Eliot claims in relation to these elements of the pattern of society as a whole that, insofar as the individual is concerned, perfection in relation to one element does not suffice to attribute to that individual the term “cultured”. Eliot also adds that we can not realistically expect anyone to be fully accomplished in all the above areas. This, in turn, leads Eliot to embrace a Wittgensteinian principle which claims that when we wish to determine whether a rule is being followed, we do not focus upon what one individual is doing at any particular moment, but rather upon what a community is doing over a period of time. Wittgenstein has the following to say on this topic:
” 567. How could human behaviour be described? Surely only be sketching the actions of a variety of humans, as they are all mixed up together. What determines our judgement, our concepts and reactions, is not what one man is doing now, an individual action, but the whole hurly-burly of human actions, the background against which we see any action.
568. Seeng life as a weave, this pattern(pretence, say) is not always complete and is varied in a multiplicity of ways. But we, in our conceptual worlds, keep on seeing the same, recurring with variations. That is how our concepts take it. For concepts are not for use on a single occasion.”(Zettel, 99e)
Eliot evokes the whole but does not conceive of the whole in exactly the same terms as Wittgenstein. Eliot also points to how, in a late phase of the development of Culture, a process of specialisation occurs occupationally, but also in the case of the differentiation of art, politics, science and religion. He describes this process of specialisation in terms of two ideas that in fact are not compatible with each other, namely, autonomy and dominance. There is no question that, insofar as science, in its technological aspect, is concerned, there is what might be described as a colonising effect on other domains of investigation. However, Science conceived of broadly, by both Aristotle and Kant, is indeed “autonomous” in the sense of defining the scope of its own activity(and also in the sense of justifying that scope in cultural terms). This claim is congruent with the metaphysical accounts of all forms of the sciences we encounter in both Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics. The word “autonomous”, insofar as Kant is concerned, carries the meaning of “self-determining”, or “self-causing”, implying a respect for all other forms of thought whose concern is not confined to the hypothetical determining of cause-effect relations in contexts of exploration/discovery, but rather with, for example, actions and reasons in a context of explanation/justification. All cultural activities involve these two kinds of contexts, and there are different kinds of explanation/justification that manifest themselves, for example, in the different forms of account appealing to either hypothetical cause-effect accounts, or rational logical explanations, appealing to the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Eliot does not, of course, subscribe to the kind of rational account provided above, and prefers to confine his speculations to the observation of differences, rather than the more difficult categorical task of explaining why all the different forms of culture have some kind of essential feature in common (which may reveal itself in future investigations). Speculating in a “spirit” of exploration/discovery might well “discover” a decline in cultural levels as manifested, for example, in the amount of knowledge people possess now, as compared with previous eras. Eliot, however, ventures to suggest something more than this, and claims that the decline of culture is “total”. He does reason his way toward the idea of a worthwhile civilisation, but he is not in a position to give either Aristotelian or Kantian grounds for his judgement.
Eliot notes, for example, that a culture can tolerate a number of different religions, but stands firmly by his previous conviction that a culture is unable to exist without some form of religion. The Kantian response to the questions posed by Eliot would be in terms of the 4 questions he claimed defined the scope of Philosophy , namely, “What can we know?” “What ought we to do?” “What can we hope for?” and “What is man?”. In the account given to us by Kantian critical philosophy, there is a complex relation between all 4 questions which trace the extent to which knowledge(justified true belief), morality( freedom, the categorical imperative, human rights) and religion contribute to the leading of a Socratic examined life, an Aristotelian contemplative good spirited flourishing life or a Kantian Enlightened life. Kant, in his critical Philosophy has created a logical space for faith which can be both explained and justified, and whilst there may be long periods of decline, Kant has faith that, in the very long term (one hundred thousand years), “All things will be well and all manner of things will be well.”(Little Gidding, Four Quartets).
Eliot continues his account of the decline in Culture by insisting that Culture and Religion are:
“different aspects of the same thing” (P.29, Notes)
He also insists that aesthetic sensibility and taste must also find a place in the above “sphere of the spirit”(P.31). His reasoning, however, ends in a paradoxical judgement, namely:
“To judge a work of art by artistic or by religious standards, to judge a religion by religious or artistic standards should come in the end to the same thing: though it is an end at which no individual can arrive.”(P.30)
There is, of course, a problem with the comparison, given that we are dealing with a defined object on the one hand, and the family of activities that constitute a religion on the other, but that aside, one can nevertheless ask the question “What sense of the “same thing” is being referred to here?” This question has a relatively clear answer in the works of Aristotle and Kant, but the question is whether Eliot has the argumentative resources to satisfactorily answer this question. It would seem that a philosophical view of art and religion is required for this task. For Kant, the three faculties of mind, namely sensibility, understanding and reason, function autonomously, but are also integrated into a larger whole in accordance with autonomous principles. Sensibility. for example, puts us in an immediate non-conceptual relation to our objects, whilst the understanding requires a categorically determined representation of the object–a representation that aims at the truth when combined with other representations. Sensibility, functions in accordance with the infinite media of space, time, and matter whilst understanding, on the other hand, functions in accordance with internal finite categories and rules that are schematised by sensible schemata via the medium of language. This difference in the function of faculties, according to Kant, suggests one difficulty with identifying artistic and religious judgements. In the case of sensibility we are dealing with a direct connection of the representation with the object, and in the case of the understanding , the conceptual representation has an indirect connection to the object which has to do with the Wittgensteinian requirement that concepts must be generally used and can be used to say the same thing about spatio-temporally different events.
Eliot also wishes Culture to include:
“all the characteristic activities and interests of people.”(P.31)
Eliot includes a list of activities that includes gambling activities(Derby Day, the dog races), games, and even foodstuffs prepared in certain unique ways. He then draws the obvious conclusion that cultural activities lack unity, and this puzzling diversion urges the question:”What makes us wish to use the term “culture” for all the above activities?” For many philosophers some of the items on Eliot’s list would not be regarded as “cultural”. Eliot also takes up activities which Aristotelians and Kantians would be hesitant to include under the concept of “cultural”, carrying with is as it does a positive normative affirmation, e.g. zealous war-like patriotism and the evangelisation of Christianity. For Eliot, on the other hand, culture is the incarnation of religion(P.33), but for Kant culture is more closely tied to the worth and dignity of leading a moral life that is lived in accordance with the categorical imperative and the principles/laws of practical reason. Faith and Grace play a supporting role in the context of explaining and justifying an answer to the critical question “What can we hope for?”. For Eliot the answer is quite clear because for him Christianity is the “highest culture the world has ever known”(P.33). Eliot confounds his own position, however, with the claim that there is value to be attached to so-called “materialistic religions(whatever this means!) simply because it distracts the populace from boredom and despair(cf gambling).
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.
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.
It may be true to claim that attention to both Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy is necessary if one is to succeed in capturing the full sense or meaning of the philosophical component of Eliot’s poetry. There may, however, be, an aspect of Eliot’s poetry that remains untouched by the above philosophical interpretations(Aristotle, Kant, Freud) and that aspect is also important for our understanding and reasoning about aesthetic and religious problems.
We argued in an earlier work entitled “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action”(Lambert Academic Press, 4 volumes2019-2022) that Wittgenstein conducts investigations into the use of language in order to reveal the important role of words in the understanding of their “meaning”. Wittgenstein believes that grammatical investigations can reveal the essence of things, thus distancing himself from various modern forms of relativism, and he also insists on the objectivity of the linguistic practices that are an essential part of our communal life-world. These investigations are conducted in Greek and Kantian spirit, and seek to connect essence-specifying characterisations with both the notion of “forms of life”, and our mental capacities. Wittgenstein attempts to assemble his album of sketches into a landscape that we find our way about in. He also, we know, compared Kant’s project favourably with what he was attempting to do, but there is no acknowledgement of the Aristotelian hylomorphic idea of “forms of life”.
Wittgenstein also analysed the language of religious belief. He points out, for example, that a religious belief cannot be characterised as a momentary state of mind(Lectures on Religious Belief). Neither can it be characterised as the kind of belief that can be proved via the production of evidence or the giving of reasons. The “reasons” given for a religious belief differ significantly from the reasons we give for a belief such as “Jean-Paul will be grading his students at the end of this academic year.” The faith that a religious person places in the future occurrence of a Judgement Day can be defended, but the “reasons” will not “prove” the veracity of the belief. There are, however, similarities. In both cases we will expect certain kinds of behaviour/activity on the part of the believer. Without some kind of public criterion, we would not know whether we understood the meaning of what has been said. If, for example someone believes that they will not cease to exist after their death, it might be a challenge to understand exactly what they mean, even if they engage in various forms of preparatory activity for a life after death, e.g. an author who writes an autobiography, or a ruler who arranges to have certain objects placed in their grave. This draws attention to an important condition for the existence of language-games, namely, that they require a form of life constituted of a constellation of actions which are embedded in the practice of learning the use of words. The telos of this learning process is the actualisation of this linguistic knowledge in the community. Wittgenstein, in relation to the life after death question expresses the same kind of scepticism that Socrates expressed in his cell whilst awaiting the implementation of his death sentence. Socrates, we know, claimed that he did not know whether a dreamless sleep or communion with other souls in a heavenly medium, lay in the future. What he was certain of, however, was that whatever it was that was going to happen it would be something Good. Wittgenstein has this to say about “The Good”:
“What is good is divine too. That ,strangely enough, sums up my ethics”(Culture and Value 5e)
This of course is a Kantian position. Wittgenstein goes on to say:
“You cannot lead people to the good: you can only lead them to some place or other: the good lies outside the space of facts.”(5e)
This is, of course a primary strategy of Eliot’s poetry which also strives to integrate the religious belief system with our moral belief system. Eliot leads us to the places of the beginning, exile in the waste land, and finally to the end where we “know” the beginning for the first time. These places, for Eliot are the “objective correlative” that he claims is a necessary instrument for the poet to use, when it comes to the evocation of the appropriate emotions and passions connected to fundamental themes of the poem. The Garden of Eden and the Waste land are, of course, in a sense “virtual”, and not actual places, but we understand that they are creations of the productive imagination. We understand this by the way in which Eliot uses his these ideas.
Wittgenstein, in his later work, moved away from the logical positivist view of Science and toward a more humanistic position. In Culture and Value he specifically claims that Science sends us back to sleep, and he reiterates here what he has said elsewhere, namely, that the solution to scientific problems no longer interest him(cf Socrates). What is needed, Wittgenstein claims, (in Socratic and Aristotelian spirit) is that we wake up and view the world with awe and wonder. Reminding us too of the Kantian claim that :
“We may apply….to an organised being, all the laws of mechanical generation known or yet to be discovered, we may even hope to make good progress in such researches, but we can never get rid of the appeal to a completely different source of generation for the possibility of a product of this kind, namely that of a causality by ends. It is utterly impossible for human reason, or for any finite reason qualitatively resembling ours, however much it may surpass it in degree, to hope to understand the generation of even a blade of grass from mere mechanical causes.”(Critique of Judgement, Dialectic of Teleological Judgement, P.66)
The implication of the Aristotelian, Kantian and Wittgensteinian view, is that science, (with its “book of nature” commitment in which observation of the facts and the mechanical causes of phenomena is the primary concern), will not provide us with answers to the aporetic questions that arise when we attempt to understand nature. Similarly, if we view past culture with the same commitment we may reduce it to rubble and ash, but, given the complex nature of our mental capacities and the way in which they relate to the human psuche, a spirit will hover over the ashes. Eliot captures this scenario in his image of the ashes of burned roses on the sleeve of winter. Aristotle Kant and Wittgenstein all agree on the complex integration of our human capacities and powers. Wittgenstein expresses this in the following fashion:
“The treatment of all these phenomena of mental life is not of importance to me because I am keen on completeness. Rater because each one casts light on the correct treatment of all”(Zettel, 465)
It is in this spiritual space that we find “The Good” and the awe and wonder we feel in the face of the beauty and sublimity of the natural world. Kant noticed the tendency to attempt to reduce the “architectural” work that occurs in this spiritual space to rubble, and objected to this attempt in all three of his major works, but most specifically in the Critique of Judgement, where the emphasis is upon the relations of the “faculties” of imagination, understanding and reason. Wittgenstein shares many of Kant’s concerns:
“Even if it is clear to me that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value but simply of certain means of expressing this value, still the fact remains that I contemplate the current of European civilisation without sympathy, without understanding its aims, if any.”(CV 9e)
Wittgenstein speaks quite often about a “landscape” in relation to his philosophy, and the difficulty his pupils have in finding their way about in this philosophical terrain. He also speaks about his own work in terms of an attempt to produce an album of sketches of this landscape, regretting the fact that these sketches do not form a whole. Perhaps both Aristotle and Kant felt this way about their work too. Wittgenstein’s modernity, however, manifests itself in the following remark:
“The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It is not, e.g., absurd to believe that the scientific and technological age is the beginning of the end for humanity, that the idea of Great Progress is a bedazzlement, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known:that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that humanity, in seeking it is falling into a trap.It is by no means clear that this is not how things are.”(CV 64e)
Yet at the same time Wittgenstein is uncertain of this position, and speculates hopefully that perhaps one day our civilisation will evolve into a Culture. He focuses on a major modern concern orbiting around our modern educational systems, and claims that the education of his time was merely designed for the purpose of the pupils having a good time in the name of the Popper’s principle : “minimise suffering”. Suffering of the kind experienced by souls exiled in the waste-land (referred to by Eliot) is, Wittgenstein argues, out of date. This exemplifies for Wittgenstein, the decline of civilisation but it also connects with Kantian reflections on the importance of leading a moral life that has nothing to do with what Kant referred to as the principle of self-love in disguise, namely happiness. The Kantian moral agent, instead accepts the suffering involved in the effort to protect ones freedom and do ones duty, and they do this by, amongst other things ,bearing responsibility in relation to other peoples freedom. The saint, for Eliot obviously embodies this Kantian ideal in the way in which suffering is borne and in the way in which life is appreciated: a life lived , Eliot argues, at the intersection of time and the timeless.
Music is sound organised in Time. This particular pieceby Beethoven inspired the musical form of Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, each quartet consisting of 5 movements. Eliot wrote to Spender and referred to this Beethoven piece, and the relief that is felt after great suffering. We know that Hamlet says to Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are contained in his Philosophy. I have been arguing in several blog posts(http://michaelrdjames.org) that there is more to the philosophical content of Eliot’s poetry than many suspect. The combination of music, prose, and philosophy is what makes Eliot’s poetry classical and timeless. One example of this combination of how rhyming prose, philosophy, and the timing and rhythm of music, can make good poetry is the following section from Little Gidding:
Ash on an old man’s sleeve Is all the ash the burnt roses leave. Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended. Dust inbreathed was a house- The walls, the wainscot and the mouse, The death of hope and despair, This is the death of air.
The end of the story of man may well be best pictured in the form of dust from the once blooming rose(the life of man), and this is suggestive of two ancient philosophical themes.
Firstly, we know Socrates turned away from his investigations of the physical world(the world of particles, air, fire, water, earth) fearing it may blind his soul to more important matters. Life and its creations reduced to dust may well prove to be the end of air. This is one of the suggestions in these lines. Secondly, there is an oracular prophecy that everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction and it was this prophecy that motivated Socrates to lead the examined life, rather than a life investigating earth, air water and fire. Four Quartets is obviously a celebration of Christianity, but it is also and elaboration upon themes from Ancient Classical Greece. We ought to recall that the elements earth, air, water, and fire were important elements of Aristotle’s physics, which together with the processes of heat and cold, wet and dry can be used to explain both weather systems and life-systems. Dust in the air suspended may, that is combine with evaporated water to form clouds, which in turn produce rainfall, which in turn nourishes the earth: as the earth gets hotter dust rises again in the air and is swept upwards and across the earth by the four winds and the cycle continues. There is nothing in Eliot to contradict this physical account and whilst Aristotle does not shy away from exploring the physical world as did Socrates, he does agree with Socrates that the investigation of the human form of life(the human soul) is the most interesting form of investigation and he also embarks upon the project that resulted from the challenge of the Delphic oracle to man to “Know thyself!”
