Category: Literature

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A review of Thomas Howards Youtube lecture on T S Eliots “Four Quartets”: Part 4– A Wittgensteinian commentary

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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”.

One of the major “revolutions” of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy involved referring to the differing philosophical significance of the different “forms of language”, e.g. descriptive, interrogative, imperative and “countless other kinds”(Philosophical Investigations, 23). These forms are viewed in terms of the way in which we master the use of these forms as a consequence of learning the language. Wittgenstein, in the context of this discussion, uses the term “technique”, and this invokes the image of “tools”: words and sentences are “tools of language” he claims. Using these tools correctly then becomes an important part of the training process, and this process connects to areté( saying the right thing at the right time in the right way in the right circumstances). Imperatives, it is argued, have both conditions of understanding and performance. For example, the imperative “We ought to keep promises”, requires both understanding of the meaning of the words, and an understanding involving the importance of doing what one has said one is going to do. These elements are part of the language game we play with imperatives which is also founded on the praise or blame of fellow language users who believe the practice of keeping promises is important for the community. Imperatives of the above kind, then can be seen as “universal maxims” or principles, related to the moral law(the categorical imperative). The logic of the language game governing individual promising consists of a set of premises that begin with a universal”necessary “ought-statement”, and continues with a premise or premises stating the facts of the matter(that Jack promised Jill he would pay the money back that he was borrowing), and a concluding premise expressing what the individual ought to (Pay the money back).

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)

Whether what Wittgenstein means here is the European penchant for viewing the world scientifically, or whether he also has in mind the “transformation” of European Philosophy since the times of Aristotle and Kant, is unclear. This view, however, fits in well with the thesis that Kantian and Aristotelian Philosophy have been, in the modern industrial world, marginalised as part of the technical and financial “march” of “progress”. A march to the drum of techné rather than the symphony orchestra of arete, areté, epistemé, diké, logos and phronesis. Music was a primary concern for Wittgenstein and we find reflections on Beethovem, Mozart, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Wagner and Hadyn in the writings on Culture and Value.

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.

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If music be the food of poetry, play on.

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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!”

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James: Kissinger, the New World Order and Isolationism: Kant, the Old World Order and Globalization. Season 17 episode 6

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“By the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century. Wilsonianism seemed triumphant . The communist ideological and Soviet geopolitical challenges had been overcome simultaneously. The objective of moral opposition to communism had merged with the geopolitical task of resisting Soviet expansionism.”(Kissinger 1994)

“”The absence of both an overriding ideological or strategic threat frees nations to pursue policies based increasingly on their  national interest. In an international system characterized by perhaps 5 or 6 major powers and a multiplicity of smaller states order will have to emerge much as it did in past centuries from a reconciliation and balancing of competing national interests.” (Kissinger 1994)

“Both Bush and Clinton spoke of the new world order as if it were just around the corner. In fact it is still in a period of gestation and  its final form will not be visible until well into the next century- Part extension of the past, part unprecedented, the new world order like  those which it succeeds will emerge as an answer to three questions: “What are the basic units of the international order. What are their means of interacting? What are the goals on behalf of which they interact?”(Kissinger 1994)

I believe Kissinger’s book on Diplomacy to be one of the best works written on the subject because it implicitly acknowledges a political and ethical philosophy which is conspicuous by its absence in many other similar works. Kissinger is correct in his formulation of his three questions  but he pays scant attention to perhaps “the two political events of the twentieth century” which may answer his question concerning the basic unit of international order, namely the formation of the United Nations and the European Peace Project. He points out how the US  was a polyglot formation of many different European nationalities and that the Soviet Union was an empire containing many Eastern nationalities. He does not emphasise this point but these seem to the Kantian political philosopher to be precursors to both the United Nations and the European project in the sense of their  manifesting a disbelief in the unit of the nation state(See my earlier post on the Pathological nation state)

Kissinger goes on to point out that:

” No previous international order has contained major centres of power distributed around the entire globe. Nor had statesmen ever been obliged to conduct diplomacy  in an environment where events  can  be experienced instantaneously and simultaneously by leaders and their publics-“(Kissinger 1994)

Kissinger then asks the Aristotelian and Kantian question: “on what principle shall  the new world order be organised.” His answer is unfortunately narrow and suburban::

“..can Wilsonian concepts like “enlarging democracy” serve as the principle guides to American foreign policy and as replacement for the cold war strategy of containment? Clearly these concepts have been neither an unqualified success nor an unqualified failure. Some of the finest acts of  20th century diplomacy had their roots in the idealism of Woodrow Wilson: the Marshall plan, the brave commitment to containing communism,   defense of the freedom of Western Europe and even  the ill fated League of Nations and its latest incarnation, the United Nations”(Kissinger 1994)

It is clear from these quotes that Kissinger does not place any faith in any unit of international order which does not naturally grow out of the historical units of the nation state. He points to Americas victory in the cold war but simultaneously reflects on the fact that their power to influence has decreased and regretfully and nostalgically  reminisces on Wilson’s desire for universal collective security. Kant had pointed out at the end of the 18th century that this would not be possible without an organisation like the UN.

“In the absence of a potentially dominating power, the principal  nations  do not view threats to the peace in the same way: nor are they willing to run the same risks in overcoming those threats they do not recognise”(Kissinger 1994)

Clearly Kissinger sees the UN project to be flawed, partly perhaps because of its reluctance to  globally engage its military for its values in the way in which the US has. America will, Kissinger predicts. be the  greatest and most powerful nation well into the 21st century but it will be a nation with peers and become a nation like others but it is moving into uncharted waters and History cannot be its guidebook. Wilsonianism he is convinced  is no longer relevant.

“Curbing the power of the central government has been the central concern of Western political theorists, whereas in most other societies, political theory has sought to buttress the authority of the state. Nowhere else has there been an insistence  on expanding personal freedom…The society, and in a sense, the nation, preceded the state without having to be created by it. In such a setting political parties represents variants of an underlying consensus, today’-s minority is potentially tomorrows majority. In most other parts of the world the state has preceded the nation. It was and often remains the principal element in forming it. Political parties, where they exist, reflect fixed, usually communal identities: minorities and majorities tend to be permanent. In such societies the political process is about domination, not alternation in office, which takes place, if at all by coups rather than constitutional procedures.”(Kissinger 1994)

Kissinger goes on to say that our Western democracies presuppose a consensus on values. In America the single most important value is freedom to live as one wishes. This is not the European Kantian idea of freedom which recognises necessary limitations imposed by  the pluralistic life styles of modern communities and pursuing happiness collectively and ethically  rather than as a collection of psychologically motivated individuals. Kantian reflection on the universal values required for our collective projects arrived at a universal ethical theory which then gave rise to the conviction that human rights were universal. This way of thinking has always been ambiguously regarded in the US  especially in those historical instances where it is clear that  leaders have  very often  put American interests first and human rights second. It remains to be seen what will happen if Kissinger’s prediction  actualises itself : if, that is America finds itself in a world of equally powerful peers.

Russia’s domination has been limited by two factors: the anticommunism which is prevalent throughout Russia but also anti-imperialism which is present especially in  the new non Soviet republics. What is going on in this region of this world is very different to what is going on in the West. Russia never had an autonomous church, it missed the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Age of Discovery, and modern market economics. Experiments in the introduction of market economics has usually resulted in failure and a wish for the good old days of communism, allowing  the communist party on occasion to achieve 90 % of the vote(1995). The major problem for the new world post Wilsonian order, according to Kissinger, is the integration of Russia into the international community.. But he does not mention the difficulties that putting America first has caused in the world. He does not mention how this is related to the individual putting themselves  first. Or how this  compromises  the universal and collective project of  ethical values  which involves  so much more than the often materialistic concerns of the individual. Previously Wilsonianism, the bearer of  the Kantian humanistic world view that the ethics of the individual and the politics of the state were isomorphic, had sustained the hope of cosmopolitanism but subsequent isolationism brought with it a disbelief in universal ethical  aims

Kissinger notes the tendency for leaders of the US  to come from the South and the West, regions of America with the least emotional and personal  contact with Europe. President Trump is of course from New York  but he carries on the post modern attitude of political detachment from the concern of Europe for its security and development.  He carries on along the path of individualism and the individuals uncertain psychological relation to his community.

Peruse these words written in 1994:

“In the years ahead all the traditional Atlantic relationships will change. Europe will not feel the previous need for American protection  and will pursue its economic self interest much more aggressively: America will not be willing to sacrifice as much for European security and will be tempted by isolationism in various guises. In due course Germany will insist on the political influence to which its military and economic power entitle it and will not be so emotionally  dependent on American military and French political support.”(Kissinger 1994)

The future of the European Project, which incidentally Kissinger does not believe in, the United Nations, which he also believes to be flawed, and the deeper processes of Globalisation in accordance with Ethical universal values which lay masked behind Woodrow Wilson’s largely academic view of politics, is uncertain in the wake of the rising tide of isolationism and populism which appears to have the power once again to  submerge the accomplishments of the Enlightenment and Greek Political Philosophers.

But Kissinger believes that the 21st century will be marked by a seeming contradiction between fragmentation and Globalisation:

“On the level of the relations among states the new order will be more like the European system of the 18th and 19th centuries than the rigid patterns of the cold war. It will contain at least 6 major powers–the US, Europe, China, Japan, Russia and possibly India–as well as a multiplicity of medium sized and smaller countries. At the same time international relations have become truly global for the first time. Communications are instantaneous, the world economy operates on all  continents simultaneously. A whole set of issues has surfaced that can only be dealt with on a worldwide basis…”(Kissinger 1994)

Yet  nowhere can we read in his work about the possibility that the academic political vision of Wilson, imitating poorly the Enlightenment ethical and political messages of Kant, might contain the recipe for the success of either the UN or European peace projects.