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Book Review of T S Eliot’s “Notes Toward a Definition of Culture” Cults and Sects

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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)

The claim that a higher religion is more difficult to believe, may not be an accurate representation of the state of affairs Eliot is referring to . The above quote reminds one of the Kantian diagnosis of the pathological destructive presence of scepticism, dogmatism and indifference in our Cultures. Kant’s diagnosis was then complemented with a prognostic treatment in the form of his critical philosophy. The relation of critical Philosophy to Aristotelian hylomorphic philosophy is also important in the understanding of Kant’s view of Culture, which is a variation on the themes of areté, arché, diké, epistemé, and phronesis. We also note the presence of the term “consciousness”, and the Cartesian doubt expressed in the above quote indicates that, for Kant, we are dealing with the pathologies of indifference or scepticism when we are engaged upon the task of sociologically explaining and justifying the unity and diversity of religious movements.

The Roman Catholic and Protestant churches are obviously institutions grounded in History and Faith, in ways in which modern sects are not, but it is not clear that the existence of this phenomenon of the fragmentation of institutions can be “sociologically” explained. Curiously, the “explanation” of “consciousness”, Eliot provides, accords well with that provided by Jean-Paul Sartre the Existentialist. On Sartre’s account, consciousness is equated with “nothingness” or “negation”. This nothingness or negation, for Sartre, is a conscious response to a question. Negation, Sartre argues, is necessary for the process of differentiating objects from one another, and it is part of our awareness of reality: we say categorically, for example, that “Pierre is not in the café”, and this in the end rests on an explanation of the role of consciousness in our awareness of reality. That the “unbelief”, as Eliot puts the matter, should occur, because of the belief, is a complex claim, and it is difficult to fully understand the meaning of such a claim. Similarly, it is difficult to understand exactly what Eliot means when he maintains that it is difficult to correlate behaviour with moral law insofar as the higher religions are concerned. What is at issue for both Aristotle and Kant in the context of this discussion is primarily areté and diké, and the self control implied by both terms. In the case of Aristotle we can clearly see the operation of the methodology of the “golden mean”, and in the case of Kant, we are told that it is “self-love”, or narcissism that “tempts” the agent to make some excuse to exempt themselves from the reach of the moral law. We should note here that this temptation is a particular temptation, and not a general attempt to question the validity of the moral law as such. If, then, the two commandments of the New Testament can function as the basis for moral and religious laws, there is no obvious reason to question the justification and universality of the moral commandments on general sceptical grounds, e.g. “They may not be “good” . There is however good reason to “believe in” the validity of the moral commandments, given that they recommend a form of life that does appear rationally defensible. The “belief-in” the religious commandments, on the other hand, may be a more complex matter given the fact that they refer to a transcendent being. This reference requires characterising this being in terms of an essence specification. No easy task.

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.

Protestantism, of course, itself suffered from the process of fragmentation into sects. Eliot sees this process as instantiating something positive, namely “diversification” which, from one point of view, can be seen to be a negative phenomenon compromising the value of unifying so many people as possible under one institutional umbrella. On Eliot’s account, too much unity, can be connected to “cultural decay”(P.70). This can also be the case, Eliot argues, with extreme diversification . This suggests the operation either of Hegelian dialectical thinking, or more realistically, the operation of the Aristotelian process of the “golden mean” in the name of areté.

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)

Eliot’s intuitions are sound and can be seen to accord well with the Kantian philosophical position in relation to the two Christian commandments(Love God above all and love thy neighbour as thyself), which, put simply, maintains that there is a philosophical form to these commandments : a form that can be parsed as “Know that God is above all” and “Respect thy neighbour as thyself”. For Kant both of these imperatives form the conditions for the possibility of following the moral law(the categorical imperative), which in turn forms the condition, over a long period of time, of leading a good spirited flourishing life. For Kant, insofar as the main clerical bodies of religion embrace a belief in supernatural events, this would be rejected on the grounds of the validity and objectivity of the categories of the understanding/judgement and principles of reason(noncontradiction, sufficient reason). Kant would also reject any justification of barbaric events such as that of burning heretics at the stake. Such tyrannical behaviour would run counter to the practical idea of freedom for the individual to choose a reasonable belief system. There is nothing that can be said in the name of the uniformity of an irrational belief system that could motivate disrespect for the freedom of the individual to choose whatever form of life they wish to. This thesis lies at the root of human rights. In relation to this discussion Kant would be opposed to the wholesale rejection of a body of faith that has served mankind for almost 2000 years: a body of faith which, he would maintain, possessed some affinity with Ancient Greek Philosophy and its reliance on the themes of areté, arché, diké, epistemé, and phronesis.

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Book Review of T S Eliot’s “Notes Toward a Definition of Culture” :”Regionalisation” and Satellite Cultures

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“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).

These diversions from the initial claims of Eliot and Spinoza, testify then, to the complexity of creating the conditions necessary for leading a good-spirited flourishing life. In the light of such complexity, it is obvious that all we can do is aim at the Good in our activities. The master Arts which enable us to do this are, for Aristotle, Philosophy and Politics. For Spinoza, however, human enlightenment begins with the possession of an adequate idea of the human body. This is a position shared by Freud who formulated a psycho-sexual theory to explain the course the human actualisation process takes. Both Spinoza and Freud are in agreement that the complexity of our psyche is such that its form of consciousness is aware of its endeavour to persist in its being, and this awareness is manifested in the correlation of both inadequate ideas and adequate ideas with the activity/endeavours of the organism. Consciousness, for Freud, will then, be steered by all three of his postulated principles in various ways, but insofar as the reality principle is concerned it will be present in areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), arché (the use of principles in discourse and reasoning), epistemé (the use of knowledge in ones “endeavours) and diké (attention to the cause of justice). This leads us to the Aristotelian conviction that the phronomos, (that great-souled man), is a man whose mental powers of understanding, judgement, and reasoning are all in harmony, and working in accordance with the reality principle.

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)

This provides hylomorphic content to Eliot’s claim that the transmission of culture can not be “the direct object” of our cultural activities. Aristotle, interpreted in terms of modern linguistic Philosophy, my be alluding to the imperative use of language in claims such as “You ought to keep promises”. Promising is a practical activity and “keeping” them is more than a mere maxim expressing a personal intention. We appear here to be dealing with a principle(arché) which on Kant’s view can be justified by an appeal to the moral law as expressed in the various formulations of the categorical imperative. There is clearly an intended direct object in the above claim, namely that the promise must be kept. In the above quote there is also a clear link to the teleological relation of the intention to actions to be performed in the future.

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.

Eliot also discusses India and its colonisation by the British, and he claims that the caste structure and the different forms of religion hindered the aims and process of unification. That fact, should not, of course, prevent agreement on the judgement that the unity of the country would be a good thing, as long as diversity was respected. Two other factors to take into consideration is the nature of mans inclination toward favouring his own interests over that of his neighbour, plus his proclivity for forming groups around such interests. Both of these have a tendency to produce internecine conflict. This is why a striving after The Good, and providing justifications for activities with such an aim, is of importance for both the phronomos and the Philosopher. Diversity and difference are facts that we need to take account of in this context, but the mere existence of such facts does not of itself justify the condemnation of all those “good” culture building activities, such as the passing of laws and education. The latter activity in particular requires a philosophical defence of the ideas upon which such activities are founded, e.g. diké(justice) and epistemé(knowledge).

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Review of T S Eliot’s “Notes Toward a Definition of Culture” –Class and the Elite: The Aristocrat and Cosmopolitan man

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“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.

“From each according to their ability” could well be a consequence of the principle of specialisation which required that people should only be asked to perform tasks that they have the ability or power to perform. Part of the Philosophical project of Socrates was to convince people, who thought they had knowledge of various kinds, that they were overestimating their ability or power to know certain things. Socrates was actually not insisting that everyone take up Philosophy and learn from him, but he was rather insisting on a civic spirit which the Greeks already understood to be important, a spirit best described in terms of the Greek ideas of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), arché(using principles to understand/justify), epistemé(using knowledge in ones judgements) and diké(justice).

It was Aristotle who fathomed the depths of the problem of political life in engaging with the problems of class and power, by asserting prophetically that the divided city will not become united until a large enlightened middle class has the power to decide the agenda of the state. Aristotle even outlines the mechanism by which this telos can be achieved: the principle of the Golden Mean. He gives an example of the operation of this principle(arché) in relation to the important virtue(areté) of courage, so important for the defence of the city against its enemies. Young citizens, put in warlike situations, actually or hypothetically, might respond with the extreme behaviour of foolhardiness or cowardliness, and will be steered toward the golden mean of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). This was part of the Greek “Culture”. The outcome of this process, the virtue of courage, is then, a synthesis of dialectical opposites—a synthesis aiming at “The Good”.

Eliot speaks against the above account when he invokes the idea of an elite or “higher class”, which will lead the society, and in exchange be given certain honours and emoluments. Plato avoided such a situation with his philosopher-class rulers being fed and housed by the state but being refused access to money or property. Honours, per se, for Socrates would be a direct breach of areté(self-control), encouraging a life-style that continually strives after satisfying the appetites of the thousand headed monster whose appetites increase exponentially over time, and thus contributing to the ruin of the healthy city and the construction of the “fevered city”.

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.

Aristotles view of the city differs in many respects to the accounts given by both Socrates(who was in favour of a healthy city that would require neither a military force not philosophers to thrive) and Plato. For Aristotle, the city state was a complex creation building upon several prior structures, the first of which is the structure of the family(which is not self-sufficient), and the second of which is the large group of families constituting a village(which is more sufficient than the family but still not self sufficient). The potentially self-sufficient structure of the city-state is constituted of a number of villages unified by a legal constitution. For Aristotle, this final structure contains the possibility of neutralising the forces of oligarchy and democracy(constituted by the disgruntled sons of the oligarchs) with the powers of areté, arché, epistemé and diké. These powers help to create the leader or leaders the city needs. Such a leader or leaders he calls a phronomos, a great-souled man. Some might arrive at the conclusion that the phronomos is an aristocratic man but if this is an appropriate term for this great souled man, he is surely a very different kind of being to that imagined by Eliot. Aristotle’s aristocrat would not require the instrumental benefits of honours and emoluments to deliberate and perform the duties necessary to serve the city-state. The good-spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia) he leads would be sufficient reward for his work.

Kantian political philosophy does not specifically take issue with the idea of class(this being a phenomenon of more modern political philosophy) but, like Aristotle, he sees the threat of ruin and destruction the oracle warned of, and his account sees this threat to be best met by the cultural work of enlightened men who use their freedom and responsibility to create and maintain enlightened institutions of government. Kant, even sees a role for the ecclesiastical church in this process which he claims is destined to end in a kingdom of ends in which the idea of the Good-in-itself plays a key role supporting a culture constituted by areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), epistemé(knowledge), arché(principles) and diké(justice. Whether or not the state will dissolve or wither away when the kingdom of ends is upon us is not discussed by Kant but he does present us with an image of a cosmopolitan man, emerging from this healthy, global state of affairs.

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Review of T S Eliot’s “Notes Toward a Definition of Culture”: Part Two Culture and its Meaning

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Plate 7: Joseph Making Himself Known to his Brothers, from Genesis 45, after a lost fresco in the basamento of Bay 7 of the Vatican Loggia
Plate 7: Joseph Making Himself Known to his Brothers, from Genesis 45, after a lost fresco in the basamento of Bay 7 of the Vatican Loggia by Pietro Santi Bartoli is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

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:

  1. The refinement of manners(civility and politeness)
  2. Learning
  3. Philosophy in the broadest sense of the term
  4. 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).

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Book Review of T S Eliot’s “Notes towards the definition of Culture” Part 1

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Eliot begins his Introduction to his “Notes..” with a challenge that remind us of the ancient prophecy of the Greek Oracle, namely, “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction.” This prophecy like many prophecies is not intended as a prediction of future events, similar to the predictions of Nostradamus, but serves more as a challenge to man to lead an examined life. Eliot’s challenge to us is formulated thus:

“The most important question that we can ask, is, whether there is any permanent standard by which we can compare our civilisation with another, and by which we can make some guess at the importance and decline of our own. We have to admit, in comparing our civilisation with another, and in comparing the different stages of our own, that no one society and no one age of it realises all the values of civilisation…..Nevertheless, we can distinguish between higher and lower cultures; we can distinguish between advance and retrogression. We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline:that the standards of culture are lower than they were 50 years ago and that the evidence of this decline are visible in every department of human activity.”(Notes…London, Faber and Faber, 1958)

There is much to unpack in the above message, that comes to us like a “message in a bottle”, from a distant land and perhaps a different time. Firstly, let us recognise the developmental view of civilisation, transitioning through different stages. Secondly we need to recognise that in the above quote there is no acknowledgement of the Kantian distinction between the “phases” of civilisation and culture as accounted for in the following:

“We are cultivated to a high degree by art and science. We are civilised to the point of excess in all kinds of social courtesies and proprieties. But we are still a long way from the point where we would consider ourselves morally mature. For while the idea of morality is indeed present in culture, an application of this idea which only extends to the semblances of morality, as in love of honour and outward propriety, amounts merely to civilisation. But as long as stats apply all their resources to their vain and violent schemes of expansion, thus incessantly obstructing the slow and laborious efforts of their citizens to cultivate their minds, and even deprive them of all support in these efforts, no progress in this direction can be expected. For a long internal process of careful work on the part of each commonwealth is necessary for the education of its citizens.”(Kant’s Political lectures, trans by Nisbet, H., B., Cambridge, CUP, 1970, P.49)

Kant, in his work, “The Critique of Judgement”, supplements the above account with the claim that when one can speak meaningfully of the feelings which our judgements are founded upon, we attain the heights of civilisation, and cross the threshold into the realm of Culture. He also adds that developing a taste for fine art created by genius, takes us further into this realm. Yet it is morality and its relation to freedom and human rights that firmly establishes our cultural standing. We do not, unfortunately, encounter this insight into the relation of civilisation and culture in Eliot, but it is clear from his remarks in “Notes..” that Culture as envisaged by Eliot probably does not differ significantly from that envisaged by both Aristotle and Kant. We should also recall that “Notes..” was first published in 1943, four years into the second world war that dwarfed in magnitude and intensity any war Kant may have had in mind.

The works of Plato and Aristotle are important inaugural influences, insofar as the shape and direction of our Western Culture is concerned. The superficial surface-value of honour, and war, have been connected with one another since the Peloponnesian war and the wars against the ancient Persians. It was, in fact, Greek Culture that promoted a new type of hero in the person of Socrates who manifested not courage combined with aggression but courage combined with humility(Socrates genuinely claimed that his “wisdom” consisted in knowing that he did not know everything). Socrates led his examined life in a Greek context of areté, arché, diké, epistemé, and phronesis, and this battery of terms defined the agenda for this new type of “hero”, who was prepared to die because he so respected the crucial cultural elements of Philosophy and The Law. “The long internal process of careful work” which assisted in the crossing of the threshold of civilisation began, then, with the work of Socrates, and this process continued with the work of Plato and Aristotle. The Enlightenment continued this momentum with the work of Kant, but the rate of cultural progress slowed significantly with the work of Hegel, and his active attempt to “turn the work of Kant on its head”. The momentum of progress was further slowed by the followers of Hegel working in the traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. Kant’s view of science was supplanted by the naturalism of mathematical-empirical science and its techné-inspired revolution. This slowing of the rate of progress was probably also assisted by the Kantian attacks on ecclesiastical religion, which Kant specifically dissociated from what he termed “universal Philosophical religion” of the kind espoused by Aristotle.

Yet it is in the context of what Eliot called the decline of Culture that we encounter the attempt firstly to define Culture in Aristotelian-Kantian terms that, for example, manifest themselves in the articles declaring the purposes of UNESCO:

  1. 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.
  2. To co-operate in extending and in making available to all peoples, for the service of common human needs the worlds full body of knowledge and culture, and in asserting its contribution to the economic stability, political security and general well-being of the peoples of the world.”(“Notes…”, P.14)

Secondly, the articles above are certainly interesting from the point of view of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Economic stability is obviously necessary to meet human physiological and security needs. Political security, on the other hand, appeals to the higher maintenance needs of security and belongingness. Higher growth needs such as self-esteem , cognitive and aesthetic needs, refer obviously to general well-being, and this form of life(to use an Aristotelian expression), would not espouse the honour-model of heroism, but rather appeal to the Socratic/Aristotelian models that lead us to the examined/contemplative life. Aristotle would have little objection to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which he would believe is supported by his 4 kinds of change, 3 media of change(space, time, matter), 4 causes of change, 3 principles of change and the Aristotelian canon of the theoretical, practical and productive sciences. Freudian theory is another possible hylomorphically-based theory with close connections to Kantian Philosophy and Anthropology.

Eliot outlines 3 conditions of Culture which also have connections to Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. The first condition refers to the growing cultural structures that facilitate the transmission of theoretical, practical ,and productive knowledge in the community. The second condition, refers curiously to the division of this culture into “regional cultures” which have some relation to overall culture but differ in what seem to be superficial respects. The third condition relates to Religion, which Eliot argues has a necessary connection to the existence of a Culture, i.e it is claimed that culture has never existed without a religion. Eliot is not, however, clear about the causality of this relation. He is not sure, for example, whether it is “Culture” that causes religion or vice versa:

The third is the balance of unity and diversity in religion, that is, universality of doctrine with particularity of cult and devotion.”(Notes, P.15)

This resembles the Kantian distinction between historically based ecclesiastical religion and philosophical universal religion. For Kant, all that instantiates the latter concretely in the former, is retained, and those rituals and beliefs that cannot be defended on universal grounds are discarded and regarded as unjustified.

Eliot unfortunately appeals to elite groups of leaders in society(cf Plato’s Philosophers governing the Republic), which will be “honoured” thus raising a question of the importance of Greek and Enlightenment ideas of The Golden Mean or Equality that will create an educated middle class which respects but does not “honour” or worship its leaders. Leaders, regarded by this Aristotelian middle class are, in this new form of society viewed as advisers or “water-bearers”. The imperative form of language that all use in such a society respects the freedom and responsibility of the groups/communities that are being organised. This is the role of class in a Culture that has crossed the threshold of civilisation which previously relied upon an inward looking principle of self-love(manifesting itself in nationalism and war-like behaviour), but now looks forward to a cosmopolitan peace-loving society. On this view, leaders or races of men were not supermen possessing a will to power that appeals to a vision of the Absolute or an ultimate proletarian dissolution of the state. Rather these cosmopolitan knowledge-loving equals use their understanding, judgement, and reason to evaluate advice and action in a spirit of areté, arché, epistemé, diké, phronesis. Happiness, which might have been the telos of the inhabitants of a civilisation that had not crossed the threshold into a culture, is sublimated by a communal demand for Eudaimonia(a good spirited flourishing life).

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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!”